Jump N Roll is, when you take away the smooth graphics and quite impressive music, an old school game at heart. Like Frogger it feeds that repetitive, ‘get to the end of the level’ urge. Yet with its coin and diamond collecting, it reminded me of a stressful Sonic game as well. What it also incorporates is the use of two dimensions of platforms to work across, much like Little Big Planet, with a foreground and background route. As the screen progresses to the right and you struggle to keep up, your character (which I can’t even begin to describe. A flaming lion’s head perhaps?) can choose to work on the easier path at the front of the screen or, take the high road at the back, where the challenge is far greater.

It’s a free title, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t spend money. This is one of those titles that allows, no scratch that, encourages you to spend your money on upgrades through the purchase of Pink Diamonds through the App Store. These diamonds offer such things as extra lives, instant access to locked levels and other upgrade items. Purchasing diamonds from the App store as we all know can be expensive and, sometimes, take the fun out of the game. It acts like a quick ladder to the top rather than working your way there on your own accord. Why miss the grind? Well, one reason would be to beat most of the annoyance out of the game. And I found this game annoying.

Ultimate frustration in videogames nowadays comes in the form of such games as Trails HD or Super Meat Boy. The fundamentals are all solid and the frustrations come from intentional mechanics. Yet I now find myself getting stressed with many videogames recently for dropping the ball on elements that we should have perfected by now. In Jump N Roll’s case it’s the controls that really let it down.

Many people’s biggest bugbear with iOS games is that the controls, well, don’t control. Even more so if you are playing on an iPhone or iPod touch. And with Jump N Roll, a game I otherwise enjoyed, this issue with controls ruins the entire experience. Even more upsetting is how simple the control are and should therefore function; two buttons on either side of the screen. Tap on the left hand side to jump, tap the other to ‘boost’. This would normally completely eliminate the clumsiness that is directions but I found them consistently unresponsive. Additionally, because there are no visible buttons to press, I found myself pressing anywhere on that side of the screen thus adding to the confusion.

Yet saying all this I did enjoy the game. Sure the Pink Diamond business model can be intrusive, asking if you want to buy things from the App Store, and yes it was unresponsive therefore I died a lot. And yes, the main menu leaves a lot to be desired. But, it pushed the old school gamer urges that I liked to get pushed now and then.

Jump N Roll is worth downloading. I would even pay between 60p to £1.50 for it if that would mean less aggressive selling of the diamonds. The graphics are also hugely impressive, complimented by some truly hypnotic music. Getting caught up in coin collecting and landing those perfect jumps is a compelling experience but the controls threaten to completely undermine the fun.

MLG Rating: 6/10 Platform:  iOS Release Date: 11/12/2011

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Jump N Roll for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

OvenBreak Infinity is a platformer available on IOS. As you probably gathered from my intro, it’s not a very good one. You play as a gingerbread man and your goal is to help him reach the end of each challenging level. The only control inputs you have to worry about are: jump, slide and hook. The slide button switches to hook when you’re jumping, allowing the character to swing to help him jump over pits. You don’t need to worry about moving him at all as he’s constantly running; all you need to worry about is avoiding obstacles by using the aforementioned inputs. Simple premise, simple controls; how did it turn out so badly?

It’s just far too repetitive. Now I can sympathise that this is just designed to be a game you stick on for a few minutes while on the bus but I can’t even recommend it to those who like a quick gaming fix while riding public transport. For the first minute or so you’re likely to think “ahhh this is fun jumping over obstacles and collecting jellybeans the whole time to increase your overall score”, the trouble here is that it’s not bite size at all. The levels seem to go on forever and there’s hardly any variation which causes you to switch off and leads to the gingerbread man’s much deserved demise. Also, when you do finally get through the level, you are rewarded with a new stage which, whilst it does increase in difficulty,  just like the previous level gets stale very quickly as it goes on for far too long.

The controls are responsive most of the time to its credit, although I feel the hook mechanic can be a bit hit or miss which is a pain when you a relying on it to get over a pit.

In OvenBreak Infinity’s favour are the visuals, which look very appealing. The cell-shaded art style really suits the game. The animations of the gingerbread man also look very nice as he switches between sliding to running again. Sadly though nothing else in this game is animated, all the obstacles are static.

To conclude I feel that this game’s biggest fault is the length of its levels. Having them a bit shorter would have made the game’s repetitive issues less of a hassle. The levels lengths are so ridiculous I think they could have made four stages out of each. So whilst it certainly lives up to its ‘infinity’ sub title, it’s not in a beneficial way. More variety and content is required. I really can’t think of anyone I’d recommend this game to. There are much better options available out there; I highly recommend a pass on this one.

MLG Rating: 3/10 Platform:  iOS Release Date: 12/12/2011

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of OvenBreak Infinity for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of five days on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

Star Marine is a side-scroller where the player’s main goal is to destroy the opposing alien species. Each mission usually begins with some kind of plot point or picture driven cut-scene to help you get in the mood for murder, the style of animation doesn’t look fantastic when compared to the retro Contra art style of the main game. Luckily the art style in the very brief cut scenes does little to mar the overall package of the game as a whole. The game takes a lot of inspiration from Contra and wraps the whole experience in a polished sci-fi skin using music akin to that of Mass Effect and Unreal Tournament.

The player controls a surly looking space marine with the left stick and his gun direction with the right. Control feels accurate and precise in general, allowing you to concentrate and lose yourself in the score-building onslaught. Star Marine isn’t just a side scrolling shooter however; it’s also a game where you can compete with friends for the highest score by chaining together combos. Social interaction comes in the form of Facebook and Game-Center connectivity, allowing for achievement comparisons with friends or confusing Facebook updates for your family.

High-scores can be polished and honed by earning ‘Gems’ to upgrade weaponry and character resilience. Gems earn you new tools of destruction and add a degree of tactical choice to the game when hunting the highest score. Each weapon suits a different situation, bundles of enemies will be mopped up by a single super conductive electrical stream of energy, but not so useful against a single opponent who cowers behind a wall. Boss fights are one of the most entertaining aspects of Star Marine. Boss design is straight out of the ‘classic guide to boss battles hand-book’. You can feel that the developers of this game wanted to write a love letter to classic games like Metroid and Contra drawing on their nostalgia as a creative source. The Mechanics and rules of boss battles will be familiar to anybody who was alive and gaming in the NES and SNES days, relying on pattern analysis and precise dodging until victory is achieved.

Star Marine: Infinite Ammo has some minor problems such as new paths not opening when triggered but nothing that ruins the experience long term. Star Marine is a great game for those looking for an injection of nostalgia but the grin inducing touches may be lost on younger gamers.

MLG Rating: 7/10 Platform:  iOS Release Date: 12/01/2012

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Star Marine: Infinite Ammo for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of five days on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

What have we been playing?

Matt continues with Saints Row: The Third, joins the community for Gears of War 3 & Full House Poker and discusses his experience with Bastion DLC.

Daren talks Flashpoints among other things with Star Wars the Old Republic, grabs Broken Sword 2: Remastered on iOS and returns to Osmos.

In the news

Possible Diablo 3 release date, rumours of new Microsoft and Sony hardware at E3, Xbox Live account phishing, XBL Indie games given greater file size capacity, X-COM making a strategic comeback, House of the Dead 3 & 4 HD’s incoming, Star Trek Online free to play date confirmed, Microsoft Flight launches as free to play, Lego Batman 2 announced and the best SWTOR glitch ever.

Soundtrack of our gaming lives

In this episode, Matt selects the opening cinematic from Final Fantasy VIII.

In addition you get the usual suspects; Retail Roundup, New Releases, DLC and the Sexy Quiz.

Subscribe to the show on iTunes & leave us a sexy review. Download direct or listen here.

As always we really appreciate feedback so tell us what you thought of the show or expand on the discussion points raised by leaving a comment.

Poor Bruce, it seems like he just can’t help himself when it comes to going on adventures. Unfortunately he isn’t the most agile bird and he keeps getting himself stuck and the only person who can help him is you. Don’t let his cute looks and the pretty environments fool you though. After the introductory levels teaching you how the game works, the game starts to get pretty tricky.

Chillingo have come up with another well thought out physics puzzler with 100 levels across five different environments that Bruce needs to make his way through. You must aid Bruce by helping him avoid various perils including spikes, hot coals, or even being licked up by a patient frogs, as our lost chick here can’t fly. You do this by manipulating the environment around him so that gravity can take hold and get him home to his nest at the bottom or side of each level. Grass verges disappear when pressed, platforms attached to vines can be dropped into place and you can also drop weights on to platforms to propel Bruce across the level. Timing is very important too, the game makes really good use of multi touch meaning you’ll need to have good reflexes to make sure everything falls in to place for Bruce as he makes his way home.

There are normally a couple of different ways for Bruce to get back to where he needs to be but if you want to unlock the new environments you are going to have to collect the three golden eggs that have been cleverly placed around the levels. If you are a completionist this will keep you coming back to make sure you get all of them.

It’s the simple games that work best on the iOS platform and this is another good example. Sure, there are some challenging levels to overcome but this only adds an extra level of fun to the experience, although the high concept is more than a little familiar. It’s certainly a more refreshing physics puzzler, but only marginally. However, fun is fun and Lost Little Chick’s compelling mechanics, charm and experience will keep you entertained whilst you’re on the go.

MLG Rating: 8/10
Platform:  iPhone, iOS Release Date: 12/10/11

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Little Lost Chick for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of 3 days on an iPhone 3gs. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

In the primary game mode, Dusk ’til Dawn, you must swing from tree to tree as daybreak chases you, through the use of your elastic leg. And once it catches up to you, you fall asleep and the game is over. As you’re swinging through the areas of forest, cave and fire cavern you gain points depending on how far you travel, but a set of pesky animals are out to get your poor bat. Pandas and monkeys cling to trees and throw things at you to stall your momentum, as well as other bats branding baseball bats to impede you even more. Additionally there’s a hungry tiger skulking around on the forest floor waiting to give you the good news with his sharp teeth. It sure is a dangerous place for this young bat. Fortunately you can use your wings to gain a significant boost to your distance by collecting fruit as you swing along.

The second mode, Night Fire, has you once again swinging with the intension of gaining distance, but instead of sun light you’re being chased by a raging fire. But distance alone won’t save you from the flames; you will also need to knock over buckets of water to slow the fire’s spread.

Mechanically all this swinging couldn’t be simpler. You touch the screen to shoot out your elastic leg, and touch again to release. The trick is to time your swing to gain the most distance or best direction for collecting fruit, and an onscreen curve will help guide you on best swinging practices. It’s simple, easy to pick up and tons of fun.

You also gain awards in the form of clothing for your bat by completing specific challenges, such as performing a 360 degree swings, hitting the skybox, etc. It adds that little extra purpose to the endless setup that encourages replay marvellously.

Swing the Bat is yet another example of a simple idea working marvellously. It’s enjoyable and compelling, and although it’s not the most original idea on iOS it’s charm maintains your interest.

MLG Rating: 8/10
Platform:  iPhone, iOS Release Date: 05/09/2011

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Swing the Bat for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

For those of you reading this review and thinking “I’ve read half of this before, Jon, what are you playing at?” please remember that I am now reviewing retrospectively, and some of you may not have read the Blockado Mountain review from last week. I suggest you do read it afterwards because, come on, why not?

Jungle is the first destination on this whistle-stop tour of Blockado Land, not to be confused with Lego Land, or Stickle-Brick Village, or indeed the widely unknown K-Nex Hamlet. And being a jungle there are plenty of brilliant backing sounds to accompany the gameplay, such as toucans and vines swinging and some other assorted noises. It’s surprisingly convincing and realistic, and more than once I found myself drifting off while playing, I would be snapped back to focus by the call of a passing tropical bird. Graphics-wise it is much the same as what I experienced in Mountain, if not a little brighter and more vibrant in places, to tie in with the whole jungle theme.

The problem I have with Jungle is that it is almost too easy. Having played through the significantly harder Mountain, harder because most of the puzzle elements and traps had been firmly established, I only had a couple of tutorial levels to become accustomed to the style of play, before being thrown in at the deep end with some utterly gruelling levels to solve. Jungle introduces you to each puzzle element piece by piece, and I actually learned some different tactics from these basic levels that I have since been able to incorporate in the few unsolved puzzles I still had in Mountain. I managed to clear through all of Adventure mode in Jungle - some 40 levels - including the hard puzzle paths all in one sitting. I even got a nifty achievement for not using the Solve function to help me through.

So having blitzed through Jungle I delved into the palette of browns that was Blockado Desert. Some of the more difficult puzzle elements were introduced in this set of puzzles, such as everyone’s staple puzzling favourite: the ice block, as well as the snake blocks, which really adds an extra sheen of difficulty and strategy to this selection of levels. I would say that I had more fun with the Desert set of levels, probably because it felt a lot more challenging than Jungle, but I still haven’t felt as challenged as I did when I played through Mountain. On more than one occasion I was forced to write out puzzles on scraps of paper to solve when my iPhone was not to hand. This is the level of challenge I hope to return to the time the next game comes out.

This time around I played a lot more with the Puzzle Scanner, which adds puzzles to your collection by way of those funky QR codes you see on everything these days. Some of these had a bit more of a devilish feel to them, and I thoroughly enjoyed being completely and utterly beaten into submission from one of the downloaded puzzles, which even now I have been unable to solve for some reason. So with the Puzzle Scanner, the Bonus Puzzles and the Adventure mode, for both Jungle and Desert, you are looking at a minimum of 150 puzzles to solve, and plenty of opportunities to go back and get three-star ratings on some of the earlier puzzles.

So playing the games in order is the most logical thing to do, which should keep you nice and busy until the fourth instalment, Blockado Deep Sea, is released at the end of this month. You’ll feel much better playing through them properly and in sequence, because the way I went through them was like entering the world’s weirdest triathlon… I can only compare it to kicking things off with a twenty-mile hike over hot coals, before treating yourself to a ten minutes in a sauna and then a mildly difficult Sudoku.

Scoring the games as separate entities, and in terms of their challenge and gameplay aspects, proved to be difficult. Do I compare them to the first game I played, a game that had learnt and developed somewhat from the initial outings? Or do I try and score them as if I had not played Blockado Mountain? Well both Jungle and Desert still feature that frustrating camera moving icon, which I have been told is being looked at ahead of Blockado Deep Sea, so that’s a point off each unfortunately. In the end though, it has to come down to the experience as a whole. An experience that isn’t far from being perfected. Watch this space!

MLG Rating: 8/10 (Blockado Jungle) 8/10 (Blockado Desert)
Platform: iOS Release Date: 15/08/2011 (Blockado Desert) 17/08/2011 (Blockado Jungle)

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided  digital copies of Blockado Desert and Blockado Jungle for review purposes by the promoter. The titles were reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

It’s hugely compelling. The pleasantly simple concept and design make it easy to pick up and play; a wonderful fit for the iPhone. OmnomBot’s bin-like design and animations are charming along with the stark surroundings and menu, which makes navigating a breeze and distractions minimal. You must keep OnmonBot’s Hunger-o-level from running out by eating meat and avoiding vegetables as they fly from right to left across the screen. How they approach you can change randomly between flying straight at you, bouncing, or even bouncing over you and requiring you to flip your mouth shut to eat them. It’s great, unpredictable reaction fun.

It’s all about gaining points and avoiding hunger from wave to wave. With tricks like eating three pieces of meat in a row without closing your mouth, but before the mouth energy bar runs out that closes your mouth automatically, you can gain more points. Additionally you can flip the vegetables for even more points, although on the quicker waves mistiming this can be dangerous. Each waves gets faster and therefore gradually more difficult until poor Omnombot succumbs to hunger and the games is over.

It sounds silly and shallow, but that’s part of its charm. There’s a special sausage you can eat to temporarily shield yourself from vegetables, although its necessity is questionable with the mouth energy bar in play. Challenges act like achievements, encouraging you to chase certain objectives like flip three vegetables in a row or have a perfect run through of a certain wave, and as you complete challenges new ones appear. The leaderboard has yet to be implemented, but the promise of an online leaderboard is sure to bring further compulsion to play.

OmnomBot is shaping up to be a great title and the Milkman Games team are busy not only tweaking the game, but also preparing new levels, challenges, modes and characters as we speak. OmnomBot is due to be release on the App Store later this month.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6MjWmdEE_U

Bit By Bit Games

Anyway, being the level headed and generous soul that I am (Ha!), I decided it would be only fair to review Endless Lines with as little reference to that update incident as possible. So now we can start this review afresh. Well I’m still knocking a point or two off at the end of things for the whole fiasco. I said I was generous, not fucking Saintly…

For once it’s nice to kick of a mobile game review without being forced to mention any of the usual suspects that get name dropped every five minutes in these things. However, just for a laugh, Endless Lines is not like Angry Birds or even Bejewelled. Hurrah! Although if we were going to go for any sort of comparison, you would have to imagine this game as a bizarre amalgamation of Scrabble, Tetris and Snake. You remember Snake? What the world once thought would be the cutting edge of mobile gaming. Such luddites we must have seemed like back in 2002… The playing field before you is an 8×8 grid of Scrabble tiles, with the appropriate letters replaced with different shaped lines. I almost went flashing back to Tetro Mania from last week, as our old Tetris friend, Mr ‘T’ Block, makes an appearance here. There is a straight line, and ‘L’ shaped line, and a cross-shaped, with two straight lines running perpendicular to one another. All tiles feature as rotations and mirror images of themselves, and it’s your task to slide them around to create a line that runs from the left side of the screen to the right.

You can slide every column and every row on the grid, moving the full set of eight tiles with the swipe of your finger. The lines on the tiles are blue to start with, and once they connect together to form the beginnings of a path across the screen, they change to red. Lady luck will sometimes open up a new game with a whole patch of tiles linked together, and let you just finish them off to gain a few easy points. When a full path is created, all associated tiles along the path are deleted, and replaced with new tiles. But there are times when none of the tiles seem to match up, and every time you try to create a winning line you wind up deleting the start of the path. It boils down to knowing when you can just swipe the rows across to put everything together, or dropping down columns of tiles to mix them up a bit, hoping for new combinations to reveal themselves. You can rely on the game to help the majority of the time, but your brain does get enough of a workout when you are frantically searching for any route you can create.

There are three gameplay modes to choose from. Blitz Mode sees you try to score as many points in 60 seconds. Sprint Mode asks you to pick a target score, 10,000, 30,000 or 80,000, and challenges you to get that score in the fastest time possible. Zen Mode has no time limits or targets, but simply lets you play for as long as you want, at your own pace. There are some neat special blocks to liven things up a little. Multiplier Blocks can be included in a path to increase your score, so you might earn x2, x3, x4 or even higher for your path. Bomb Blocks, when in a completed path, will destroy all remaining blocks in the row and column it sits in. The Lock Block adds a bonus chunk of challenge to proceedings, as the row and column containing a Lock Block cannot be moved at all. This means you need to focus on completing a path that travels through the Lock, to try and wipe it from the field. Act slowly, and another lock will appear, freezing another set of tiles. It’s nice trying to plot your way around destroying these, as more often than not, making basic paths just to score points in relatively easy.

One function that doesn’t seem to work at all is the Shake function. During gameplay, if you are stuck, you are supposed to be able to shake your device to mix up the tiles a bit, which to me sounds a little like cheating anyway, but when I’ve tried rotating, shaking, throwing, dropping and tumble-drying my iPhone in the name of trying to mix up the tiles, they remain resolutely glued to the spot. I don’t know, maybe it’s one of those “all-in-the-wrist” things? It’s not a function I seem to miss, so I wouldn’t worry about it to be honest.

The game is powered by OpenFeint, so you can join everyone else playing the game to compare your scores and times, if they haven’t been deleted by deadly updates- sorry, needed to give it another mention. It’s definitely worth it for puzzle-junkies such as myself, and it’s simple enough for anyone to pick up and play. A couple of small flaws prevent it from achieving that perfect mark, but I am sure plenty of you out there will get enjoyment from Endless Lines. At least until another update comes along that renders you impotent and kills your dog.

MLG Rating: 8/10
Platforms: iOS Release date: 11/08/2011

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Endless Lines  for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

Emberwind

The Kingdom of Grendale has gotten itself into a spot of bother and you, as the gnome Kindle, along with your cheeky and trusty owl sidekick, Wick, have to get to the bottom of it. Taking the form similar to the side-scrolling adventures of old, you have to navigate multi-pathed levels to get to your objective, now with advanced control schemes and multiple types of attack. Your main method of conveying these instructions is through the trusty virtual D-pad on the left, and buttons to the right. Here arises the largest problem I have with Emberwind. With the lack of tactile feedback being a pre-existing complaint for touchscreen devices, the small scale of the D-pad and buttons, combined with the range of complex movements required to traverse the terrain, often ends in failure and frustration.

Graphically Emberwind is chock-full of detail and quaint detail befitting a fantasy game, coupled with a sufficiently deep story, which genuinely gives the impression of a complete product that has been fully thought through during the development process. The source material is also taken with a pinch of salt. With some meta-humour, for example, when you “accidentally” hit your owl compadre. Come on, when is the next time I can legitimately whack an owl? Although the level of detail is welcome, and encouraged, on an often graphically underestimated platform, a lot of the details are lost on that 4″ screen, especially with the D-pad and other interface elements included. Another drawback of such detail is the loading times, typically on my iPhone 3GS it would take roughly 30 seconds to load a complete level. This seems somewhat excessive. However, when testing on my iPhone 4 the load times were halved to around 16 seconds.

Ultimately one has to question whether Emberwind is fit for purpose on the iPhone? However, the fiddly controls, long loading times and condensed visuals are all problems that can be nullified by using a larger device such as the iPad, if you can get hold of one. You can’t blame Timetrap for also porting Emberwind to the iPhone/iPod Touch once the hard work had been done converting to iPad, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good game for the system.

MLG Rating: 6/10
Platforms: iOS    Release date: 04/08/2011

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Emberwind for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone 3GS/4. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.