Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Andrew Nesvadba'

Star Wars Meets Diner Dash?

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Star Wars Meets Diner Dash?

The iPhone has some interesting Star Wars themed apps on the horizon, but none seem as interesting as THQ Wireless' take on the management genre set in the iconic 'Cantina' setting from Star Wars IV. THQ tipped off Mobile Entertainment about the game including a small draft blurb: "Your task is to see that the right beverage finds its way to the right customer. And don’t keep them waiting, some of the customers are real troublemakers! Working towards your daily quota, accuracy and speed are essential. As a reward for a job well done, outfit your cantina with decorations and attractions to appeal to even the most difficult customers." Preview Screenshots: via Moblle Entertain…

Burple Fish : The Burping Free Falling Action Game Review

Review Russ Kumro By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Burple Fish : The Burping Free Falling Action Game Review

Clowns, whatever you're position on them as entertainers, are typically associated with fairly surreal situations. If you could slip in to the dreams of a clown after a big successful show near the seaside, you might just find a resemblance to Russ Kumro's latest App, Burple Fish. Should you be fascinated enough to delve in to the halls of madness, you'll be confronted by a simple premise: Get your fish to the ocean without him exploding from built up 'gas'. As you fall from the sky y…

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HexaRot Review

HexaRot Review

Three-match games are a dime a dozen, with many games even opting to include them as a gameplay mechanic with an entirely separate genre. HexaRot by Jozsef Kern trys to stand out by being more of a brain-teaser, replacing a traditional grid with hexagonal wheels that must be turned to line-up patterns. There's more than a bit of adjustment required in mastering this new matching technique and at times it borders on being more like a puzzle than a quick-fire three match game. The Timed…

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muBlip Review

Review para9 By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
muBlip Review

I'm not sure if I've somehow been co-opted in to an educational game while playing muBlip by para9. On the face of it the game is an Ouendan-style rhythm game with fresh electronic chiptune beats, but to mix things up the game uses a Simon-says watch and repeat set up to add an amazing new kind of challenge to the genre. Each track is broken up in to phrases where the player watches the computer play the beat using on screen patterns and then must repeat the phrase as accurately as po…

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Rat On The Run Review

Rat On The Run Review

One of the biggest challenges in designing a game for a touch device is coming up with a way for the game to be played that feels natural. Platformers have toyed with free-running in the past and some like Canabalt have been immensely successful. Like others before them, Donut Games has taken free-running and made their excellent puzzle platormer Rat on the Run. The gameplay is entirely uncomplicated by pointless controls and only requires touching the screen to start moving and to ju…

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Hands On Preview - Mad Tanks

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Hands On Preview - Mad Tanks

There are a lot of things that help when trying to stand out from the pack with a new App, but if you're going to do something that has come before at least try to be "the whole package". Mad Tanks by Joystick Ninjas will be hitting the App Store soon and will be competing for ground in the Scorched-Earth-meets-Worms genre stakes. Gameplay comes in two flavors, the first being typically round-based and awarding players with cash after each round for more weaponry to pummel their opponents faces with. However, the second available mode is what could have made Mad Tanks truly intriguing. 'Tactics' as it's called consists of a set limit of turns that each player can take, one after the other,…

WordSearch Rush Review

WordSearch Rush Review

It's not surprising how many word-search games are on the App Store thanks to it being a fairly well known and easy to implement puzzle for a touch device. However plenty of them suffer from either having huge grids that are a pain to read or lack any real fun game element. WordSearch Rush by We Are Colin tries to solve both of these problems while remaining true to the puzzle's more educational purposes. WordSearch uses 7x7 (and the occasional 8x8) to keep things easy to read without…

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The Witcher - Versus For iPhone

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
The Witcher - Versus For iPhone

I'm a bit of a fan of The Witcher by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and despite being an early adopter of the PC RPG for the franchise (which was riddled with issues for the international version), my fandom held true. So of course the news of a sequel just being announced caused me some joy. What does this have to do with the iPhone? Well the game is getting a cross-platform release and that's right... the App Store will be getting its slice of the franchise. The Witcher: Versus will be tied to a browser-based version of the game, which means you can waste your time while you waste your time (insert Xzibit macro here). More details are to come, but it's looking really good and that's n…

Zenonia 2 - Closer Than Ever

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Zenonia 2 - Closer Than Ever

If you've been hanging out for Gamevil's new sequel to their insanely popular Zenonia franchise, you'll be glad to know that the boffins over at Kotaku have been informed by the developers that it should be putting its submission in to Apple by the end of the week. Rumor or not, it's a good indicator that the game will be hitting the store in the near future, so while you're all excited why don't you check out their latest preview vid. Youtube Preview: via Kotaku…

Flick Bowling 2 Review

Flick Bowling 2 Review

If Doc Brown from Back To The Future had a crazy German half-brother, he'd be Baron Von Schtopwatch, the mad professor who hassles Jim and Jen at their local bowling alley. Stay with me on this one because it gets weirder. Your goal is to return to the modern day while challenging figures from history after Von Schtopwatch sends you back to ancient Egypt. Storyline aside, Flick Bowling 2 by Freeverse is a strange beast to handle. The "true to life" physics as the developers put it mak…

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Blast Off Review

Blast Off Review

Physics is your friend. That is to say, forces related to physics like gravity are a small comfort for those of us terrestrially bound. For those flying around tiny clusters of super-dense planetoids, black holes and white holes while rescuing the occasional astronaut, physics can be a royal pain in the rear-end. Blast Off by Halfbrick Studios is a physics based puzzle game that combines action elements to provide a devilish challenge. Blast Off uses a single-touch system, propelling…

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BioDefense: Zombie Outbreak Review

BioDefense: Zombie Outbreak Review

Let me summarize the story of BioDefense: Zombie Outbreak - A meteor hits Earth; Zombies roam the Earth; Mankind fights for its survival. Now that we have the stock plot requirements in place, lets get back to blasting endless waves of zombies! With its unique mix of RTS and Tower Defense gameplay, this is a huge step forward for developer Resolution Interactive who have previously made their name with the Moto franchise. Gameplay boils down to two main duties of branching out and cap…

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The GameBone - Exclusive New Images and Features

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
The GameBone - Exclusive New Images and Features

Oh the lament of gamers bemoaning virtual controls: "There's too much delay", "They're crazy sensitive", "Why can't I get the real taste of milk at half the fat?". I'm sure that last one was just a persistent advert on forums, but regardless... virtual controls aren't perfect. For most people, virtual controls aren't all that bad and only require some adjustment to get used to, but the lack of consistency across games is sometimes blatantly evident. The GameBone iPhone peripheral changes how arcade games are played on the go by plugging in to the device, activating true analogue buttons for your game. Manomio, a major supplier of classic games for the iPhone including the C64 emulator is…

Chop Chop Runner Review

Review Gamerizon By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Chop Chop Runner Review

Chop Chop Runner is the latest in the Chop Chop series from Gamerizon and has a lot to live up to after their first release, Ninja. Once again the defining aspect of this series seems to be great single-touch controls that keep gameplay fast while intuitively allowing players to carve up the screen in typical ninja-fashion. If you've played popular running games like Canabalt then you'll be able to jump straight in. Gameplay is quick and addictive - a true hallmark of the genre - once…

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Flurry - iPhone Pushes Out PSP For Software Sales

News By Andrew Nesvadba, 14 years ago
Flurry - iPhone Pushes Out PSP For Software Sales

After just a year and a half on the market, mobile phone analytics company Flurry has estimated that the Apple iPhone (and iPod touch) has captured almost 5% of the market's video game sales for 2009. This poses a big threat for other portable gaming devices thanks to the overwhelming number of cheap apps that are potentially driving people from the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS to Apple's touch devices. Based off their own analysis and numbers from NPD (via Gamasutra), Flurry have estimated that the iPhone and iPod Touch controls 5% of the $9.9 billion US video game software sales for 2009. Even more staggeringly, after comparing sales for portable game devices only the iPhone made up 19% of…