Elven Chronicles

Well first of all I must admit something: I’m a RPG fan. Even more than that, I’m a Final Fantasy fan. And if you’re wondering what this has to do with anything and haven’t guessed from the pictures already, read on…

Elven Chronicles is a mobile role playing game, where you are put in the shoes of a knight called Rogan who has lost his memory and is on a quest to find out who he was. You travel alongside an elf called Jada who is a spellcaster, master of all of the worlds elements: fire, ice, lightning, earth, holy and dark. The quest takes you through forests, cities, icy mountains, caves and dungeons in search of your forgotten past, battling a variety of monsters.

The level up system is automated, each time you achieve a new level spells are automatically given and attributes are raised. Thus the only customization you have as far as how to play your characters is with what items you choose to equip them, for instance weapons can have added elemental damage of a certain type which may help against monsters weak to that element.

The magic system is based on elemental, holy and dark attack types, with each monster having a weakness to one element and a strength against it’s opposing one. Unfortunately if you attack the monster with the element it is strong against you will heal it instead of damaging it. The game designers were very uninspired when it came to naming the spells, instead of fireball or something they just use “Earth 1″ or “Fire 1″, the number indicating the level of the spell obviously. At least there is no shortage of spells.

The combat system is specific to old Super Nintendo RPG series and of course Final Fantasy which I mentioned earlier. Combat takes place in turns, where each character can choose one of four actions: attack, use magic, use item or retreat. Of course monsters won’t ever retreat, but they will use spells against you, some of them even having the ability to cast the extremely annoying “Heal” spell on themselves, making battles last two or three times longer then they should. However this can be overcome by appropriate timing, since monsters only heal themselves when under a certain amount of health so the key is to kill them with your most powerful spells before the get a chance.

The music is really good as is the sound in general, which does a lot to add to the atmosphere of the game, sometimes even more so than the NPCs or the relatively vague dialogue. On the map you move your party on, enemy monsters all appear as whirlwinds, color coded by battle difficulty (eg. green – very easy, blue – medium and so on), which is a really bad choice if you ask me.

Unfortunately the game is extremely long, with many battles which become repetitive, there are loading times everytime you enter a battle, leave a battle, enter an area, open the menu or the inventory which make the game seem even longer. Unless you like playing for tens of minutes in the same area this game will put your patience to the test. All in all a good game though, with a lot to offer especially if you want to dedicate it a lot of time.

Ali the penguin

Put yourself in the role of the penguin Ali who was chosen for a dangerous mission. Your task is to bring back a precious relic – the sacred golden egg – to the nation of penguins. The relic was captured by malevolent beasts battling with the nation of penguins for ages. It is going to be a hard way to the relic with many obstacles and enemies. Do not be polite to the thieves and throw snowballs at them, they deserve it.

Well since it’s summer I thought why not cool off a bit with something, and what better than a game with a bazooka wielding snowball firing penguin with a funny name! A platform adventure game, Ali the Penguin brings a few extras to the general formula. Besides being fun and having cool graphics this game is also non-violent since your cannon only fires snowballs, which makes it great for kids and grown-ups alike.

And last but not least, the thought of a mad penguin with a snowball cannon going on a quest to find a sacred relic is just well… funny! If you love penguins, like dreaming about winter snowball fights or just want to play something simple and fun, than this game is definitely for you.

The only downside is that aiming your cannon straight up can be a little bit tricky since you have to use the same keys you use to go left or right, and having played the game for a while now I still can’t say I’ve gotten a grip on it, but you can manage even without that by just jumping up and shooting instead of aiming up. All in all a nice game though!

Call of duty 3

Nice graphics, smooth gameplay and the strategical twist to the usual arcade shooting game genre are the best parts of this phone game, but you’ll have to live with the bad sound effects and relatively small mission number.

Everybody loves a good war. Well at least that’s how it seems these days. So it’s time to get your rifle, put on your uniform and army boots and go fight for your country.

Call of Duty is a pretty well know franchise when it comes to PC gaming, and today  everytime a successful PC game comes out, it’s almost immediately followed by a cell phone version. The only things the PC and cell phone version have in common though are the name and the basic gameplay idea. The game takes you through 8 missions in different parts of the world, having you participate in military actions as part of an assault team.

This game wants really badly to add a more strategic side to the classic platform shooter but it just doesn’t quite cut it. Besides shooting, sniping and the occasional targeting of an artillery strike, you’re also supposed to use the terrain to your advantage by taking cover behind sandbags, crates and what not. That would be a really great idea if your health would actually be precious instead of regenerating whenever you’re not being shot at. Or if your team-mates weren’t so good at killing absolutely everything so that you hardly have to fire a shot yourself, yet so dumb that they get stuck in walls. Oh well, you can’t have it all.

Other then that the game at least manages to take out some of the boredom of doing repetitive actions that you would expect from a shooter. It also has some nice background music, but lacks the special effects for all of the weapons and explosions.

3D burning tires

It’s 3D and it’s a racing game! That alone would make a lot of people buy it. However I should advise you not to get overwhelmed by your instinct in this case. The game lacks a lot in comparison to other mobile racing games.

The 3D engine is nice and looks ok, not great, just ok, all of the cars and the tracks are seriously unrealistic which makes us put this game in the arcade category. There isn’t a lot of variety when it comes to environments though, just 3 types are present: desert, lava and ice.
The cars are varied enough not to get bored of the game immediately. You start with one car and need to unlock the others as well as a few extra game modes. However the controls of the car are horrible! Once you press your directional key left or right you feel like there’s nothing stopping your car from moving, no friction, no drag, nothing.

Also the music is the same on every track and not very well suited for this kind of game, making the game feel even more repetitive and boring which is not good for a racing game with no powerups on the track, no nitro or any other element to make the game more fun.

The one really interesting feature this game has, and the one that saves it from being a bellow average game is it’s bluetooth multiplayer feature which enables up to 8 players to race together using a bluetooth connection. That’s likely the only thing that could make this game really fun.

How to Train Your Dragon

Here’s another phone game based on a popular movie, but this one would have been better called “How to train your brain”. The mobile game version of How to Train Your Dragon is in fact not particulary action packed but rather a top down puzzle / adventure game with a snappy sense of humor.

After falling a dragon from the sky using a net, Hiccup, our lead hero and playable character, turns from trying to slay it, per viking ways, to helping the poor creature get back to health, thus trying to escape the “dragon killing viking” future his father had planned for him. In doing so, most of the time you will be collecting items, opening doors and figuring out the inner workings of all manner of contraptions (lighting pots on fire in a certain order anyone?), following penguins over icy death traps and that sort of thing. The adventure part kicks in when you have to deal with the occasional enemy creature of the forest like carnivorous plants, bears, bees and wild pigs. Your main weapon is your trusty sling shot so it’s all fun until a bear looses an eye!

The game is rather tedious and long, each stage involving more and more thinking and retracing one’s steps, with little reward between them except of course the occasional good one liners from a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are also minigames and a few flying levels but they don’t bring a lot of diversion or anything spectacular, still I thought they are worth a mention. The music and game colors are nice, and I suppose the cartoonish design fits the game well.