mobile adventure games

Harry Potter 5

When an unexpected dementor attack in Little Whinging forced Harry to perform magic to save himself and his cousin, Dudley, the Ministry Of Magic notifies him that he has been expelled from Hogwarts. Soon members of the order of the Phoenix (a secret society who fought Voldemort last time he came to power) appear at Privet Drive to rescue Harry. The take him to their headquarters in London, where Harry learns of Voldemort’s efforts to rebuild his army. Mr Weasley escorts Harry to his hearing at the Ministry where Harry is found ‘not guilty’ (thanks to Dumbledore’s assistance). Harry and his friends then return to Hogwarts for their fifth year but soon learn that things have changed. Ministry appointed Defense against the Dark Arts professor, Dolores Umbridge cruelly punishes Harry for daring to speak the truth about Voldemort’s return. What’s more she is unwilling to teach practical defensive magic, leaving the students to take matters into their own hands…

And that’s where you come in. As you can see the phone game follows the movie’s plot and puts you in the role of Harry Potter as you explore the corridors and magical rooms of Hogwarts. The game is fairly similar to Darkest Fear, your main objective being to go from one place to another, while staying in the dark so as not to be spotted by Hogwarts students unsympathetic to your cause.

This going back and forth obviously has a few twists to make the game progressively more interesting and challenging. Sometimes Hedwig the owl will come along and allow you to scout the area before you make your sneaky moves, other times you will find Fainting Fancies, sweets that you can drop on the floor for the watching students to pick up, eat and fall fast asleep, enabling you to pass by them even in the light.

And between all of these there will be the occasional interruption when you will need to cast a spell. Spells are cast through playing a mini game which involves a wand spinning around the screen with you having to press a button when it’s over one of four circles, the more on target you are the more you advance to completing the spell. Once you have hit enough circles the spell is cast.

The graphics are very good for this kind of game, with a lot of atmospheric lighting, shadows and detailed environments. The story is very rich, containing a lot of dialogue and really immersing you in the whole plot of the game. The only bad thing about this game is that some of the levels can be frustratingly difficult.

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!

Predators the mobile game

Thank God for auto-fire and auto-aim! This mobile game is another spin-off based on a movie that’s not that great. Predators the movie doesn’t do the Predator series justice and frankly this game doesn’t rank very high either. And before you ask, this isn’t the iPhone version, it’s the Java cellphone version.

If you’ve ever played Contra then you’ll be pretty familiar with this side scrolling shooter and the game mechanics, as well as with the sheer massive amounts of enemies that will be swarming all over you. And just like in the aforementioned game you can find and pickup different powerups across a stage to change your weapon type. Unlike Contra though you at least don’t die that fast and falling into a pit with spikes won’t kill you… not immediately at least as I’ve found it almost impossible to actually get out before loosing all HP. While you do have auto-aim and auto-fire as well as the ability to shoot in any direction it won’t be long until you get frustrated by those annoying killer bees that seem to come in endless swarms, not to mention the carnivorous plants that look like they’ve been taken out of a twisted Mario game.

And since this game is called “Predators” be sure you will be facing lots of them, which kind of takes the edge off fighting them since a few levels in the game you will already be accustomed to their tricks. For some strange reason they seem to be invulnerable when shot from behind though. Well thankfully there are a host of other insectoid alien bosses and mini-bosses in the game to empty your infinite ammo on. The game music is pretty cool but the sound effects are less than average. To break the monotony of mindlessly killing aliens the game designers decided to include some 3D running and dodging levels where you have to avoid obstacles and the occasional predator attacks.

The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning

Another Play Station games mobile counterpart and fortunately it’s a very good one. The Legend of Spyro: A new beginning is the latest installment of the Spyro series. The game’s hero is the little purple dragon named Spyro who’s out on a quest to free 4 captured Guardian dragons, each one guarding a specific element: fire, ice, earth and electricity. The guardians were imprisoned by an evil dragoness named Cynder in order to harness their power so that she may open the Dark Master’s prison and bring terror throughout the land.

Thus our little hero and his dragonfly brother Sparx set out on their adventure. The game features a terrain theme for each of the guardians elements, as well as 3 different types of levels: ground levels played in a platform style, boss levels where Spyro must defeat a mini-boss in order to free a guardian and air levels which represent the transitions between the other 2 types of levels, where Spyro needs to fly from one end to another avoiding obstacles and picking up power-ups.

After freeing a guardian, Spyro learns how to use his specific element as a breath attack and can open additional areas in levels that he has already finished in order to get power-ups that increase his life or mana or strengthen his other breath attacks. This little feature increases the number of times you’re likely to play each level in order to be sure that you haven’t missed anything. Obviously you can choose what level you want to play from a main map, and can play each level as many times as you want once you have unlocked it.

The game is quite good, the graphics are superb and very colored and cute. Each mini-boss has a certain attack pattern that you need to learn in order to defeat him. Also each other kind of enemy is more vulnerable to a type of elemental attack than to others, and knowing this vulnerabilities can make the game a lot easier for you.

With 4 types of weapons and 3 types of levels, all with nicely done graphics, playing Spyro in this mobile phone game will be anything from delightful to all out funtastic!