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Trials HD is one of those games that fits very snugly into the category of simple fun. Like many of the better XBox Live Arcade games, it has a simple principle, crafted into a pleasingly fun experience.



I seem to recall playing a 2D flash version of this many years ago on newgrounds (Elasto Mania) and the concept was much the same as it is with Trials HD, a motorbike game of sorts, which plays out in 2D. Trials HD of course has a full 3D environment, however you are restricted to moving left and right, up and down in 2D, and the bike never moves in or out of the screen. Basically all you need concern yourself with is forwards and backwards.



The standard game mode is simply time trials on a variety of courses ranging from the relatively simple to the punishingly hard. If you lean too far forward or back your bike will tip, and if your head or back hit a surface it's a crash and you must restart or reset to a checkpoint. Of course you must often tip yourself so that the wheels align towards the surface you're heading for, incase you crack your head!



To get gold medals for each track, you pretty much have to do it in one run without crashing and in a fairly speedy time. Easy enough until you hit the end of the 'medium' set of tracks. As a nice touch, the timer at the top also displays the progress if any of your friends on the same level in an unobtrusive manner. If you find yourself unable to achieve a gold medal - you can at least try and best your friend's times!



Later on you'll find loops and physics-ey balancing sections, requiring careful control of your speed and orientation - like I mentioned earlier, if you're heading right for a wall you need to make sure your wheels face down onto the surface, likewise if you're heading for the roof - rotate upside down to protect your precious head!



It's a nice system, and 'nice' is a word I don't really like or use often, it implies that there's nothing offensive or wrong with this game, but at the same time, it doesn't blow me away. But that's ok, because I don't think you need to be blown away to enjoy a game.

That I remember enjoying the 2D flash version of Elasto Mania, many years ago, and had as much fun as I've had with Trials HD, says alot about the effectiveness of the core gameplay mechanic.

You unlock challenges too, which differ not only from the main time trial mode, but also from each other. One challenge wants you to bail out of your bike and send your driver hurtling down a large ravine, with points awarded for the most bones broken! Another might see you try and maintain balance to the end of the level, whilst inside a giant hamster ball - then try one where you are on top of the ball on the outside! Gently carry a trolley with missiles that explode after too much bumpiness or simple try the mountain climber challenge - where victory is decided by how high you can scale a ramp.

Some of these are really difficult, and there's frustration galore in both the main game and the challenges. But it's fun frustration, if that makes sense. Like N+, there's a drive to get better and you know if you replay a level you're stuck on, just one more try might get you through it! You learn to balance better and to manage your movement.

When you're done with all that there's even a detailed and full scale track editor which is incredibly complex, and apparently what the designers used to make the actual game.



It's a hard game to sum up, but basically it's a nice concept, a proven fun gameplay mechanic with plenty of challenging courses and tests of control, and the option for user created content that's on par with the actual game. Addictive and frustrating in equal measure, nicely presented graphically, there's little to complain about overall, but also, it's essentially a lot of what we've seen before repackaged.

There's no denying the fun that can be had with it, and if you find yourself with the points, this is worth a download, if even just for the hilarious crashes that can happen - you'll be cursing whilst any onlookers guffaw at your misfortune.


A decent game, with many hours of fun and frustration. Worth the money. If you liked N+, you'll probably like this.

Bratman.
...

Platform: PC
Developer: Wizet
Publisher: Various, depending on region.

Ratings:

PEGI:












ESRB:


Maple Story is a 2d side scrolling free to play MMO. It was developed by the South Korean company Wizet and is published and localized by a variety of different companies depending on region.

The first thing noticed when playing is the graphics. Maple Story uses pixelated graphics similar to the Super Nintendo but done in a chibi manga style. This leads to a very cute and bright game with much potential for silly enemies and creatures like giant killer tomatoes, smiley mushrooms and enormous pelicans with headsets. The downside to the graphical engine is that the pixels are very noticeable, especially on a larger monitor.


The gameplay is a mixture of super mario brothers with golden axe. You jump around platforms wielding swords and spells to defeat your enemies. As expected of an MMO your character levels up, gaining stat points and skill points. Stat points are spent on your basic stats, such as strength or intellect, each class needs different stats in the way you would expect, e.g. a Warrior relies more on strength and a Wizard relies on intellect. If you're unsure what to do, there is an auto-assign button which splits your stats up in a good way for your class. Although this may not be the best for min-maxing it's still a good feature to include. Your skill points are spent learning your class spells and abilities, the flame wizard I played had the ability to summon a flame elemental which followed me around and blasted my enemies. Each skill point I put into it (to a maximum of 20) increased its damage and duration.


The game is played using mouse and keyboard, with movement and attacking dealt with solely by keyboard control. You are able to customise any control except your movement, which remains as the cursor keys, this gives quite a bit of customisation and is able to suit most players needs. There is an option to use macros also.

As is normal for a lot of free to play mmo's the game includes a micro-transaction system whereby you spend real life money for in-game items and features. The items gained in Maple Story are almost purely cosmetic, things like a lightsaber weapon, a detectives hat or a Halloween outfit, none of which have any impact on the gameplay. The items which aren't cosmetic don't grant any combat advantage to the player, these items are pet incubators, stat/skill point resetting scrolls or a scroll which increases your experience gain for 24 hours.

As in most MMO's there is an important social side to the game. Guilds and Parties are common place, where players group up for a short or longer period of time and interact, both in playing the game and just chatting. The game also includes a marriage function, where two players can get married and throw a party with their friends.

However despite being around for such a long time, Maple Story suffers from some quality of life issues.

The game is based heavily around grinding, getting past the tutorial which takes you to level 10, requires you doing a variety of quests which almost entirely consist of “Go here and kill 20 of this creature”. This repeats from level 1 until level 10.


To be fair this is a common quest among MMO's and a common problem among many however the spawn rate of said creature is very poor, it can take up to 20 minutes to kill 20 creatures as having killed all those on the screen you must wait for them to respawn. This is of course assuming you're fighting them alone and not sharing them with 3 or 4 other players. I myself have seen a player standing in the middle of the screen and when the enemies spawned cast a screen wide fire spell which wiped out all the enemies at once, leaving none for any other player. They continued to camp that same spot for quite some time.

Many of the quest givers during the tutorial weren't in the town but in the field of battle. The game doesn't pause or render you invincible whilst talking to a quest giver, so not only are you being attacked whilst getting a quest, you're also unable to fight back. A minor issue but an annoying one none the less.

The other QOL issues are more cosmetic. There is no windowed mode option, in fact trying to put the game into windowed mode with software or tools will be detected as a hack by the game guard system and shut your game down. This same game guard also dislikes Alt-Tabbing out and should you do Alt-Tab you'll find that all your keys come out as BBBBbbbbbbb, making surfing or IM chat impossible.

The in-game UI can be a bit clunky and awkward, clicking the small X in ...

Ashes Cricket 2009

Published by Codemasters
Platform: PC, Wii, PS3, XBOX360 (version reviewed)
RRP £44.99

Well for those of you who enjoy cricket Codemasters has released Ashes 2009 just in time for the end of the series. If anyone in the gaming world is still bothering to read this review then you’ll be sad to hear that the game suffers in much the same way a movie tie-in game suffers. I have the distinct feeling that this games was rushed out to capitalise on the sports popularity for the summer.


There are some very nice touches in this game, when you first start it asks you to pick your international team and the menus are decked out in that teams colours hence forth. When you look at the menu screen you realise there really isn’t that many options -play cricket, legends and an online mode is about it in terms of playing the game, the rest are basically options. Within the play cricket menu there are four options - Ashes 2009, One Day, Test, and 20 Overs.

I chose the 20 Overs first simply because it was the closest thing to an arcade experience. The first thing I noticed when the game started was how poor the stadium looked, it was like something from the PS2, a 2D crowd and shoddy looking camera men. I went to bat first, holding down the left bumper or left trigger will chose if you’re batting off the front foot or back foot, and not touching either it will do it automatically. X=a defensive shot, A=attacking and B=a Loft shot(what you want if you’re smacking for a six), use the left analogue stick to aim your shot. The first bowl came in and I was out immediately, seems I had been holding down the B when all it really need was a tap. It’s all in the timing, you have to get it right or more often than not your gonna be out.

If your shot stays within the boundaries you have to choose whether to run or not, one tap of the B to run once(note do not keep tapping B, cause they’ll just keep running!) and a tap of A to stop.

I was soon out and it was my time to Bowl. Firstly you must choose where to place your fielders, a little over my head but I’d say cricket fans would enjoy this. When you’re bowling, choose where your aiming for and the bowler will begin his run up. A power meter will come up much like in golf, hit one of the face buttons(which are different types of bowls like inside, outside, slow and swing) when you want to stop it an away he bowls, Pretty simple.

Now I wanna talk about this games problem, I quite like the game play, but for me some of the animations are done so well it really lets the game down when there are ones that aren’t. It just feels like a few weeks more and they would’ve nailed all of it. For example it looks great when the bowler has a short run up, but in his longer runs ups he looks like a two year old who’s just deuced himself. The crowds look awful and the outfielders look hideous when diving for the ball. Some of the players don’t look anything like their real life counterparts and some even seem to suffer from big head syndrome.

Having said all that, I am well into playing an Ashes series and am enjoying it quite a lot, I’ve started to really think about where I’m placing my outfielders and it’s quite satisfying getting someone out, especially when playing on the harder difficulties, and smacking a six and watching the replay is great. There are also some good moments of tension too - the Umpire checking the video replays to see if you’re out or not is very well done, and the commentary hasn’t become annoying yet either which is a plus.

I can see there being problems with replay value, the lack of variety and the fact that there are only national teams and no leagues either hinders the game. It could really do with getting the IPL or county teams, World 20/20 or World Cup to enhance the one player experience.

Overall a worthwhile game if you’re a serious fan of cricket, worth renting for a weekend if you’re a casual fan, and you’re probably not even reading this review if you’re not!


3 out of 5 ...

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This game was reviewed using the Xbox 360 Version. The PS3 version can be considered to have a slightly higher value to due to the exclusive Joker challenge rooms.

If there is anyone out there prior to The Dark Knight (or even the Batman Animated Series, based on how good it was) who doesn't think Batman is the most awesome, badass super hero out there, think again. Before you read, yes, I am saying this because, not primarily though, this game is one of the best comic book games ever made. While thats not exactly a big achievement to be able to get after many, many mediocre superhero games, rocksteady, the developers of the Batman AA scored big points with this game. Without exaggeration, this is by far the closest thing you'll ever have to feeling like the dark knight himself. That said, this game is definitely not without flaws, some minor, some stupid.

The story begins after Batman apprehends the Joker and brings him into Arkham Asylum, the high security prison where all the super villains of the likes of Ivy, Joker, Killer Croc, and all Bat's other rivals are taken. Well, if the intro doesn't hint you off long before the actual event occurs, the Joker proceeds to break out into the Asylum, gaining control over it and trapping Batman in a night long hellish battle against many of his major foes.


The story itself belongs in a Batman Animated Series cartoon, or a 3 issue comic sub-series. That is to say that it isn't anything close to the stories of games such as Bioshock or half-Life, or even Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. To be honest, it was underwhelming, but felt very fitting, and you'll probably feel the same way if you grew up on the old Batman Cartoons. Batman consistently walks into traps, even though he himself states that he knows they are traps. I suppose this is to show just how skilled a fighter he is, knowingly walking into traps set by his various rivals. It came off more in a way that made me think rocksteady wasn't quite sure how the real Dark Knight would have approached these situations, most certainly not as headstrong and reckless as he does in the game. Stealth is almost nonexistent in the boss fights with the exception of the Scarecrow battles, which really doesn't feel anything like the way Bats begins a fight. Its nothing big, but it grated my nerves a little to see him fight as head-on as he does with enemies like Bane and Ivy.

The combat system is unique. Trademarked as the "FreeFlow" combat system, you jump from enemy to enemy beating them up, countering some attacks and dodging others. It works great on small to medium sized groups of enemies, and its a blast to use, though the slow-cam really got on my nerves later on in the game. What doesn't work is when there is a larger group of enemies attacking you all at once. The controls don't react as tight as you'd like, and pulling off long combos becomes more tedious. When more then one enemy type appears at any one time with the large group of people, it borders on becoming a mess. Specific buttons for specific enemies doesn't work as well as it could with the clutter on screen during this mass battles.

Bosses are a different matter. With the exception of a few (I'm looking at you, Ivy) the boss battles are fun and fast. Even though as aforementioned they aren't the way Bats would handle them, each boss usually has a different way to defeat them other then "mash the attack button!!!11". The Scarecrow levels in particular stand out as the best by far, combining more scariness then Silent Hill and Resident Evil had in the last four years with great platforming stealth. The visuals at this point are at their best, with fantastic lighting and special effects. Oh, and some of the most clever ideas I've seen in a video game(you'll know it when you see it. Escaping Convicts may be Batman XD) Bane's fight is also a standout. With this said, what the hell happened with the final boss, rocksteady? For me the worst boss battle in the game, and fairly easy at that, and without spoiling anything, is very similar to a certain "mess" I described earlier. Surely they could have made a much better battle with the Joker of all people. I'm also very disappointed we never got Mr. Freeze in the game.


Now the game where Batman AA can stand proud is its stealth component. When fighting armed enemies, running into even two of them will end in a pretty bad time for the Batman, and if you somehow live, then you'll have probably only a fraction of life left. When you enter rooms full of 6 or more gun wielding nuts, you've got a party on your hands. The game prides itself on the various ways to take down an enemy. Stringing them by their feet from a gargoyle, smashing through glass onto ...

Well we've already had Worms on XBLA. It was fine for the time, but I was not impressed by the lack of weapons and customization. This is the version we should have been given first time round.

First off, the name, Worms 2: Armageddon. There was a 'Worms 2', and there was a 'Worms: Armageddon'. But these were two seperate games. As you'd expect, 'Worms 2: Armageddon' is something of a mix of the two, with Worms 2's advanced level of customization, and Armageddon's excellent weapon selection and mix of single player tasks.


There's also some new weapons and modes, unique to this version of Worms, the poison gas will quickly fill up tunnels and whittle away the health of them tunnelling bastards, and the bunker buster will fall from the sky and burrow a bit before exploding. So clearly the player who favours hiding is in for some punishment. That's what you get for cowardice!


This is perhaps the most complete version of Worms to date. It's the purest form yet. Great sound effects and voices, plently of customization, buckets of crazy weapons (Concrete Donkey!), and simple controls.

Even after 15 years or so, the original concept of Worms still works, a 2D map, selection of weapons, turn based fun. I like to think of Worms as our generation's chess, and that, in 60 years I'll be sitting as an old man in the park, playing Worms as the ultimate test of tactics and intelligence!


You can tell a lot about someone from how they play Worms, the aformentioned tunnellers, the ninja rope experts, the insanely accurate grenade/cluster bomb throwers, who can throw one from across the map, factoring wind resistance, into your lap, and the complete bastards who block your Worms in with girders (I'm one of them).


So it's Worms, and it's got the weapons and the customization. You can't go wrong with that. It also has a few different modes on offer aside from the standard deathmatch. Forts mode has two teams stuck on largish islands in the water, with no easy way from one to the other. Jetpacks and Ninja Ropes are forbidden so basically you must besiege your opponents island and try to get him from afar with limited and time delayed weapons. It's actually more fun than I thought it would be. Then there's race mode, where you try to get through a maze like level in a shorter time than your opponent. It works pretty well too as a change of pace.


Single player wise, the AI is pretty much same as ever - pinpoint accurate with grenades, and occasionally stupid when stuck or blocked by scenery. It's a shame really, as more human behaving AI would make this game an excellent purchase for those not interested in dealing with other people. As it stands however, unless you are going to be playing this against real people, either through XBox live, or locally in a pass-the-controller match, then there isn't much on offer. The campaign, whilst it has some interesting challenges, particularly the last one (Armageddon), don't last too long, and you can complete the single player campaign in one sitting.

Given the random and seemingly infinate nature of the levels, you'd think there could have been hundreds of campaign levels, but in fact there are only 35.


But Worms has always been about the multiplayer, and in that respect, it works well. I noticed a few bugs, with maps being selected before I'd pressed a button. There was the occasionaly random loss of connection, which I'm fairly sure was the game's fault, but hasn't happened recently so maybe that's been sorted. The search+lobby system could be a bit more streamlined, but generally it works and it isn't too hard to find a game. Players XBox avatars show up between turns to laugh or cry at the performance last turn, which is a nice touch, but can slow down the action, but then, is Worms really about a fast pace anyway?


In closing, I can't really put this game down too much, I'm annoyed and feel that this is what the first Worms on XBLA should have been, but we've finally got exactly the type of game XBLA was made for. I realise there are a lot of goodies out now for XBLA and also for DLC, but if you have the points, this is a must have for any gamer who respects their history.


Worth the money for definate, but make sure you have friends to play with either locally or on Xbox Live!

Bratman.
...

Developed By: Codeglue
Published By: THQ
Genre: Action
Players: 1-8
Console: Xbox 360
Price: 800
ERSB:
Cartoon Violence.
________________________

Overview: Rocket Riot is one of those titles that seemed to have pooped out of nowhere, Until the review code came up, I hadn't heard about this game at all. After playing this game, I realize that I am not the only one who is unaware of its existence.

Gameplay: Rocket Riot controls much like Geometry Wars. You move your player around with the left thumb stick, and shoot by aiming with the right one, except the longer you hold the stick in any direction, the more momentum the rocket will have. There are many different enemies to fight against such as zombies, robots, monsters, aliens, ect, but they all die in one hit so you are pretty much fighting the same enemy with a different skin, "Hey look! I am in a room full of zombies! OH LOOK! NOW I am in a room full or robots!....and they are behaving exactly like the zombies did on the last level...".
You can "Customize" your own character which is nice, but this only goes as far as choosing a character, its primary color, and its "Detail" color. Every enemy you kill is unlocked as a playable character aside from bosses, and there are PLENTY of these, you can really get picky with what character you end up with because the guys who made the characters really made a wide range of them.

Even tho there are 80 "different" levels in this game, most of the stuff is incredibly repetitive. Level one, defeat ten guys, level two, defeat fifteen guys, level three, defeat twenty guys, ect. Then there are also the levels where you have to search and destroy a character. Level four, find him, level five? find him again...... Twice. There are a couple of other game variations that you will have to do throughout the main single player story mode over and over and over again with a slight change to "justify" that it is a new level *sigh* and those tedious football mini games, why don't YOU take a guess before reading huh? Level one, score one goal....Level two, score TWO goals! WHOA! This is a brand new experience! NOT! After level thirty five I had to force myself to come back and play the game so I could review it.

Lets not forget tho, this game supports online multi player! well...no, not really, even tho the mode is available, there is absolutely NO ONE playing the game, and if I didn't have to review this game, I would have stopped long ago myself. I tried going into quick player and rank matches, custom matches, ect. But every time I searched I would, to my surprise find that there is no one else interested in having a go at it online. It is a shame too, I would have loved to complain about this game with other people who bought it and ask "So why did YOU buy the game?".
To be fair tho, I can see how the online mode would be fun, but as of now, since I haven't been able to find anyone else to play against, my guess is just as good as yours.
Everything you see can be destroyed because it is made with "Pixels" that act as individuals, this is probably one of the funnest things to do because it just feels great to destroy, they made it work and they made it fun.


There are a couple of power ups in this game that you will find by destroying the environment. These are split up into four sections: Green power ups improve your fire power by adding faster fire rate, or increasing the size of your rockets etc. Blue power ups increase your defense by giving you upgrades such as health recovery. Yellow power ups are useless but "fun"; They turn your rockets into game balls or increase the size of the explosion that your rockets create when they collide. And lastly there are red power ups, or rather, power downs; These are harmful to you and should be avoided at all costs unless you wanna be a rocket magnet or you want the ability to shoot rockets to be taken from you.
Aside from the main single player campaign and the multi player mode, there is the "Endurance Mode" where you fight wave after wave of enemies (Much like in the single player campaign); And the "Play Ground mode" where you will be able to use any power ups you want and will be presented with only one enemy at a time.

Graphics: Rocket Riot has a very unique visual style. From far away, you may think that the environment in Rocket Riot was made with sprite sheets pixel by pixel, But it is actually a 3-D game that succeeds at having a rather "old school" feel and look to it. The characters are built the same way but they look much sharper then the environment, sometimes it is even hard to tell ...

This game was reviewed from the Xbox 360 version.

Long, long ago, in a land far, far away(Dallas Texas, to be precise) a small game development company named id created a game called Wolfenstein 3D. With graphics not much better then a Gameboy Color game, this first-person-shooter rose to the top of sales charts, having made an entirely new way to play the video game--and anyone with even a small knowledge of video game history can tell you what it was. While Wolfenstein's spiritual successor Doom is credited for perfecting, or rather making mainstream the idea of the FPS, Wolfenstein essentially invented it.

And so, about 18 years later, a new game with the moniker Wolfenstein is released, this time developed by id's close partner Raven Software. Obviously, remaking a game made almost two decades ago that had a storyline you'd only know if you read the manual wouldn't have went over too well these days. Instead, Raven made Wolfenstein a direct sequel to Wolfenstein 3D's sequel, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Taking place directly after the events of Castle Wolfenstein(and I mean DIRECTLY after the events. Poor BJ doesn't even get a break) you follow war-time hero and G.I. Joe-esqe spy, BJ Blazkowitz as he again confronts the Nazi's twisted attempts to gain control of the occult for their own nefarious means. What this game ended up as is a perfect sequel to Castle Wolfenstein. While I say perfect, I don't mean the game itself is perfect. but rather that Wolfenstein gave me the exact same feel as Castle Wolfenstein did back in 2003(yes, I was late to the party on that game). The setting, atmosphere, enemies, even weapons will feel very familiar to you if you had played the games prequel.


For this Wolfenstein, Raven software seems to have decided to take Gears of War creator Cliffy B's idea that FPS games can benefit from RPG elements to heart. Like games such as Bioshock, any gun you get in Wolfenstein can be upgraded, given you have enough money for the job. Gaining money can be just finishing missions or finding bags of the green stuff lying around. For whatever reason people leave bags of gold lying around, we'll never know. But who cares, its a game. Thats the fun about it. Anyway, as each weapon can be upgraded with various attachments (scopes, silencers, extra clips, etc.) the powers you gain through a mysterious medallion in the game are also upgradable. These upgrades become unlocked the more you progress through the game's various missions. The problem with the upgrade system for the powers of your medallion are that it just doesn't do that much to make it too much better of a tool. For the weapons however, the upgrades are something worth paying for, especially for guns such as the Kar98 rifle and the Tesla gun. The upgrade system works, if not so much for your medallion's powers, for your weapons.

The gunplay itself is very familiar. Following the traditional gunplay of its prequel, Wolfenstein features the same run-and-gun action as Castle Wolfenstein, this time supporting an auto-regeneration health system. Compared to Halo, Rainbow Six and other games that use regenerating health, you have a good lot more in Wolfenstein then in other games, letting you usually just run into a group of Nazis or monsters and just open fire with disregard. Personally, I have never been a big fan of regenerating health in single player games. Wolfenstein could have worked just as well with the traditional 100 hit points health scale, used in past Wolf games, but heck. What shooter DOESN'T feature regen-health these days. This health type does work well in the connecting areas where you will spend your time in between missions, helping allies and buying upgrades around town, as well as using your powers to find secrets.


Speaking of powers, the abilities you find in the game are inside what is called the Veil. The Veil itself is one of the coolest aspects of the game. It uses a bar of magic that can be upgraded to hold more magic at a time. The bar has auto-regeneration too, however the rate of refilling is far too slow for combat purposes. For this reason, there are many different "hot spots" in each level where you can run to refill your gauge, and they are so frequent, that you could essentially stay in the Veil for entire levels at a time. Now the Veil is a bit hard to explain, other then "parallel dimension". While in the Veil, the games colors start glowing neon and enemies turn to a bright green color, making them easier to see and shoot. Secrets and weak spots on enemies glow red, and are easier to find. Previously unreachable areas now have Veil ladders ...

Developer: Blitz Arcade
Publisher: Atlus U.S.A., Inc.
Genre: Puzzle and Word
Release Date: 6/24/2009
Console: Xbox 360
Price: 800MS points


For anyone obsessed with the hacking mini-game in Bioshock, Atlus have released Droplitz, a game with a remarkably similar concept, onto XBLA which may be right up your street. The object of the game is simple: guide precious Droplitz of an unknown substance through a maze of piping, rotating each piece to funnel towards collection points at the bottom of the screen. If your pipe leads to a dead end you will lose your droplets. The more channels and branches you create, the more droplets you gain back.

At least the theory is simple. In practice the fantastically speedy depletion of droplets leads to one of the most frustrating game experiences of your life. Most aspects of this game are designed to cause annoyance or stress related injuries. For example, simply creating one section of pipe will not do, the high scores are achieved through linking pipes and connecting multiple collection points, which sounds like a great idea until you realise that most of the time this occurs by accident while looking for other possibilities. Meanwhile crafting a length of pipe from top to bottom will more often than not result in a dead end, leaving you staring at the Television in murderous disbelief, the pixellated equivalent of a kick in the balls. The end result is a game that feels as though you have no control over the action.


Classic mode consists of this style of play as you move through different themed backgrounds. The gameplay does not threaten to change at any point, just the colours and themed catchphrases which gawp over the amazing things you’ve accidentally achieved. Changing the difficulty simply makes the board bigger, giving a faster depletion time and adding no change of technique to the gameplay. However, despite the apparent complexity of the channel creation, the game is genuinely fast-paced and challenging offering a seemingly impossible puzzle that for a short time is rewarding. In the long term the game suffers from its endless repetition and lack of variety leaving very little replay value.
The addition of new game modes does not help matters either (especially given the lack of a multiplayer mode). Zendurance, if you haven’t already guessed, plays exactly the same as Classic mode but without the thrill of changing backgrounds. The idea is to survive as long as possible, which is galling in itself, particularly when you view the in-game acheivment ‘Survive for 5 Minutes’. I tip my hat to anyone who can complete ‘Survive for 20 Minutes’, let alone surviving the aneurysm inducing 2 hour achievement.
Power Up Mode allows the use of bombs to blow up parts of the board and replace sections of pipe. Admittedly this is exactly the same as both Classic and Zendurance mode in that the gameplay does not change. Power-Up mode, like Zendurance needs to be unlocked through high score achievements which is one of the games redeeming features. All difficulties, boards and modes are unlockable, giving a sense of achievement but relying on a ridiculously high scoring threshold at the same time. As a result this review does not contain the Infection mode which unfortunately is proving impossible to unlock.


Perhaps I am being too harsh on Droplitz. After all the game can be addictive and enjoyable if the technique is mastered but by making the simplest idea so complex this learning curve will take many frustrating hours that seem somewhat longer thanks to a shocking lack of variety in the gameplay. Droplitz is more fast-paced and deceptively challenging than most in the genre but its lack of variety, repetition and limited replayability, combined with gameplay that requires the reflexes of a cheetah on speed, leave you with a game that is more annoying than fun, failing to deliver what most other puzzlers (including its obvious predecessor, Pipe Dream) can.


Score: 2 out of 5 ...