Jet Car Stunts

I'm not a big fan of racing games which may make me appreciate driving games that mix it up a bit that much more. I really enjoyed the Need for Speed series once they added the ability to be chased by or become the police. There's also a pretty cool arcade game, although I forget the name, where chasing down and apprehending the bad guy is the goal. Jet Car Stunts takes driving games in another direction that is also quite entertaining.


Flight crew, prepare to land...

Jet Car Stunts is a very well put together game. It has an absolutely fantastic set of tutorials to get you going. I have to admit that when I first saw the screenshots of the game I thought the bottom right controls would be left and right. Nope, this game fully utilizes the tilting capabilities of an Android device and it feels great to play. The four buttons along the bottom are thrusters, brake, reverse, and accelerate and Jet Car Stunts is about more than driving around tracks doing wheelies. Instead your car is about one turbo thruster away from being able to fly. Sometimes you'll have to take a jump and engage the thruster to provide that extra oomph to make the jump, but other times you'll have to press the brake button which doubles as a flaps button when gliding through the air. With all of this control you'll be cruising through hoops and making hairpin turns like there's no tomorrow. And if there happens to be no tomorrow (i.e. you go over the edge) you're treated to a nice view of the cloud cover that you're about to descend through.

The graphics in Jet Car Stunts remind me a bit of Virtua Racing on my old Sega Genesis w/ 32x add on. Very polygonal. The tracks match that graphical style. It's basic by today's standards, but I'd rather the game play smooth than wow me with infinitesimal detail for my car. Sounds match up well for thrusting and turning and I never had any problems with the controls. Tilt works great and can be adjusted in the options, although I never found that necessary, and the on screen buttons are well placed and big enough such that I never experienced any issues with unresponsiveness.

Jet Car Stunts is among the most masterful games I've played on Android. Finding good games isn't too hard lately, but finding great ones is a challenge. Jet Car Stunts is GREAT! Plenty of tracks... online leader boards... 2 modes of play... all for $2.00. There is a demo version too, and I guess it's worth checking out just be sure the game will run well on your Android device. After you've verified that then buy it! This game earns a rare 5/5 stars.

 

Tap To Shoot (Reviews of Agent, Eagle Nest, Lets Fire, and Wild West Sheriff)

I was absent last week so here's a treat... four reviews in one day of games with a "tap the screen to shoot at a target" theme. Please note that each game's title is a link to the game in the Android Market. Let's take a looksie...

Agent Demo

Agent is the only paid title I'm covering here so you'd expect it to be the best. It does have a free 'demo' version available as well. The author states that it's taken a year of work to make the game. Unfortunately, even with all of that work, at $3 it may be a little pricey for a simple shooter. I tried the demo and the title screen is less than visually pleasing. The game does, however, offer a campaign mode and multiplayer as it begs and pleads for you to give it a 5 star rating in the Android Market. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask?

Once you make it into the actual game and through all the very primitively designed info screens the game is very nicely done. The targets move smoothly into place and have visual timers above them so you know exactly where you stand. Tap to shoot and you can feel that the game feels right on target. As the game advances more targets appear at the same time and then they start to shoot back and soon it's time to buy the full version with 38 more levels. As you progress you also earn money to buy 'in game' merchandise which is a nice, little touch.

Multiplayer mode isn't really what I expected. In multiplayer there's a split screen with one player taking the top and the other taking the bottom while you compete at the same time. I was thinking network or hot seat play, but this is actually kind of cool. But a phone's screen is just too small to make this work really well with the scaled down graphics... multiplayer mode really cries out for a tablet.

Eagle Nest

Eagle Nest is a free, ad supported game so you'll see ads during loading screens, but not during actual game play. The game doesn't offer much in the way of variety, but it does have a few differences from Agent including a pretty title screen. First, during play you'll be given a "goalscore" that you're trying to beat in order to advance and let me tell you that advancement is not easy. Second, it's the only game that doesn't offer a weapon with infinite ammo. You're equipped with a six shooter and have to tap the bottom of the screen periodically (or when you hear 'click' instead of 'bang') to reload. The game is accompanied by some nice music and while the animations aren't quite as smooth as in Agent it still looks pretty good.

Finger Shooting (aka Lets Fire and Hit It)

Lets Fire is odd for an interesting reason which I'll get to later. It's a freebie that has ads on its menu screen and features four modes of play: Normal, 1 Minute, Hunter, and Bubble modes. In Normal mode it's just a plain target shoot. The instructions say shoot and level up, but I never had any luck with that. 1 Minute mode is just as it says... hit as many targets as you can in a minute. Hunter mode has you having to shoot only targets of a given color. And Bubble mode has you shooting targets before they leave the play area.

The game has a techno soundtrack playing throughout and offers no options... just the four modes of play. The graphics are ok with standard bulls eye targets occasionally being dragged by balloons or something else. Shooting is on a delay, but that's pretty clearly intentional... just tap to shoot and wait for a fraction of a second before hearing the sound of your shot ring through the air. Double, triple, ...etc tap and that subsequent shot fires immediately after your prior shot telling me that the game isn't suffering from a slow down issue with the firing delay.

Now I said this was odd for an interesting reason and you'll note that I have no link, screen shots, or QR code for this game. That's because after downloading it I can no longer find it. The game contains no credits. The name of the game is apparently different depending on who you talk to... my icon's title says "Lets Fire", but once loaded the game says "Hit It" with bullets for the letter 'I'. In a nutshell, even if I loved this game I can't find it in the market as my searches for both of those titles didn't produce the correct game.

Edit: Thanks to mrben for providing the new and correct name of this game: Finger Shooting. Photos and QR code added.

Wild West Sheriff

Wild West Sheriff is a bit different in that it's not strictly a tap to shoot style game. Instead, you are defending a small group of settlers from invading cowboys and Indians. I'm assuming that you are the "Wild West Sheriff". You tilt your Android device to move a gun sight and then you tap to fire. Invaders often give a sign of when and where they're going to strike so you can prioritize your killing and the game treats you to a nice pool of blood left in your enemy's footsteps once they are properly dealt with. Once again not much in the way of options and once again the game is ad supported. However, the game does allow you to complete for spots on the Internet leader board via Scoreloop.

Summary

I have to say that Lets Fire is the weakest of these games and that's saying something. It's not that it is a bad game, but just that it's been outclassed by the others in terms of graphics and theme. Just shooting a plain-jane floating target isn't going to be enough for a cream of the crop type game. Next, Agent, while probably being the best of the group, loses out because of the cost. It's quality isn't so superior that it's the go to game of the group. Yes, if you're so enthralled with this style of game you'll probably want to eventually get it and if it was a buck I'd probably give it the win, but not at $3 when other quality free games exist. The difference between Eagle Nest and Wild West Sheriff, however, is going to come down to preference. Do you want to touch to fire or do you like the idea of tilting your Android to move a gun sight? Fortunately you can have both for free and that's a good thing and a bad thing. Hopefully we, as Android owners, aren't getting so many ad driven freebies that it drives the larger commercial ventures away. I guess that remains to be seen. In the meantime, fire away. All four of these games are fun to play... if you can find them in the Market (I'm looking at you 'Lets Fire').

Kongregate

Kongregate isn't really a game... it's a shell for Flash games. With the massive increase in popularity of mobile gaming we've seen a lot of ports of mobile games to both the iPhone and Android platforms. One of the many reasons to be an Android owner, however, is the recent support of Flash on the device which allows one to view Flash on web sites and suddenly be able to play the countless Flash games that already exist without a 'porting process' having to occur. The problem with this is that different devices are, well... different. Your home PC probably has a mouse and your mobile device probably has a touch screen. This creates differences in using these Flash games and provides one of many awesome excuses for Steve Jobs to exclude Flash support on the iPhone.

Kongregate is a web site full of Flash games. FREE Flash games. Once again advertising is the key their financial success. Kongregate encourages developers to create new games with both weekly and monthly prizes. Their catalog boasts of almost 40,000 games, but with Kongregate for Android it's closer to 400 in exchange for having this games tested as mobile games that don't rely on the traditional keyboard/mouse combination.

Kongregate wouldn't be any good if all of the games are lousy and they certainly aren't all winners, but there's enough here to make for a worthwhile addition to your Android gaming experience. Among the games I tried were 'Hexlom Mobile' which is a puzzle game in which there's a hex grid and some of the hexes contain numbered pieces. The number indicates how many other pieces a piece needs to be adjacent to in order to solve the puzzle. There's also 'filler Mobile' which reminds me a bit of the arcade classic Qix in which you touch the screen to blow 'bubbles' which little particles float around the playfield. If a particle touches a bubble while it's being created then it's destroyed. If you release then the bubble falls to the bottom and takes up space and that's the over goal... to fill up 2/3rds of the play area. I also tried 'Vector Conflict Mobile' which is a fast paced arcade game using vector style graphics. Touch the screen to fire at the oncoming forces. The game played much too sluggish on my Droid to be worth of any serious time. Finally, I played 'Pinch Hitter! Mobile' which is a sandlot Home Run derby baseball game. It doesn't have any instructions which made it hard to play, but eventually I figured out that I had to drag to move my player inside/outside as well as to adjust his swing up/down. Not bad, but I do think Flash mobile makes for far better casual and puzzle games than fast paced arcade games and based on the number of games in each category I am not alone.

If you're looking for some good, quick, simple fun then Kongregate may provide you with your answer. The interface for finding games is pretty good with basic search facilities as well as options such as viewing Staff Favorites. Each game is rated by the community and I'm sure more games are coming soon. I'm not going to give this a star rating because it's just another interface for accessing games, but I will say that it's certainly worth trying. I'm glad I did.

X Construction

Don't hire me to build a bridge! That's what I've learned after playing many games of X Construction on my Android phone over the past 24 hours. This game is quite cool and adds another very satisfying entry to the world of physics based puzzlers.

In X Construction you play the role of a bridge builder having to carefully place girders to create a structure strong enough to allow a train to cross. On each level the span may be wider and there may be additional supports at the bottom of the chasm, but the idea remains the same. One interesting thing is that each girder that you can place can be of varying length and you drag your finger to make in longer (up to a point) or shorter so that it connects two endpoints. That created a temptation in me to always use ‘more’ or longer girders given that I didn’t have to pay for the extra steel. The game has a basic tutorial that gets you started with the only real suggestion that might help improve your game play being the somewhat obvious 'build stable shapes like triangles'. So, off I went to build my first bridge.

The first bridge is pretty easy... a small gap with enough girders to make it easy. I ended up creating what looked more like a suspension bridge. As the game progressed I learned that probably wasn't the best way to go about things and that underside support worked better. When building a bridge there are two 'modes': ‘add a girder’ and ‘delete a girder’. There's also an undo option that you will use a lot. And that is probably my biggest aggravation with this game: I'm always having to undo stuff because the dots I have to touch are so small and my hand covers where I'm placing so it often takes many tries to get the placement I actually want. There's also a zoom in option that makes placement a bit better, but certainly doesn't eliminate this problem. Once you're satisfied that your bridge will hold you press the 'play' button in the upper left and watch the action as the train comes. As the train rides over the buckling behemoth you'll see some girders glow red to indicate stress. If there's too much stress the girder snaps and the train tumbles to the bottom of the abyss with the passengers doing a cheesy 'aargh' scream of death. It becomes obvious this isn't a big budget game with the audio and, from the way the train bounces around, I also start to question the physics of the game as, unless the train is made from super balls then there's no way it would actually move like that.

But the bridge physics seem pretty good (although I'm certainly no expert). Eventually (hopefully?) you'll get it right and be on to the next level of which there are 11. I'm on 7 right now and while 11 levels certainly warrant the hefty $1.30ish price tag (yes, sarcasm) I have to confess that it will be sad when the game is over and I'm forced to wait for more. There's also a free version with ads available which means there's little reason not to try this game on for size.

If you like physics puzzle game that this is unquestionably a necessity for your Android game library. And if you don't, it's still worth taking for a spin. I hope the game grows. There are some interesting suggestions in the game's comments on the market such as adding different vehicles (how about having a tank cross the bridge?). This is a really nice game that barely misses the 5/5 mark. 4.5/5 stars.

Steambirds

In the realms of turn based board and miniature gaming there are lots of air combat type games such as AeroDrome or Wings of War. These games can either pit you against an opposing plane or be team based. A turn typically consists of evaluating where the enemy is, predicting where your enemy will go, and then 'programming' your plane for the next turn so as to outmaneuver and eventually shoot down the opposition. SteamBirds takes this turn based battle and converts it into an Android game.

Upon loading SteamBirds there are a few menu choices that allowing you to select a set of levels to play. I always start with the basics. A timeline of levels is then displayed. I clicked on the first one and got some information, but I could not figure out how to get things going. I tried clicking on the next bubble on the time line and a similar thing happened, but instead this time there was a 'Play' option. I don't know why the apparent inconsistency exists, but I was fooled. Ok, so moving into the game....

SteamBirds features a nice tutorial system to get you started. It explains that the game is turn based and shows how to turn and speed up your plane. It provide the typical confidence builder mission where you start on your enemy's tail and pretty much just have to breath to get past the level (and that's the way it's supposed to be). I really like it when games have an active tutorial system instead of expecting me to passively read pages of text. As you play through missions racking up 4 star achievements and new rankings eventually you'll get to a level in which the game becomes challenging. No longer do you start in the cat bird seat, but instead you enter the scenario facing the opposition head to head in a level that features 2 planes vs. 2 planes. I tried to outmaneuver and get into a flanking position. I really didn't want to play chicken and hope that more of my shells reached their target than their based on simple luck so I twisted around. One successfully followed me and did some damage, but not enough for the kill. My other plane made it around. Now it was my turn and I easily pumped a plane full of enough lead to send it spinning down to earth. Now I had the two on one advantage and could more easily ensure a flanking position. Victory was indeed mine, but only a 2 star victory.

SteamBirds adds some interesting variety as you progress. For example, soon after the above encounter there were planes that had poison gas. They would spew out a noxious, green trail of the stuff and my pilot would take damage when flying through it and my guns would jam. The game offers a nice progression to keep it fresh.

SteamBirds does its job very well. I really don't have much in the way or criticism for this game. The only thing I can think of is that the bubbles I had to click on for movement are a little small on my 3.7" screen and thus it took 2-3 touches at times to connect and be able to enter my orders. This can really become aggravation when you are trying to make that perfect, precision move.

SteamBirds isn't going to be for everyone. If the idea of taking turns and seeing your orders (and your opponent's orders) resolve piecemeal doesn't sound like it has enough arcade action for you then you are probably right. If the idea of a plane combat game that involves some thinking is right up your alley then you'll be in seventh heaven with this game. This game is more of a tactical game and, personally, I love it! 4.5/5 stars.