Pollushot

I think we can all agree that pirates are bad news, but do you know what the biggest issue with large pirate colonies is? Yep... all that rum drinking and treasure map making can only yield... lots of pollution. Somebody has to clean it all up. Why not you?

Pollushot uses a sling-shot type control called a sling-ship to catch the rubbish falling from the sky which doubles as ammunition. You then use this ammo in Angry Birds style against these menacing pirates as you sling it right back at them. You'll drag your sling-ship with your finger to catch the debris and move into position for a precise shot. Then you'll release, touch, pull back, and quickly release to destroy them. Now I'm not exactly clear on how destroying a bunch of pirate ships helps clean anything up, but I am clear on the fact that it's actually quite fun.

Pollushot features engaging and smooth graphics of a variety of pirate vehicles and in an interesting twist it's not sequenced so you won't see ship #1 first and ship #2 next and so forth. The down side of that is repitition. However, this game is also quite difficult. It promises 3 worlds to unlock, but so far I'm well short of the 100,000 points needed to unlock the second world after many, many plays. Actually, I thought my high score of 36,000 was impressive. The game also features OpenFeint support and leader boards so even if you can't quite meet the 100k mark you can at least see how good (or bad) you are versus other players.

The graphics and sound effects are executed well and this is a great idea for an arcade game that makes excellent use of a touch screen. The game has also worked perfectly on both my Android phone's small screen and my tablet's larger display. The only real negative to the controls has to be the screen edges. If I've moved my sling-ship to the left edge of the screen then I can no longer shoot left (I'm already on the edge) or right (I can't drag off the screen). That really should be fixed by created a small boundary for movement so that one doesn't get caught in that situation and can always fire at an angle.

Pollushot is 100% arcade game and the innovation of combining a 'catch' mode (and you also get points for catching falling debris) with the sling-shot model of firing coupled with the difficulty that leaves you frustrated, but feeling like the game is totally fair translates to not only a really long sentence from me, but also an excellent arcade experience. I can also appreciate the obvious Angry Birds inspiration yet they didn't just copy that game, but created something quite different. There's something about sling-shot style combat that I think is here to stay when it comes to touch screen devices and their games. 4.5/5 stars.