A Few Random Notes...

Wow, yesterday I got one advertising click and earned a whole nickle. The family is looking forward to enjoying gumballs for dessert tonight (and the small ones at that). And I'm making fun of the Google Adwords program with that comment...

Today I was driving and we were headed to check out a Half Price Books store. I went to one when I visited my brother in Texas and they're great stores with lots of neat stuff to peruse. As I'm navigating the outer circle of the mall and getting ready to turn onto a major street my GPS annouces that I need to turn left on 'Wisconsin 253' or something like that... and I live in Illinois. It apparently decided we had somehow warped on over to Madison, WI. Listen, Mr. GPS... if I could travel that fast then I wouldn't need you... as whenever I made a wrong turn it would only take seconds to correct at that speed...

And now my Weather Channel software displays a city about 20 miles away as my home location. Verizon's answer? "Have you turned it off and on again?" (That's a quote from the British sitcom titled the IT Crowd which is excellent, by the way). I'm also seeing it toggle between 1x and 3G way too often after months of excellent service. I might think it was my phone... if my wife's wasn't doing the exact same thing.

Dragon Fire

It's no secret that I have a passion for board gaming (and more specifically Euro style games). In this niche hobby the abstract strategy genre doesn't get much love. There are some excellent abstract games, but often games with similar mechanics and a theme do much better at the retail level. People love pirates and zombies and so forth much better than simply being black or white. And yes, this will tie in to this game review...

Dragon Fire makes the claim that if you like traffic control games (hinting at Flight Control) then you're a good candidate for this game. I fully understand why and it's a reasonable parallel. In Dragon Fire a dragon's head that could have just as easily been a paint can or a square box fires different colored streaks and then you have to navigate them to a receptacle of the same color. You'll be toggling directional arrows to achieve this goal and there are three basic objects in the game: receptacles of different colors (and they change color and eventually go away as they are filled), the arrows that allow you to control where these streaks go, and turns which change the direction of the streaks. If you fail to get one of these color streaks to a like colored receptacle then you lose a life... lose three and it's game over.

The game includes 26 levels and a speed adjustment option. Make no mistake... the game is hard. Once you get past the first couple of confidence builder levels it'll have you stressing out and making mistakes. That reminds me that one thing I didn't like was if a streak entered an arrow and I change the direction of the arrow before it exited then the streak would continue in the arrow's original direction. From what I know about game design that kind of behavior is recommended against as it's frustrating (it's recommended to err in the player's favor)... and I find it to be unnatural. Just as I make a brilliant move the carpet is pulled from under me.

Dragon Fire's graphics are at par for this kind of game and it's got a nice audio track. The controls are decent, but I do find myself missing the smallish touch points for controlling the arrows now and again. It would be nice if those were bigger when they weren't adjacent to other arrows as there's no ambiguity as to what my intent is.

I think the game, despite being well done, has a couple of strikes against it that might not have been there had it been released before Flight Control. First up is the abstract nature of the game. I find it far more enjoyable landing planes or parking cars or docking ships versus controlling streaks of color. Second, in the 'traffic control games' the whole screen is my playground. I can change directions of a vehicle whenever I want by dragging a new path, whereas in Dragon Fire I'm limited to affecting just a handful of spots on the screen. Perhaps it's a good thing that the developers didn't just make yet another Flight Control copy (I think the Android Market has four direct copies already) and gave us something different. Unfortunately, I find the original to be the more enjoyable diversion. 3.5/5 stars for a quality title that falls a bit short of the competition.

Memorial Day Sale

Glu Mobile is having a Memorial Day sale and is offering their games such as Build-a-Lot and Super KO Boxing 2 (an excellent game) for a measley $.99 here in the USA. Great deals! Go get 'em now... and thanks Glu for matching your Apple App Store sale in the Android Market vs leaving us in the dark. Just do a search on 'Glu' in the Market to find them.

Super Jetpack Dragon IV

I got a notice about Super Jetpack Dragon IV a day or two ago. It looked interesting and thus I knew it was a title worth reviewing. But one thing that always intrigues me when I learn of a new game is checking out the developer's website and learning that I've played one (or more) of their other games in the past... in this case 'The Battle of Pirate Bay' on the iPhone. It's also interesting to me when devs are more open about their process versus trying to impress me with that big, corporate look. You see, I think we're in an age when things have become too impersonal and people want to deal with people. Case in point this article on their website about the similarities of the submission process between the Apple App Store and the Android Market which shows a very human side of the company:

App Store vs Android Market Thoughts

So what's the game like? Super Jetpack Dragon IV is a mouthful and will hereby be known as SJD. In this game you're a dragon (with a mount, I think... but that doesn't matter) and you're a menace to the countryside. Why? Because it's there. You're racing from left to right on a scrolling landscape scooping up food, burning down villages, and plundering walls. The controls are simple and are explained everything you run the game which I wish was not the case. I would much rather have a separate 'How to Play' button. Not to mention the instructions omit a key part of the game and that's the energy meter in the upper right of the screen and the fact that both hovering and breathing fire deplete it. That will most likely become obvious while playing, though, as it was for me.

The landscapes have a slight cartoony feeling, and are smoothly drawn. The parallax scrolling is pretty smooth although I do detect a bit of jerkiness here and there. Controls are responsive and other than the fact that when my dragon plummets to his death it sounds like a guy saying 'Ahhhhhh!' the sound is decent.

This game is arcade game all the way. After initially feeling like this was going to be a Sonic clone I now feel like it's more of an advanced (very advanced) SFCave. Perhaps Mini Plane would be a closer analogy. You are always moving forward... and you have to jump and attack at the right time to rack up points. As the game progresses there's a little bit more to it with avoid things like dragons, but it's really all about racking up points. Unfortunately, for what it is... the game is big and until Android 2.2 is available for me it's 15 MB size is a problem. I don't fault the developers for that as I, personally, wouldn't waste the resources of pushing stuff to the SD card knowing Android 2.2 will take care of that problem for me.

The developers indicate that there's more coming. I'm hoping more also means 'The Battle of Pirate Bay'. In the meantime, SJD is a solid arcade title that doesn't have a lot of depth, but is worth of playing a few games here and there while waiting for a train or competing for a high score. And with scores being the central reason to keep playing leader boards would be nice. 4/5 stars.

Edit: I had a chance to check out the iPhone version of this game and the only real difference is that they do have leader boards... so obviously the dev is well aware of this as a good feature.

Winds of Steel

The state of Android gaming is really starting to improve. No longer are all of my Android games just quick flirts with entertainment that might repeat themselves with harder levels and little more. There are many examples of this and Winds of Steel is among them. WoS is a World War II aerial combat game that is very nicely done. The game loads with some nifty forties style music complete with static interference just like old time radio. You'll be greeted with a menu allowing you to select campaign play, instant action, or options. Options lets you adjust things such as skill level (there are three of them) and whether or not to enable sound and force feedback (vibration). Absent is any real help and I'm bothered by that trend as I don't find trying to figure out the game and its limitations very enjoyable.

Choose 'Instant Action' and you'll be able to select such modes of play as a simple dog fight, a bombing run, ...etc. I tried the dog fight mode first. Steering is done via tilt (as it should be) and works well. Occasionally the game might skip a few frames and I'm curious how well it runs on phones with the faster snapdragon processor, but no big deal. Your plane has two modes of firing: machine guns and bombs and they are toggled with a touch screen button on the lower right. In the screen shot you can see bombing mode is enabled, but for dog fights we can leave the machine guns on. Mysteriously absent from the screen shot (taken from the developer's web site) is the fire button which is above the toggle button about half way up the screen. Tap it for a burst of machine gun fire. As you pilot your plane a red triangle will point you in the direction of the currently selected target (and I don't know if I can change to a different target or not... I sure couldn't see how) to pursue. Line the enemy up in your crosshairs and fire. As your plane or your enemies plane takes on damage it will start to smoke, burn, and eventually crash.

The graphics are very nice with nice puffy clouds and good detail on the planes and ships. The hum of the plane's engine is well done and the vibration has a pretty good feel of a plane's propeller whirring away. The controls are smooth with one exception... I found the fire button a little on the small side of things. Often when focusing on the action my guns would not fire as my thumb would slide ever so slightly off of the fire button. As there's nothing else there (i.e. no opportunity for ambiguity for what my thumb touch was trying to do) I wish they'd have given some tolerance of error... that would have improved my game play experience substantially.

I then tried the Naval Battle mode after getting the hang of things and blowing several enemy planes out of the sky. The Naval Battle is harder so say the least... and all of this is on rookie mode so far. First, I had to figure out what to do... and living in the USA I immediately went after the Japanese ships and planes. Wrongo! Admittedly if I had paid attention to the graphics on the wings of my plane it would have been obviously that I was a Japanese pilot. Even more impressive was that I could clearly see the US flag on the ships. Anyhow, once I figured out my role I then realized that I needed to focus on the targets the game selects for me and avoid the flak from the enemy ships (and there's a lot to avoid). After several tries I was finally able to knock out the American Air Force (thus defending my fleet) and then blow away the enemy battleship. Mission accomplished.

Other minor issues with the game include exiting to a screen displaying my score while force feedback whirrs away (that can't be good for battery life) and the lack of any altimeter such that I have to rely solely on visuals to avoid getting too close to the ground.

I won't continue with the same level of detail, but the game has a couple other instant action modes of play and a whole slew of campaigns such as Pearl Harbor. There's a lot to this one and it's only 3 euros (or about $4 with the recent fall of the euro to the dollar). I'd really like the see the fire button issue addressed, but beyond that any criticisms I have are on the petty side. Great game and great fun! 4.5/5 stars.