english blog

So 2013 is over allegedly and all the developers have been far too busy eating and drinking to release much in the way of games over this silly season. So here is my top favourite games of 2013 plus one dishonourable mention. Number 4: Sid Meier's Ace Patrol Sid Meier's Ace Patrol was a bit of a surprise entry into the mobile world for Sid and now there is the sequel  Pacific Skies . Sid Meier has done very little wrong in his career and this game shows why he is the king of turn based strategy. You can't go wrong in picking up this title or the sequel. Number 3: Natural Selection 2 Can we use the term asymmetric gameplay whilst not talking about the Wii U. If we can then that would be the best way to describe Natural Selection 2. One team plays the aliens, the other the marines in a first person shooter view, whilst one commander on each team plays an RTS. You can't get much more asymmetrical than that, yet the game is still quite balanced and a hell of a lot of fun to...

هل سبق أن سألت نفسك عن السبب الذي يجعل Google تطلب منك تحديد ما إذا كنت تريد عرض الصور في الرسائل الإلكترونية أم لا؟ لقد كنا نتبع هذا الإجراء لحمايتك من محاولات استخدام المرسلين المجهولين للصور في اختراق حماية جهاز الكمبيوتر أو الجوّال الذي تستخدمه. ولكن بفضل التحسينات التي تم إدخالها مؤخرًا على كيفية تعامل Gmail مع الصور، ستظهر لك قريبًا جميع الصور المعروضة في رسائلك تلقائيًا على جميع أجهزة سطح المكتب والأجهزة التي تعمل بنظام التشغيل iOS أو Android. وبدلاً من أن يتم عرض الصور من خوادم المضيف الخارجي الأصلية مباشرة، أصبح الآن بإمكان Gmail عرض جميع الصور من خلال خوادم الوكيل الآمنة التابعة لـ Google. ولكن ما الذي يعنيه هذا بالنسبة إليك؟ ببساطة، أصبحت الرسائل أكثر أمانًا؛ حيث يتم فحص الصور للتأكد من عدم وجود فيروسات أو برامج ضارة معروفة بها، كما أنك لن تضطر إلى النقر على الرابط المزعج "عرض الصور أدناه" مرة أخرى. وبفضل هذا التغيير الجديد، سيصبح بريدك الإلكتروني أكثر أمانًا وسرعة وجمالاً من أي وقت مضى. وبالطبع يمكن لمن يفضل التحقق من الصور التي يتم عرضها في كل رسالة على حدة ...

Band Stars  is a free to play, band simulation game. I was pretty excited to pick this up as the combination of being a rockstar plus Kairosoft style gameplay really appeals to me. If only it was as easy as playing this game to start a successful music career. The game is divided into five different sections, firstly you have recording. Recording is the bread and butter of your group and is what you'll be doing most of the time. First you'll pick the label, the style and the lyrics of a song as well as one of your band members to write it. Then you select who should play what instrument on the track and if anyone will do a solo. Finally you choose someone to mix it. All of these different sections correlate to one of the five different skills, lyrics, creativity, melody, rhythm and polish. I am always confused by polish as they write it with a capital first letter. Who has the best Polish? It asks, umm... Next we have training. Training will improve your band members in one or...

So snails do have teeth, in fact they can have thousands of them. Luckily in this game you only have to deal with eight individual teeth. As far as I can tell this game is made by just one guy and it is based off a game that was released in October called Pumpkin Dentist. In fact I believe it is the same game just with a snail instead. So right in front of you is a snail's head and it will open and shut it's mouth allowing you to clean its teeth. To clean its teeth you just need to touch on them until they turn white but if you try to clean its teeth whilst it's mouth is shut you will hurt it. Hurt it too many times and you fail the level. Also there is a timer and a little gremlin that want to ruin your day too. You do have some power-ups to combat all this. A toothbrush which cleans some teeth a bit, freeze will let you keep the damn snails mouth open for a while, and the finger? Well the finger just undoes all the times you hurt the poor snail. There are just a bunch of ...

Clumsy Ninja is a pay-to-not-wait style game which puts you in charge of training a ninja and yes, he is clumsy. The ninja's sister has disappeared after fighting a mysterious villain and it is up to you to train him hard enough to get her back. It plays more like a virtual pet simulator than anything else. The bulk of the game is spent training your ninja in one of four mini games. The first is a trampoline and in terms of gameplay this one is pretty boring. You have to slide the trampoline back and forth to keep him from falling off and slowly he will learn how to do new moves. Next up is punching bag training. I feel this one is fairly satisfying to watch but you don't really do anything but hold up the bag for him. Then you have my favourite mini game where you throw various things at your ninja like watermelons or basketballs and he has to learn to defend them. Lastly is the practice dummy. You don't do anything with the practice dummy except put it back in the ring if...

Legend of Grimrock has been out for sometime but I've only just gotten around to playing it lately. It's essentially an old school dungeon RPG with new world graphics and sound. Legend of Grimrock is made by another Finnish development team, who go by the name Almost Human, my second Finnish developer this week. You're thrown into a dungeon with a team of four and you have to survive. The way you lay out your team is crucial as only the two in front can strike with melee weapons. The back is reserved for missile weapons and magic. I do recommend reading the short tutorial to get a handle on the game but very little is explained. It's all part of the old school charm, you have to figure out what is going on for yourself. This makes the game quite difficult at first and on my first try I died pretty quickly, after being overwhelmed by monsters. Once I figured out how magic worked and that you need to keep backing away from monsters, recharging your attacks and coming back...

Oceanhorn was developed by Cornfox & Bros who are a Finnish game developer. This game has received rave reviews and at the time of writing it sits on a Metacritic score of 92. Basically saying it is one of the greatest games of all time. Is it that great? The simple answer is no, a lot of flaws have been overlooked in it's achievement of that score but it is still a good game, let me explain. You play a boy on a Zelda Winder Waker-esque quest to save the world. You travel from island to island in your boat, which triggers a shoot 'em up mini game. This is probably the easiest part of the game as everything in your path has a giant hit-box, it makes for a good way to stock up on money and items. Most of your adventuring will take place on these islands in their dungeons. You have your typical sword and shield, plus you find other classic Zelda items along the way such as the bow, bombs and even heart containers. Plus you push boxes around to solve puzzles. It sounds pretty g...

There are a lot of games converting over free to play at the moment. Asphalt 8 and AVP Evolution are taking the microtransaction route, whilst Mecho Wars has just become free to play.  Asphalt 8 [iOS, Android] Asphalt 8 was a dollar to play for a short time, with plenty of pay for extras options and now it is a free to play, pay for extras game, confused? Good. The game offers a bunch of control modes with the worst being the on screen controls, meaning that tilt is the only real option. If this was a serious racer that would be a big problem but as it's an arcade, crash your way to the top title, it's not such a big deal. The crashes are completely ridiculous with minor taps sending cars flying and scoring you points. Sometimes cars will ram into me and this will count as me destroying them, granting me extra turbo bonuses. It's totally silly but that's half the fun.  The menu is atrocious with everything smashed onto one screen and the most useful item, the settings b...

Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is Tiny Tower in space. Just like Tiny Tower you are in charge of a series of rooms stacked one upon the other and you need to manage their day to day affairs. Restock stores, deliver people to floors and get bitizens to move into your apartments. However it's not all the same, the game introduces some new ideas and streamlines some functionality of the previous title. The premise behind the game is that the Emperor needs to make money to fund the Death Star, so the Empire rents out space to shops and apartments. You can also build Imperial levels which go below your other levels and they allow you to complete Imperial Assignments. Like in the last game people come to your lobby and you take them by elevator to the floor they want to go. The twist in this one is that you can take anyone down to an Imperial level to speed up it's production time. My favourite is to take unsuspecting Gungans down to the interrogation room to be tortured. Well they just ...

Tower of Fortune [iOS] Tower of Fortune 2 is now out which means the original is free to play. It is best described as an RPG with pokie gameplay. You are basically playing slot machines, leveling up and getting loot.   It's a very simple game, you just take your chances on the rolls of the slots. Whatever symbol lands in the first position determines the result, any matching symbols after that just add to the result. For example a skull means the enemy strikes, a sword means you strike etc. In terms of gameplay there isn't much else to it, yet like the pokies it is some what addictive. It's the kind of game you want to play when you are too tired, or have no attention span for much more complex, interesting games. When you die you lose all your levels and equipment. What you do keep is your gold and any of the tower you have unlocked. Dying is immensely frustrating but it does add to the longevity of the game. I do wish it was less punishing and let you keep your equipme...

FIFA 14 [iOS, Android] It's cool, really cool; you can play with touch controls which is very relaxing or more intensely with an onscreen control pad and I like that. They want you to pay for some stuff but that's okay because you get to do a lot for free, even play as an A League team! However connecting to Origin is entirely broken both on Android and iOS, so once you get past the initial stages you can't do anything 6/10. Pocket Trains [iOS, Android] It's sort of a game that you don't play; you wait around for your trains to get their goods to the destination, then you tell them what to do. It's not bad, it feels enjoyable when you do play it, it's just that you need to be playing another game, or doing something else, otherwise you'll just get bored 5/10. Turbo Racing League [iOS, Android] I've had this game on my phone for months now but the movie has only just come out here so it seems like the most appropriate time to review it. It's a sim...

What a name, what an odd game. It's a freemium quiz RPG and it's actually pretty fun. You need to successfully answer trivia style questions in order to do combat damage to the enemy monsters with your spirits. Spirits are collected in card form and can be enhanced or evolved into more powerful spirits. It's an odd mix but it definitely makes it unique... also my code is  7UAGWDVD, add me! The game gives you your standard story driven quest mode and an online battle mode where you still battle the A.I. but compete to see who can beat them in the shortest number of turns. The questing features an odd but reasonably interesting story which includes your standard rise to greatness. The name of the game takes its title from your master Wiz, like a lot of Japanese games on phones and tablets poor translation is a feature here. The questions vary widely in difficulty from extremely easy to ridiculously hard. They do offer an interesting mix of questions with some of them even bei...