Download Games Roundup
Vorpal! Zeit²! Darts! Blimp! Swap!
Blimp: The Flying Adventures
- PSN Minis – £3.49
- Also available on iPhone – £1.19 (trial version free)
Crane Balls' charming iPhone title was one of those games that you always suspected might benefit from having 'normal' controls.
The premise of guiding a little blimp around, picking up passengers and dropping them off was reasonably entertaining, and it was beautifully illustrated to boot. But the longer the game wore on, the more the its tilt movement system ground you down.
Upon its belated transition to Minis, it wasn't unreasonable to assume that having a tactile left-right movement system would fix all that, and it would end up a more enjoyable game as a result. Wrong.
On the PSP at least, you're limited to controlling movement with the nub, and, if anything, it's just as unforgiving as it ever was. For reasons best know to the developer, the d-pad remains unused, so you can't even resort to that. Sigh.
The visuals are also a noticeable step down from the pin-sharp clarity on iOS devices. All you're left with is a game that costs almost three times as much as the original, isn't as pretty, and still has all the frustration intact. What a shame.
6/10
Super Swap
- DSiWare – 500 DSiWare Points (£4.50)
Because it's scientifically impossible to have too many match-three videogames in your life, here's another one to salivate inappropriately over.
You might well wonder what the point of Super Swap is, until you realise that PopCap – for whatever reason – hasn't yet tasked its port monkeys with releasing one on DSiWare.
Presumably spotting the enormous open goal, Teyon has released a slick, no-frills version covering plenty of gem-matching ground, with four predictably addictive modes that care not about how much time you've got spare. They're having all your time, thank you very much.
In Classic, Speed and the ominous-sounding Death mode, coloured blocks rain from the top and you have to match three of a kind by dragging them in one of four directions. You not only know the drill, you probably made the drill and are on your way to my office right now to exact furious revenge for something I honestly didn't do.
Meanwhile, the fourth of the modes, Rows, tasks you with shifting entire columns or rows to match those bloody shapes. For every three colours you match, a kitten drowns. Do you have any conscience whatsoever? I'm beginning to wonder.
6/10