Download Games Roundup
Oozi! Rush! Earth! Moon! Race!
Touch Racing Nitro
- PSN Minis - £2.49
Just a thought, but if you're going to port your touch-based racing title to a platform with boring old sticks and buttons, it's probably a good idea to change the title.
But presumably in the name of maintaining the sliver of brand recognition it gained last year on the iPhone, Bravo Games has risen above such petty ridicule and stuck doggedly with the Touch Racing Nitro moniker anyway. Ah well.
Sadly, the studio has also strangely ignored a lot of the concerns people had with its top-down racer in the first place. Although the tight, grippy controls allow you to throw the car around the track with pleasing precision, it neuters the enjoyment by allowing you to overshoot straight over the barriers.
You'll often end up facing the wrong way, on the wrong part of the track, or worse, irredeemably snagged on a chunk of scenery, cursing as your opponents roar past you.
The workaround to all this is, obviously, don't drive off the edge of the track, but it's impossible to play the game in this mindset. More often than not, you'll want to push the car to the limit, and press home the advantage - not pootle around playing it safe.
It's a real shame, because the game has a lot going for it, with a Skidmarks-esque visual signature and plenty of tracks to get stuck into. It's also one of the few Minis to scale up brilliantly on the PS3, though does seem to suffer from alarming slowdown at times.
With a little more care, Touch Racing Nitro would have been an excellent addition to the patchy Minis line-up. Instead, it's just another iPhone port that doesn't quite cut it.
5/10
Moon Diver
- PSN - £9.99
- Coming soon to Xbox Live Arcade.
Ever fancied a four-player version of Strider? What do you mean "What's Strider?". Anyone would think you hadn't spent the past thirty years playing videogames.
Anyway, Koichi Yotsui (that's Mr Strider to you), clearly thought it was high time that his athletic brand of side-scrolling platforming was brought up to date as a multiplayer hackandslash, with a dollop of RPG on the side.
Well, 'up to date' is subjective. Developer feelplus has applied the obligatory glossy HD makeover, and thrown in simple drop-in online co-op, but in raw gameplay terms, this is pure button-mashing chaos of the highest order.
In a game where even the jump button performs an attack, you'll spend the vast majority of the time fighting off hordes of similar-looking enemies, and regularly find yourself penned-in until you've slain every last one of the blighters. Eventually, you'll meet a big old bastard boss, and party like it's 1989.
On your own, all of this relentless pogo-slash nonsense can be a bit of a drag, especially given the way the game delights in putting you right back to the beginning of a stage when you die. Because we all know how much fun that is, right?
In co-op, though, it's a different beast. Not only can you revive one another when you've run out of energy, but can pull off the adorable 'MoonSault Combinations', which let you smash things up in style. Not only that, it's a far more tactical game once each of you have levelled up a notch, and each have your own chosen special attacks.
Moon Diver is one of those divisive little numbers that you'll either love because of its repetitive, twitchy bombast, or want to drown in its own spittle. It's here. It's queer. Get used to it.
7/10