iPhone Roundup

Doom Resurrection

• Developer: id Software
• Price: GBP 5.99

Reducing Doom to an on-rails zombie shooting gallery might not sound like the most enticing take on the beloved FPS brand, but the end result is surprisingly entertaining.

Robbed of traditional controls, developer Escalation Studios instead moves the player around in a similar fashion to light-gun shooters like Time Crisis, with the player left to adjust the aiming reticule by tilting the iPhone up or down. Shoot and dodge, meanwhile, are mapped to the bottom right and left corners of the screen respectively.

Adapting to the unusual control system is an impressively swift process, and pulling off precision aiming isn't as fiddly as you might fear. In true Doom fashion, enemies come thick and fast and, as usual, aiming for the head (or nearby barrels) reaps rewards, and helps get you closer to the all-important par time.

Other commands are similarly intuitive - simply tap an ammo clip to pick up, or touch the top-right of the screen to reload, while weapon-select is as simple as tapping the top-left corner to cycle through the choices available. When you let a zombie get too close, you physically shake them off.

Set across just eight levels, the one major failing of Doom Resurrection is how quickly you'll rip through it. Although undoubtedly fun while it lasts, it's over way too soon, and it's not one of those games you'll feel enormously compelled to replay. Currently priced at GBP 5.99, it's at the higher end of the scale for iPhone games, too.

As a technical showcase, though, it serves as a reminder that the iPhone packs some serious grunt. Styled in the same fashion as Doom 3, enemies and environments are suitably grisly and detailed, and offer a glimpse of what may lay in store should developers ever decide to make more complex games with this kind of tech.

For now, though, Doom Resurrection is an enjoyable diversion for a couple of hours, but lacking in depth or replayability to warrant serious consideration.

6/10

Trixel

• Developer: Adept Games
• Price: GBP 0.59

On a platform awash with simple puzzle games, it's not easy to stand out. Even when you do something different, it's tough to spot when something is genuinely worth picking up, rather than just a passably neat idea. Trixel succeeds by not only being a damned fine logic puzzle, but by being admirably original in approach. It's also unfathomably cheap. Like all truly great puzzle games, the concept is incredibly simple, yet no sooner have you grasped the basics, it builds into something truly brain-bending.

At the start of every puzzle, the goal is simply to match the target pattern shown by flipping the tiles in the least number of moves. To begin with, patterns come on a three-by-three grid, and to change the colour of a tile, you need to guide the cursor one square at a time to flip it to the opposite colour.

Initially, movement is limited to four basic directions, but as you progress through the game special multi-arrow tiles allow you to move diagonally, while wormholes teleport you from one part of the puzzle to another. On occasion, you'll also come across crystals that allow you to take moves back, or even skip entire puzzles altogether.

By the time you've played the game for 10 minutes, you're already hooked, and the further you get into Trixel, the more its effortless 'one-more-go' appeal kicks in as you strive for those all-important gold medals. On the one hand, it's perfect for handheld play to make those boring commutes fly by, but on the other you'll probably be unable to stop playing and get run over on the way to work. Your choice, really.

8/10