Mobile Games Roundup
Academy! Torture! Aporkalypse! Lumines! Boost 2!
Boost 2
- iPhone/iPad - £1.19 (Universal binary)
In light of the recent art attack perpetrated by Proun, it seems my lot in life at present is to oscillate between psychedelic racing games, pausing briefly to note down my findings.
Similar in concept, Jonathan Lanis' tumultuous first-person racer throws you into a teeth-grinding battle for survival as you hurtle along at face-wobbling speed.
The further you go, the better your score, so it's in your interests to weave in and out of the incoming obstacles and avoid losing precious seconds off your remaining time.
To keep things literally ticking over, you have to hit boost pads - but at the serious disadvantage of having less time to get out of the way of all the things blasting towards you.
This precarious balancing act makes Boost 2 a furiously compulsive affair as you return for more punishment, convinced that this time you'll get the better of it. Sometimes you'll get lucky and squeak by, but you mostly find yourself repeatedly kicked to the kerb by the ruthlessly uncompromising course design.
How long you'll tolerate this punishment will be down to you. For as much as I wanted to experience more of its restless, morphing environments, there's only so much personal failure you can take before it's time to wave the white flag of surrender.
7/10
Torture Bunny
As someone liable to dissolve in paroxysms of guilt at the mistreatment of a housefly, I find the idea that setting up elaborate torture traps for a defenceless rabbit could provide hours of entertainment troubling.
Kaxan Games casts you in the role of cold-hearted tormentor and tasks you with causing maximum pain and suffering to a quivering bunny, left suspended in a cage high up in your torture chamber.
In each chamber you're given a limited number of devices with which to inflict general pain and misery upon the bunny's person and can arrange them as you see fit. Once you open the cage, his fate is sealed, but you have to ensure that his descent to the ground is as agonising as possible. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
The further you progress, the greater variety of torture devices becomes available to you, and before long you're placing swinging blades, boiling pots and beds of nails with extreme prejudice. The longer the screams, the bigger the points tally.
And if that doesn't sound twisted enough for you, you can always use a photograph of your choice, and simulate the continual torture of your arch nemesis.
If you can divorce yourself from the fact you're playing an agony simulator, you would at least hope to extract some enjoyment out of the 'puzzle' nature of the game. But the humdrum truth is that there's not a great deal of challenge within Torture Bunny either - just a whole heap of trial and error and an element of luck.
5/10