Mobile Games Roundup
League! Fight! Tiny! Draw! Fin!
DrawRace 2 HD
I'm considering suing RedLynx. Not for terrorising my face with offensive rubbish, but for ensuring that I get nothing done every time it releases a game.
DrawRace 2 provides no relief, with a gameplay formula so addictive it may yet bring society to its knees. Or at least keep it collectively clamped to the sofa for unhelpful amounts of time.
As with the original DrawRace, the big idea is that you physically draw the course that you want your car to take in advance of the race, with the pace of your delicate finger-tracing dictating the car's speed as it snakes around the circuit.
This trial-and-error formula ensures that success is fleeting. You might judge a corner perfectly only to apply a little too much speed on the straight and careen haplessly into the sidings. Or you might score the perfect first lap only to get too excited and faff up the crucial second.
But in common with RedLynx's other games, you have to buy into the failure - and it only seems to encourage you to return with renewed vigour.
Testing your lap time prowess in the World League leaderboard is bad enough, but once personal pride enters the equation via the Friend Challenges, there really is no looking back. The 45 seconds or so it takes to play a couple of laps fools you into thinking it won't take long, but when you're replaying the same circuit dozens of times, the hours fly by. As I write this, I am intermittently trying to beat one. [Update: beat you!]
If you happen to have friends nearby, you can even indulge in some pass-the-device multiplayer, where you all get a turn to sketch your routes and then race against one another - with a button in each corner to apply the all-important boost. It's a cunning twist to an already moreish format.
The fact that RedLynx then has the gall to put mountains of tracks, skill levels and modes into a technically impressive package is likely to mean you'll gorge on DrawRace 2 for so long you'll want to send the developer more money out of sheer embarrassment. 69 pence, for goodness' sake!
9/10
Mighty Fin
- iPhone/iPad - 69p (Universal binary)
The helicopter game has got a lot to answer for. My made-up research suggests that the DNA of that patient, probing, one-button survival mission must have mutated its way into at least seven per cent of all successful mobile games. And here's another one, starring a fish that's fond of hats.
For reasons it's best to leave buried deep in the minds of the Launching Pad Games people who wrote this guff, Fin needs a holiday and has signed up for a Round The World Tour. What that means for folk with iOS devices is an excuse to get sucked into another irrepressible, fun-filled one-buttonathon.
Like Tiny Wings and its ilk, you simply press the screen to make Fin dive, and let go to send him soaring into the air. With an array of bubbles to collect, it's the usual rhythm-based affair, where getting good means mentally mapping out each of the 16 levels like a person with nothing better to do.
Despite (or possibly thanks to) its barren, shamelessly derivative mechanics, you can't help buy into its casual nonsense.
If Mighty Fin demonstrates anything, it's the power of the unlockable hat. Seriously, who couldn't enjoy making a Rasta fish happy?
7/10