Mobile Games Roundup
Karoshi! Wings! Dig! Jet! Puckerz!
Jet Car Stunts
- Android - £1.25 (Lite version free).
- Also available for iPhone - £1.19.
If Geoff Crammond still had any interest in making games, we'd probably have already seen an iPhone version of the awesome Stunt Car Racer. But worry ye not, as True Axis has done the job for him, with this equally accomplished "platform racing game".
Similar in spirit to the 1989 16bit classic, you blast around a series of fiendish courses designed to test your ability to handle an eccentric car-jet-thing.
Armed with turbo boost and air brakes, simply keeping your craft on the track for seconds at a time becomes a near impossible task as you zip from platform to platform, shoot up ramps and spin through mid-air corkscrews.
But with slick tilt controls and super-smooth circa 1990 polygonal visuals to warm your cockels, the stop-start trial-and-error gameplay quickly burrows under your skin in a way reminiscent of the peerless Trials HD.
Given the accolades Jet Car Stunts commanded on iOS in 2009, anyone of the Android persuasion should race to the Marketplace right away to snaffle this superb conversion up.
9/10
Tiny Wings
- iPhone - £0.59
If you're aiming to be numero uno on the App Store these days then basing your game around flinging birds at high speed through the air is a good place to start. Tiny Wings maker Andreas Illiger agrees.
This is the latest bagillion-selling success story, and it flaunts the kind of one-touch simplicity that keeps people busting for the John while you set high scores on your throne. Bombs away!
As night rapidly draws in, your challenge is keeping your little feathered friend ahead of the setting sun for as long as possible through fast, skilful flight. Delaying a good scorching is all about building and maintaining momentum by folding your wings (touching the screen) and swooping down at exactly the right moment.
Judge it correctly and you'll hit the slope perfectly and catapult into the clouds - but keeping the run going involves almighty anticipation and a just a teensy weensy smidgen of luck. The faster you go, the more islands you'll be able to visit, and the greater the chance of basking in the warm glow of high score glory.
Tiny Wings is hideously addictive, supremely cute, and at 59 pence you'll play it for hours and never really know why. Such is the way atop the cloud-hidden peak of the App Store.
7/10