Review: BubbleTrouble

BubbleTrouble is yet another dodge the circles game. It's free, and that's the best thing I can say about it.

Graphics:
Coloured circles of various sizes. You play as the blue circle while trying to dodge the red circles. When you move, your circle leaves a little trail, so at least that's something.

Sound:
None.

This is about as exciting as it gets.

Gameplay:
Dodge the falling red circles by tapping or dragging. Every now and then a tiny green circle will fall. If you collect it, you'll gain a shield that lets you destroy the red circles. They appear far too infrequently and are generally way too far away for you to get to them in time.

What I liked:
-The title/instruction screen looks okay.
-You can tap or drag to move.

What I hated:
-Dodging things is hard when you can't see your circle underneath your finger.
-Shield power-ups are way too hard to get.

Final Verdict:
It's basically a port of a bad Flash game from the mid-1990s. Don't bother.

BubbleTrouble is available for free from WilliamSnell on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Imperial Hockey

Imperial Hockey is more of a tech demo than a game.

Created with a cross-platform development tool called CatHide, Imperial Hockey is less a game and more a demo of just exactly what CatHide can do. Which is a shame, because apparently what it can do, it doesn't do well.

This is what you'll see the first time you start a game.

Graphics:
Not good. Two paddles, a puck, and a background, all of which look like they took a grand total of 20 minutes to whip up.

There's something weird about the text. I'm not sure if it's the font selection, but a lot of letters appear to have been cropped by a pixel so part of the outline is missing. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say it was intentional, but I still don't like it.

Sound:
Four or five hockey buzzer and paddle click type sounds. They're appropriate to the game, and the fidelity is pretty good, which makes the sound the best part of Imperial Hockey.

Gameplay:
It's pong, only with worse controls and fewer options. You control your paddle by tapping it and dragging, but its hitbox is too small, so you're bound to miss it every now and then when you let it go.

There's only one version of the game, which appears to be the standard tennis version, even though it's played on a hockey rink. You can set your opponent to multiple difficulty levels, but controlling your paddle is so imprecise that the real opponent is the sloppy game design. And there's no way to win against that.

Technically, I won, but in Imperial Hockey, there are no winners.

What I liked:
-Sounds are okay.
-Multiple difficulty levels give at least some variation to the game.

What I hated:
-Bugs.
-Poor paddle control.
-Hit detection is sloppy.
-To "serve" the puck, you have to tap the screen, which means you lose track of your paddle and have to grab it again before the puck gets to you.

Final Verdict:
If this was supposed to encourage people to buy the CatHide development software, then it's going to fail.

Imperial Hockey is available for free from Imperial Penguin on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0.1

Review: Wild'n Poker Free

The wildest title screen ever.

Wild'n Poker Free is a take on the classic video poker system. It tries to give you all the fun of a casino without the associated broken thumbs and busted kneecaps. It fails.

Everything about this game is slow. It's just dealing cards (and there's not even an animation for that), so there's absolutely no excuse for how badly it runs.

It also comes with a built-in chat program courtesy of Villo, but I can't imagine why you'd want to use it, and I refuse to sign up for their service to test it out.

Graphics:
Somewhat limited. The faces of the cards are reasonably well done, and the fonts work well. That's not exactly high praise, but you've got to play the cards you're dealt, so to speak.

You're given a choice between dozens of deck styles, but as far as I can tell you never see the backs of the cards, so it doesn't really matter. You also get a large number of backgrounds to choose from. Some of the graphical styles (including the compulsory sexy lady deck) are only available in the upgraded version, but there are enough available in the free version that you'll probably find something you like.

Sound:
No music, and just three or four effects (that you can thankfully disable in the options menu). They sound okay, but they lag, so I can't say they're particularly effective. I wound up just turning them off.

I won!

Gameplay:
Relatively simple. Video poker isn't exactly rocket science, but these days it's a lot snazzier than just the basic game. In Wild'n Poker Free, you're dealt five cards, you choose which to hold and which to discard, then you deal again. Anything better than a pair of jacks wins, with varying payouts depending on how high your hand is. It'd be okay if it weren't so dang slow. Everything lags. Button presses, the score counter, dealing the cards... everything. It's astonishing, since there's so little going on.

The full version supposedly gives you access to a more advanced game, but the upgrade button is broken, so even if you want to, there's no way to check it out.

What I liked:
-Lots of deck styles and background images to choose from.

What I hated:
-Laggy.
-Too many load screens.
-Can't change bet amount without backing out to a menu screen.

Final Verdict:
It's buggy, laggy, and ultimately, Wild'n Poker Free isn't wild in any sense of the word. Stay away.

Wild'n Poker is available for Free from Bryan Leasot on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: CreaVures

CreaVures is a puzzle platformer in the vein of Lost Vikings where you guide your creavures through the forest collecting things. The beginning's relatively simple, but the game quickly becomes more complex as your various creavures' powers are revealed, and you learn to use them in interesting ways.

Rhino beetles would be terrifying if they were really big enough to ride.

Graphics:
Excellently rendered, if a bit weird. The creavures blend in well with the background... perhaps a little too well, as it can be a tad hard to see exactly what's going on sometimes.

The creavures themselves are cute, and the enemies are decent enough, if somewhat benign-looking.

Multiple planes of 3D graphics scroll by as your creavures run through the forest. It's an impressive display of what the PlayBook hardware can do. The planes aren't differentiated enough, though, and I frequently found myself confused as to which parts of the level I could actually interact with.

Overall, I'm not a big fan of the game's style. It's way too dark, and things just sort of blend together.

Sound:
Subdued, but appropriate. The music doesn't get in the way or get annoying, and the sound effects work well.

I knew a guy in high school who could do that.

Gameplay:
It's a puzzle platformer, so there are puzzles and there are platforms.

The puzzles work relatively well. Each creavure comes with a set of powers that can help you move around obstacles in different ways. Pokey can climb certain walls, Bitey has a tail the other creavures can swing on, Zappy can jump well in water, and so on. While they were never particularly difficult, I found that the puzzles became more interesting as my team gained more creavures and I progressed through the game. Shocking a bird with Zappy while swinging on Bitey's tail is very satisfying.

The platforming is just bad. You control the characters with a virtual analog stick and a jump button. Movement is far too imprecise, jumping is way too floaty, and sometimes button presses just plain aren't recognized. I understand it's a limitation of the hardware, but I'm sure the controls could've been fine tuned at least a little bit more. It's rare, but when you have to restart a puzzle for the third time because you missed a jump that you should've made easily, the game can be really frustrating. Fortunately, checkpoints are plentiful, so it never gets too egregious.

Swapping between characters is handled with a simple tap of a virtual button, and once you get more than two, you can swap one out at any checkpoint. It all works well, and I never had a problem with it.

Three creavures are better than one.

What I liked:
-Cute characters.
-Interesting puzzles.
-Epic boss battles. Well, not epic, but suitably grand.

What I hated:
-Floaty controls.
-Bad platforming segments.
-Difficulty discerning foreground and background from playable part of the level.
-Levels are way too dark.
-Occasional crashes.

Final Verdict:
CreaVures is good, but the poor controls and floaty movement keep it from being great.

CreaVures is available for free (courtesy of RIM) from Union on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: QMplayer for BlackBerry PlayBook

QMplayer is a version of Mplayer for the PlayBook. As the name suggests, it plays things. In this case, video files. It can play most formats you have on your tablet, or it can stream stuff from the internet. Unfortunately, it's a time-limited trial, and the upgrade is $6.

It features a host of control options that allow you to skip forward or adjust the way your video plays, and you can access the controls through gestures, or via the keyboard. Unfortunately, neither of those methods is well implemented or well thought out.

UI
Hideous. Ugly design, ugly colours. Most of the functions can be accessed through gestures, but if you want to actually do things, you're going to need to use the keyboard.

Usefulness:
Plays a few files and file types that the built-in video player can't handle. That's somewhat, useful, but it's not $6 useful.

Reusability:
As long as you have videos to watch, you can use it over and over again. For two weeks. Then you've gotta pay.

What I Liked
-Plays lots of file types.
-Interesting functions like the ability to play things on fast forward or delay the audio track.

What I Hated
-Gesture controls are hard to use properly.
-Keyboard controls seem to have been designed for a full keyboard, rather than the mobile version on the PlayBook.
-If you hit "Stop" you have to reload the video.
-Ain't got no alibi.

Final Verdict:
QMplayer is a decent video player, but its hideous UI and lacklustre control scheme mean I'll be sticking with the basic built-in player for now.

QMplayer is available as a free two-week trial from EXECUSE on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0.8

Review: Groovy Beats

Groovy Beats is a DJ loop creator that'll let you create phat beats to drop on the kids or something. I'm not a big music guy, so I'm not really up on the lingo. However, I'll try to explain things as best I can.

Groovy Beats gives you eight tracks 16, 32, 48, or 64 beats in length depending on how much space you need. You pick a sound for each track like a percussive sound, or a single piano tone, choose the beats where you want the sounds to play, then let 'er rip. You'll be left with a music loop of around 1 1/2 to 17 seconds, depending on the tempo you choose.

UI
Clean, and nice to look at. By necessity, there's a lot of stuff on the screen at once, though, so if you have fat fingers like I do, you may end up with the occasional mis-tap. Also, it can lag a bit every now and then. Overall, it's a very effective setup.

Usefulness:
It's not the deepest or most robust loop creator out there, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately, the free version doesn't give you any way to save your work, so that costs it a fairly large chunk of its usefulness.

Reusability:
Near infinite. If you ever need a music loop for a project, or even if you just like making them, Groovy Beats will have you coming back over and over again. The free version comes with over 100 sounds to choose from, and you can purchase hundreds more.

What I Liked
-Plenty of sounds to choose from.
-Easily-adjustable tempo and volume controls.

What I Hated
-Fat fingers can cause a few mis-taps.
-No auto-save.
-No way to mute a single track.
-The save feature isn't free.

Final Verdict:
Groovy Beats will certainly let you create some groovy beats, but it has a few quirks, and you need to lay down a buck if you want it to be really useful.

Groovy Beats is available for free with in-app purchases from XLabz Technologies Pvt Ltd on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Stick Tennis

Stick Tennis is perhaps the best tennis game for mobile devices that don't end in DS or SP, but is it actually any good?

Graphics:
The UI is very well done. It's slick, it's clean, and it's shiny.

The characters are similarly well done, and the animation is smooth for the most part. There's some slight jerkiness when moving between running and swinging the racket, but I'm not expecting incredible motion interpolation from a 2D mobile game, and the speed of the action hides it pretty well.

The backgrounds, and the courts all seem to be built out of the same basic parts. They look good, but they're not overly impressive.

Sound:
No music that I could find. There's a little bit of cheering and groaning from the crowd, and the umpire is suitably cold and impartial. The few grunts you hear from the women get a little annoying after a while, and there only seems to be one racket swing and one ball hit, both of which get old really fast. The fidelity is fine, and overall the umpire's sounds make up for the lack of variation in everything else.

Gameplay:
This is where Stick Tennis really falters. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the platform, there's only so much you can do. You can tap, and you can swipe. In this case, you tap to toss the ball up on a serve, and you swipe to hit it. Changing the direction of your swipe has a moderate affect on where the ball goes, but sometimes it doesn't seem to make much difference. You have no control over the movement of your player, or the power of your shot; both are automatic. I found myself getting incredibly frustrated at my player's inability to put the ball where I wanted it, or to even get to the ball.

The timing on returns is very harsh. You have a very, very small window in which to hit the ball, and since you have no way of controlling when your player will (or even if they will) be near the ball, there's far more guesswork involved than I'd like. With a little practice, I was able to return the ball with some regularity, but I still experienced far more missed swipes of the racket than I was comfortable with.

There are seven ways to play: Four tournaments, a daily challenge, practice mode, and world domination, where you take on some of the all-time greats to prove your worth. They all seem to be more or less the same, though. The ball may move a little bit faster on grass courts than on clay, but I couldn't really tell the difference. All the opponents seem to play pretty much the same, too. Then men serve faster, and overall, the higher-ranked players seem to hit the ball faster, but there doesn't seem to be any discernible difference between their ability to get to the ball when it's on their side of the court. Having a lot of options is nice, but you're mainly choosing between playing on a blue background or a green one.

The free version gives you access to the first round of each tournament, and you can pay $2.99 to unlock the rest. But, I fail to see how games in the second round would be any different from those in the first.

What I liked:
-The UI is excellent.
-The animation is more than sufficient.
-The umpire is a cold, unfeeling bastard. Just as he should be.

What I hated:
-When playing in a tournament, you have to wait a few seconds for the game to calculate the results of the other brackets before you can get to the action. Seems unnecessary.
-Most rounds feel exactly the same.
-Window in which to return the ball is very small.
-Incredibly limited controls make for frustrating gameplay.

Final Verdict:
Stick Tennis is a slick production with a lot of time and effort behind it, but the limited controls and lack of variation in the gameplay mean the game just plain isn't much fun. Tablets and phones just aren't the place for a tennis game, unfortunately.

Stick Tennis is available with in-app purchases for free from Stick Sports Ltd on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.1.1