Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Dave Flodine'
Lightopus Review
Games that are set under the sea usually have a relaxing tone attached to them. There's just something about gliding below the ocean blue. The Little Mermaid must have been onto something. In Lightopus, not only are you gliding around in a visual aquatic wonderland, but there's a more pressing purpose to propel you to action. Your babies, and your entire species is under attack! Each level has you floating around what can only be described as a small pocket of ocean. You are confined…
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TwinGo! Review
Sometimes two people are inseparable. You've seen it in real life when your friends fall in love and suddenly your friend becomes merged with their partner creating some strange sort of amorphous twin. As a videogame mechanic however it can be quite creative and provide a nice base for plenty of perplexing puzzle gameplay. This is what Twingo has to offer. It's you goal to use the power of swiping to guide Fuyu and Natsu to their respective colored pads at the end of each level. The c…
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Fairway Solitaire by Big Fish Review
When starting up a game called Fairway Solitaire, the name suggests a lot. “OK”, you think. “Somehow they've combined solitaire with golf. This should be interesting”. Then you're hit with a cheerfully animated introduction about the age old war between golf and gophers before being thrown into a puzzle game with not only intriguing mechanics, but plenty of personality. Not every course in this game (and there are many on offer) is eighteen holes, but the basic…
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Prince of Persia® Classic Review
The original Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner was a gaming classic, with its fluid animation, exotic setting and adventurous gameplay. The game was remade for the XBLA a few years ago, updating the graphics, adding more animations, and new modes along with achievements. That version was amazing and now has been ported to the iPhone. Can the touch screen deliver as wonderful an experience as a controller however? The answer sadly is no. Part of what made the original and the remake g…
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iBomber Defense Pacific Review
And the tower defense games just keep on coming! It's hard to be completely cynical about gross over-saturation of a genre when a developer does such a good job of creating an entry into said genre. Not only that but this is a sequel to iBomber Defense which was a pretty solid tower defense title to begin with. As the name suggests, battle now is primarily on the Pacific rim, and while that gives a lot of opportunity for battleships to attack beach-heads or enemies to float upstream, t…
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ZiGGURAT Review
As the last human on Earth, you stand tall upon the Ziggurat, surveying the damage that the alien menace has wrought. As the hordes approach, you and your powerful weapon can keep them at bay... but for how long? That is all the information needed to understand and undertake this arcade shooter from Action Button Entertainment. Yes it seems that the team responsible for some of the more unique game writing and criticism on the net has thrown their hats into game design, and what they'…
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Lume Review
What's more enjoyable in a game to you? Having an intro and tutorial that sets up the world and how to play, or just dropping you into this new world and having to figure everything out yourself? Both have their pros and cons but seeing LUME is a game of puzzles set in a world of abstract art, perhaps having little prompting as the game opens is best. Oh there's this story about visiting your grandfather with him being nowhere to be found, but that seems all too ancillary to the experi…
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WrestleFest Premium Review
Full disclosure here, Dave is a huge wrestling fan. Having watched various promotions from the late 80s all the way up to today, this either makes him the best candidate to review this remake of the arcade classic Wrestlefest, or perhaps the worst. It's all how you look at it. Nonetheless this is how it's gotta be so let's see if THQ can take what made the original Wrestlefest so fun to play and make it shine on the iPhone. The original game only had two modes, Battle Royal, and Tag T…
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Beat Hazard Ultra Review
Games that revolve their play and mechanics around music are something special. What's even more special are those games that allow you to use your own music library as not only this ensures you have levels based around music you enjoy listening to, but it creates almost limitless content. Beat Hazard has been around on Steam for a while, turning any song in your library into an adrenaline pumping twin stick shooter. Now for a lot of people the visual assault of this game made it unpla…
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FANTASYxRUNNERS Review
The endless runner genre could be looked at as a pessimistic metaphor for life. We're always charging towards goals, but they always seem just out of reach. I guess that means you just need to have as much fun as you can along the way right? FANTASYxRUNNERS has you questing through endless lands of monsters and deadly crevices, aiming to earn rupees, complete quests and unlock heroic companions along the way. Two big buttons get you through this exercise. One's for jumping, one'…
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My Army Review
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender etcetera, etcetera. When Winston Churchill gave that rousing speech to the House of Commons in 1940, he would probably have no clue that his words would be used to introduce the review for a fun little iPhone game titled My Army. Does it have any relevance outside the game starting on an Omaha-esque beachhead? Not s…
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BlockHopper Review
Puzzle platformers take many shapes but it's nice to see one that advocates creating your own pathways. The goal is out of reach, and for some reason our little protagonist Bit needs to find his way there. What is one to do? Luckily the omnipotent player has the ability to travel into block mode, pop down some platformers ripe for the jumping to allow Bit to travel on his merry way. OK, so the player isn't completely omnipotent. Each level you have a handful of blocks of different var…
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Fishbowl Racer Review
Look, if you're going to leave your fishbowl on a trolley, you have no right to complain when you come home to find your house ransacked. Especially when you leave fish food all over your numerous shelves. Sooner or later the poor thing is going to get hungry and mayhem is just going to ensue Fishbowl racer is a new breed of the endless racing genre. Oh there have most likely been games with fish before, but how many ask you to control the jumping patterns of two linked characters at…
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Pinball Arcade Review
Anyone who has frequented an arcade has most likely had an encounter with a pinball machine. Part videogame with its animated scoreboard and goals, part mechanical contraption with its flippers, bumpers, ramps, and mischievous metal ball flailing around the table. They're a unique annal in the history of the arcade that at least in western countries has become a relic of the past. Enter Farsight Studios with Pinball arcade, recreating some of the most famous and popular pinball tables…
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On the Hop Review
Part of what makes a good platformer is simplicity in control. On the iPhone this can lead to a disadvantage as you're missing the tactile feedback of a d-pad, analogue stick or buttons, and most platformers try to replicate these control schemes with the touch screen. The best examples of the genre on the platform are those that try and work around this limitation, using the advantages and simplicity of touch controls to create a memorable platforming experience. On the Hop succeeds i…
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