Color Sheep (for Android)

Pros Cute wooly protagonist. Well animated. Addictive play. Multiple difficulty levels. Fun color combo-ing.

Cons One-hit kills. Always have to restart from beginning. Bottom Line Full of charm and fast-paced play, Color Sheep is a strong casual game for Android.

By Max Eddy

If the premise of a hue-changing sheep that uses prismatic lasers to destroy slavering, color-coded wolves doesn't pique your interest, then I can safely say you will not enjoy Color Sheep (99 cents), a mobile game for Android. If it sounds appealing, then you'll be rewarded with a fast-paced, addictive game, and round after round of wolf-blasting.

In Color Sheep, you take the role of Sir Woolson, who stands alone against a rampaging pack of multi-colored wool. Woolson's only defense is a colorful beam which destroys any like-colored wolves it touches. You change the beam's  hue by tapping colors on the left and mixing bright and dark intensity buttons on the right. Then tap Woolson to unleash a colorful blast that swiftly reduces the lupine attackers to bones and pelts.

The game becomes more complex as you face wolves with colors that can only be countered by mixing your colors. For instance, bright cyan wolves can be felled by holding down the bright button and sliding from the green to the blue button. As the packs grow and diversify, the battle becomes more intense. It's a bit tricky, but you'll soon find yourself falling into a pleasant groove of sliding and tapping.

Randomly dropped magical items can aid you in your quest with varying effects like a shield, a lightning attack, or a rainbow wave of destruction that disintegrates your enemies. And while you can only carry one item at a time, unused items and active effects persist between levels.

To their credit, Color Sheep's developers recently rolled out a major update to the game. In addition to welcome improvements in how items are handled, players can now choose between difficulty levels. At Junior difficulty, you find a truly ludicrous number of magic items, and helpful hints on what colors to mix in the midst of battle. The Insane level, on the other hand, dumps you into high-level combat in a new setting, and ditches all the color-mixing tips.

A Lot of Personality
Color Sheep is a charming game full of animated flourishes. The wolves strut across the screen with cartoonish ferocity, Woolson's winning smile gleams at the end of each round, and, yes, the skulls of defeated wolves clatter at the hooves our hero. This might sound overly violent, but it's cartoonishly un-gory and underlines the absurdity of the game.

On the Samsung Galaxy S III, the game looks particularly sharp and bright. However, I thought it occasionally looked a bit washed-out and blurry on the larger Nexus 7.

Beauty Only Fleece-Deep?
Color Sheep's charm and recent update make it a strong casual title, but I've still got some quibbles. Though the updated game's levels are shorter and brisker, the game sometimes seems very static since Woolson never moves.

The game is better than ever, but I'd still like to see more improvements. Adding achievements would make frequent restarts more bearable, though the Facebook-powered leaderboards help somewhat. Adding a map-like layout which allows you to choose different stages, like Astro Shark, would be welcome as well.

Going From Good to Great
When I first reviewed Color Sheep, it felt a little unfinished and got by mostly on charm. The developer's update fleshed out the game significantly but it still straddles an awkward place that's too involved to be as casual as Nimble Quest, and not quite polished as Astro Shark. There's still a lot of room to improve, but I'm grateful to see the developers taking the time to make their charming game all the better.

Hopefully we haven't seen the last of Woolson in his fight against lupine evil.

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Color Sheep (for Android)

Pros Cute wooly protagonist. Well animated. Addictive play. Multiple difficulty levels. Fun color combo-ing.

Cons One-hit kills. Always have to restart from beginning. Bottom Line Full of charm and fast-paced play, Color Sheep is a strong casual game for Android.

By Max Eddy

If the premise of a hue-changing sheep that uses prismatic lasers to destroy slavering, color-coded wolves doesn't pique your interest, then I can safely say you will not enjoy Color Sheep (99 cents), a mobile game for Android. If it sounds appealing, then you'll be rewarded with a fast-paced, addictive game, and round after round of wolf-blasting.

In Color Sheep, you take the role of Sir Woolson, who stands alone against a rampaging pack of multi-colored wool. Woolson's only defense is a colorful beam which destroys any like-colored wolves it touches. You change the beam's  hue by tapping colors on the left and mixing bright and dark intensity buttons on the right. Then tap Woolson to unleash a colorful blast that swiftly reduces the lupine attackers to bones and pelts.

The game becomes more complex as you face wolves with colors that can only be countered by mixing your colors. For instance, bright cyan wolves can be felled by holding down the bright button and sliding from the green to the blue button. As the packs grow and diversify, the battle becomes more intense. It's a bit tricky, but you'll soon find yourself falling into a pleasant groove of sliding and tapping.

Randomly dropped magical items can aid you in your quest with varying effects like a shield, a lightning attack, or a rainbow wave of destruction that disintegrates your enemies. And while you can only carry one item at a time, unused items and active effects persist between levels.

To their credit, Color Sheep's developers recently rolled out a major update to the game. In addition to welcome improvements in how items are handled, players can now choose between difficulty levels. At Junior difficulty, you find a truly ludicrous number of magic items, and helpful hints on what colors to mix in the midst of battle. The Insane level, on the other hand, dumps you into high-level combat in a new setting, and ditches all the color-mixing tips.

A Lot of Personality
Color Sheep is a charming game full of animated flourishes. The wolves strut across the screen with cartoonish ferocity, Woolson's winning smile gleams at the end of each round, and, yes, the skulls of defeated wolves clatter at the hooves our hero. This might sound overly violent, but it's cartoonishly un-gory and underlines the absurdity of the game.

On the Samsung Galaxy S III, the game looks particularly sharp and bright. However, I thought it occasionally looked a bit washed-out and blurry on the larger Nexus 7.

Beauty Only Fleece-Deep?
Color Sheep's charm and recent update make it a strong casual title, but I've still got some quibbles. Though the updated game's levels are shorter and brisker, the game sometimes seems very static since Woolson never moves.

The game is better than ever, but I'd still like to see more improvements. Adding achievements would make frequent restarts more bearable, though the Facebook-powered leaderboards help somewhat. Adding a map-like layout which allows you to choose different stages, like Astro Shark, would be welcome as well.

Going From Good to Great
When I first reviewed Color Sheep, it felt a little unfinished and got by mostly on charm. The developer's update fleshed out the game significantly but it still straddles an awkward place that's too involved to be as casual as Nimble Quest, and not quite polished as Astro Shark. There's still a lot of room to improve, but I'm grateful to see the developers taking the time to make their charming game all the better.

Hopefully we haven't seen the last of Woolson in his fight against lupine evil.

View the original article here

Crazy Taxi (for Android)

Pros Incredibly fun racing action. Catchy music. Wireless controller support.

Cons Incredibly fun racing action. Catchy music. Wireless controller support. Bottom Line Sega's classic cabby game pulls up to Android devices and takes gamers for a joyfully hectic (and nostalgic) ride.

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

Sega's current creative output doesn't match what the company produced when it was in the console business, but digital marketplaces have let old school gamers relive its golden years. Crazy Taxi for Android ($4.99), the smash racing hit for both arcades and the ill-fated Dreamcast console, is re-released yet again—and it's one of the best versions to date.

The mobile version (I tested it on a Samsung Galaxy Note II) keeps the fast-paced, addictive fun of the original game and resurrects an important part of the Crazy Taxi experience that was absent in recent re-releases: a killer soundtrack featuring Bad Religion and The Offspring. Now that all the pieces are back together, Crazy Taxi should be considered a must-have game for diehard fans.

Licensed to Drive
Gamers play as one of four cab drivers who must pick up passengers and deliver them to their destinations within an allotted time. If you successfully do that, you get the fares; blow it and the passengers bail without paying. Crazy Taxi's handful of modes slightly tweaks the basic formula, but you're racing against the clock in all of them. The Crazy Box mode features 16 mini-games, but they aren't quite as fun as the main game.

Crazy Taxi was originally designed with a joystick (and then a controller when it hit consoles) in mind, but the touchscreen, naturally, is a smartphone's input device. I wouldn't recommend using it, though, as touchscreen controls aren't suited for fast breaking and direction changes. You can also dart through the San Francisco-like city's traffic by tilting your Android device—I found it the superior method of handling corners at high speed. That said, Sega wisely includes wireless MOGA controller support for those who want a more console-like experience.

Another wise inclusion: The return of the Bad Religion and The Offspring songs that helped define the game's original arcade and home releases. The pop-punk tunes comprise a stellar soundtrack that's the perfect musical accompaniment to frantic driving. This, in my mind, makes Crazy Taxi for Android the definitive downloadable version (the PC, PSN, and XBLA versions lack the licensed music). The visuals are dated—Crazy Taxi's a game from 1999, after all—but once you put the pedal to the metal, the relatively low polygonal count isn't much of an issue.

Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Crazy Taxi's proper return serves as a reminder that Sega was once an industry leader in crafting entertaining, quirky games. On paper, Crazy Taxi's premise—a game about driving a can—sounds really odd, but the gameplay, music, and nostalgia makes it a game that I will return to often.

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Ticket to Ride (for Android)

Pros Great board game-style play. Multiplayer.

Cons No tablet/handset optimization. Crowded, confused design. No local multiplayer. Expensive. Bottom Line The play of Ticket to Ride has survived translation to mobile and is more fun than ever, but the rest of the app is a confused mess.

By Max Eddy

Ticket to Ride takes a bland, tedious sounding subject—building a railroad system—and makes it fun and entertaining. As a board game, it's considered a modern classic. Now on Android (and iOS), players from around the world can match their rail-baron skills whenever they like, if they can get past the app's irritating interface.

All Aboard!
In Ticket to Ride you build your rail empire by claiming routes between cities. You score points for each route—the longer the better—and claim them by collecting the appropriate number of colored cards from the sideboard. You score extra points for completing Tickets, lengthy, multi-city routes, and for having the longest continuous route on the board.

As a board game, Ticket to Ride can be an imposing, with tons of little pieces and cards in addition to a lengthy scoring process. The mobile version of the game does away with all the fiddly, tedious parts of the board game and lets you focus on strategy and play.

In this respect, Ticket to Ride shines. The games are fun, surprisingly brief, and frequently challenging. The tension for each round comes from having so many options—from claiming train lines, drawing cards, or drawing tickets—and only being able to choose one action. Once you start playing you can see why this is considered a classic board game.

Ticket to Ride ships with just the classic board, but expansions are available for purchase at several locations in the app.

A lengthy tutorial, comprising an entire game, uses pop-up windows to tell you what to do. I was surprised that although I couldn't turn off the tutorial and finish the game on my own, I could ignore its advice and the tutorial seemed to adapt in turn. Towards the end of the game, with my defeat all but assured, the tutorial started giving me bizarre, bad advice. It also didn't inform me of some game mechanics, like under what circumstances the pool of available cards resets.

Even without the tutorial running, the game isn't always clear about what is happening or what should happen next. Prompts to draw cards are small, displayed at the bottom of the screen, and fade quickly. It's hard to get back into the game up after you've set it aside, since you'll probably forget what you were doing.

Weirdly, the multiplayer controls appear to be split between the lobby (located in the "restaurant" section) and the screen where you begin a game. The iOS version is much simpler and also includes pass-and-play games and LAN games. The multiplayer menus of the Android version were so confusing, I wasn't sure if these features were present.

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Pacific Rim (for Android)

Pros Detailed graphics. Cinematic soundtrack.

Cons Repetitive backgrounds and enemies. Stationary fighting doesn't recreate the film's larger-than-life battles. Very little environmental damage. Bottom Line Pacific Rim aims to replicate rock-'em-sock-'em action of Guillermo del Toro's monster movie, but its repetitive and limited gameplay makes this a game strictly for genre fans.

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's big-budget monster movie, rumbles onto Android devices as an eponymous $4.99 mobile game from Reliance Games. The action title seeks to recreate the flick's massive silver-screen jaeger-versus-kaiju battles, but the game lacks the scale, not to mention engaging gameplay, to be anything more than a stationary button-masher.

If you're expecting a knock-down, drag-out game in highly destructible environments, tread lightly; Pacific Rim is only half of that. The game offers plenty of button-mashing as you throw haymakers, evade incoming attacks, and parry blows in urban and aquatic environments, but there's a distinct lack of scale or environment. There are a few cursory buildings in the background, but you can't navigate between them or slam kaiju into them on command—you're locked into a tight combat zone. King of the Monsters for the Neo Geo, a video game from 1991, does a far superior job of emulating the giant monster battles seen in many Japanese kaiju flicks—and it's more than 20 years old.

That said, Pacific Rim does have a few attractive features. Defeating kaiju earns experience points and in-game currency (PP) used to improve a jaeger's combat prowess Pacific Rim (stronger shields, health regeneration, air strikes, new mechs). You can also use real-world cash to buy in-game money ($1.50 equals 2,000 PP). You ca Angry Birds n also earn cash by sharing kaiju data cards (via Facebook), which sometime appear after you win matches. There are also Career and Survival modes that let you engage in a single-player story or run a gauntlet, respectively.

Pacific Rim is a visually attractive game that features detailed mechs and monsters, but its backgrounds and enemies are recycled far too often for my taste. A one point, I battled the same crab-like kaiju four times in a row! That's a little insane. A cinematic score adds a sense of drama to the combat, but it isn't enough to elevate to the ho-hum fighting.

Whether or not you should buy Pacific Rim depends on how hard up you are for punching monsters in the face with a metallic fist. You will do that, but in the most repetitious manner possible. Power ups and special attacks break the tedium a bit, but only diehard kaiju fans should dive in.

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