Games - android

 

Angry Birds
FREE 

 Beware! Load Angry Birds onto your phone and your productivity will be shot. Your significant other will feel overlooked, your children will cry for your attention; you, meanwhile, will be blissfully unaware of anything except an intense desire to fling cute-looking birds at cartoon pigs.

Now available on Android, Angry Birds is one of the most popular iOS games of all time - and with good reason. It's clever, it's entertaining, it's absorbing and it proves that a great game need not be overly complex to master.

The game is simplicity itself. Birds are loaded onto a slingshot, which you pull back with your finger. They are then flung at pigs, who protect themselves via a variety of complex fortifications. You can change
the slingshot's angle and how much you pull it back. When you fling a new bird, you can see the trajectory of the previous one, so you have an idea of what angle to use.

You begin with small red birds, but as the game progresses you unlock new ones with different abilities. For example, one bird drops eggs that explode on impact, while another can smash right through wooden obstacles. As the fortifications around the pigs become stronger and more complex, you'll need to develop strategies for breaking through and destroying those pesky pigs.

The animation is smooth and pinching to zoom in and out looks cool. The game did hang on us occasionally, but your progress is always saved.

The app is supported by ads. which can be intrusive; but a paid-for option is planned to let users remove these. The upshot? If you're a gamer, you'll want Angry Birds., and even if you're not you'll still want it.

Pirates & Traders
FREE

 Anyone who has played Sid Meier's Pirates should feel right at home with Pirates & Traders, an open-ended game in which you sail around the Caribbean seas in search of wealth and glory.

You start off by choosing a name, your nationality (British, Dutch, French or Spanish), some skill points (sailing, fencing, charisma, and cunning), the type of ship you want, and the difficulty setting. You also have some options for adjusting when the autosave kicks in.

When you begin playing, you'll find that there's loads of information to take in. Fortunately, no matter what screen you are on, you can always consult the help menu, which explains all the data on the screen,
as well as what you can do. It will still be a lot to absorb at first, but at least it will be a less daunting task.

While sailing the seas you will come across other ships, and how you engage therm is up to you. When you arrive at ports, you can meet with the governor, trade with merchants, buy and repair ships, or go to the bank to put away money for retirement. That last step becomes crucial, since you age in Pirates & Traders and eventually your skills will begin to decline. Learning when to retire is something of an art.

Pirates & Traders is a fun, addictive game that has a lot going for it. If this title is representative of where gaming is headed for the Android platform, then Android users will have a lot to celebrate in the coming months.

 Speed Forge 3D
£1.76 

 Speed Forge 3D for Android is a fun racing game that gives you six different locations in outer space to race through.

The game takes advantage of the accelerometer in your smartphone and provides plenty of feedback as you crash. We found ourselves squealing with delight when we tried out Speed Forge 3D and experienced our initial wipeouts. When you smack into something you don't just get the odd knock along the way, but a plethora of explosions and a wildly vibrating handset.

Once you've got the hang of things, the competitive element kicks in. You are in effect in a time trial against other racers and are encouraged to get them off your tail by hurling mines and missiles in their direction. Of course, they are just as likely to try the same trick with ycu. However, since these aren't real racers in the online gaming sense, their reactions are just that
a shame, given the obvious potential and excitement garnered by the graphics and environment.

 FAST AND FURIOUS

Speed Forge 3D offers much better graphics and vehicle handling than on some games we've seen before. The faster Snapdragon processors and larger-screens that Android handsets offer confer an advantage here. The 3D effects are surprisingly good and we found ourselves getting thoroughly into the action. What's lacking, though is the ability to play against other people. You can charge around the preset scenes at breakneck speed and won't upset the physics engine that handles the graphics. But perhaps, like space itself, the world of Speed Forge feels barren and lonely.

N.O.V.A.

£3

N.O.V.A. has taken gaming on Android to a whole new level, with captivating graphics, awesome first-person shooter action, and even online death matches. You'll be slaughtering aliens in a range of areas; N.O.V.A. features 13 levels spread throughout five distinct environments. Your arsenal is also fairly robust: six weapons are available to you including a handgun, shotgun and rocket launcher. Aside from just blasting aliens, you'll get to man turrets on the ground or on the back of a jeep, solve small puzzles that unlock ammo boxes, battle bosses, and more.

As you progress through the game, you'll unlock special abilities like freezing enemies or increased run speed. N.O.V.A.
plays and feels like a complete console game. You can even play in online death matches of up to four people via Gameloft Live.

On the screen, there's a life meter and buttons for weapon selection, reload, grenades, pause, music, special abilities, jump, move and aim. When it comes to the controls, you have a few options. The default has a virtual joy stick for movement and a button for firing while looking around and aiming is done by dragging anywhere on the screen. The controls are very responsive and you can adjust the sensitivity to your liking.

N.O.V.A. has stunning graphics, and everything is highly detailed - from intense space battles to lush landscapes full of atmosphere. The sound effects and music are top notch, too.

PES 2011
£1.83

 Install PES on an Android device and you can get your footie fix wherever you are. Lacking the corporate sheen of the officially sanctioned FIFA games but with a much more realistic games engine, Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer has long been the choice of serious soccer fans on the console. Following a transfer to the iOS with the 2010 version, PES 2011 is now available from the Android Market.

STRENGTH AND DEPTH

As ever the strength of PES is the gameplay. Despite the restriction of having to use a virtual controller via your device's touchscreen, PES feels like the rarest of things: a fully featured mobile game. It takes a while to get to grips with tackling and heading (as it should), and goals are tough to come by, but with some practice you'll feel immersed in as realistic a football sim as you can find.

The learning curve is relatively steep, but the standard required of newbies is far from frightening. Load the game and quick-start into a match and all but the most digitally challenged will be able to compete from the off. More importantly, when you're playing against the AI - as
you will almost always be on a mobile device - it is sufficiently intelligent Sometimes we found the player changes frustratingly difficult to second guess, but this has always been a criticism of Pro Evo, and with practice you get used to it.

Stadia and pitches are designed and rendered beautifully, and we like the way the pitches change to suit 'overhead conditions'. And far from the days where every Dutch player was known simply as 'Oranges', PES now has details of oodles of top European teams, with officially licensed UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League modes (obviously you'll play the reserves in the latter).

The graphics are excellent, the options myriad and the scope for self improvement plentiful. Playing on a smaller screen will make you pine for your console on occasion, but for mobile gaming there's simply no better footie option than PES 2011.

 Soccer Superstars
£3.06

 Soccer Superstars is an Android game that strikes the right balance between depth and casual fun to appeal to anyone who's a fan of the sport. Featuring retro graphics and music reminiscent of Nintendo's 8bit NES, Soccer Superstars is a charming soccer game with RPG elements.

The game has several gameplay modes, ranging from cultivating the talents of an individual player to being the manager of a team, to picking a team and taking it on to the pitch.

The controls are easy to master, and a quick tutorial guides you through the basics of how to play. As a result, you get started right away, rather than struggling with a complicated control scheme. And even though the controls are simple, a lot of strategy is involved in gauging when to pass, when to shoot and so on. Since the game retains the rules of football, fouls and penalties apply. Luckily the help section does a good job of explaining these points to novice players.

 Avid football fans will enjoy playing the manager mode. Here you have various options for tweaking and improving your team's statistics as you play through various tournaments and international friendly matches, trade players, and make various other changes.

Although the formations you can create for your team are limited, you at
least get to decide whether to play attacking, defensive or balanced play -combining these features creates a wider array of strategic possibilities.

Overall, Soccer Superstars strikes the right balance between appealing to diehard fans of the sport and attracting casual gamers. It's easy to recommend this to anyone interested in playing a soccer (or football, even) video game.