iPhone App Spotlight: Penguin Hunting is Awesome

Hey folks, I’ve been trying out a few games on the ol’ iPhone and I thought I would give a quick roundup of the good, the awesome, and the ugly!

Let’s start with the good:

You can’t go wrong with Crazy Penguin Catapult Lite (review of free version only). Fling those penguins through the air, people!  Sure, penguins can’t fly.  That is, unless you launch them from a catapult.   The main gameplay is divided into two separate parts.  In the first, you tap the screen to unleash your catapult as a penguin dangles from a rope.  If you trigger it at the right time, your penguin flies off safely.  The wrong time?  Splat!  Okay, now your penguins are all in the air and the second part of the gameplay begins on a separate screen.  You simply tap the screen to cause your penguin to dive at the right moment.  What’s the right moment?  The moment that will knock out the most polar bears of course!  Yes, it’s penguins versus polar bears in this winter war!

When playing the Campaign, you move your penguin around a map in a manner reminiscent of Super Mario World.  On each stage, you have to knock out a certain number of bears.  The more penguins you put into the air with your catapult, the more penguins you will have to dive-bomb bears.  On each stage you can earn one to three stars depending on the number of bears you take out.  There are also bonus stages and a boss battle.  You can purchase special upgrades by getting enough stars.  For example, you will achieve a flaming ring.  On the catapult portion, you can launch penguins through this ring which will allow them to penetrate ice on the bear-bopping portion.  

I’ve only played the free version of this game, but it really is quite fun.  You get quite a bit of gameplay for free.  I don’t know yet if I like it enough to buy.  But hey, you should at least download the free version because it will certainly amuse you for a good half hour or more.  I thought this game was well done and my only critique is that the loading screens are a bit long.  You can also check out a flash version of the game here.

Now on to the awesome:

Well, what else but Dr. Awesome, of course.  I originally wanted to name this website something like “The Ultimate Awesome.”  Luckily, Karn talked me out of that.  But with my love for all things awesome there was no way I wasn’t forking over the 99 cents to play this game.

I honestly had no idea what the heck this game was from reading the description, other than that it focused on surgery.  But the easiest way to explain it is that it’s Qix reborn.  The gameplay is, well, it’s Qix.  You perform surgery on patients by moving your “scalpel” to fence off sections of the gameboard, eradicating viruses while avoiding being hit.  Then mix in a dash of Phoenix Wright for the cutscenes.  You get these over the top anime-style cutscenes between surgeries that are actually pretty great (check this link to see the flavor).

The controls are based on tilting the iPhone but work superbly.  You really have to keep moving the iPhone and it takes quite a bit of focus.  I found this is not the best game to play when you are standing up on a bumpy subway with your back to the door.  But it is also really fun.  

The game draws its patients from your iPhone’s contact list so you will be saving (or not saving) family and friends.  The game even references the fact that you know them.  The nurse will say something like, “Oh, Dr. Awesome, isn’t this patient your-”

And the doctor will cut in, “Not now, nurse, Dr. Awesome needs to focus!”

There are achievements and you will also gain new titles as you advance.  I always liked Qix so it’s not surprising I like this game.  But really, it’s the mix of all the elements that makes it awesome: the fast-paced gameplay, the tilt controls, the contact list patients, and the wacky cutscenes.  Everything comes together quite nicely.

I don’t have many negative things to say.  It would be nice if the difficulty ramped up a bit more slowly with even more cutscenes in between.  I don’t mind that it gets totally insane but I would have liked a lengthier progression to that insanity. Also, when you stop playing the game for a while, some of your “patients” kick the bucket which is kind of a bummer.  Ah, and sometimes when you die, it’s too easy to die again immediately when you pop back up in the middle of virus mayhem.  But this one is definitely well worth the buck.

And I’m afraid it’s time for the ugly:

The only reason I purchased iHunt (by John Moffett) in the first place was because I was curious how it got to be the number three top selling paid game on iTunes even though the reviews were all horrible.  I still don’t know the answer to this question but I do know that the negative reviewers were correct.

I admit I’m not that big on hunting games in the first place, but this is just so bad.  There is really nothing at all to this game except the shooting mechanic.  Similar to Dr. Awesome, this game makes use of tilting the iPhone to control your crosshair.  But there’s nothing awesome about it. You can take on clay pigeons, pheasants or deer.  It gets old in about ten seconds.  There is just nothing to hold your interest here or inspire you to keep playing.  

The deer are the most hilariously bad.  When you start the deer game, there are like a million deer just hanging out in a field…it looks so ridiculous.  I’ve never gone hunting but I’m sure it’s nothing like this.  The only thing more ridiculous is the animation when a deer is shot.  It kind of falls over like a piece of cardboard.  It’s hard to explain but it’s quite funny.  Pretty much all of the animation (or lack of animation…the birds just kind of hover across the screen) is terrible. 

The only good thing I have to say about this game is that it was only 99 cents.  I can’t believe how many people (including myself) have purchased this thing.  The lesson here, I think, is that if someone actually makes a really good hunting game, they will probably make a ton of money.