Toon Warz
A 3.5in touchscreen is hardly the ideal medium to view and control a first-person shooter, but Toon Warz makes a better fist than most at overcoming the hardware limitations.
To start with, you get a fully fledged game with well designed and expansive maps, a nice selection of weaponry and well thought out gameplay with logical objectives. The graphics are sort of Return to Castle Wolfenstein meets Marathon 2.
Call of Duty: MW2 it ain't but come on, it's playing - and playing smoothly - on a mobile phone. The "toon" part of things comes into play with the bad guys who look like Hanna-Barbera's idea of Nazis so kudos to developer Polarbit for not chasing the gratuitous violence and gore buck.
The customisable control interface that combines the accelerometer, trackball and on-screen pressure pads is well thought out, and the adjustable sensitivity means exploring never gets to be a chore. If you can't hold your phone steady, the accelerometer can be disabled.
The game isn't perfect - the 'jump' feature is hit and miss, and save points are too few and far between - but it's the best phone FPS I have come across and one you can spend many a satisfying hour playing.
Reg Rating 75%
Price €3 (£2.50)
More Info Polarbit
Zombie, Run!
Zombies, Run! makes the list because it's that most rare of computer games: one that actually gets you out of the house and into the sunlight... arggghhhh, it burns, it burns.
Actually, I'm not entirely sure Zombie, Run! qualifies as a game at all. What you do is this: you switch your GPS system on, let the app find your location, tap on Google Maps to pick a destination and then the game populates the area around with zombies. Green for ones that don't have your scent yet and red for ones that are coming after your brain with gusto and ketchup.
Zombie speed can be set to either Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil or 28 Days Later, and their number to Controlled Outbreak, Early and Late Local Infestation, or Total Pandemic.
Once set your aim is simple, get to your destination without getting torn to pieces and ending up as a snack for the living dead. OK, its pointless, but since when as that had anything to do with it? A multi-player mode lets you dodge the dead with your mates.
Reg Rating 75%
Price Free
More Info Peter Dolan
Ten Essential... Android Games
COMMENTS
Marvin - ZX Spectrum Emulator
ZX Spectrum emulator - links directly to the World of Spectrum archives for instant access to over 9,400 Spectrum games.
Nice to see a couple of Apple fanbois taking time out from fingering their own prostates to come and troll these pages. Obviously the rise of Android is starting to worry you guys.
http://www.replicaisland.net/
Replica Island
Replica Island is a free, open-source game for Android.
Guide the Android robot through 40 action-packed platforming levels on a quest to discover a secret power source on a mysterious island. With an retro style and unique, challenging game play, Replica Island is a new take on the classic platformer genre.
http://www.androidtapp.com/air-control/
Air Control
A simple premise to control the aircraft heading for your airport can turn into hours of addictive time-wasting.
Just select an aircraft and draw a route for it to land at its designated zone. Sounds easy but as more aircraft enter the area, all with different speeds and all from different directions it becomes a strategic nightmare. Even getting 100 points seems impossible for some time.
The Ad supported version is free, the paid version is 60p.
Appbrain install: http://www.appbrain.com/app/dk.logisoft.aircontrol
Games!
For all fans of Abduction: World Attack it was a very close run thing between that and Zombie, Run! for the final place in the list.
Re. the hardware, I used my Hero simply because, well, its my phone and I had it to hand, and because there are a lot of them sloshing about in users hands.
Yes if I had taken screen grabs from a Nexus One or Xperia they would have been larger on the page and more impressive and colourful, but the essential game play would have been the same and that is what I was concerned with.
Please keep in mind those screen grabs are actual game play images taken with the Android SDK and have not been tarted up in any way.
As for the new 3D games from Gameloft I tried the only one available at the time of writing - Asphalt 5 - on a mate's Desire and was less than impressed by it. I also understand that none of the news crop of 3D games from Gameloft will run on Android 1.5 or 1.6.
In 12 months time I would expect this list to look very different as games developers take full advantage of larger, higher resolution screens and Snapdragon chippery but for the time being I stuck with games that are just fun to play even on an old G1.
Trap
Game involves trapping balls moving around the screen by drawing lines to separate the area into smaller areas. The goal is to capture 75% of the screen to clear a level.
Great free game but it gets hard quite quickly though, and I have only got to level 6 so far.
