Thursday, September 30, 2010

Quick Pick: Fruit Ninja

Fruit Ninja
$0.99
Rating: 5/5  
Fruit Ninja is one of those games that you can just pick up and play anywhere and always have it be fun. It's got an easy concept, slice some flying fruit with your fingers and avoid bombs. So simple, so elegant, and so worth the 99 cents. Seriously, download this game right now. I promise you that you won't be disappointed. I myself been playing this game a lot while waiting for the train. Then of course playing a few games of Risk, but that's an app review for another day.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

App Review: Enigmo 2

 
Enigmo 2
$2.99
Rating: 5/5 

Yes, this game is a year old. And yes there are quite a few reviews out for it already, but I don't care. I've been playing this game far too much lately, and I intend to tell you why.

First off, I loved the original Enigmo for the iPhone. It was the perfect puzzle games to just pick up and play anywhere. It's concept was simple: use a variety of tools and objects to get water from a spout to a receptacle. There were 3 different types of water and an insane total of 50 levels. Pangea even updated the game later on to allow custom player levels. To say that the game never ran out of new and interesting ways to melt your brain with it's puzzles would be an understatement.

Now (a year ago) they've come out with Enigmo 2 for the iPhone. It has the same basic concept as the first game, however it also has some significant changes. Unlike the strictly 2D nature of the first game, Enigmo 2 features 3D puzzles which only serve to greater increase the challenge of the game. Furthermore, the game makes up for a lack of the extra types of water that were in the first game with lasers and plasma. Same idea as the water, get it into the proper receptacle, however with these two, it's done completely differently.



The lasers are fairly easy to understand; they bounce of reflective surfaces and don't bounce off non reflective ones. Simple right? Well... It would be if the game was still in 2D, but that extra dimension really makes using the lasers a challenge difficult for even my old geometry teacher from high school.



Now, if you thought that three dimensions made using lasers difficult, then you're going to have a psychotic melt down when you try corral plasma from it's spout to the goal "bucket." See, plasma doesn't naturally fall, so if bounce it off something, it'll just keep going in that direction. Again, like the lasers, it's sounds easy, except you usually won't be bouncing plasma, you'll be bending it's trajectory with gravitoids. These little guys attract plasma like tiny black holes, and you have use them to angle plasma into the goal.



Some puzzles use only one these three materials, some use all three, and some use all three and then a couple more of each type. Some of the puzzles use just two dimensions, and some use all three dimensions and two of each type of material. Currently I'm only in the 20s level-wise, but I can't see how they could get any harder, but I know they will, and that's what's brilliant about this game.


Now, I don't want you top think that these puzzles are frustratingly hard. No, they not that at all. These puzzles are satisfyingly hard. The feeling you get when you finally solve a really hard puzzles is like nothing else.

All in all, I'm giving Enigmo 2 a 5/5 for great puzzles, a top notch soundtrack, and a great use of the third dimension.