Take It Easy

Take It Easy runs at about the same level of fun as Sudoku. That is, it's enjoyable to get the hang of and fuss around with for a few minutes at a time, but once you've played it for a while, it's a little uninspired and lonely.

There are three different game modes, but the fundamental concept of the game revolves around either placing or swapping tiles to connect same-color bars in order to score points or complete goals. So the gameplay is incredibly simple. But this isn't a bad thing: with moderate levels of strategy, the game more than warrants play after play. But this is true only for the "classic" game mode.

The fault of the game is in its "puzzle" mode, which, unlike "classic," provides a sense of level-based progress. This is a shame, however, since at least the first 50 puzzles are uncomfortably easy. And even beyond those first 50, the strategy of the game breaks down too easily and too quickly with the possibility of accidental wins. It's a flaw that's rather demoralizing for anyone attempting to actually strategize and feel accomplished. I don't mean to sound uppity. It's just that the job of puzzle games is to be balanced. They function on the basis that they're mathematically sound. That they're fair.

This flaw is what separates Take It Easy from becoming a bathroom classic like Sudoku. That, and a horribly over-saturated market.

Pixel People

I started up Pixel People knowing completely that I didn't enjoy simulator games. They always seem designed to waste a person's time: you click or tap or whatever and your city grows or your crops sprout and you keep clicking and tapping until everything gets bigger and better. But there's no strategy to it; there's no sense to it. You just keep returning to this game and doing what has to be done to make your little world less little. They're linear, they're slow, and they're darn boring after the novelty of their theme wears off.

Pixel People doesn't make me love simulators and it's not so different from the clicking and tapping I'm used to. But it is different enough to give me some hope for people who do play these kinds of games.

Pixel People is set in a utopia that's basically a blank slate for rebuilding the world we know now, except it's in the sky. And functions with one key difference: splicing. Yes, you build buildings and plant trees and move everything around to look the way you want it to look. But what could be the purpose of building a city without building people too? Yep, clones. With a manner of gameplay not unlike that alchemy game you might have played--in which you begin with a few basic elements and combine them in all ways possible to eventually build something absurd like a black hole--Pixel People allows you to make clones to inhabit this peaceful world, by combining various careers to form even more careers and more careers and so on. So when you decide to combine the genes of, say, a police officer and a mechanic, you splice a firefighter and then have the ability to place an appropriate fire station in your city.

It's simple, but it adds some variety to an otherwise stagnant genre. It still didn't inspire me to make the sky my own with a brilliant utopia of shining clones and amusing flavor text, but it did make me happy to see some innovation for once. Plus, although Pixel People is built with the freemium model in mind, it can be played for quite some time (perhaps indefinitely) with no need (or even prompting!) to upgrade or purchase anything. So if you're into the whole "city building," "pet in your pocket" kind of thing, don't skip this one.

Badland

Badland is about as successful as a one-button game can get. It takes the screen with a beautifully mysterious and haunting atmosphere of both sights and sounds, and takes your wits and your touch with clever, puzzle-based, sidescrolling action.

You control a creature as mysterious as its environment: it's something like a porcupine with wings. And those wings provide the single control element of the game: tap and hold to fly; release to fall. It's extraordinary that such simple controls can guide you through an absurdly engrossing and intense narrative. I use the term "narrative" loosely, but there is nevertheless a narrative to this game, however abstract it may be.

The goal of each level is to survive, to make it to the tube at the end that sucks you through to the next level. Your creature will collect necessary powerups along the way--some that make it larger, some that make it faster, and some that make it spin. Your creature will die many times (along with hundreds of its clones you'll collect along the way), and it will be sad every time. (Especially when you've just collected, like 20 clones and every single one of them except for the one in front gets slashed to pieces by an enormous buzz saw.) But hopefully it will be worth it to experience this cruel and stunning new world.

What this game lacks in length (only 40 short levels so far), it more than makes up for in replayability. There are achievement-style goals to accomplish after completing levels--things like collecting every powerup, and making it through a level without dying and returning to a checkpoint--and even more than that, the fast-paced nature of the game lends itself (with incredible ease) to multiple playthroughs. While I would strain to call this game difficult, its difficulty feels right, and it keeps you watching out for your curious protagonist. Badland is part game and part narrative, so it feels right to get stuck only once or twice before escaping to another obstacle that threatens death.

Frontline Commando: D-Day

What this game lacks in fun, it more than doesn't make up for in any way at all. (The graphics are occasionally nice.) You have encountered a game that has almost no redeeming value, but simultaneously is missing any flaws that make it unplayable. (A commonality on iOS, it seems.) In other words, if you have no soul, this game could be a lot of fun for you.

The game begins with a historical, black and white film intro, and during loading screens supplies a number of strange facts about World War II. So a reasonable assumption, given the game's name and general persona, is that it will take you through a sweeping narrative of the war. Nope. The campaigns in Frontline Commando are a series of boring, methodical, repetitive encounters that resemble a wartime-themed target practice with no story or character besides an awkward lead-in clip of some soldier yelling, "Move out!"or something equally vapid.

Environments are recycled. Weapon selection is limited unless you pay. Missions have the capacity to be varied--there was one mission I shot down planes instead of hiding behind cover as a foot soldier--but they aren't. Commando is a generic, money-suck--a thinned-out-to-the-bald replicate of console shooters, furthering my suspicions that this is a genre that will never work on touch screens. Tapping and sliding are no way to control a gun.