A little burst of mariachi music greets you as you open up Call of Carlos, a platforming arcade game from developers Games Academy. To go alongside the background music, there's a strong Central American feel to the graphics, which adds a lot of atmosphere to this well balanced and fast slice of twitchy controlled fun.
Alphajax has taken an unconventional route to Xbox Live. Originally an independent release in the Windows Store, Microsoft noted its popularity and has brought it to their flagship brand. But it's an app with some problems, and that dulls the impact.
Any busy metropolis is going to have a complicated public transport system that takes many months for those new to the city to understand. In historical times this meant lots of paper maps, guesswork, and leaving a lot of spare time. Now you have any number of public transport applications on your smartphone. Given the increased complexity of London, how well does London Travel handle the options? Quite well, actually!
Every time I come across an app from Beautiful Mind Games in the Windows Store, I'm amazed how they can take a well known gaming mechanic, twist it just enough to be something new yet familiar, and produce a really good gaming title. While there is no single wow moment in their latest title Orientile, it continues a strong run of successful games.
Replicating the exact behaviour of something in the real world inside a smartphone is never trivial. Or even, necessarily, desirable. Yet this is what RC-AirSim: Model Airplane attempts - and succeeds wildly. The downside, as you might imagine, is that all the frustrations of the real world come over as well. This is part game, part simulation, part tech-demo for the developer's physics and graphics algorithms - yet I love it. Read on for why....
Nokia continue to release their exclusive Xbox Live titles on Windows Phone, with some big names for the public to recognise. That might seem a bit trivial to regular Xbox Live players, but never put aside the pursuit of the casual consumer suddenly spotting a familiar logo in the marketing material. Which is why Trivial Pursuit is an important title.
"Surprise me!"A few moments later, my Windows Phone will pick out a tune at random and grace my ears with something wonderful from my collection (or The Proclaimers). That's 'Hey DJ!' in action, allowing your voice to be used to play your music. It works, it's useful, and it's a great example of third party apps filling in usability gaps.
Now this is more like it! A gaming title which feels at home on a mobile device, that takes into account the nature of modern gameplay, with smart looking graphics and an easy to use (and understand) control system. There's even enough tactics to make the game more than a 'follow the level designer's obvious route' to victory. Yes, I rather like Spy Mouse. How much? Let's find out.
Last week's Xbox Live release, Turn N Run from Electronic Arts, is a platform game with a unique view on the world... a unique view that can change to give you a whole new set of platforms to run over. But is that enough to make up for some lacklustre design and slow gameplay?
For many people, ambient noise is something that they need to work really well. For others it's a way to settle down at night and help them off to sleep. A few might want to be gently woken up each morning with something a little less happy-bouncy than Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2. For all the above, and more, there's Soothr.
