There's always a certain amount of trepidation whenever I see Judge Dredd in something other than 2000AD. The iconic British comic creation rarely makes the jump to other media while retaining the core aspects of the character. But then having Dredd on my smartphone was a temptation that I couldn't avoid. And I found a great game with very little 'grudd'.
While it is a Nokia exclusive, it's the only new Xbox Live title released in 2013 (so far) so let's take a look at the artillery/destruction genre gaming that is on offer in Picnic Wars.
Impressing from moment one with its metal-tipped packaging, Case-Mate has earned a place on my Nokia Lumia 920 - it's not perfect, but this is mainly due to the challenge of the form factor. This won't help if you drop your precious smartphone face-down, but for other angles and for day to day abuse this 'Barely There' case will help a lot.
Having all these maps and navigation applications is all well and good if the sun is up or you are on a road, but what happens when you want to get off the beaten track? When you want to do less 'over there' and more 'out there'. When you look up into the star filled night sky, why not look up with Escape Velocity's Star Chart.
Who's up for some adventure on the High Sea? That's what Rum Run promises, as you play a young and plucky sailor with a heart of gold. You used to plunder the world for profit, but now you'd rather be noble and rebuild the destroyed villages around the seas you sail. Can you trade enough goods to make enough money to buy food and supplies to restore the villages to their former glory?
And so to our third Windows Phone 8 'flagship' - except that in Samsung's case it's the only Windows Phone 8 device it currently makes (though see also here), so the point is moot. The ATIV S is an impressive device in several ways though, not least because it's got by far the largest screen in the WP8 pantheon, yet remains (just about) manageable and also offers full flexibility in terms of battery changing and memory expansion. A win all round? Perhaps - though the bundled extra software fails to get close to the package in the Nokia Lumias...
This, wireless charging, is supposed to be the future - but I approached this latest accessory with extreme caution. I understood the theory behind the Qi charging standard - electromagnetic induction, and so forth, but I was sceptical about the value proposition ('how hard is plugging in a cable, after all?') and I was even more sceptical about how much power could be transferred in this manner ('surely it's going to take five times as long to charge a phone?'). Well, I've been using the Nokia DT-900 Wireless Charger with the Lumia 920 for the last week and it has made me a believer. Turns out this really is the future.
No, this is not a new XBox Live game, it's actually an old one and I cannot believe that Ewan left this one for me for so long - we're both flight sim nuts! As it turns out, Rise of Glory is as much a game as it is a 'simulation', but it's none the worse for that and straddles the divide between the two genres pretty well. In short, it's World War I acrobatic duelling, with planes everywhere, frantic rolling and diving and firing and... generally trying to survive! Somewhat surprisingly, the biggest flaw in Rise of Glory turns out to be the size of your right thumb and its relation to your phone's 'Start' key...
Jewel Tower is a fast paced block building game, but unlike the Tetris genre, the aim is not to make as many lines as possible and keep the game grid as clear as possible, you're asked to build your stack of bricks as high as possible. And when you manage to get to the required height, you'll move up a level and be asked to build a higher tower from scratch. Oh and it's against the clock.
There are a lot of titles out there that take Flight Control as their inspiration. Guiding aircraft down to a safe landing seems to be a rather popular past-time on a mobile device. Many of them go for the Flight Control approach and hope that nobody notices, or they can get away with it as long as possible. Flying Development Studios have taken the other approach, added a twist to the game, and released it for the world to judge. You know what? It's not that bad.
