Manual de servicio

With the puzzle games market seemingly filled to the brim with cartoon animals, improbable projectiles, dodgy physics engines and revamps of classics, you may find yourselves wanting a slightly calmer, simpler choice.


If so, you’ll be happy to know that the premise of Flow Free couldn’t get much simpler. Fill your grid by joining together dots of the same colour using a single path. Overlapping paths will cause them to break unless you carefully utilize the bridge in the position given to you.

The two modes provided are Free Play and Time Trial, both self-explanatory. In all likelihood, you will probably spend more time using the latter, seeing that Free Play gets rather homogeneous quickly once you get the hang of doing levels.

I get the impression that much effort has been put into tweaking the little things to improve the overall product. The graphic design is crisp and attractive, avoiding any unnecessary frills which would distract from the gameplay, which is itself as smooth and as slick as you’d like it to be. No buzzing, no annoying vibrations when you draw a path, no aliens or kung-fu masters which pop-up to congratulate you upon completing a level. Minimalist, efficient and effective.

The speed of the game varies with the grid size, with 5×5 to 7×7 ones offering a quickfire approach while larger grids require a good deal of forethought before execution, a more old-fashioned type of puzzle solving perhaps. Of course, whichever style you find more appealing is purely down to you, and this is credit to the subtle variety of the game.

I’ve always thought that the sign of a good puzzle game is that nothing feels wasted. The level design is intricate yet concise and clean, and completing it feels satisfying because of that. Like all puzzle games of course, the idea either clicks with you or it doesn’t, but with Flow Free having such a simple and accessible concept, I see no reason not to install it and give it a quick try.

Rating: 4/5

Tilt, tap and flip your way past bumps, ramps and loops, to cross the finish line as quick as you can in one piece.


For the most part, the physics engine is solid, apart from how your bike is seemingly made from springs, spraying all parts plus driver miles around when you get hit. The rather understated cry of “Ugh” from the poor guy adds further to the bizarreness.
At its best, the game can be addictive and thrilling (or at least as thrilling as you could realistically expect a portable device game to be), requiring careful timing, as well as some occasional patience. It would have been a nice touch to include a Make Your Own Level mode, which would of course have improved the longevity of the game by a huge amount, though the replay value as it stands is still reasonable, with that familiar 3-star system rewarding you for finishing quickly, encouraging shrewd use of nitro and taking advantage of shortcuts. That, on top of the 180 levels and numerous achievements, would keep you for a while.


However, and this is something that is immediately apparent, the game suffers greatly from that dreaded full-screen ad disease, the fatal strain that flares up often and without warning, leading to a frequent opening and closing of web windows that becomes so very infuriating. I can never understand why developers would sabotage their own hard work with something that is an instant write-off for many, and which leaves a badly damaged product for the rest. Clearly, it’s difficult to get addicted to and fully enjoy a game that gets so frequently and obnoxiously interrupted and it goes a long way to highlight flaws that users may otherwise forgive or overlook.


Some of these include the inconvenient position of the controls, with “accelerate” being placed in the top right hand area, often blocking what’s coming on a smaller screen. This cannot be modified. The stylish, neon-lit menu screens are a poor indication of what visuals you get when you start playing, consisting purely of an outer-space-y background and simple white lines as the tracks. Take the background away and it would look disparagingly similar to Line-Rider. Now, anyone who has played Line-Rider will appreciate that it is trickier than it looks to create a single good track, let alone 180 of them. However, some of these levels are nothing more than just some squiggles and haphazardly placed geometric shapes, summed up by one level which looks like the heart-rate monitor display of an erratic and probably critically ill patient. Perhaps he played too much Neon Motocross.

Of course, there are a couple of decent levels, but too few and far between. If the developers emphasize quality over quantity for future levels, it would do the product a world of good. If you can stomach the ads or bear turning your connection off, Neon Motocross is worth a look.

Rating: 3.5/5 without ads, 2/5 with

The simple things in life are the most enjoyable, and especially the ones which remind you of your childhood.  Do you remember when you were young and you had to connect the dots to create the pictures? Dotbuster has that initial vibe about it… except that its amped up on steroids.


Small green circles appear on the screen and a simple swipe of the finger will connect the points together.  Once you connect all the way back to the starting point then your polygon will be complete and the circles will disappear.  Its very intuitive and actually if there’s nothing else on the screen then you’re naturally going to press on the green dots like childsplay.  Quite literally there doesn’t appear to be much else that appears on the screen because of the minimalist stylisation.

You may find on initial gameplays that you’re tempted to connect to all the points that appear on the screen in order, much like a whack-a-mole type game (except its connect-a-snake instead).  But actually this isn’t allowed because as soon as you cross your own path then you’ll cancel the polygon you were drawing and you’ll have to start again.  If instead you leave the dots, then you may find yourself asking which dots to connect first – there’s no numbers like those old skool connect the dot travel companions.  But after you retrain your thoughts then you’re ready to rock and roll with the other specialities in the game.


Leaving the dots is a no-no because they’ll swell up and turn amber in preparation to explode and drain your energy.  This life gauge is the competition element which prevents you from continuing forever.  But don’t worry there are boosters which appear as vibrant pink dots with hearts in them.  If you encircle these within your shapes then you’ll collect them.  Unfortunately if the red skulls viruses are encapsulated too then you’ll find yourself poisoning yourself.


Death is inevitable with these survival games and as you progress then you’ll find that more red dots appear and your greens turn amber much faster.  No sooner than you started then you’ll find yourself weighing up whether you’ll lose more from letting the dots pop, or if enveloping the skulls would reduce your energy less.
Luckily there are some cogs which will clear the screen so you’re reset back to zero.  Otherwise if you’ve collected enough stars then you can trigger a big bang which will obliterate everything on the screen.

I have to be honest, first impressions of this game can easily lose people’s attention.  Perhaps the biggest question that pops up is… why play this?  It took me a long time to figure out why there was this niggling feeling in the back of my mind.  But I realised that my problem was that this had deep connotations with my childhood of scribbling on random bits of paper.  Indeed that’s a waste of time, but as long as I gave this game a chance then I realised that this game could be a winner.  At the moment it’s a bit unforgiving for the newbies, but if players stick it out and start feeling that competition spirit then they’ll enjoy playing the game more.

The verdict is that this is a coarse jewel waiting to be polished so that the facets are cleaner and shinier.  With a little bit more pattern play and slightly less randomness I’m sure people will start  craving for more Dotbuster.  Don’t let the Google+ logins and In app purchasing put you off – the game can be fun but it just needs some decent sessions where you give it a chance.

Rating: 3.5 /5

Available on iOS (version reviewed), Android, Windows Phone 8 and BB10

Angry Birds Go is the latest addition to the Angry Birds franchise and comes in the form of a Mario Kart-like racing game. This 3D adventure is a downhill, soapbox cart racer where you can play as all the characters from the Angry Birds series.  It’s a rather brave move away from the 2D physics-based point and aim Angry Birds we’re all used to, but one that is still very appealing to gamers of all age groups.


The game is available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 and is the first Rovio game to be a free-to-play experience. All other mobile Angry Birds games cost 69p for the HD and full games, and are constantly being updated, even several years later.

Rovio has already said it will add multiplayer and additional content early next year, so it seems the game will have the same longevity as its franchise buddies.


From the outset, it’s clear that Angry Birds Go is easy to play and fairly addictive, especially for short bursts of time. The familiar, colourful characters are all there and each has their own unique power-ups to use against the opposition.

The controls are very straight-forward. You can either steer using tilt controls or on-screen buttons, and there’s no acceleration or braking to worry about as it’s a downhill racer and gravity does it all for you.

You start off with one character, the Red bird, and one car. You can unlock new characters by completing races similar to boss battles, although you will have to complete each of the character races three times to get said character.

The physics are great, with cars noticeably getting better the more in-game coins you spend on upgrades and there are plenty of power-ups to mess around with as you get further into the game.


Surprisingly there’s a great variety to the races available as well. In one race type you’ll have to avoid obstacles to finish a race before a timed-bomb goes off, in another you have to splat through as much fruit as you can before crossing the finish line. Of course, there are classic versus races as well.

In order to progress successfully through the various levels, you’ll need to work out which cars and characters are the most appropriate. This requires a fair amount of grafting on your part as you’ll have to earn coins to purchase upgrades.

As part of the freemium model, beyond the first three car options you have to purchase cars using real-world currency. You might be able to complete the game using fully-upgraded stock vehicles, but we sincerely doubt it and Rovio is charging a premium for the other vehicles.

At the time of writing, there’s a sale on one of the mid-range cars, but it’s still priced at £6.99. There’s a slightly better than stock option for £1.99, but for the best soapbox carts you should be prepared to pay a whopping £34.99.


What we thought was a bit crafty of Rovio is that none of the car prices beyond the three starter options are actually listed in the app itself. You have to tap through to the iTunes purchase screen to be presented with the staggering figures, something that seems a little devious, especially for a franchise so popular with children.

If you’re in the market for additional vehicles, but don’t want to get their via in-app purchase, there are physical Hasbro Telepods cars and characters that can be scanned directly into the game. This is a fantastic expansion for children, but frustrating for adults looking for a game as a quick time-filler.

You can avoid spending money in Angry Birds Go though, if you’re prepared to put in the hard graft. Rovio has limited long sessions in Angry Birds Go by introducing an energy system that means each character can only compete in five races before needing a rest to recharge, something that definitely wasn’t present in any other Angry Birds game.

Each character takes at least 10 minutes to recharge and as you gain more characters this becomes less of an issues. However, the limitations of the energy system does mean the initial slog to get more than two characters can become a little laborious.

The whole free-to-play system may evolve over time, as it has in other freemium titles, but so far we haven’t experienced a payment wall that would otherwise make us stop playing. It really cant compare to the unobtrusive free-to-play model of Plants vs Zombies 2: Its About Time, though.


One of the more disappointing elements of Angry Birds Go is the 3D graphics. This is Rovio’s first foray into 3D and it really shows. The 3D sections are far from crisp and are especially shown up when they are side by side with cartoon 2D menus. Youll probably forget about this once you get going, but its disappointing if youve got one of the latest phones or tablets -- it just wont show off what theyre capable of in the slightest.

Verdict

Despite Angry Birds Go being slightly spoiled by its freemium model, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable and worth a download for those loyal to the series. It’ll be interesting to see how the game develops as Rovio adds new features as well, but anyone who has grown bored of the series wont flock back for this.

Key Features: 8-inch, 1,280 x 800 resolution display;

Toshiba Encore: Design

Toshiba Encore: Screen Quality

Toshiba Encore: Software

Toshiba Encore: Performance

Toshiba Encore: Camera

Toshiba Encore: Speaker quality

Toshiba Encore: Battery Life

Should I buy the Toshiba Encore?

Verdict

As a fan of round objects this game definitely gave me a positive impression and only until I play this game did I find that it’s full of it! With wheels and barrels to watermelons and eggs! (Eggs are oval, but they’re still considered round right?)

The Main Concept

This is a physic engine based game where you as the player will control a selection of round object to accelerate left or right in a 2D platform map to reach to the designated exit whilst going through challenging obstacles. The score on completing the level is represented by 3 stars you get each for completing each specific criteria of that level.

Your selection of round objects is your primary and only variable at your disposal. Knowing the different properties or each is the key to finding your way around the 2D platform map; which I personally really loved. Furthermore when they introduced edible items such as Watermelons and eggplants I absolutely adored the fact that they will break on impact giving the game that extra bit of realism.


You get a selection of 3 different types of round objects for you to use, and within the time limit you must reach the green exit, changing between different round objects happens instantly with a puff of smoke (reminded me of ninjas transforming into a log.) and during this transaction you lose the properties of the previous object in return for the properties of the new object. One of the tricks is when you try to land on small platforms where you accelerate fast with a wheel then switch to a beach ball where there is more air resistant due to a larger surface area that makes it easier to control during a leap.

4/5 Rating: It’s satisfying

It is one of those light weight puzzle games that brings a satisfactory grin to your face once you complete one of the 45 levels of the game, and there is certainly more to come! For a free game not only do you play with virtual food you also fiddle with the properties of different objects including a wheel, barrel, bowling ball, beach ball, bouncy ball and possibly plenty more to come and it’s not fraustrating when you don’t complete a level since the level simply restarts instantly the moment you are no longer able to continue, no constant pressing of replay button every time you die which I prefer. With clean simple graphics and being well polished I can’t flaw this game, but it isn’t the best one I’ve experienced in the category of physic engine puzzles so I’ll deduct a single point.

If you commute by a bus then rolling objects in a game might make your morning a little more enjoyable. So try it!