![]() The cheerful music, fantastical painterly visuals and perfect controls make the it the best mobile platformer available on Android. Jungle Run also deftly recreates the gorgeous and whimsical visuals found in its console big brother. It’s a perfect example of how to do a touch-screen platformer right. Jungle Run’s ingenious one-button controls create an exhilarating, fast-paced, skill-based platforming experience without dumbing things down. In any of Rayman Jungle Run’s 70+ levels you’ll swing over dangerous spikes, hover past bottomless pits, wall-jump into the sky to collect hidden medallions and plenty more - and you’ll do it all with a single finger. It's a game that teaches you how to win, one level at a time. ![]() Flying enemies trip you up? Next time try more archers. Packs of smaller enemies slip by you? Use more artillery. You will lose some tough stages multiple times, but you always have an answer to whatever challenge the game throws at you. Kingdom Rush’s big secret (besides simply being super-polished and smile-inducing) is in its spot-on balance. The game’s pop culture-laden humor, wealth of secrets & character upgrades, and completely fair balance will keep you coming back for more. Before too long you'll be playing proto-Connect 4 with a metallic lush, rescuing dogs with plunger guns and getting your spanner on for a spot of improvised civic plumbing.Even though Kingdom Rush can at times be frustratingly tough, you’re all-but guaranteed to keep coming back for more. Things soon diverge from this inventory-filling, however, and more interesting and complex solutions are required. Initially puzzles are gentle, pick-up-and-combine affairs, introducing the concept of the proximity necessary for interaction as you attempt to gain access to the Heath Robinson city where the majority of the game takes place. The game begins with a short bit of back-story, essentially establishing the hero, villains and love interest, before tasking the player with assembling our cruelly dismembered hero as he begins his quest. It's no War and Peace, but complex character-development and moral intrigue would only serve to obscure Machinarium's message of simplistic enjoyment - a gilding of the lily's gorgeous patina. This narrative progression is helped along by short, un-voiced cut-scenes and simply animated speech-bubble exposition. ![]() Tiny, Jetsonesque UFOs putter past in the distance.Įvery screen is a new delight, twisted cityscapes and quasi-industrial interiors contrasting beautifully with geriatric robots and the bumbling malcontents whose bullying mischief provide the necessary antagonism to sedately shuffle the story along. These touches imbue the cylindrical android with charm, transforming him almost immediately from emotionless droid to whimsical underdog. One of the mechanics of this innovative, 2D point-and-clicker is that your robot hero can contract or expand to interact with points of interest at different heights (hot-points and objects can only be clicked when in reach), and adopts a stiff-legged, stalking gait when expanded and a scuttling locomotive style when compact. Of particular note is the animation of the nameless, googly-eyed protagonist. Machinarium is a world of browns and greys, yet evokes a warmly fuzzy Saturday afternoon cartoon sensation which establishes both place and character with incredible visual efficiency. What hits you first is the beauty, the attention to detail and intriguingly muted palette. Machinarium squeezes more charm from a quite roughly drawn automaton than the Walt Disney Corporation has from a legion of creepily anthropomorphised mammals. Not that it's unattractive - wholly the opposite. What makes this more remarkable is that the game largely unfolds in the sort of oxidised and ramshackle scrapyard the title suggests. What Machinarium certainly doesn't initially elicit for me is exactly what it turns out to be - an engagingly charming and beautiful point-and-click adventure world full of character, emotion and humanity. It conjures up images of grotty workshops, of automated slaughterhouses, and rusting, febrile dreamscapes full of the screech of metal on metal. ![]() Machinarium, let's face it, is not a particularly friendly word.
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