Having grown up playing a whole lot of Worms games I’m extremely familiar with the turn-based action-strategy genre.  Those games felt great while they were kept in their 2D confines, but as soon as the series made the jump into the third dimension things began to fall apart.  Having that extra direction to worry about in a game that requires such precise aiming presents a whole new set of challenges and problems.  Turret Wars looks to adopt and simplify this same concept, but ends up falling flat.

The A.I. opponents really want you dead

You’ll take control of a stationary turret placed randomly on the map with enemy turrets equally scattered around.  From here you survey the map, find an enemy you want to destroy, take aim, fire, and miss.  You will almost always miss your first few shots because the enemies are all so far away that most of the time you need to look at the tiny little mini-map to make sure that you’re actually pointing in the general direction of something.  Here we see the game’s first major flaw: turrets can’t move.  Since your enemies will never budge and the wind never changes force or direction, once you’ve managed to actually correct your aim so that you hit your target you’ll just hit the fire button over and over until they’re dead. This also works against you since as soon as one of the enemies decides to target you you’ve basically lost.  This is made even more frustrating by the fact that when up against more than one A.I. opponent they will almost always prefer to fire at you than at each other, giving you the impression that the game hates you so very much.  To make matters worse, there are occasionally planes that will fly by and drop bombs on you; bombs that you can’t avoid since you’re rooted in place.  They do give you the ability to try and shoot down the bombers but since they move in real-time, even while you play the game in turn based mode, most of the time they will pass by while it isn’t even your turn.  There are also a bunch of power-ups scattered around the maps, but none of them are really worth wasting a few turns trying to hit.

You can't tell from this screenshot, but the game freezes on this loading screen pretty often

There’s also a real-time mode that essentially removes all of the strategy from the game and replaces it with a mad scramble to aim and mash on the fire button but it really isn’t any more fun to play.  You can choose between four different turret types, each with their own special abilities, however only two of them really stand out.  One of these is a turret whose shot can be nudged left or right while in the air, making it significantly easier to hit your target.  The other turret of note is so overpowered that it breaks the game; after firing your shot you can self-destruct it in mid-air and take the shot over again after correcting your aim, as many times as you need in a single turn.  To counter this, your shots deal slightly less damage, but when you never miss a shot this barely makes a difference since you’ll destroy most enemies before they can even hit you.  There are also several different maps in the game, but aside from one stand-out the majority of them just seem like re-textured versions of the same geometry.

The game is also plagued by numerous bugs.  I’ve already mentioned that the stiff A.I. almost always targets you, but that’s really only the tip of the iceberg.  Around a third of the games that you try to play will end with the game locking up or crashing before it can finish loading. Another problem is that the random placement of turrets means that often there’s one turret that either can’t be hit or can’t hit anyone.

Rings is the only map that really stands out visually

Most of the textures in the game feel flat and bland.  The models are surprisingly well detailed, but this inconsistency with the texture quality gives most things a really strange unbalanced look.  There are a few cool effects like the way your camera follows your shot through the air, however the camera snaps back at the moment of impact so you don’t actually get to see any damage.  There are also some occasional graphics glitches, the most prominent of which is texture clipping on the planes.  Another problem is that your HUD is always so cluttered that attempting to see things in front of you can feel far difficult than it should be.

There’s really only one audio track in the game that loops over and over with a techno beat that suits the style of the game pretty well but it’s such a short piece that it ends up getting repetitive pretty quickly.  You’re also given the option to listen to your own music which I’m sure most people will prefer to use.  Aside from the music the only sounds you’ll hear are some passable explosions and the game’s female announcer whose robotic voice just sounds and pronounces words like a Microsoft Sam, so overall nothing really stands out.

Turn the volume up? To hear what?

Turret Wars really isn’t a good game.  It took a bad concept and somehow managed to make it worse.  While you are given quite a few options to change things up a bit and most of the bugs could eventually be ironed out with a patch, there are just so many poor design choices that it’s almost impossible to enjoy the final package.  This is a game that’s not worth playing no matter how inexpensive it is.

Gameplay

Let’s face it, just about everyone in the world has played at least a few hours of Tetris, and at least one kind of puzzle game that challenged you to match 3 of the same colored shapes.  There may be hundreds of different versions of each available, but no matter how many different ones we play the mechanics have never really evolved that much.  This is where TriColor comes along.  The developers over at MobiRate decided to go the Reese’s cups way and got their match-3 game all up in their Tetris, with a result that works surprisingly well.

Gravity doesn’t work this way!!!

The premise is quite simple, colored blocks fall in small groups of 1 to 3 arranged in various Tetris-style shapes and you must rotate and place them to try and line up 3 in a row horizontally vertically or diagonally.  Just like its great grandfather Tetris, there is no physics system in play here, meaning that if one block from the falling piece comes to rest somewhere the entire thing stops as well, even if the block that touched formed a line.  The result is pieces that just sort of hang there in mid air confusingly and force you to try and navigate your pieces around and under them.  This effect gets even weirder if you can manage to eliminate some blocks underneath a floating one since it will drop down by the number of blocks removed from under it, but still keep the same floating distance.  While this can be pretty annoying for the first few games, I found that after a short time I was becoming accustomed to it and able to place my blocks to minimize floatage, so i guess you could say that this is just part of the game’s learning curve.  You can also set off chain reactions and rack up score multipliers by either lining up two sets of 3 at once or having falling blocks line up with 3 other blocks when they land, but more often than not this will be pure luck.

You are given two different methods of controlling the game, either with the on-screen buttons or by using your finger to drag the piece.  Let me establish this right here: You should not under any circumstances even attempt to play the game any other way than with the buttons.  The problem with the sliding controls is that they are too imprecise for a game like this.

Thank you TriColor, I do feel good!

More often than not I found myself dropping a piece when I tried to move it to the side, or moving it to the side and then dropping immediately if my finger slid down just a tiny bit, resulting in a few too many ragequits (which the home button is all too good at).  The button controls work excellently however, you have buttons at the bottom for left and right movement, tap the board to rotate and hit another button to drop.  Playing it this way feels exactly like playing classic Tetris and really helps you get a handle on the game.

Graphics

This game has a very simple look to it.  As I said earlier, you have basic tetris style block arrangements and as far as the pieces go that’s pretty much all there is to it.  Whenever you line up three or more blocks there’s a little lightning animation before your blocks explode.  You’ll also get some encouraging words of “GOOD” and “EXCELLENT” to give you a little pat on the back when you set off bigger chain reactions.  The addition of 3 different theme packs to choose from is a nice touch but it one of them is just a recolored version of the other and doesn’t actually change any shapes.  All in all, the graphics get the job done but won’t really blow your mind.

Different styles and the ability to make custom soundracks add some depth to the game

Sound

Much like the graphics, the sound design in this game is quite simple.  As you play TriColor you’ll be treated to a cheery little background tune that really fits with the style of the game.  The other sound effects are all similarly cheery, but are not at all obtrusive if you want to listen to your own music.  Speaking of your own music, TriColor has a really great “make your own play-list” feature built in.  It’s really easy to quickly choose a few songs for the game to cycle through while you play, and since that’s what almost everyone wants to do it’s great that the tools are built right in.

Conclusion

Overall TriColor might have a few strange design choices like the lack of gravity, but it really is a pretty good puzzle game, and at only $0.99 you can’t really complain.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone who’s a fan of Tetris or match-3 games and wants to try something new.

The Game

You’re sitting at the poker table, you take a look at your cards and decide that you could definitely take the hand. You raise $100, take a breath, and look around. Your opponents are analyzing your every facial expression and your every gesture for any sign that you are bluffing. You pretend to nervously look away and your opponent immediately jumps on the chance to call your raise. Perfect, you’ve got them right where you want them, so you decide to take a sip of your soda and check the time. You’ve been playing Hover Poker this entire time! Your opponent? Your buddy, sitting right next to you.

You really are surrounded by your opponents, but they are more than likely your friends, as Hover Poker lets you essentially play multi-player poker with the same device, passing it around for different turns. All cards are hidden, and when it is your turn you simply touch and hold on the two peek buttons to take a look at your hand. There is a peek counter, which is a great touch, so should the counter not be zero when it is your turn and the device is passed to you, go ahead and punch whomever just passed it to you in the arm – they looked at your cards! All the usual rules of poker apply, small and big blinds pay their antes automatically, best hand wins, and you can fold, call, or raise.

The user interface could definitely use some improvement. When you wish to check, you are forced to hit the “Call” button, which logically makes sense but should definitely change to a “Check” button as to not confuse others. In addition, when raising your bet, you are given the choice between the more and less button which works in increments of $10, or the slider which lets you increase your bet much quicker but inaccurately. Lastly, going all-in is quite annoying when you have a larger amount of chips on hand, would suggest an “All-In” button that would make it much easier!

Graphics

The graphics behind Hover Poker are nothing special, they are clear and they work, cannot really complain about it because I wouldn’t expect poker to have extraordinary graphics.

Sound

The verbal cues that the in-game announcer gives you are very helpful in letting you know what the actions of the previous players have been and whose turn it is. There is no other music present in Hover Poker, but that is to be expected.

Conclusion

Hover Poker delivers everything that a multiplayer, one device, portable poker game advertises: quick and simple games of poker that can be played up to six people. There really isn’t much more to it other than that, and a single player mode or an online multiplayer mode would be great additions.