Fishing Frenzy for the iPhone should not be confused with Rapala’s Fishing Frenzy, as the two games are completely different, both literally and figuratively. Whereas Rapala’s was a fairly realistic attempt at a fishing simulation, the iPhone’s Fishing Frenzy is a strict arcade style fishing game, and a very limited one at that.

Fishing Frenzy is controlled entirely via the tilting action of the iPhone. You move the phone left and right to move your boat around atop the water, and jerk it up and down to raise and lower your line in the water.

Fishing Frenzy’s biggest problem is that it ignores the most interesting aspect of fishing games (and real life fishing for that matter) by eliminating the battle once the fish is hooked. Instead of intense battles that could’ve been controlled in a number of creative ways, the fish simply flies out of the water the second you hook it, at which point you must manoeuvre the boat around so the fish lands inside the boat.

This gameplay mechanic also has the effect of making the game zip by far too quickly. Without prolonged battles for fish in place, the game instead uses a timer and a points system to determine success, and levels are extremely short, with the early levels clocking in at under a minute to beat. With only twelve levels, you can surely guess that there isn’t much gameplay to be had. The game could easily be beaten in less than half an hour.

The only real variety to the basic gameplay is the inclusion of a few obstacles that you need to avoid, in the form of electric eels and swordfish, and the fact that different fish award varying amounts of points. Other than that you simply move your hook around to the fish and then your boat around to catch them.

The graphics are adequate, but not much more than that. Most of the fish are nice and colourful, but the background and character art is very uninspiring. It doesn’t help that the same background is used throughout the entire game.

The developer has touted the fact that their game is currently free for a limited time, which is hard to imagine given the game’s current state. How they could realistically expect to charge money for it at present is beyond me. Even as a free game I can’t really recommend it to anyone. Sure, some people may enjoy what little gameplay there is, but that could be said for thousands of free games on the iPhone and PC.

Until the gameplay is more diverse and interesting, there’s more variety in backgrounds and levels, and more levels themselves, this game is nothing more than a waste of time, albeit a small amount of time.

Pros:

• Cute fish

Cons:

• Ignores the meat of fishing, the battles
• Far too short
• No variety

Score: 3/10

Price: Free

Fishing Frenzy on iTunes

iMafia is one of the growing entrants in the iPhone MMO genre. In it, your goal is to build up your criminal empire and conquer the vast sea of degradation that is humanity. You can buy up real estate to build up your wealth, beat down the poor saps that try to cross your path, and even knock off your rivals, all in the name of sticking it to the man, and the poor fools that try to cross you.

Now before you get excited about that free price tag dangling down there at the end of the review, you should know that iMafia works much like the multitude of free-to-play MMO’s on the internet. While it is indeed free to play, players who are willing to invest real money to purchase in-game points have a decided advantage over those who don’t. And points are by no means cheap, you could easily spent $20+ on points just trying to build your gangster up to a level where he’s even moderately competitive with the other top players. A steep price tag for what amounts to little more than a text-based game.

iMafia has three different character classes to choose from, the brawler, mogul, and workaholic. Each comes with a unique bonus that will cater to different play styles. Brawlers get faster health regeneration, the workaholic has fast energy regeneration, and the mogul earns income faster. The game comes with some handy tutorials to help get you up to snuff, a feature lacking in many iPhone games.

As mentioned your main goal is to collect income, increase the size of your gang, develop your skills, and keep an eye on your stats to make sure your ready for any forthcoming missions. Unlike the nearly identical iMob, there is less of an emphasis on friend codes to increase your ranking, and more of an emphasis on actually playing the game, which is naturally a step in the right direction.

The game is presented entirely in text, menus, and graphical stills. There’s not much in the way of art, or even much story or dialogue for that matter, making the game far less interesting than other MMO’s. You simply continue to perform your daily routines in a relentless task to build yourself up, with no real driving motivation to do so.

Connection issues are also rampant. Most iPhone MMO’s have had severe troubles in this area, so iMafia is by no means unique in this respect, but even so, waiting as much as 10 seconds for the game to connect and load up a simple text-based menu is not my idea of a good time. The app will also close at times without provocation.

I have a hard time getting excited about games like this, but I’m sure there’s enjoyment to be had for the right people. It’s a decent enough game, though entirely derivative and nearly identical to iMob. It’s free to play, so if it sounds like something up your alley, go ahead and give it a try.

Pros

• Good tutorials to help newbies get started

Cons

• Connection issues
• Plays like any other text-based MMO
• Art and dialogue is lacking

Score: 5/10

Price: Free

iMafia on iTunes

When you think of the working world, there’s one element that’s always missing; kids. Yeah, the poor little kiddies still haven’t managed to crack their way into corporate America, or even McDonald’s. So what’s a kid yearning for some extra Hot Wheels spending money to do? Well he could get a paper route (see game: Paperboy), or he could mix up a batch of juice and set up office outside his/her house, selling small cups of often poorly prepared juice for exorbitant amounts of money. Kids have the benefit of being kids after all, which often pulls at the heartstrings of adults, even when they know the juice will be overpriced and lacking in lemonade goodness.

It’s back to these halcyon days of child economics 101 we head with Lemonade Tycoon, a free iPhone game which starts off no more complicated than running a simple stand from your front lawn would be, but soon evolves past the reach of the average child into lemonade empire territory.

The gameplay is broken down into days, and as each day passes you’ll be greeted with the menu screen where you can adjust all facets of your business, right down to the recipe you use to create your lemonade and the underlying profit margin (or deficit, avoid the deficits) it will create when contrasted against the price you’re selling for. Like life, finding that perfect balance is essential, in this case the balance between squashing lemons and mixing them with water and sugar, and the amount of greenbacks you’re going to charge for them.

You can buy upgrades for your lemonade stand, spend money on marketing campaigns to get the word out, hire new staff, and much more. A nice little touch was the daily newsflashes, which always managed to make me smile with their silly lemon infused headlines. You can also see the overall popularity of your stand and check on the weather for the following days, which plays an important role in how many customers will show up.

Like all great simulation and Tycoon games of the past, you never quite reach that point where you feel completely comfortable. Different weather requires adjustments to strategy, such as the recipe you’ll use and where you’ll set up shop. As you get more successful you’ll need to hire more workers to keep up with the demand or risk losing all those previously satisfied customers. Unlike the lemonade itself, where the perfect recipe may in fact exist, there’s never quite that perfect point where the game just runs itself (and which would be quite boring after all). You’re constantly making small tweaks and adjustments on the road to unattainable perfection.

If there’s one weakness in the package, it’s the graphics, which are blocky and utterly devoid of detail. I’m assuming the game is a direct port of one of the previous PC versions, which have been around in one form or another for years, but I have no clue which one. As it is, the graphics will transport you back into the distant past just as the gameplay will. Maybe it’s fitting after all.

While Lemonade Tycoon isn’t quite as demanding as other simulation games, and isn’t much of a looker, there’s a simplicity and charm to the title that makes it undeniably appealing. Oh, and did I mention it’s free? Yes, unlike lemonade, some things in life really are free.

Pros:

• The price is right
• Addictive simulation game that lets us return to our youth

Cons:

• Graphics are quite unimpressive
  

Score: 9/10

Price: Free

Lemonade Tycoon on iTunes

iCopter Classic is the free iPhone app of the flash game which players either loved or hated. The game is a simple helicopter flying sim, with you controlling your craft through a never-ending cave filled with chunky floors and ceilings and floating Pong paddles, a feature every cave should have.

The controls are exceptionally simple. Without any input your helicopter will slowly descend, by touching it, it will rise back up. The time needed to make it rise or fall depends on its speed of ascent or descent, which is where the initial difficulty comes in. The faster it’s going in one direction, the longer it will take to stop and begin going in the desired direction. Once you’ve mastered the controls, the only real challenge is to keep your view on what’s coming up so you can plan your course accordingly.

The newest version of iCopter Classic allows options to speed up or slow down the gameplay which is a nice addition, as well as the ability to change between different helicopter styles and colour schemes. The core graphics though remain faithful in every other way to the flash original, which is to say they’re quite ugly. With single colour pixel blobs for walls and ceilings, and a simple gradient colour background, only the half-decent looking chopper (at least compared to everything around it) saves the game from being perhaps the ugliest game ever.

iCopter Classic has no levels or objectives of any kind, you simply fly as long as you can without dying in a flaming crash. The distance you’ve flown is equated into a points score so you can keep track of your greatest flying feat.

The main problem with iCopter Classic is that there’s no variation of play. Everything is exactly the same 5 minutes into the game as it was at the beginning. The caves don’t get tighter, the blocks don’t speed up or change in any way, it’s just the exact same game from start to finish. The levels do get randomized, but the difficulty is the same each time, and throughout the entire level.

iCopter Classic is the type of game that will send you through 3 distinct emotions as you play it. Overwhelming frustration at first, as you try to learn how to control your helicopter and crash into everything 3 seconds into the level, exuberance as you finally learn how to play and begin making progress, and then boredom as you perfect your play and realize the game is both far too easy at that point, and far too repetitive.

One major annoyance encountered was a pop-up constantly asking me to let the game track my playing location. It will continually harass you until you say yes, even while playing the actual game, which is a terribly poor decision, and entirely unnecessary.

As a free game, it’s hard not to give iCopter Classic at least a small recommendation, as it should give gamers some enjoyment until they’ve mastered it. Go in with realistic expectations of what it is and you may find yourself enjoying it, at least for a short while.

Pros:

• Simple controls and realistic physics

Cons:

• Too challenging to start with, too easy after some practice
• Hideous graphics
• Annoying pop-ups

Price: Free

Score: 4.5/10

iCopter Classic on iTunes

Though the oddly chosen name may not indicate as much, Tap Tap Revenge is a rhythm based music game, very much akin to other entries in the genre, which has exploded in recent years. Games like Guitar Hero have transcended into mainstream culture like few games do, which is a testament to the genre’s melding of great music, addictive timing and rhythm based gameplay, and the ease with which it can be picked up and enjoyed by just about anyone, regardless of their gaming past, or lack thereof.

In many ways this iPhone game harkens back to the games of yesteryear, where you had to be all but flawless to beat a level. With games now being centered more on spectacle and storytelling than challenge, that sense of accomplishment when beating levels or even whole games just isn’t there like it used to be. The music genre brings that back to some degree. Sure you can still beat levels with less than perfect run-throughs, but you’re never quite satisfied until you master the level, replaying it countless times until you know it by rote, and could probably play it with your eyes closed.

Gameplay is very simple and intuitive. Once the music gets rolling, of which there’s a nice selection available, you simply tap the glowing balls which slowly slide down the screen towards you as they cross the indicated zone. At other times you’ll have to tilt the screen in a specified direction. At higher difficulties the action can get incredibly frantic and fun.

For a game that relies so much on rhythm and timing, the pattern of tapping is sometimes at odds with the music, which is unfortunate. Gamers will often get into a trance like state while playing a game like this, and their timing is based on the music, more than it is on watching and reacting to the on-screen action. When this fusion of on-screen and music isn’t properly aligned, it creates chaos, and ruins what is otherwise a very enjoyable experience. Thankfully this isn’t noticeable on most songs.

While the game features a nifty little high score mode by which you can submit your high scores into a global database for true bragging rights, there are very few other incentives to drive you to repeated plays. There are no new songs or modes to unlock, and no career type mode which has become a staple of the genre. At lease there are 4 difficulty modes, which is nice.

Games like this bring out the competitive spirit in players, whether they be playing head to head, or taking turns. Tap Tap Revenge capitalizes on this with a great two player head to head mode, with both players squaring off against each other at opposite ends of the screen. This mode makes the usually frantic gameplay even moreso, forcing you to crank your concentration up to another level, and avoid watching what your opponent is doing. Naturally the tilt feature is removed from this mode, as it would be next to impossible, and probably quite dangerous for your iPhone’s safety to have two people trying to crank it in opposite directions.

The graphics are very colourful, with glowing, shifting backgrounds, and blazing trails of light on which you’re tapping indicators descend. There’s nothing incredibly exciting about them, but they don’t need to be.

The music is a bit of a mixed bag. A majority of the tracks are obscure music you’ve probably never heard of, and while not bad by any means, it’s not quite the same as rocking out to a classic. The inconsistent tapping, as mentioned above, also serves to lessen the impact of the music on those songs.

You really can’t complain about a product when it’s free, especially when it’s as generally well put together as Tap Tap Revenge is. For fans of the music genre and newcomers alike, this game is definitely worth a try. See you on the leaderboards.

Pros:

• It’s fun and it’s free, you can’t beat that!
• Great two-player mode

Cons:

• Can’t use your own music
• Tapping is sometimes off kilter with the music

Score: 8/10