Grand Theft Auto, Brass, Power Hover, Dungelot review – new gaming apps for the iPhone
Making the most of the relative paucity of major console releases early in the year has traditionally seen a good crop of gaming apps released into a cold, dark January. This year is no exception with colour and light illuminating the gloom from mobiles across a variety of genres - indeed, even the humble boardgame has proved susceptible to a makeover.
It's been done beautifully in Brass (Cubio, iOS, 3.99), which recreates an excellent table-top title set in the north of England during the Industrial Revolution. The idea is to build up cotton mills, coal mines and iron works and connect them through a series of canals and railroads, without going bankrupt. The rules can be daunting so it's well worth playing on an iPad at first to make reading the text prompts and various cards easier. The tutorial doesn't do the best job, so hunt around online for a full PDF of the rules. Perseverance does pay off, however, and once you are up and running there is a rewardingly complex challenge to discover, which can be enjoyed both online and offline. With every tiny mistake you make at the start resulting in dire consequences later on, it's certainly not easy, but failure only increases the desire to learn and improve, making for a compulsive just-one-more-go experience.
Continue reading...