tend to be impossible to complete
during a single run, and often require
you shake up everything you figured
out so far about any particular level.
Frankly, even if these didn’t exist,
you’d want to play the game through
several times anyway, because it’s
that good.
- Kingdom Rush: Vengeance
Price: £4.99
If you’ve played a tower defence game
before, you’ll broadly know the score
when settling down for a few rounds
of Kingdom Rush: Vengeance. You get
a screen with pathways and slots, and
then build towers to obliterate waves
of enemies that appear. The aim is to
stop them reaching their goal – and
giving you an off-screen kicking.
The back story finds you as miffed
wizard Vez’nan, sick of being defeated
by the heroes of the realm, and so out
for revenge. Quite how deep-rooted
tower defence enables you to advance
into enemy territory, it’s hard to say.
Perhaps don’t think about it too much
- after all, this is only a video game.
Still, this isn’t just any video game,
nor just any tower defence game. It
looks fantastic, not least when dozens
of tiny foes are darting about, being
contained by your cunning tactics. It’s
reasonably deep, with special powers
to unleash, mighty heroes to deploy,
and an upgrade tree to grapple with.
Oddly – and slightly
disappointingly – some goodies
(towers; alternate heroes) sit behind
IAP. But you don’t need to splash out
to win; and for the
outlay, it’s hard to
remain grumpy at
the best game of its
kind on iOS.
WORD GAMES
- Blackbar
Price: £2.99
This game comes
across like a
politically literate
tirade against
censorship. An