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Six Guns quite obviously wants to be the mobile gaming equivalent of Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar’s excellent Wild West shooter. In terms of graphics it certainly hits the mark, but in a lot of other respects it falls painfully short.

The game is essentially a large action adventure where you wander the Wild West plains as a loan gunslinger taking on missions for money. You might, for example, have to rescue damsels in distress, hunt down rogue gangs or even rid areas of zombie-like monsters.

The graphics are truly stunning, as the game world is quite large and filled with impressive desert scenery, nicely crafted buildings in the towns you visit, as well as detailed character models that are smoothly animated.

Although Six Guns is free to download and play, it does try to constantly push paid upgrades to you and also has a lot of nagging notifications. You can finish the levels without opening your wallet, but this is often easier said than done.

That’s fair enough, as it’s the standard approach of freemium titles. However, there are two other things that really bug us about Six Guns.
 

Firstly, it lacks any kind of story to keep you engaged with the game. There seems to be no reason for you to take on jobs other than the fact they earn you money. Plus the jobs vary so widely that they often seem totally unconnected to each other and after a while many of the mission become quite samey and repetitive.
 

Secondly, the control system is horrible. So horrible in fact that it’s actually difficult to turn your gun slinger around. Gameloft seems to have discovered this during development and added a dedicated button to turn him through 180 degrees, but while it helps a bit, the controls still often seem to behave quite erratically, especially the auto-aim feature.

Six Guns Verdict
Six Guns has sumptuous graphics and a large gaming world to explore, but the annoying controls and total lack of a plot means it struggles to hold your attention. A pocket version of Red Dead Redemption it most certainly is not.

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Angry Birds is no longer just a game, it’s now a full blown brand in its own right, just like Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that the two would eventually team up for a game, the aptly named Angry Birds Star Wars.

Right from the get go the trade mark Angry Birds humour comes to the fore as the standard classical rendition of the Star Wars theme over the title sequence fires up and then segues seamlessly into an oompah-band version. From there on in it just keeps getting better.

In terms of game play it’s essentially a mash up of the first Angry Birds game and Angry Birds Space, with added light sabres and laser blasters thrown in for good measure.

Naturally the old Angry Bird characters have been given a Star Wars make over and the background settings for each level are drawn from the Star Wars universe. Early levels focus on the bird flinging mechanics of the first Angry Bird game, before more Space like levels are added in.

And because these birds are now Star Wars characters they have extra powers. For example, the Skywalker bird gets a light sabre after a few levels on Tatooine, which you can wield mid-flight by tapping the screen after you’ve release him on his trajectory. Similarly, the Han Solo Bird gets a laser blaster that you aim by simply tapping on the object you want to shoot at once he’s in flight, while the Obi-Wan bird gets a force push move.

The pigs have also naturally undergone a Star Wars make over, as they’re now dressed up as Storm Troopers. Some even get to fire laser turrets too, while others fly around in Tie Fighters. Both of which add an layer of extra complexity to the game, as you can deflect laser shots with the light sabre or bash stuff into the turrets to move them so they’re firing against their own side.

For your two quid you get eighty levels split evenly between Tatooine and the Death Star. There are also bonus levels with R2-D2 and C-3PO to unlock and an in-game teaser shows a third world called Holt is coming soon as a free update. An additional world, called Dagobah, is available as an in-app purchase for £1.49 and adds another 40 levels.

Angry Birds Star Wars Verdict
The Force is strong with this one as Rovio has managed to meld the two brands together to great effect. It looks great, has bags of humour and is so insanely addictive that we could hardly tear ourselves away from it to write this review.

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If you grew up in the eighties then it’s highly likely that He-Man and his battles with Skeletor were a sizable part of your after school TV viewing habits. They may say that ‘nostalgia ain’t what it used to be’, but the cute little retro offering that is He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe, with its modest 69p asking price and fun gameplay, proves that wrong.

You start the game trapped in a dungeon hanging upside down from chains. Once you’ve freed yourself you have to battle through 27 levels to get to Castle Grayskull and defeat Skeletor before he takes over Eternia.

The game’s cartoony graphics look bang on the money as they draw a lot of influence from the art style that was popular on old 16bit console games, including parallax scrolling, cell shading and heroes with grossly exaggerated features. However, developer Chillango has also added some extras such as lots of destructible and collapsible scenery. The cheesy music fits nicely too, even though it’s sadly not the original theme tune. 

The game play follows the old 16bit action platform genre quite closely, so you have to hack and slash your way past enemies while negotiating platforms in order to reach the end of each level alive. Every four levels or so you take on a mega boss – a member of Skeletor’s lynch mob.

The game has a neat control system too. Rather than relying on a tricky to use virtual D-pad, it instead just divides the rather basic controls between the left and right hand sides of the screen. Sliding your thumb or finger anywhere on the left hand side of the display moves He-Man back and forth, while tapping on the right hand side makes him hack and slash with his sword. Gradually you add more moves as you go, so swiping upwards launches He-Man into an aerial sword assault, while swiping downwards makes him perform his whirlwind attack, for example

He-Man starts off quite easy, but the difficult level soon ramps up so you do need to collect as many crystals as possible throughout each stage to add new moves to your repertoire. If you can’t be bothered with that you can just add these moves via in-app purchases, but thankfully you don’t have to purchase items to be able to progress through the game.

He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe Verdict
He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe is more than just a novelty nostalgia trip. It’s a damn fine retro hack and slash platformer with slick graphics, intuitive controls and fun gameplay. It’s worth every penny of its modest asking price.

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Xbox SmartGlass is a whole strategy by Microsoft to integrate Windows 8 PCs as well as a variety of mobile devices more tightly with the Xbox 360. Basically, Microsoft’s idea is that PCs, laptops, phones and tablets will be able to act as second screens for the console. It sounds pretty snazzy in theory, but now that the SmartGlass app has arrived for phones is it actually any good?

Xbox SmartGlass is available as a free download for Windows Phone and Android (4.0 and above required) devices. Microsoft will also add an iOS version in the coming months. The Windows Phone and Android apps look pretty much identical and work in exactly the same way.  To start using the app all you have to do is log-in using your Windows Live ID, which you should have if you’ve got an Xbox Live account.

Once you’re logged in you’ll find the app is divided up into five screens that you can swipe between. It opens at the home screen. This shows what’s now playing on your Xbox (it could be the dashboard, a movie or game) and below this is the SmartGlass remote and a short list of recently used apps or games. When you launch a game or app, the now playing area populates with some more information about the content you’re using. For example, with Halo Reach it shows game art and has a small blurb section on where to download the manual.

If you launch the SmartGlass remote, on the other hand, the whole screen turns into a touchpad controller for your console, allowing you to swipe back and forth through menus.

The controller also works with the new Internet Explore browser. Touching the screen with a single finger moves the cursor while using two fingers causes it to scroll the screen or zoom if you pinch in or out. It also opens up a keyboard on your phone’s screen when you tap on a text box. This makes it much easier to enter text than using the normal Xbox controller.

From the homescreen, if you swipe right you’ll find yourself on the Bing Search tab. This doesn’t offer web search, but instead allows you search for movies, TV shows, apps, albums and games that are either stored on your Xbox or available to buy through services such as Netflix, Blinkbox and Xbox Videos. When you find a movie or TV show you can usually tap on the SmartGlass icon next to it to have your console start playing it straight away. It’s a great idea, but the problem is that the search is a bit patchy. It worked well for Xbox Video and Netflix, but didn’t seem to work with BBC iPlayer and only some 4oD content showed up in its search, which is quite a big failing.

Scrolling left form the homescreen takes you to Social Tab where you’ll see your Xbox Live Avatar, Xbox Live points, as well as buttons for checking on your friends, messages, and recent activities. You can also edit your avatar from here and update your profile

Scrolling left again brings you to the Recent tab where you’ll see a long vertically scrolling list of all the apps and games you’ve recently used, while swipe left again takes you to discovery tab, which offers recommendations on new Xbox Live content you should check out.

All in all, the Xbox SmartGlass app is useful, especially for the remote control element. However, the search, which should be a killer feature, still needs some more work to be truly useful.

Xbox SmartGlass Verdict
It’s early days for Xbox SmartGlass, but it does provide a neat way to control and interact with your Xbox 360 from your smartphone. However, the search feature needs more work before it becomes truly useful and some of the other features still feel a little bit clunky.

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Warwick Davies is a small man – he stands just  3ft 6inch tall – but he’s had a big career appearing in a whole load of blockbuster movies including Return of the Jedi, Harry Potter I and II and, eh, the Leprechaun film series. He’s even recently starred in his own sitcom called Life’s Too short, and now he’s got his own app.

PocketWarwick is sort of like a Tamogotchi for your iPhone or iPad, with career elements from his Life’s Too Short sitcom mixed in to try to keep things interesting.

Across the top of the screen there are bars showing his current levels for stuff like hunger, IQ, fitness, entertainment and hygiene, which you have to try to keep topped up so he’s ready to accept jobs as they come up. You do this by selecting different activities from a sub menu at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. For example, select gym and he’ll be equipped with gym gear such as a skipping rope. As he skips his fitness levels will go up, but his hygiene level will go down, so you’ll next have to switch to the shower to up his hygiene levels again.

Jobs arrive from his agent via emails on his phone. Each job has certain requirements in terms of clothing he needs to wear, books or scripts he has to read and levels he needs to be at in terms of stuff like IQ and hunger. When you accept a gig you have limited time in which to equip him with the necessary clothing and to match his levels to those required.

Jobs range from radio interviews to auditions for blockbuster movies and when you complete a job successfully you get rewarded with coins or royalties, which in turn need to be swapped to buy stuff like clothes and food. The whole aim of the game is to move Warwik up from being a Z-lister up to an A-list movie star and to do this you need to keep him not just fit, healthy and happy, but also rich so you can buy the necessary gear needed for future jobs. The game is free, but obviously you can make in-app purchases with real life cash to quicken your progress through the game. To be fair though, it’s not overly weighted towards these in-app purchases and we found we could happily play it without needing to constantly reach for our wallet.

There’s some nice humour in the game, both in terms of the things that Warwick says when he’s wittering away at you from his couch, bed or living room and in the descriptions of the various jobs that appear in his inbox.

However, the game becomes very samey after a coupe of hours play, as essentially it reduces to a tread mill of accepting a job, buying and equipping him with the necessary clothes, reading a book or script and then actually going to the job. The fact that you never see him at the job, but instead only get a reward screen showing you the amount of cash or royalties you’ve gained, also increases the boredom factor somewhat.

PocketWarwick is an interesting idea for a celebrity endorsed game and has some nice humorous touches. However, the novelty soon wears off and becomes a bit boring and repetitive the more you play it.
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Introduction
TomTom was relatively early to jump on the smartphone bandwagon with its TomTom for iPhone app. But it has studiously ignored the increasingly capable Android platform, until now. At last, you can install TomTom-powered navigation on your Android-run smartphone. With the free Google Maps Navigation providing stiff competition for nothing, the question is whether a premium sat-nav app has enough extra to be worth shelling out for.

Things don’t get off to the best of starts at the installation stage. Annoyingly, at launch the TomTom app will only work with screen resolutions of 800 or 854 x 480, which currently counts out the Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X, as well as most tablets. This is a major drawback, and is sure to subdue sales amongst premium device users, who are most likely to want to shell out for high-end navigation software. TomTom has pledged support for higher-resolution screens soon, but we opted to test the TomTom app on a Motorola Motoluxe to be sure of compatibility. You also need Android 2.2 or higher, but every recent handset should have this anyway, or the option to upgrade.

Prices start at £30.99 for UK and Ireland maps, with Western Europe costing £39.99 and the whole of Europe £49.99, although these figures are an introductory offer for an unspecified time only. There are also versions for most of the rest of the world, including North America, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, but only Brazil in South America, and just Southern Africa. It’s worth noting that this is a big app. The initial download is less than 25MB, but when you first load the software it will then bring down the maps associated with your chosen purchase. The European software we tested takes up a cool 3.31GB, and there’s no option at this stage of choosing just to install some of the countries covered – it’s the whole of Europe, or nothing. So you will need to have at least that much space available on your device’s internal memory or removable storage. On the plus side, unlike Google Maps, you will be able to use this software when you have no mobile data connection, as all the maps are stored locally.

Once the app is installed and running, the interface has most of the same features as the iPhone 5 compatible version, although the design aesthetics and menu configuration are quite different. Simply tap the map to call up the menu, where you can set your destination, or create a multi-waypoint trip, as well as access settings and the shop. Destination options include navigating to a full UK postcode, an address entered in the usual city-street-number order, or one of your contacts. There is no keyword address search, but the full category-based Points of Interest (POI) system does have this feature.

You can save favourites and a home location, as well as browse a list of recently found destinations. However, conspicuous by its absence is Google Local Search, a particularly strange omission on a Google-powered phone. There’s also no option to enter raw coordinates, although not many people use this frequently. Once you have found your destination, IQ Routes is used for calculation. Real average traffic speeds are taken into account, based on time of day and day of week, so your route could be different depending on when you want to travel. In previous testing, we have found this provides much more realistic journey-time estimations than sat-navs that don’t have this feature.

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Indestructible is a sort of mash-up between Micro Machines, Destruction Derby and Robotron. Basically, it’s a driving and shooting game that sees you battle it out against waves of computer controlled cars or alternatively play online against up to four real life opponents to see who comes out on top.

It’s got a similar top-down view to Micro Machines, so the graphics look quite cute, and it ran at a reasonably consistent pace on our Sony Tablet S. The top down view works particularly well here, as it gives you a broader view of the playing arena, which is important as it’s actually possible to drive off the edge of the arena to certain death.  The areas aren’t particularly large, but this does mean there’s nowhere really to hide and it makes the gameplay that bit more frantic. However, it is a bit of a shame that there are only three arenas in total.

The game is free to download and play, but you only get access to one car by default. If you want something better you have to shell out real money, which is fair enough we suppose — Developers have to eat too!

You control your car using two onscreen virtual joysticks, a bit like you do in Robotron. The one on the left controls the direction and speed of the vehicle, while the one on the right controls the direction of your cannon fire. It sounds complicated, and is a little bit tricky to get your head around at the first, but you soon get used to it and it becomes second nature. As well as just firing at opponents you can also ram them to cause extra damage, so in this respect there’s an element of Destruction Derby to the gameplay too.

In the single player mode you simply take on wave after wave of computer controlled cars. Usually multiple ones turn up to attack you at the same time and you gain in-game points for destroying a full wave. These points can then be swapped for upgrades. However, the game is geared towards you spending money for upgrades, so you’ll be playing a long time to get enough points for significant upgrades if you’re just relying on your gaming skills to acquire them. The computer controlled opponents aren’t hugely smart either — usually just swarming in around you, so the gameplay in this mode gets a bit tiresome after a while.

In multiplayer mode you’re pitted against up to four other players and have to duke it out to see who can get to five kills first. If you die, you’re respawned after a count down so you can get back into thick of it. The multiplayer mode is the most fun as it’s possible to have some great ding dong battles with other people. However, there are times when it can be a bit one sided too, especially if other players have bought lots of upgrades and you haven’t.

Indestructible Verdict
While its single player mode is pretty unsatisfying, the real charms of Indestructible show themselves when you’re pitted against real life opponents in the online death matches. Granted, it’s not the deepest game in the world and the limit of three arenas means its longevity will probably be limited. However, in short bursts, the online game play is a lot of fun.

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These days £6.99 is a lot to pay for an iPhone or iPad app, even if it is a reference tool. However, first impressions of Atlas by Collins are good, especially because the app looks so beautiful.

It opens with the globe of the earth spinning gently in space. You can swipe across it to rotate it back and forth and use the pinch gesture to zoom in on a specific region or location. Once you’ve picked an area you want to explore you can tap on the Info button to find out more.  There’s also a location bar at the top of the screen that you can tap on to search for a place, feature or country anywhere on the planet.

What’s more, you can switch between different globes to view different types of information. The default globe is based around satellite imagery, but there’s a physical one that majors on stuff like mountains, lakes and deserts, and a political one that shows political boundaries and economic data.

Throughout the app the information is presented in a beautiful and elegant way. There are neat charts, lots of interesting text and some beautiful photography, especially the landscape shots.

The app is huge, though, needing 620MB of space to install, and that’s with just one globe installed. If you want to install the political or physical globes you’re looking at an awful lot of storage space and may need to delete some other apps or movies to make room for it – you see why we complain about a lack of expandable storage on phones now.

We noticed a few oddities as well. For example, in the political atlas although the boundary between the republic and north of Ireland is shown, the boundaries between England, Wales and Scotland aren’t plotted. Also, as you zoom in on the globes there’s a jarring jump between the integrated mapping imagery and the switch to Google Maps for the closer up view. It also crashed a few times while we were testing it.

More troubling is that often when you zoom in on a place and hit the info button there’s very little information provided. For example, the entry for the Caspian Sea simply gives its latitude and longitude and some alternative names for it. The rest of the description simply reads ‘a lake’, which is almost comical, especially in an app that costs £6.99. Sadly it’s a similar story with many cities and other features around the world.

Atlas by Collins is beautifully presented and does have a fair amount of content. However, it’s also annoyingly lacking in certain areas, suffers from some glitches and takes up a massive amount of storage space.
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