Minesweeper Mobile

There aren't many video games that can claim to have been played by millions of people on a worldwide scale. Fewer still that have been played extensively by people of all ages, both genders, and even by many who claim to have no time for or interest in video games.

Minesweeper is just such a game.

Anyone who's owned or used a PC for any period of time will know it, packaged as it has been with successive iterations of Microsoft Windows. Through its simple, unfussy gameplay and presentation, and by being sneakily tucked away alongside Word and Excel, it presented itself as more of a sophisticated office toy than a video game.

For those of you who haven't played Minesweeper (and there can't be many of you), play takes place on a grid where you're tasked with uncovering a number of hidden mines. By clicking a point on the grid you uncover various squares containing numbers, which represent how many of the eight surrounding blocks contain mines. By extrapolating from multiple numbered blocks you can hone in on the mined squares, sticking a flag marker in to indicate where you believe them to be.

Minesweeper Mobile, as the name suggests, updates this classic formula and brings it to the little communication device in your pocket. It does so by switching from the well known abstract 2D perspective to a flashier isometric 3D one. JavArt has also taken the strange decision of presenting the game in a kind of comic book style, with a little chap ambling around the grid placing flags at your command.

Unfortunately this approach proves far from successful, with your view being constantly hampered and the controls never quite marrying up with what's going on onscreen. Up, Down, Left and Right on the thumbstick just never quite click with the diagonal movements across the isometric grid.

The use of a player character too is irritating and more than a little cumbersome. The protagonist shuffles around the grid at a snail's pace, robbing the game of any smoothness and immediacy. Fortunately you can elect to skip this animation from the menu, but it really shouldn't have been included as a feature in the first place.

At its core, though, is the same solid premise that hooked millions of bored office workers. And it's this that will carry you through the game and prompt you to ignore your better judgement by playing on. Regardless of the poor execution, there's still fun to be had here, whether through the progressive challenge and varying backdrops of the Career mode, or the enjoyable take-it-in-turns two-player mode.

The graphics are, if nothing else, bright and colourful. As mentioned, the different backdrops provide a welcome dose of variety, though these are purely cosmetic and don't possess their own unique characteristics or rules. A missed opportunity, perhaps.

Elsewhere in Career mode is the shop feature, where individual one-shot power-ups can be bought for use at any time in the game. These include the ability to uncover a random mine or sustain a single mine blast, to name but two. It's a nice idea, and can help you out in those 'leap of faith' situations that would otherwise result in seeing the Game Over screen.

It's not enough, however, to redeem an otherwise poorly conceived game. With Minesweeper Mobile, JavArt appears to have updated a classic for the sake of it, with little or no thought having gone into the changes made. Some ground is best left undisturbed.