Game Reviews

Snood

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Snood
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Like the singing California raisins of the eighties that haunted countless children dreams, Snood burrows into the brain with its caricatured puzzle play. An array of impressive features make it a competent refresh, even if it's not as exciting a puzzler as it once was.

Snood has you blasting miniature coloured heads across the screen with the goal of teleporting the creatures back to their home world in batches of three or more. Kooky homecoming hook aside, the game involves clearing like-coloured snoods by firing individuals using a cannon placed at the bottom of the screen. Think Bust-a-Move or its more recent variation Bubble Bash.

The core concept isn't anything new. Special snoods attempt to freshen things up such as DaBomb, which explodes and takes out any adjacent snoods. Sleeping snoods have to be woken up before they can be teleported off the screen. While interesting, these don't dramatically change the experience.

It's the execution that gives the game reason to be snooty with full multiplayer and an assortment of single player modes, the former being the real draw. The previously referenced Story mode takes you through an utterly throwaway plot that serves as a poor reason to string together stages, but at least Time Attack and Puzzle modes provide decent solo play.

Multiplayer, which runs through Facebook Connect, allows you and a buddy to compete for style points that flood your opponent's screen with snoods. Push notifications enable you to catch up on challenge requests while away from the game, too. What's cool is that you can have several games going at once, popping in and out when you have a moment to spare.

All of these features require a Facebook account, though the demand goes further than that. Unlocking single player achievements requires logging into Facebook, which seems unnecessary. As if that wasn't bad enough, Snood only runs on firmware 3.0. Sorry, iPod touch owners, but you have to pay for the upgrade if you want to play.

Requiring 3.0 and forcing use of Facebook for features that should be available offline is questionable, particularly given the alternatives on the App Store that don't demand either. While competently updating an old game, Snood is little more than mildly interesting.

Snood

Multiplayer matches through Facebook are something to brag about, but outdated gameplay prevents Snood from being anything more than a decent touch-enabled update
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Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.