Trucks & Skulls HD

There's little point in trying to tackle Trucks & Skulls HD without first dealing with its parasitic relationship to Angry Birds.

There's nothing necessarily wrong in trying to copy success. Simply put, Trucks & Skulls is Angry Birds stuffed inside a Molotov cocktail of high octane fuel with a fuse consisting of Axl Rose's bandana dipped in old engine oil, lit and thrown onto iPhone and iPod touch.

So it would be wrong to expect anything novel in terms of gameplay: Trucks & Skulls takes the physics trajectory genre and makes it go bang.

Instead of different types of birds, the fun comes from souped-up hell-bound vehicles ranging from simple kinetic energy colliders to more complex units, such as the Dive-o-saurus, which performs a vertical dive bomb attack when tapped.

There's also the Bombzilla, a jalopy carrying a huge bomb, and the Triclops, a truck you tap to create a cluster attack of three elements.

These are the characters that make the game exciting. As each of them waits on the launching ramp for you to select their power and trajectory, they shake and rock around as if they're raring to go.

Each of 129 levels - divided into a trio of themes with 43 levels in each - provides you with a set of trucks which you use to destroy all the skulls. As with the pigs in Angry Birds, these are protected by different types of structure ranging from breakable glass and wood to solid metal and rubber-coated steel.

Thankfully, this task is made easier by a generous distribution of dynamite, ensuring everything goes with a bang. Obviously, the fewer trucks you use and the more destruction you cause, the more points you score.

Despite the spectacular presentation and the metal guitar riffs that ring with your success, Trucks & Skulls becomes surprisingly repetitive after a few levels - even a little mundane.

The collision physics don't always feel smooth, while the levels are too often solved by random crashing and bouncing around or the use of a well-aimed Dive-o-saurus.

There are few demanding - and hence really satisfying - stages. Instead, you either blow everything up in a big bang of exploding skulls and lava or hit the 'reset' button and keep having another go until you eventually get an explosion.

It's a peculiar state of affairs, not least because the iPad version ships with a fully functional and easy-to-use level editor. You can create your own levels - dragging and dropping items, selecting vehicles - and then email the finished product to your friends.

Although the concept seems as if it should work well, the style of the heavy metal theme doesn't combine with the physics to provide interesting gameplay or longevity.

Those birds won't be knocked off their perch just yet.