It's a good thing that real skyscrapers aren't built the way they are in Tower Bloxx: My City. If they were, you'd see an awful lot of flimsy towers throughout our major cities, with whole floors jutting out the sides.
Digital Chocolate's Tower Bloxx series has been around since long before iPhone gaming took over the world. But, while it was a hit on Java, it hasn't evolved significantly in the last few years and it's fallen out of favour.
Can Tower Bloxx: My City on Xperia Play turn the series' fortunes around?
Pile on!The game is incredibly simple, and that's its main strength.
A crane appears at the top of the screen, swaying from side to side, holding a piece of tower block. You press the X button on the Xperia Play's gamepad when it's lined up, whereupon it drops and another block appears.
If you've been accurate, the tower will resemble the kind of skyscrapers you see in major cities. If you've done it poorly, the tower will sway like a lush.
If you miss completely, you'll lose a life and a few floors. That's pretty much the game, only its been stretched out over an ill-fitting city construction game where you gradually build up your settlement one tower at a time using the same mechanics.
Short stackTower Bloxx: My City is charming in small doses, but after you've built a few skyscrapers you realise the game isn't getting any deeper as you go.
The Xperia Play controls add absolutely nothing, as it was never the most complex game in the first place.
In fact, if anything they slightly detract from the experience by exposing exactly how limited the gameplay is: most of the buttons never get touched - all you do is tap the X button, and use the D-pad to navigate the menu screens.
While it's perfectly serviceable, Tower Bloxx: My City is unlikely to get pulses racing in this post-Java age. Like the perilous Jenga towers the game mirrors, it topples at the merest breeze.