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Top 10 best Android games: December 2011

Naughty and nice

Top 10 best Android games: December 2011
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After navigating the slightly rocky road of the Ice Cream Sandwich OS launch in November, Google earned plenty of seasonal goodwill with its 10 billion download celebrations.

Achieving such an astonishing feat via the Android Market, which until recent updates felt like rummaging through a buggy bin in search of the best games on Android, was truly impressive, and proved just how much of a dominant force the little green robot has become.

Also, it gave greedy (and parsimonious) gamers the chance to pick up some fantastic games, like Sleepy Jack and Minecraft - Pocket Edition, for the measly price of 10p / 10c.

Yet, despite these celebrations, the Market continued to expand like our waistlines at Christmas with some real crackers.

So, here are our top ten Android games for December. But, if you got some tasty treats from under the tree that we’ve omitted, let us know in the comments below.

Grand Theft Auto III
Review - Download

Smack in the season of goodwill seemed as good a time as any to re-launch one of the most violent video games ever on Android: Grand Theft Auto III.

While we were initially left speechless that Rockstar was able to launch a major game on iOS and Android simultaneously, the quality of the work soon became the key talking point.

Retrofitting checkpointing and regular autosaving was a welcome concession to modern play, but the spruced-up visuals really popped on larger-screened ’droids.

Plus, the simple, ultra-violent charm of touring the streets of Liberty City, randomly assaulting strangers, fending off waves of police, and occasionally completing missions, feels as fresh today as it did a decade ago.

Honeycomb tablet players also had the unique benefit of being able to plug in the USB controller of their choice for a more traditional driving and shooting experience.

Spy Mouse
Review - Download

With Firemint, the studio behind iOS and Android touchscreen legends Flight Control and Real Racing, being swallowed by mega-publisher EA, we had reason to fear that its creativity might be consumed, too.

But, fear not: Spy Mouse is here to prove that Firemint hasn’t lost its gift for creating unique mobile games (well, not unless you’ve played the structurally similar Creatures & Castles, anyway).

Using the line-drawing control method employed in Flight Control, you guide Agent Squeak on an intrepid mission to steal cheese and annoy cats. On each stage, pieces of tasty fromage are dotted around the map and you have to collect them all before making a quick escape through the exit.

Thwarting your progress, however, are legions of stalking felines, who will pounce on your vulnerable mouse if he so much as bats a whisker in their direction. To survive, Agent Squeak needs to learn their patrol patterns, use toy mice as decoys, and nip between holes in the walls to evade capture.

Presented in a ‘cheesy’ Man from U.N.C.L.E.-style, Spy Mouse oozes charm and isn’t afraid to ramp up the challenge in later stages - where the cats are smarter and the levels are more maze-like.

Hero Mages
Review - Download

A bold effort to unite the worlds of tabletop strategy and touchscreen gaming, Hero Mages is all the more impressive for being the work of a lone developer.

Ross Prysbylziki takes a lot of cues from the Dungeons & Dragons formula (there are even virtual dice to roll), yet the smoothly animated character models and wry sense of humour inject some new life into the classic formula.

Combat is resolutely turn-based, with heroes and villains duking it out across gridded maps that are punctuated with stone walls to provide cover from attacks. Movement and combat are determined by action points and well explained in a comprehensive tutorial on the modest single-player mode.

Hero Mages implores you to head online to fight epic battles with real-life opponents. It’s here, unfortunately, that the premise of the game stumbles, as the focus on internet play is severely hindered by the lack of actual players.

Still, if everyone reading this picks up a copy and heads online, Hero Mages could become the game Prysylziki dreamt it would be.

Special Enquiry Detail: The Hand that Feeds
Review - Download

It’s easy to sniff at the hidden object genre, with its basic - - often to the point of tedium - gameplay, but sometimes there are some intriguing titles buried beneath the clutter of identikit games.

Special Enquiry Detail, for example, may bring little new to the table gameplay-wise, but its diverting story and overly earnest characters bring a real charisma to the standard screen tapping for items.

Playing as detectives Turino and Lamonte, you have to track down the killer of teenager Carmody Phelps. This involves interviewing suspects, examining evidence, and the occasional spot of CSI-lite forensics, all of which rely on the tried-and-tested hidden object-hunting formula.

Basically, your investigation boils down to a lot of tidying up cluttered rooms to find specific pieces of evidence and solving the occasional simple puzzle or riddle.

There’s nothing paricularly new or groundbreaking here, but the engaging, slightly absurd, tale should keep you hooked longer than the rote gameplay might suggest.

Fallen Realms
Review - Download

Before Diablo came along and turned the genre into one action-packed click fest, RPGs were fairly low energy affairs.

In the likes of Dungeon Master and Shining in the Darkness, you played from a first-person perspective and steadily moved through endless dungeons, fending off monsters appearing at random, and snatching up loot they dropped to spend on shiny new armour.

Fallen Realms will be instantly familiar to players reared on this type of early virtual role-playing game, which is both a blessing and a curse.

While the 2D visuals are lushly detailed, the gameplay is stoically old fashioned and leisurely paced. Only capable of moving forwards, your hero strolls through underground fortresses, rambles through overgrown forest, and raids ruined temples looking for monsters to bash and coinage to plunder.

Where Fallen Realms distinguishes itself is through its online community. New quests are doled out daily by the developers, and there’s a chance to meet other players, making the experience a more social affair that transcends the somewhat shallow gameplay.

Tank Riders
Review - Download

After taking us to breakneck speeds with Reckless Racking and Reckless Getaway, developer Polarbit eased off the accelerator for its latest release.

Tank Riders, as the title subtly suggests, puts you behind the controls of a snail-paced vehicle armed with devastating firepower.

Shooting other tanks is the main aim, but you’ll also need to smash crates to pick up health bonuses and use teleporters to traverse the vibrantly designed levels.

Your performance across these action-packed stages is graded via ye olde three-star rating system, with progress through the game earning you different weapons to make your tank even more destructive - like missiles that destroy enemies instantly.

Presented with typical Polarbit polish, Tank Riders looks fantastic, but is slightly hampered by awkward controls (firing to the left involves crossing your hands, as you need to reach past the D-pad used for movement) and some laggy netcode. It’s nothing a patch and some alternative controls couldn’t fix, mind.

NFL Flick Quarterback
Review - Download

While American football itself remains something of a curio to the average European Joe, virtual incarnations of the sport have gained relatively huge popularity in the region - despite the absence of cheerleaders.

The annual Madden updates might be the big show, but - having played both (see below) - we’d have to say that NFL Flick Quarterback is the more entertaining prospect for casual fans.

Main mode Playmaker focuses on the most immediately rewarding aspect of American football: passing. Controlling your team of choice’s quarterback (the game has fully licensed kits), you have to to swipe up the screen to throw perfect passes to receivers upfield.

It’s easy enough at first, but as the defending players get more aggressive, avoiding interceptions can be fraught with tension.

Yes, other modes like throwing passes into bins and the lack of online leaderboards are disappointments, but the core passing is so intrinsically rewarding, it’s hard to care too much.

Madden NFL 12
Review - Download

If the delights of NFL Flick Quarterback are a little too casual for you, however, there’s always the ultra-serious Madden series to tickle your end zone fancies.

The latest instalment landed on Sony’s Xperia Play last month, and is a typically solid conversion of the console franchise, complete with 32 fully licensed teams and up-to-date rosters for aficionados.

With smooth player animations and the kind of high-quality presentation EA is renowned for, it’s impossible not to be impressed with the amount of detail crammed into every pixel of this handheld sport sim (even if the jam-packed screen means you often aren’t entirely sure what’s going on).

The only real stumbling block is the dearth of help for newcomers to gridiron. Short of ploughing through the 12 pages of solid text in the ‘help’ section, you’re pretty much left to you’re own devices when it comes to grasping both the mechanics of American football and the convoluted controls.

While the Xperia Play’s physical buttons are a blessing once you’ve got used to the flow of play, at the start they’re just an extra layer of obfuscation to what is an already complex game to grasp. Still, if you’re prepared to spend a while learning the ropes, there’s a rewarding and challenging sim here for NFL junkies.

FIFA 12
Review - Download

Back in the realm of Euro-centric sports, EA finally passed FIFA 12 onto Android last month - albeit as an Xperia Play-exclusive title for the moment.

A step up from the previous year’s outing, the game is a far more polished outing on the pitch. Player animations are far more natural, the AI’s been given a serious talking to in the dressing room, and neat little interface tweaks abound (like flags above a player’s head to show they’re offside).

While the Xperia Play’s physical buttons will never let you down when passing and shooting, the movement controls could do with being a little more finessed.

If you stray too far to one side, for example, your player will stop in his tracks - which is a pain if you’ve just weaved neatly through the AI defence.

It’s nothing a patch, or the addition of D-pad support, can’t fix, so footie fans toting Xperia Plays would be letting the side down if they don’t pick up a copy.

Beyond Ynth
Review - Download

Admittedly, picking the humble ladybird to be the hero of a video game is a strange choice on the part of the dev, but it does lend Beyond Ynth’s physics-puzzling fun something of a unique coleopteran charm.

Players control Kribl, a ladybird on a bonkers mission to retrieve diamonds lost from his kingdom. In each of the 80 levels, Kribl starts out trapped in boxes of different shapes and sizes.

You need to lean him against the walls of the box to tip it over and roll from one side of the stage to the other, retrieving the diamond in the process.

The fiendish twist is that there are plenty of fatal obstacles out there that you need to protect Kribl from. A frying ray of sunlight, an acorn falling from the sky, or even a pool of lava will all need to be meticulously outmanoeuvred.

While some of the long list of puzzles can stump you for a few minutes, a generous time-rewinding function (activated by using the L trigger) helps you correct mistakes or start from scratch. This does sap some of the challenge out of the game, but Beyond Ynth remains a worthy puzzler for casual players.


Top 10 best Android games: November 2011
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Top 10 best Android games: September 2011
Top 10 best Android games: August 2011
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Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo