Angel Stone - Slightly more video than game sometimes

Looks can be deceiving. It's something we learn early on in life. Just because the fruit in the bowl looks real, that doesn't mean it isn't made of wax. Stop eating wax fruit.

Angel Stone epitomises the mobile gaming version of those shiny apples that don't crunch right. It looks like a third-person action RPG in the Diablo mould. All flashing swords and loot to collect.

But scrape away the shiny veneer and what's left is, to all intents and purposes, the bones of a card battler. And those bones don't really need to be poked that often to rattle out their deceptive dance.

Hack and sit

Ostensibly the game sees you controlling a warrior as they smash through a series of bite-size levels. You've got an array of four Angel Stones at your disposal, which represent special moves.

You can unleash these by tapping on buttons on the side of the screen, or swiping up, down, left, or right. There are three classes to choose from, and they each have access to different kinds of moves.

There's the standard muscle-bound, sword-swinging berserker, a gunslinger that's a variation on the usual bow-and-arrow ranger, and a shadow mage who spews out bursts of magical energy. You can choose to be a male or female version of any of the classes.

Tapping on the screen moves you around, but you can set it so the game leads you towards the nearest enemy automatically. You'll also use your standard attack automatically when you're in range.

So really all you're doing is tapping out your special moves when their cooldown has worn off. And when you're grinding earlier levels you won't even have to do that.

And you will have to grind those levels. You need to keep your gear, your character, and the Angel Stones you've got equipped upgraded, and quite often you'll hit a wall and have to retread your steps to bulk up.

There are variations of the story mode that see you chasing loot, but you're just doing the same thing over and over in order to earn slightly better pauldrons.

But don't think that Angel Stone doesn't have anything going for it. It looks great, it does what it sets out to do really rather well, and its compulsion loop is noose-tight within a few minutes.

The best praise I can pay it is that when I've finished writing this review I'm probably going to boot it up again and see if I can get some better guns.

It might be a wax fruit, but it's a wax fruit that's so well painted, fragranced, and lit, that while trying to get any sort of sustenance from it would be a bad idea, it's not too awful to look at it for a bit.