Burn The City

As gaming premises go, taking on the role of a gigantic fire-breathing monster intent on reducing the entire human race to ashes is impossible to resist.

Who doesn’t want to be an unstoppable Godzilla, capable of incinerating whole cities in just a few minutes? We certainly did. But after a few hours with Burn The City our own enthusiasm for the role had diminished to a few scattered embers.

While Burn The City is a competent physics puzzler from the well-worn mould of Angry Birds, it’s too slow and ponderous to hold your interest for long.

A gigantic green monster is hellbent on destroying the world city-by-city. Rather than trying to stop him, you're helping him to get the job done as efficiently as possibly.

While the monster stands frozen to the spot at the left of the screen, you move a crosshair with your finger to aim the trajectory of his next fiery belch.

For quite a few stages in the game’s first world (of two) this simply involves carefully taking down each settlement in turn - occasionally using the rocky scenery to bounce shots onto homes, or the odd nuclear plant to wipe out bigger areas in a deathly flash.

The controls, while not exactly inspired, work efficiently enough. As in Angry Birds, your last crosshair stays on screen to help you line up your next shot more accurately.

Raining down fire is moderately entertaining for a while, even if the explosions and flames are little too modest for our taste, but Burn The City loses a lot of its charm once the puzzles start getting trickier.

A challenge is always welcome, but it's not always obvious what a level is asking you to do (this isn't helped by the default zoomed-in camera) and it's easy to mess up a shot, burn down the wrong girder, or release a rolling boulder too soon and have to start over from scratch.

Here, the monster’s slow firing rate and limited number of collectible power-ups called ‘Yums’ (which increase blast power, or allow for straight, more accurate shots, for example) really start to grate.

You’ll need a lot of patience to make it through the whole campaign. In a game about a fire-breathing monster, that’s a pretty tall order.