The mobile quick pick of the week Drag Racing!

Have the need for speed but the wallet of an average American? Check out Drag Racing on the Android Market. This game is but 8 days old but the Android Market claims that it has over 10 million downloads already. Drag Racing (that is the actual name) hardly needs a review, it is a fantastic game and is certainly the best of its kind. It is very easy to play but it leaves a lot of room for perfecting your racing skills.

With tons of cars to pick from, customizable upgrades, easy to use controls, and several different play modes Drag Racing offers a very complete experience. The graphics of the game are very good, I had it slow down once but a simple restart of my phone solved the problem. There are a few bugs but I remind you that it is only 8 days old so hopefully they will be fixed (things like the throttle being stuck down or not being able to accurately tell your rpms, but they were rare and avoidable if you know the cause).

Tons of cars, tons of upgrades (basically the same for each car though), offline, online, head to head, skill only, and pro league rounds are available. For the most part all of the cars are viable though in the upper tiers there are clear favorites. There are 10 levels of cars, you buy a car at a certain level then upgrades will increase the level to a certain point. For example if you buy a level 1 car and upgrade it completely it will probably only be level 3 (with exception to 2 of the level 1 cars). The controls are as simple as pressing the on screen gas peddle before the race (proper timing helping your launch) and using on screen up and down shifters as needed. To make things easier there is an on screen guide to help you know when you need to shift.

Because it is a free game there is a premium currency but the good news is its very easy to get. Simply racing bosses, online matches, and in the pro league you can earn respect points (the in game premium currency). RP as it is labeled and cash are used to buy upgrades past level 2 and to tune your car however I warn you before trying to tune your car, it is time consuming and challenging to get positive results from it unless you know something about racing cars (which I do not). There are a couple advertisements that pop up at the top of the screen but they have been appropriately placed to be out of the way. The only one I really ever noticed was while waiting in a pro league room for a game to start (when I’m already not paying attention) and towards the last third of the race an advertisement will sometimes pop up over the track guide at the top left half of the screen. Because you’ve already progressed in the race past that point it doesn’t get in the way and I’ve never seen it cover my opponent.

Drag Racing is without a doubt the best drag racing game on the Android Market. Get it. It’s free, the premium currency can easily be grinded out, and the advertisements are not invasive at all. According to the Android Market it is one of the top grossing games out right now, even though it’s a free game and can be played to its fullest potential without money I like that it is on that list. If developers made games as great as this one, with the ability to maybe speed up progress without giving a true advantage through premium currency I think mobile gaming would improve as a whole.

I am just about 200 races in with just over a 50% win rate (the pro league against 9 other people rather than the head to head against 1 other really lowers the win rate) and I am still loving the game. I’m not sure how they do the racing but lag is non existence. I imagine they save my race and play it against someone else so it isn’t real time head to head battles but the feeling is still there. Drag Racing does suck your phones battery dry so I recommend playing with your phone plugged in if you can. If not, keep track of time because those 2 hours will go fast.

Drag Racing’s rating: 91/100 One of the best games on the Android Market.

If you like our news and reviews, follow us on Twitter @1upnerd or like us on Facebook. Also, share us with your friends!

Mobile Thursday Review of Dragon Hunter 2!

Dragon Hunter 2

Dragon Hunter II is an active defense style game developed by Feelingtouch Inc. They call it a tower defense but it isn’t in the traditional sense, sure you are in a tower shooting at dragons but normally a tower defense game involves placement of towers in a strategic manner to optimize performance that shoot on their own. This game doesn’t have that… ever. Even at the later stages of the game you will always be actively playing instead of sitting back and watching.

Dragon Hunter II offers 1 level, 4 different types of flying dragons (varying in difficulty), and 3 different types of ground level/water level dragons (varying in difficulty and placement). At the start of the game your tower can’t do much, in fact for awhile all you can really do is shoot 1 arrow. At this stage the game is actually a little bit challenging because you need a good amount of accuracy with your shots or you will find dragons piling up on your tower and beating you. But as the game progresses you can unlock new skills and upgrade your tower.

Dragon Hunter 2 open map

Your primary attack is the arrows you manually shoot at dragons, you start with 1 but have the option to eventually be able to upgrade to 6 in a single shot. At this stage pretty much all of the other skills are irrelevant but the game does offer quite a few. It offers 2 different arrow shots not counting the regular one; poison arrows and dizzying arrows, one poisons the enemy and one stuns. They aren’t really useful especially considering that they are on a timer and have to be manually selected with tiny buttons at the bottom of screen. The other skills you can unlock are magic based ones. These are actually very handy at the early stages of the game. There are 4 in total but given how the game is designed I’ve only been able to unlock the 3 primary ones (there is an ultimate skill but its price is so high it would take forever to grind and get). The 3 main skills are fire, ice, and wind. When you cast fire it rains down fire from the sky dealing a good deal of damage (and maybe burn damage), when you cast ice it rains down ice from the sky freezing them in place, and when you cast wind it puts a tornado on the screen pushing most enemies back (it won’t push the ground ones unless you are on a boss level, maybe a glitch, maybe as intended).

Bosses of Dragon Hunter 2

The other options for tower upgrades are increased tower repair speed, increased tower hit points, reduced cooldowns on skills, and improved power (damage) from skills. Outside of those skills there are 2 more, boat speed and boat pickup rate. For whatever reason the developers felt the need to put food in the game, and you have a boat that slowly (and I mean very slowly) goes around the level picking up food from dead dragons floating in the water. You can’t actually ignore these skills because you need the food or the game forces you to buy more with your hard earned gold. Management of these skills are key because if you are consuming more than you and making per level you won’t get to use your gold on useful skills and instead on buying food. Other than possibly getting players in a position where they can’t progress I really don’t see a reason to it but it’s there.

Every 16 levels you encounter a boss, well, 1 of 2 bosses. They just repeat every other time. The bosses are special encounters that require a bit of tact when dealing with them and all the other dragons flying around but in the end you just spam arrows as much as you can in its general direction and you will eventually win. The real benefit to beating a boss is the reward because you get a ton of gold which allows for some of the more expensive upgrades instead of having to wait several levels for a single upgrade.

Dragon Hunter 2 is a somewhat unique (I’ve seen similar flash based browser games on my PC) active defense based game on mobile gaming devices. It is free and there is the occasional advertisement but they never really become bothersome and most of the time I didn’t even notice the in game ones. Dragon Hunter 2 isn’t a perfect game, it could use some balancing and polishing but if you have a couple minutes to burn and your hatred for dragons is as great as mine, this is a good download.

Dragon Hunter 2’s Rating: 74/100

If you like our news and reviews, follow us on Twitter @1upnerd or like us on Facebook. Also, share us with your friends!

Mobile Thursday review of Third Blade

Every once in a while you find that gem of a game. I recently found Third Blade and it is just that. Developed by COM2US Third Blade is a 2d (with some 3d depth, Street Fighter style) side scroller hack and slash. The game places you in control of a young man on a journey to save his friend who was captured by monsters. At the start of the game there is a fairly well drawn comic book style story being told that I actually enjoyed despite the fact that I downloaded the game for the single purpose of destroying monsters.

The man you control is proficient in three different weapon types; dual-wielding daggers, a single one-handed sword, and a large two handed sword. Each weapon has a very different play style, the daggers providing a very fast movement fast attack but somewhat low damage per hit style. The single one handed sword (no shield) is the defensive set with fast attacks medium damage output and considerable knockback, and the two handed sword has slow attacks, slow character movements, but huge damage and knockback.

Outside of just mashing the attack button to generate combo points that increase stats on the current level (things like +attack, +crit, -cooldown) each type of weapon gets its own skills that play to that weapons style. The big sword gets a very slow over the top attack that looks awesome and does a ton of damage while the daggers get this flip into a roll that damages everyone in the area several times a second. As far as I can tell (I haven’t finished the game yet) there are 6 skills per weapon type. The skills are unlocked as you level up and improved with runes, the games premium currency.

 

Fortunately for us the developers made it so that the premium currency could be gained without having to spend real dollars (you can transfer gold into runes, gold is earned in combat and from missions). This means that everything within the game is available to any player if they dedicate enough time. This also means that the developers of Third Blade put a small advertisement at the top of screen (mainly between missions, usually doesn’t come up when fighting) so that they could get some sort of return on their product.

The game itself is wonderfully developed, everything runs as smooth as could imagine, on my phone…. I did try the game on our tablet and it crashed it making us force restart it. Maybe because it is so new the updates just haven’t come out yet to support the tablets, I’m not entirely sure but I imagine this game would be great fun on it. The only other issue I had was the difficulty, at the start it was easy but within 10 stages it became immensely difficult requiring me to grind a lot to improve stats enough to be able to handle stages. It went from a hack and slash to a tactical fighter requiring strategy very fast. I still enjoyed the game and as it stands it is the best of its kind on my phone but the challenge of the game is certainly worth noting.

With the ability to play to whatever style you like, offensive, defensive, and speed and the option of customizing skills within the weapon types Third Blade offers a truly unique experience for any player. I couldn’t find a cookie cutter build that guaranteed a win, in fact I found myself having to switch between weapons based on the mob or boss. Melee enemies, ranged enemies, slippery looking zombie fish things and slugs, Third Blade has it all. On my HTC Thunderbolt the game ran flawlessly but it seems as though it was some problems on tablets. Third Blade is free; it has a premium currency (that can be avoided) and advertisements that have for the most part been placed out of the way so that the experience isn’t ruined. This is a game everyone should get if their Android device can handle it.

Third Blade’s Rating: 88/100

If you like our news and reviews, follow us on Twitter @1upnerd or like us on Facebook. Also, share us with your friends!

Tetris goes free on the Android market!!!

Some might not call this article news worthy but I couldn’t disagree with them more. We here at 1UpNerd love classic video games, we love free games, and we love mobile gaming which is why we are happy to share with you that Tetris is now free on the Android market thanks entirely to EA. For awhile now EA has been trying to infiltrate the non pc/console gaming industry but with competition like Zynga and other large companies that control the market with their style of social games it has been a difficult road. I am guessing that EA is trying to bring attention to its mobile games by releasing everyone’s favorite classic mobile game for free to the world.

Tetris is a wonderful game, I’ve always known what it was but it wasn’t until sophomore year of high school did I really start playing, every day, 5 days a week (in study hall for about 50 minutes) against one of my closest friends on our crappy little phones. At the time it was just about as developed a game as you could put on a phone but even now when I play the game it is always great. It should be a game that comes preloaded on every phone but thanks to EA that isn’t necessary since they made it free.

You can also find the classic but updated version of Worms that if my memory serves me right I played last on Dreamcast, Fifa, and The Sims 3 by EA on your Android phone. EA doesn’t always do everything right (cough, their client attempts) but they definitely did right with me this time.

Link to the free version of Tetris: FREE TETRIS!!!!

Link to other games offered by EA on the Android market: EA Games

If you like our news and reviews, follow us on Twitter @1upnerd or like us on Facebook. Also, share us with your friends!