Review: Bugdom 2

Overview The popular video game comes to the iPhone with hardly any loss of graphics or sound! You are a bug trying to make it in life without being squashed, exterminated or canned. Along the way, you'll be making friends, kicking nuts and taking names.

Gameplay The game starts with little-to-no tutorial, which is vastly different from most similar games on the iPhone. You basically hop right in. The storyline from the Pangea website tells you:

While on his way to visit his family on the far side of the Bugdom, a Bully Bee swooped down and stole Skip’s knapsack. Your job as Skip is to track down the Bully Bee and get your knapsack back. The chase takes place mostly in and around a house. You will make new friends in the Bugdom who will help you through each area. Keep an eye out for Sam the Snail and Sally the Chipmunk. Sam will usually make you prove your worthiness before he will help you, but Sally is just interested in gathering acorns, so be sure to brings lots of those to her. Additionally, the same Buddy Bugs that helped Rollie McFly defeat King Thorax will help you defeat most mean enemy bugs that you encounter.

Bugdom 2's gameplay is smooth and the audio is simply enchanting. I initially had some problems with the game crashing, but upon deleting it and reinstalling, the problems had gone. You'll also receive a popup notice from Pangea which informs you that if the app should crash, they recommend a hard reset of the iPhone by holding down the power and home button for 10 seconds. There are relatively few controls to master. You tilt the iPhone for movement. A more pronounced tilt adds more speed to your character's movement. Tapping the screen enables your bug leap, and holding down a finger in the bottom left corner enables your bug to pause and catch his breath. While paused, you can swipe the screen, and your bug will "kick" an acorn which pops open into a little plant which your bug can then eat for energy. Holding down the button while near an object allows Skip to pick it up. Review You'll be immersed for the first several moments by the stunning color and animation of the game. Pangea really outdid themselves in this game port from the Macintosh platform. It really is beautiful. However, (and I'm prepared to dodge your stingers), I just couldn't get into the game. I've played many of these tilt-a-games, and I just grew insanely bored with Bugdom. It's endless. Really. I felt like I was in Bug Hell and found myself looking for a can of Raid just to end it all.

I had a lot of difficulty controlling Skip. I never could quite get adept at slowing him down well enough to do things right the first time around, and I gave it a lot of practice. I looked for a way to "desensitize" the iPhone tilt factor, and you just can't. Similar games of this level-walkthrough nature are easier to control. This one factor really produced a lot of squashing desire. I found myself tapping the screen in frustration on poor Skip's head, but he just "boinged" in response. I'm sure, however, that young audiences will love this game. It has a definite kiddish fun factor and it's repetitiveness does not distract from the game's quality. Kids have a "do-it-again" mentality, and that's exactly what this game brings them. And for $3, you simply can't beat it. It's worth having on your phone just to allow kids to play with. It really sets a graphical-price standard that is going to be hard to match. Summary If deep, multi-level, tilt-i-Phone games are your thing, you will love Bugdom 2. And there's a lot to love. Stunning graphics, audio and overall color is alone worth seeing on your iPhone. It's a great game for kids, and for that reason, get it while it's still $2.99. That's a steal for such a deep, well-designed game. Hopefully some of the control issues will be smoothed out in future versions.

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