Review: Geared
by Matt Fox
September 7, 2009
Overview
Get the gears turning...that's about the gist of Geared in a nut shell. You have a yellow gear and a blue gear to start with. You also have a bunch of gray gears that you place in between the yellow and blue ones. These gray gears range in size. Connect everything together so they all turn and presto, you've completed the level. Now do this over and over again with an addictive game that's as much fun as it is frustrating.Features
The game comes with a staggering 80 levels included in it with more on the way in the next upcoming update. The difficulty levels range from incredibly easy to frustratingly impossible as you progress throughout the game.
The app tracks your time on each level and it also has a player awards ranking system so you can keep track of how well you are doing on any particular level. There's a level selection menu so you can go back to any stage that has been completed and play it again if you wish to do so.
The game has no music in it, but you can play your own through the iPod and the sound effects can be turned off as well. The game saves your progress so if you get a text or phone call you can go right back into the game and pick up where you left off from. There is also a reset level button in case things get a little out of control.
Breakdown
The Good:
This game is very addictive. Once you start playing the game, it's hard to put it down. Before you know it you've gone through thirty some odd levels and wasted a few hours. It's just really easy to start playing the game. It just doesn't take a lot of effort to learn the basic premise of the game or get through many of it's earlier levels.The Bad:
I feel this game is too easy for its own good. What I mean is you can breeze through about thirty or forty levels before things start to get really difficult. Since it has 80 levels in it, that's more than half of the game completed before things start to get tough. I was kind of hoping that it would get harder, sooner. Some of the levels are so easy there isn't much value to them at all. I get that some are there to teach you how to play when new features are added like the "no-drop box" or the "slider," but still...
I also wasn't a big fan of the controls. The drag and drop is fine, but the game is so precise that it gets really frustrating when the gear needs to be moved over the tinniest bit for the other gears to start turning. We all know the iPhone is spotty sometimes with the touch controls and this game has a tendency to suffer from that due to the preciseness of the gear positions.
I also didn't like that you can't leave a gear on the screen. If it's not doing anything and is in a "non-working" position, it flashes red and you need to move it. However, I like being able to see all of the gears on the level so I can get a better sense of where to place them. In levels filled with "no-drop boxes," this isn't possible and I feel it hurts the game a bit.
