Review: Fingerzilla

The Overview

Free Apps! Free Apps! We all want some free Apps! Free Apps! Free Apps! Come and get your free Apps! For some time now, devs have been giving their apps away on a short term basis as a promotional gimmick - to boost ranking, to gain followers, etc. Then came the AppVent Calendar. Now my Twitter feed is overflowing with sites posting free Apps, especially games. One of the heavy hitters is FreeAppADay.com....so heavy, in fact, that Yahoo Finance reported on March 8th that FAAD shot Fingerzilla from complete obscurity to #1 in the App Store in 24 hours. So, Fingerzilla MUST be great, right? I mean it was a FAAD free app, it hit #1 and it lets you be a freakin' kaiju destroying metropolises! Rampage World Tour, disasters in Sim City and Populous, "completely destructible environments" advertised in every modern FPS ...damn, but do we ever want to destroy as much as create. So Fingerzilla MUST be great....right? RIGHT?!? So I SO MUCH wanted to like this app...I even waited until 2.0 came out to do this review, hoping they would optimize it. But, alas, it has to be one of the laggiest games I have ever played on my 1st Gen Touch. Your finger represents the destructive might of a giant monster ala Godzilla. Tap the buldings to destroy them, the cars and trucks to smash them and the people to eat them. Speed is of the essence - you are on a clock and score more points the faster you terrorize the town. There is also a panic meter that fills up as you cause more wanton (or do Japanese monsters create wonton) destruction. More panic equals more points (basically it acts as a multiplier).

The Features

Fingerzilla uses OpenFeint for achievements and leaderboards. All of the achievements are cumulative, meaning you don't have to reach any of them in a single game - you accumulate your kill and damage totals over multiple games and reach each high water mark. The leaderboards, however, are another matter. Basically, you CANNOT place on any of the leaderboards without buying at least the "Stop Time" Add-On. This has actually been a complaint on discussion boards. Fingerzilla has 6 levels built in but 7 more available through an Add-On. Besides the two Add-Ons mentioned, Stop Time and Level Pack, there is also a Name Pack that allows you to eat famous people, dead presidents, new annoyances (like a telemarketer) and people off your contacts list. The fourth Add-On pack that currently exists is the first one to come out, the Mutation Pack. It gives you 4 powers to eat and smash your way to higher scores.

The Breakdown

The Good You get to destroy stuff! Eat people! Death, destruction, mayhem - the kaiju way! The developers want this app to succeed. Add-On packs and updates are constantly in the pipeline (kind of like Pocket God or Doodle Jump). The Bad Did I mention the lag? The 1.1 update was supposed to fix those issues. Then the 2.0 update, again,  was supposed to fix it and people reported that it helped with their 3G phones. But it still runs terribly on my Touch and from the current comments, there are tons of other people with the same issue. Then there is the pricing structure. It's a $2 app (it was a free app for a day), it has advertising, and it has In App purchases. How many ways can you milk the cow? And the fact that one of the Add-On (some argue you need more than one) is required to to make it to the leaderboards is pretty lame.

The Verdict

I really wish I could have played this on a device that could handle it. Like I said, I WANTED to like this game...I STILL want to like this game. But it just has too many issues. The developers have stated that they want to fix the leaderboard issue and create an revenue stream that works well and impacts the consumer the least. If it goes free again, try it. See if ti amuses you for half an hour or so. Maybe check out and Add-On and see if that makes it more fun. Otherwise, just wait to see if Inert Soap figures out a pricing structure and optimization package that makes the game worth it.