Review: Feed Al: A Finger Physics Odyssey – Star Hungry Aliens
by Staff Writer
December 8, 2010
Overview
Al Newton the Alien wants you to feed him by collecting stars with a special device called the collector that he provides to you. The game is from the makers of Finger Physics, and is a new game in that line. You place various shapes to direct the collector to roll through the level and collect all the stars.
Features
Every level has a certain number of stars, but you don’t have to collect them all to advance to the next level. You just have to get the collector from the top of the screen to the bottom while avoiding obstacles. Your score is based on time, and stars collected, and there is a special system called PlayPlace to compare your scores online geographically.The Good
The game offers up a much faster pace than the typical puzzle game. You place the given shapes to help the collector roll through the level, and as soon as the collector falls through the bottom you’re right at the top of the next level. You can use any or all of the pieces, and can choose to go for all the stars or the path of least resistance.
It’s complete up to you in this endless romp of collecting stars to feed Al. There are triangles, rectangles, and circles to place while you deal with hazardous bars, breakable glass blocks, and levels that have no side walls to keep the collector in the play area. All of your action is to create the path, and then you tap the collector and watch it go only able to hope it does well because you can’t interact with it while it’s moving.
That’s unless you get some of the upgrades which you can buy with the points earned for your gameplay. The earn points for every time you play which allow you to have upgrades including fireballs, nudge, and the ability to break any block. You have three lives, and every time the collector fails to make it through it costs you a life whether it hits an obstacle, gets stuck between blocks, or runs out of momentum.
The game has a nicely polished art style that the Finger Physics games have been come to be known for. There are nice animations for all the interactions the collector does, and the game has a sci-fi techno soundtrack. The game offers up a unique idea as you depend on gravity, and just offering up the slightest adjustments to the orbs natural path straight down through the level layout.
The Bad
The game is very simplistic in scope and content with one endless mode with randomly generated levels. Finger Physics is known for the amount of levels included, and variability between the levels, and sadly it’s not here in Feed Al. The levels blend together, and there isn’t much distinction in the tactics needed to be successful.
Any other type of mode would help the game greatly or some type of campaign so you feel like you’re actually going somewhere. There are various backgrounds for different locations, but you don’t travel to different locations allowing for checkpoints to pick up at those different locations. Therefore once you play a couple times you’ve seen every type of puzzle, and then they just repeat randomly with different backgrounds, and slight adjustments.
The game isn’t all that complex, and that aren’t very engaging puzzles. For the most part it seems too simple unless you try to get every star in a level. With an endless game you would think comparing scores online would be very important, but instead of using Game Center or OpenFeint or something else well established they have a brand new system. This brand new system doesn’t work very well as it requires location, but every attempt on an iPod Touch 4 couldn’t find my location, and didn’t let me enter it manually.
Occasionally the game doesn’t pick up your actions as you try to rearrange the pieces. Also you can only place the pieces rather than being able to manipulate them to change their orientation.
