Overview
Lion Pride HUGE sees you take control of a pride of lions and hunt prey across the land and is the iPad version of the iPhone game of the same name.
Features
Lion Pride HUGE features tried and true path drawing gameplay, a long single player mode, a survival mode and online scoreboards/achievements via Openfeint.
The Good
Lion Pride HUGE (called huge because it is on iPad) puts you in control of a pride of lions and its your job to hunt prey to feed your cubs. You do this via familiar path based gameplay. You draw a line from your lion to an animal to attack it. Drawing one slowly causes your lion to slowly walk to the destination, while a faster swipe causes a run, or pounce if it ends at a creature.
Smaller animals, such as gazelles and warthogs go down easily enough with a single lioness, but larger animals require two or even three lions. Attacking with one lion will pin the animal for a while, so you can quickly route another feline into the melee.
Most prey runs quickly across the screen, so you can set up a lion or two in front of them, while another flanks in from the side to help clean up. Some levels also feature a sleeping male lion. If you wake him up, he can help take down bigger prey. As you move your lions, a food gauge in the bottom left ticks away slowly, so you must keep capturing prey for food. The game is very easy however, so I never had this gauge run out.
While you can get clever with Lion Pride, its easy to just abuse the game's stun mechanic. At any time you can double tap on an animal to stun it for a second or two and make it easy prey for your lions, or simply let them catch up, as prey will quickly run off the screen if you attack them. This makes the game very easy and rather unrealistic.
Besides the main game, which has plenty of stages there is Survivor mode, where you simply stay alive as long as possible in an unending stage.
The Bad
Lions pride unfortunately is pretty dull. The gameplay is very repetitive and it just doesn't have that hook that other path drawers such as Flight Control have. The game is quite slow paced and there is never much happening on screen. While it slowly adds in new elements, none of these are all that interesting.
Lion Pride looks pretty average, rather like a high res flash game with cel shading. The game is viewed from above and its somewhat difficult to tell what some animals are meant to be, as they are little more than colored shapes. At least the game is clean looking and colorful, but it pales badly compared to other iPad games.
Soudnwise the game is similarity unimpressive,. there is a few animal sounds and there are little environmental sounds. The music is also quite repetitive and poor. The controls aren't always perfect either. You'll drag a line quickly to an animal, only to watch your lion run up and brush against the animal, without attacking, giving it ample time to run away.
The Verdict
Lion Pride HUGE isn't all that great of a game. It isn't really all that fun and the game gets boring fast. The iPad version is more expensive than the iPhone version, which is already a pretty old game, and there are simply better games available for this price. If you want some interesting, fast paced path drawing gameplay try Flight Control or Harbor Master instead.
The Bad
