Frog Vs Insects HD Is A Total Buzz Killer
Frog vs Insects HD (Free) by Vision4D is a casual game with a simple premise. The frog must eat everything it sees; largely spiders.
It is a cute, cartoonish minute-killer, the object of which is to move your iPad to guide the frog to his prey. You can also catch hearts to increase your health (although no reason for losing health is explained or obvious) and bug spray to kill several “insects” at once.
That power-up particularly confuses me, and makes me think this is an ill-conceived game. If the goal is to feed the frog, it would seem pesticides would make a less than ideal glaze.
The game’s concept is simple and there is no learning curve to start playing, but regrettably that’s where the good news ends.
The controls are clunky, and slow. I’m not sure if this should have been marketed as an iPad 2 app to take advantage of the gyroscope and increased processor speed, or if this is just a dud, but I am leaning toward dud.
Certainly on an original iPad it’s cumbersome, not fun.
And, while the description claims there are “some physics” to the game, I failed to see anything coherent.
The game warns you to wait for the green arrow to indicate you are in proper position to snatch the falling and flying morsels, but the green arrow is lit at almost every angle. I was able to make impossible (physics-wise) catches and miss things that were lined up.
I tried all three difficulty levels and saw no difference between them.
Most mysteriously, while this app is free, you are presented with an option to unlock it. But, nowhere in the app, or the iTunes description, does it say what you unlock. There are no ads in the game to remove, and I can’t see a need for special power-ups, so it’s seems like a ploy rather than an in-app enhancement.
You also get a nag screen asking for an iTunes review at the end of every short round. I think Vision4D had best be careful what they wish for!
This is exactly the sort of half-baked app that makes me wish the App Store review process was more rigorous.
Even at no cost, Frog vs Insects HD is a game to avoid. It’s frustrating, unresponsive, and not worth the time to download.
And, FYI to the devs, spiders, are not insects they are arachnids.
