Mini Reviews: Fingerzilla, Tap Fish, 69 Positions

In this round of iPhone games and applications you have one that wants you to replicate a natural disaster, one calm title that allows you to raise a binary fish, and one that simply insults your sexual intelligence.

Fingerzilla

The strange destructive impulse in many arcade videogames has been captured very directly by the new free iPhone game Fingerzilla.  In Fingerzilla, which is a part of the popular Open Feint iPhone gaming network, you are asked to essentially take the "Godzilla" role and begin destroying a metropolitan snapshot.  Instead of actually seeing visual representation of the Godzilla character you will instead simply tap the screen to engage in the destruction.  This is done really by just tapping buildings until they are engulfed in flames and eventually demolished entirely.  A timer is set as you begin and you begin 'going to town,' so to speak.  There are a number of different building types, as well as cars driving away and minute individuals running in distress.  It is up to you to rack up the amount of money and death, and the dollar amount is declared with each destructive act.  This works as a point system of sorts, which actually keeps Fingerzilla in line with a very conventional puzzle formula.  Once you have finished with the level you will get a newspaper piece listing the destruction and mayhem you have inspired in your brief period of attack.  There are a few different levels you can engage with an the Open Feint network gives you a fairly in depth level of communication and interaction, though this plays out mostly in the form of score bragging rather than gameplay.  Fingerzilla is fun in a fairly casual way, but since there is not much diversity here or much linear progress it loses interest after a little while.  As a free iPhone game there is really no reason not to try Fingerzilla out, but do not feel like you really need to keep it on your desktop past its use.

Tap Fish

One emerging iPhone game genre hails back to the mid-1990s fad of virtual pets.  This makes sense on a mobile platform that stays with you at almost all times, but does mean that you have to be even more dialed in to your iPhone.  Tap Fish is essentially a fish raising incarnation of this virtual pet format where you are given a small aquarium and all the necessary equipment to purchase and care for fish.  There are actually quite a bit of required intervention in Tap Fish starting with feeding of the fish and cleaning of the tank all the way to a leveling system based on how much interaction you have.  Each episode with the fish in Tap Fish will be a few minutes at the most, but as you acquire more fish and get more involved you are going to have to start returning several times a day.  This is fine as this is in line with the basic necessity of such a game, and really for a free iPhone game it stands up against competitors.  The financial system in Tap Fish involves much of how you will upgrade your gaming situation by going to the pet store to purchase things like new fish and food.  You have the option to visit your 'Neighbor,' which really just means looking at another fish tank.  All of these things will give you points toward leveling and you will constantly have options to get more money to continually move forward.  Tap Fish does stand out as a pet simulator in that it justifies the time it takes for you to be successful.  This may not be for many of the older iPhone users, but you may just find out that you have a little kid hidden deep down.

69 Positions

Anyone that checks the iTunes' App Store on a regular basis knows that the new free iPhone application phenomenon are applications that give you various sexual positions.  This is part of the way that iPhone developers have gotten around the puritanical restrictions set up by Apple and still tap into the market of 'lurid curiosity.'  Currently one of the most popular is 69 Positions, which plays on the constant middle school laughter around the number 69.  Inside you get visual representations of this many sexual positions, each with their own little text snippet.  Each position in 69 Positions is described with humanoid figures almost devoid of any gender signifiers.  The information along with it is vague and usually including awkward puns to try and 'spice' it up.  It is hard to judge an application like 69 Positions in general.  It is a fairly stupid concept right from its inception, but it seems by its popularity that there is somewhat of a general interest in it.  Even compared with other sexual iPhone applications 69 Positions is fairly useless in that it does not provide anything anatomically inventive, has almost no information, and there is really little reason to check it out in the first place.  There is both a free iPhone application version of 69 Positions and a paid one, and the paid one has so little extra content that it really feels like a slap in the face.