Mini Reviews: Solitaire, Anger of Stick, and Icy Escort

From stick figures with a genocidal desire for blood to penguins that eat ice cream even when running across ice here are some iPhone games that take surprisingly different approaches to time wasting.

Solitaire

Solitaire is a standard for time killing ever since Windows
95 gave you the bouncing decks of cards. 
Now every clerical and cubicle worker in America knows the inner workings of
the game deeply, especially when their boss isn't working.  It serves to reason that the iPhone would be
a main hub for Solitaire and other card games, and developers have not
disappointed us too greatly.  The new
free iPhone game, which lucked out with being called just Solitaire, is a
decent port of this for the iPhone. 
There are few surprises in Solitaire, which may be the point.  When you open this free iPhone game you get
to choose to start a new game or resume one that you were just on, which allows
you to go back if you have to close it suddenly to pretend like you're
working.  This may be the only feature that
really sells Solitaire beyond the obvious. 
Before each game you can select the specifics you want, such as if you
want to draw one or three cards at a time. 
Inside gameplay is exactly as you would imagine, with visuals being
about as on point as you could expect. 
The only detraction from Solitaire is that there are advertisements on
the main menu for other games, but since they do not actually work their way
into the game itself this is not too much of an issue.

Anger of Stick

It makes sense that free iPhone games are not quite as lucrative
as pay ones, but do not create a free iPhone game that does nothing but advertise
the associated full version.  This is
annoying, but you will find that Anger of Stick Free is actually a relatively
decent 'beat 'em up' for the iPhone.  Anger of Stick requires you as a hand drawn
white little humanoid to run around in bland looking levels fighting others and
rescuing people that look like you.  You
will try to get more money as you do this so you can continue to get a library
of different weapons and then move on to more difficult missions.  This is all done with reasonably good
controls and visuals, which look somewhat like they are being drawn by a grade schooler
right before you start playing.  Beyond
the clever use of visuals you are going to see that this is a pretty standard
side scroller with lots of annoying obstacles that you have to follow, but it
is by no means on the worse end of the iPhone game spectrum.  There is the free iPhone game version of
Anger of Stick and then the full one, which only costs $0.99.  If you try out Anger of Stick Free and enjoy it
then you may as well buy the full version, which is going to be worth it for
the most part.  In the end you are going
to find that there are a number of different level types, a whole host of
enemies, and it really does not seem too repetitive.  This is all true, but since the gameplay does
not really evolve throughout it does not maintain a consistent longevity.  Anger of Stick is not going to break any
records for iPhone game design, but it is some much needed fun on your touch
screen.

Icy Escort

Donut Games' Icy Escort takes America's recent obsession with
cartoon penguins and puts them right into the stock game design that they have used
all along.  The basic premise in Icy
Escort is that you have penguins that run from side to side.  You can hit them to make them jump to one of
the above platforms, where they may run into a sign that will force them to run
the opposite direction.  Here you want to
make sure that they get the available ice cream bars and find their young ones,
which will just latch on the second they run past.  If you do well enough with the given goals
you will be able to move onto the next level. 
Donut Games has done what many of the free text based iPhone MMO RPGs
have done in that they design a single game and then change all the surface
themes.  Icy Escort is not that bland,
but it does kind of make you wonder whether or not people play several of Donut
Games' titles at the same time.  Icy Escort
is a decently fun game to break up long car or plane rides, and since it is a
free iPhone game it is hard to complain too much.  As the iTunes' App Store becomes more and
more full you begin to wonder what the qualifications are for going through the
effort of installing a free iPhone game on your iPhone.  Try out Icy Escort and see if it fits into
your definition.