Review: Blokus is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
- Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Price: $4.99 (Download here)
- Version: 1.0
- Official Site: Gameloft
A few years ago, I was ordering a round of drinks at a dingy underground bar when I spotted a selection of board games behind the counter. The barmaid explained that we could take any of the games to play at our table, as long as we didn’t return them covered in beer and spirits.
The classics were there — Monopoly, Ludo, Dingbats — but I opted for something I’ve never even heard of before. Two hours later, Blokus has us all enthralled with its clever, competitive play. Maybe it was the drink, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was one of the best board games I’d ever played.
Gameloft has now brought Blokus and all its Tetris-like pieces to the App Store. Although it’s a little more difficult to play than its fold-away counterpart, it’s a wonderful conversion, adding a variety of special and classic game modes and challenges to beat, along with both online and local mutiplayer.
Each player has a set of shapes which they must attempt to place on the game board. Pieces can only be placed if they touch another piece of the same color at one of its corners, although they can touch other players’ pieces from any side.
All four players take turns in a race toward the center, then spread out to cover and secure as much space on the board as possible. It’s preferable to use larger pieces early on, so that when the board gets filled up, the smaller pieces can slot in more easily.
The best strategy is to find holes in between your opponents’ pieces, so you can weave in and out of their gaps. Eventually, none of the four players will have any space left in which to put blocks, and the winner is the participant who occupies the most individual squares — each piece being made up of one to five squares.
So that’s the game, and it’s great fun – but how does the iPhone adaptation compare? Blissfully, it’s wonderful stuff. The interface works like a charm, with the main board taking up the majority of the screen and all your available blocks accessed from a sliding panel at the bottom.
Gameplay is a simple case of dragging the pieces on to the board, spinning and flipping them into place, and then confirming your move. It’s a little tricky to grab the tiny blocks and put them in place at first, but it’s fine once you’ve got the hang on it.
The game comes with a full tournament mode, played against four AI players, which is full of special challenges to complete. All of the traditional game modes are there, including Duo, Classic 4 and Team Play. The AI is pretty clever, even when set to Easy, and will wipe the floor with you numerous times before you fully get into the swing of it.
The multiplayer is functional, but lacking some vital options. Local mode allows you to play wirelessly across two iPhones, while Online mode lets you play against friends via Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, there’s no option to search for a random game — you’ll need to invite friends to join your game.
It would have also been nice to have the option to play multiplayer on a single device, passing it between players. An oversight, perhaps, but even so, the wireless and Wi-Fi multiplayer runs smoothly and is highly competitive.
Throw in Gameloft trophies to earn and leaderboards to conquer, and you’ve got yourself a masterclass in bringing board games to the touch screen. Whether you’ve played the original board game or not, Blokus is well worth a download. It’s fun, challenging and smile-inducing.
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Blokus is a real-life, award-winning board game, but don’t feel bad if you’ve never had a chance to play before. Gameloft’s new iPhone port of the game is great, sans a few problems, and the game itself is a ton of fun to play.
Strategy games are good. Simple strategy games with evil AI’s, however, are even better. Among Us is the latter. Though its user interface could use some work and not everyone likes a punishing AI, Among Us’s fungal cannibalism should provide a thrilling challenge for true strategy fans.
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Connect 4 is a classic board game with a very simple concept. Two players stack chips in a 7×6 grid until one of them can get four in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Just about everyone’s played this version of tic-tac-toe on steroids at some point, and now you can play it on the go thanks to Hasbro and EA. The problem is, Connect 4 isn’t much of a long-player. The core gameplay just isn’t very stimulating, and the handful of bells and whistles included does little to change that.
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