About Toronto Wireless

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Trucks and Skulls HD for iPad – App Review

By Ray Nicolini
via www.padgadget.com

When Angry Birds joined the Apple Store many months ago, it became an instant hit. But, that wasn’t the only thing it accomplished. Rovio Mobile captured the attention of many other developers looking to bring new game experiences to all of us.
This is the case with Trucks and Skulls HD. It’s inspired by Angry Birds, but a physics puzzler where you launch monster trucks off nasty ramps, perform stunts and flips in the air, and finally explode skulls in your path to score points.
Trucks and Skulls HD features a variety of trucks you can select from. It’s easy to play and the game is loaded with explosions, collapsing buildings, wicked cool art, and a large collection of Monster Trucks. You start with a standard monster truck to launch, and quickly advance to trucks that drop bombs, look nasty with spiked plows, and more.
Don’t think the gameplay is boring. It’s a physics-based puzzle game that has you flinging trucks into very detailed designed levels to destroy skulls. Sounds simple, but the action gradually scales up to introduce complexity to the levels. As you make progress through this game it becomes a bit more challenging. The skulls’ fortresses become more heavily fortified, which challenges you to use your imagination and trucks’ abilities in order to make sure you destroy all skull targets in your path. Developer Appy Entertainment has added elements like rubber walls, TNT, and lava that you must use wisely to take out all those skulls.
The game presentation is quite powerful. The game is loud and looks big on the iPad. You will hear rock and heavy metal influences throughout the game, which brings some excitement to the experience. Just like Angry Birds, the screen scrolls horizontally, and you can use the iPad’s pinch method to zoom in and out.
The skulls and level layouts change to bring new elements to consider as you make progress through the game. You will encounter steel-plated skulls that require extra firepower before they explode, demolishing steel fortresses on Hell’s Highway, or walls that bounce anything that touches them. Depending on how well you destroy the level and the skulls, you earn anywhere from one to four “gears” for the level. There are three different environments for the levels, and each of them has over 40 levels to experience.
Appy Entertainment has added online support and sharing tools. Game Center support is integrated, which allows you to check scores and compare progress with friends. You can also use the Level Maker mode, which allows you to build custom levels and share them with your friends.
What we liked: The design and game presentation is quite good. The gameplay, physics mechanics and game levels design are well thought out. Brings a lot of replay value with many levels and more on the way.
What we didn’t like: We liked the Level Maker mode, but there is no way to easily download levels from the online community. It requires you to send your creation via email and have the file imported into the game.
To buy or not to buy: This is a fun game with great visual and audio presentation. It’s fun to play. The variety of trucks and game levels offer a lot of replay value. If you like to play a fun physics puzzler, Trucks and Skulls HD is a very good download for your iPad.
  • App Name: Trucks and Skulls HD
  • Developer: Appy Entertainment
  • Version: 1.1
  • Category: Games
  • Price: $1.99
  • Score: 

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