Who Wants To Be A Pilkington - App Of The Week

Everyone knows Karl Pilkington, the loveable chimp like orange shaped head idiot. There are plenty of words to describe Karl, however with a doubt is one of the funniest guys on the planet, whether its intentional or not I don't know, nor frankly care as whatever the guy touches is pure gold ever from the podcasts up to his latest work in Derek and Idiot Abroad.

Now he even has a App dedicated to him, its based on the popular show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," instead of answering questions about general knowledge. You answer questions about Karl and his many outrageous quotes and questions about his time on both Idiot Abroad and his Podcasts, granted if you have only watch the cult TV serious you will really struggle however even if you don't know the answer, the questions alone make you laugh. For theses of you who are obsessed with the guys brilliance you will love it. There are around 500 questions to answer so there is a variety, though be aware and expect some questions to repeat after a few goes put the game is not really based around the hours of playtime.Its just great to play when you are on break at work or when your just chilling down for a few laughs and to test your knowledge.

There is a few entertaining twists such as instead of the "phone a friend" and "ask the audience" options you receive on the TV quiz show. In a comical approach you know receive the option to "ask some monkeys" and "phone Susanna" which is just a simple but entertaining feature which helps the atmosphere of the game. As well, there is a little orange beside each answer symbolising how Ricky Gervais describes the shape of his head. There is also the option to upload your scores onto Facebook to compare your knowledge of Karl with your friends.

Overall it is a really enjoyable game full of humour, there maybe difficult questions for those who are not as familiar but the best part its free and will provide you with plenty of laughs. Its a good app and well worth a few plays to see if you can score a million.

7/10 

Muffin Knight - App Of The Week

For all those who love our Apps on our phones. I have started to do a App Of The Week in where I will recommend a App for you all to go and download. This can range from games, travel, sports and even news. Theres no limitations on what I will recommend, apart from you will need either a android store or have access to the iTunes Market. 

This weeks App Of The Week is Muffin Knight, the highly addictive 2D Blaster brought to us by Angry Mob Games, creator of other titles such as Predators and Guerrilla Bob. Muffin Knight is an action packed platform game with really stunning visuals and great settings for our characters to fight it out in, from environments such as castles and windmills. Theres a certain fairy tale backstory to the game from the storyline, characters and environments. You get to play as a variety of different characters as you power up from each muffin you collect, all have there own unique attributes and some more useful and others depending on your tactics to conquer the levels. Characters such as Monkeys, Goblins and Unicorn really make the game a whole lot of fun and really refreshing.

There is not much Narratology to Muffin Knight,  you start of as a little boy on a journey to return the old fairy's magical muffins, when all of a sudden a curse is put on you and with each muffin you collect you turn into a different creature, however the fairy then implies she will only reverse the curse once you have collected all the muffins back, charming right. You then have to collect a certain amount of muffins on each stage, obviously some are much harder than others with the challenge of accomplishing a 5 star rating on each stage. Muffin Knight requires a great amount of skill, believe me it is not as easy as it looks.

The gameplay of Muffin Knight is the strongest
point, its just so fun and slick, it only requires 2
control buttons which are shoot and jump so its easy for anyone to pick up and play. Obviously things are'nt straight forward as you are accompined by a range of evil characters all out to deploy you on your mission. There is a whole range of characters from sheep to bats and weird troll looking characters, some require more hits to kill. Another great feature is the ability to level up your attributes as you gain more experience, it adds a lot more diversity and keeps you more interested in the game to improve your characters and believe me you will need all the help you can in the stages later on in the game. Theres a great selection of ways to kill your foe which is another great aspect from the gameplay point of view from fireing shotguns, and launching eggs and bananas. Theres a lot more creativity used and a more fun approach to killing your enemies from a range of comedic attributes. Its also a great game to compare your best scores on each level with your friends, to increase the competitively. Muffin Knight graphically is one of the most colourful and beautiful games I have played on a mobile and really complements the game brilliantly.

Know to the real best bit about Muffin Knight, it costs a mere 79p, which is an absolute bargain for what is a brilliant game and will offer hours of gameplay. I really couldn't recommend the game more, there is not much a could fault about the game, the only slight issue is on touch screen you sometimes forget where the buttons are or your finger slightly misses contact, but that happens for all the games and not just Muffin Knight. Overall if your into mobile gaming and want a fun, yet challenging arcade thriller with a twist Muffin Knight is the game for you from hardcore gamers to the casuals out there.


9/10

Super Mario Brothers 2 (3DS)

Here we go then this is my first blog of many hopefully, First off I'm going to introduce myself as been a huge fan of video games and have a degree in the area and have been a massive follower of the mario series from an early age, the SNES is still one of my favourite gaming consoles growing up. The Mario franchise has been a huge influence into me wanting to get into the gaming industry, every aspect from the level designs, characters and the gameplay is what I love about the franchise, its just so simple for your grandpa and casual gamers to pick up and play.

For those of you, if any that are not familiar with the Mario formula, its pretty basic story telling. The Princess gets captured by Bowser and his helpers, you really think she would learn by now however its up to Mario and luigi to save her from his evil clutches by going through a variety of different levels and crossing worlds, meeting familiar foos along the way.



The new features which come with this version is firstly its Nintendo 3DS only so you get the 3D graphics which look really great and colourful and add a little extra depth in 3D but its really not the best game to demonstrate the capability of the 3D feature with it been a 2d side scrolling game. The interface, and the maps look really effective however. Super Mario Brothers 2 also introduces this new feature which is all about collecting coins with the target set to a million and you can compare with people via street pass. Whilst at first I thought this was an interesting concept and increases the playability the main fault I have, is that with this feature there are a lot more coins to be collected per level so within playing the first world i found myself with other 100 lives. This making the campaign mode a lot easier, I realise the Mario franchise is aimed towards the more casual gamers but they probably should have balance these two aspects more, apart from these two features there really is not a lot different from the previous Super Mario Bros, which I can't decide if its a positive or negative, I agree with the mentality of if its not broke, don't fix it, but Id also like to see more imagination.

As with every Mario game, I can't fault the range of the level designs and all provide a challenge. The most difficult aspect of the levels I found was collecting the 3 major coins per level, some are really challenging and provide you to have a certain attribute for example a fire mushroom at the time for you to achieve the goal, though getting from A to B i didn't find challenging enough, though for the target audience of the game it probably has around the right difficultly. The one aspect I strongly dislike was the feature that if you die 5 times in a row on a level you a granted this special attribute which basically is like giving you a free by. as nothing can kill you apart from falling off the screen. Its like rewarding you for mistakes, and it should be more about upping your game to complete the level, instead it just makes it easier than easy at times, of cause you don't have to take the attribute but the fact its even included is a element that is not to my taste.

As with most games in the franchise the gameplay is pretty much nailed on, its so simple and fluent to play, and like most mario games its so fun, if not challenging enough at times. Playing with people in co op mode is a great feature as you battle between you to earn more coins than the other player whilst at the same time working together to complete the level. Id defiantly recommend playing the campaign mode on your own and with another player via co op as its two completely different experiences and others different challenges. The Coin Rush is also a fun new feature which I forgot to mention before which allows you to revisit levels as you battle against time to complete the level with as many coins whilst been awarded bonus and multipliers which really boost your coins total, which you can compare with other people and friends on the world rankings.

Overall if you have a Nintendo 3DS, then no doubt you are a fan of mario as the two things come together, however I wouldn't recommend this game to any hardcore gamers or players wanting a challenge. I'd recommend Mario 3D land for the 3DS instead. Super Mario Brothers is a good game but it offers nothing much different to previous titles, but theres enough to warrant the £30 rrp but I wouldn't be rushing and queuing up as soon as it hits the shop, id sit back with a cigar in hand and wait for the price to drop.

7/10