Mobile Games Roundup

Land-A Panda

• iPad - £1.19
• iPhone - £0.59

If only life were always this simple. According to my wholly unscientific research, nine times out of ten, a mobile game's title reveals exactly what the game is about without need for lengthy explanation. Are they trying to put me out of a job?

Case in point: Land-A Panda; a game in which you're required to, er, land a panda next to his lovestruck mate, lest her heart be broken into a thousand pieces.

As luck would have it, Mr Sad Panda can only reach the love of this life by being blasted between cannons. It's up to you to catapult the poor beast from one to other without reducing him to a paste.

What he did to deserve this appalling treatment is entirely glossed over, but Big Pixel Studios manages to convey this harrowing tale of animal cruelty with a cuteness bordering on sinister.

There you are, propelling Yang Guang from one metal tube after another, trying to collect love coins and avoid making Tian Tian dissolve into a puddle of her own tears as he gets impaled on spikes again.

If anything, Land-A Panda could have probably benefitted from cranking up the evil earlier on. For the first 20-odd levels, it's all a bit of a foregone conclusion.

The danger is that by the time it starts to present a concerted challenge, you've probably started to grow weary of their fawning. But stick with it; those sickly love chemicals don't last forever.

7/10

Tapper World Tour

• iPad - £1.79
• iPhone - £1.19

Just when it seemed there was no hope of Midway's ancient arcade classic ever being dusted down for the mobile generation, up pops this bright and breezy tribute to insatiable alcoholism.

As with the 1983 original, the idea is to keep a baying mob of thirsty customers happy by flinging endless pints of beer in their general direction until they all sod off home again.

With its simple, tap-based controls, Tapper World Tour has the kind of instant, manic, and repetitive appeal that made us so unreservedly fond of it in the first place.

Square One Studios hasn't spoiled the party with pointless new ideas for the sake of it. Instead Tapper World Tour gradually builds on the original template with logical additional mechanics, such as having to dish out the right drinks to each patron, and new powerups.

With the steady hand of the legendary Don Bluth providing the necessary visual makeover, the game's relentlessly cheery vibe picks up from where it left off all those years ago. This time a cast of deranged and thirsty souls do battle across a hundred levels. We're holding out for the Eastenders and Corrie DLC, guys.

Perhaps the only downside to all this nostalgia is that Square One didn't include the effortlessly charming original for posterity. For as much as Tapper World Tour has all the ingredients required, the net result was that I wanted to go back and play the real thing. Maybe one day.

7/10