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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Mobile Games Roundup

Glowfish! Moki! Detective! Siege! Minesweeper!

Now that Steve Jobs has handed the CEO reins over to Tim Cook, there's a general assumption that Apple will continue to do just fine. Given how powerful the company now is, and how many unfeasibly talented individuals work for it, it'd have to work extremely hard to let it allow one person to affect the incredible momentum it has built up.

Then again, those with longer memories can be afforded a little wince at the prospect of such a pivotal, inspirational figure not being in full command. He is, after all, renowned for caring about the details on a legendary scale, and in the business that Apple is in, it's the details that make the difference.

Whatever the pundits might say, one way or the other, there's little doubt that he leaves a legacy to be proud of, and at a time when there's a strong possibility that Apple might find itself outflanking allcomers in video gaming to dominate a sector that it has openly had little interest in.

Whether Jobs' less hand-on role will accelerate that possibility remains to be seen, but from where we're standing right now, the competition knows it has a fight on its hands to keep up with the pace of change.

iBlast Moki 2

  • iPhone £0.69. Does not work on iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 1G.
  • HD version: (version reviewed) iPhone/iPad £1.99.
  • Coming soon to Android.

Who is Moki anyway? Man fish? Sentient tomato? No idea, but this red-faced goon evidently still needs blasting into a swirling vortex of his own infinite pain. Perhaps it's best not to dwell on it too much.

Beneath the smiles, pain.

Like the simple, elegant physics puzzler from a couple of years back, the sequel, once again, tasks you with bombing everyone to the magic spiral of doom by placing explosive charges under their behinds.

But as well as the formula works, Godzilab knew it couldn't just get away with just trotting out a few new levels and sticking a number 2 at the end. So, as a means of justifying its existence, you get access to a bunch of new gizmos, such as Portal 2-style surface accelerator paint bombs that send Moki whizzing off at high speed.

With ropes, balloons, glue bombs, wheels and crazy flying dogs also making an appearance (spot the lie), it quickly develops into the kind of trial-and-error beard twiddling that makes you forget that you missed your stop 10 minutes ago.

With 90 brow-furrowing levels to pile through - and a built-in level editor for creative sorts - iBlast Moki 2 offers the kind of value that will have Satoru Iwata crying into his sales figures. The iPhone's not exactly short of great physics puzzle games, but it'd be remiss of anyone not to pick this one up.

8/10

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