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Download Games Roundup

Fireball! Swing! Faery! Zen! Breed!

Kristan Reed avatar
Review by Kristan Reed Contributor
Published on
21 comments

Let's Swing

  • DSiWare - 200 DSiWare Points (£1.80)

Despite what Freud might argue to the contrary, some days you wake up and you just want to swing. Gamebridge knows what I'm talking about, and has released a game specifically designed to channel these irrepressible urges into the magic of downloadable videogames.

In the latest addition to the cheap and cheerful GO! Series range, this 200-point offering dispenses with any pretence of narrative, and just lets you indulge in some carefree swinging, moving from bar to bar until you reach that elusive exit.

Essentially Donkey Kong: King of Swing without the bananas, you can either painstakingly gather up all the nonsense collectibles, or just keep your eye on the prize and try and get to the goal as quickly as possible.

With its stark, minimalist visual style and unremitting bleakness, it's got the cold heart of a robot, but when there's swinging to be done, such matters become secondary. Let's swing, comrades!

6/10

Faery: Legends of Avalon

  • Xbox Live Arcade - 1200 Microsoft Points (£10.20)
  • PSN and PC - available soon
Giant enemy crab!

The Kingdom of Avalon is dying! Time to engage in regulation turn-based battles and patient, forensic interrogation until the hideously ugly townsfolk give us the random tat we need to push the story along!

Having woken up from stasis, it seems that you're one of a handful that can be arsed to do anything about the crisis at hand, judging by the apathetic hand-wringing nonsense that greets you every time you ask someone for the slightest favour.

Of course, you grow to expect unhelpfulness from bit-part characters in videogames, but this lot take the biscuit. Prodding the story along even a tiny bit makes you feel like some kind of moronic errand boy.

To give the game some semblance of combative hook, you wind up fighting stubborn enemy crabs (yes, some of them quite large), petulant goblins and chippy fairies with tiresome regularity. Levelling up feels less like reward, and more of a transparent device to inspire some sense of progress – but with such a grinding repetition to everything that you do, you feel like a rat stuck in a maze, pushing a button for some sugar water.

If you fancy the idea of an RPG-lite Brothers Grimm tribute act, then go right ahead. But if you can tolerate more than half an hour without wanting to eat your own earwax, you'll be doing better than I.

5/10