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Mobile Games Roundup

Reckless! Shoot! Dexter! Angry! Buka!

The trouble with doing these roundups is never quite knowing how good a game is going to be. As with Game Dev Story, you can sometimes end up finding something so good that it clearly deserves its own review. This is probably the shortest review you'll ever see on Eurogamer, but until that review gets commissioned, you should trust me on this and buy it immediately. It'll be the best £2.39 you ever spend. Probably.

The rest of the current crop isn't quite so magisterial in quality, but we think you'll appreciate at least a couple of the five we've got lined up for you this week. Shoot To Kill is the first of numerous new games on the way from ex-Sensible head honcho Jon Hare's new mobile-centric outfit Tower Studios, while addled Angry Birds addicts will no doubt be delighted to know that they can sink another few hours into the 45 new levels on offer.

Elsewhere, Reckless Racing is one of the best-looking mobile titles ever made, while Dexter's belated release on iPad is a prime example of where it all goes horribly, gruesomely wrong. A horror show for all the wrong reasons.

Shoot To Kill

  • iPhone / Free (iPad version coming soon)
Love missile F1-11.

There's plenty of murderous intent in this week's roundup, and none more so than in this surprisingly addictive top-down killing spree from Vivid Games.

Despite entering the depths of hell armed to the teeth, our fearless warrior appears to have lost the ability to walk, and spends the entire game rooted to the spot while the denizens of the underworld decide, in time-honoured fashion, that it's time for huuugs.

Sadly, cosy cuddles are the last thing on your mind, and you decide, instead, to blast chunks out of the demon horde by tapping the screen where they appear. At first hell's fury isn't much to worry about, and enemies go down with a single shot, but sure enough, more powerful foes quickly start to dish out the pain.

Within a few levels, you're swatting furiously around the screen like a demented cat attacking a quilt, desperate to quell the relentless surge. Mindful of the number of shots it takes to dispatch each enemy, you get into an amped-up rhythm, clattering away with extreme prejudice.

Designed with the specific intent to give players a bloody nose, Shoot To Kill isn't content until it has left you a husk of an individual, twitching silently in the corner. But some of you enjoy that, don't you?

8/10