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Mobile Games Roundup

Pandas! Golf! Airports! Etc.

I've spent a large portion of the last week lugging my 3DS around wherever I go. Not because of the stunning quality of the games, you understand; truth be told, I'm not especially bothered about any of the launch titles.

No, the root cause of my minor obsession is the bizarrely adorable Streetpass concept, where passing Miis migrate to your system and help rescue you from captivity. It's silly, largely pointless, and one of the most charming ideas I've ever seen.

On that note, then, I can't imagine it'll be long before we start seeing similar social gaming ideas integrated into mobile phones. I've only been wandering round London for a week and have already attracted 12 Miis into my 3DS. Imagine how many iPhones and Androids you'd wander past unwittingly in an average day.

How do you feel about strangers invading your devices? Is it a throwaway novelty or something that's going to steadily creep into our gaming from now on? While you're pondering, here's this week's pick of the mobile crop.

Collision Effect

  • iPhone/iPad - £0.59

Curse you, Chillingo. Not content with inflicting Cut The Rope, Sneezies, Food Processing, Wackylands Boss and about a hundred other similarly insidious mobile gems upon the world, it looks like you have yet another monumental timesink up your sleeve.

Smash hit.

As ever, the premise couldn't really be much simpler - but that only seems to make Collision Effect harder to put down.

The Action portion of the game involves eradicating coloured 'cosmic orbs' known as Zybbles. Obviously. As they drift lazily across the screen, you have to touch one of them to attract all the other like-coloured orbs. Once they touch, they disappear, and points are scored.

But if any of the orbs touches one of a different colour, it's a trip to the Game Over naughty step for you. Failure is a harsh mistress in Collision Effect.

Equally unforgiving but more considered is the Puzzle mode, where you're presented with a formation and have to suss out how to collide all the orbs of the same colour without allowing any opposing colours to touch en route.

The action starts off nice and gently before smashing you around the room with a two-by-four. No one said that puzzle genius couldn't be tempered by abusive madness, and you take the rough with the smooth in this game. Bloody Chillingo.

8/10