Snails by PDAMill (10/07/2004)
Saturday, 10 July 2004 19:14

I got really excited when the boss man sent out the "stuff-to-review" email and saw that this was on it. I'd been meaning to check it out and now I had another reason. This type of game is exactly what the Smartphone platform needs! For those of you not familiar with the Worms series of games for the PC, it's a turn based game where you control a team of worms. The objective, kill the opposing team in the most brutal way you can. Snails is an excellent re-make of this classic "I have nice weapon and you're gonna get this business end of it" game.

My first impressions of the game, based on the screenshot you see above, were great and when I started to play the game I wasn't disappointed. I was, however, a little frustrated when I kept losing. The games ai can be, at times, a little too accurate but that's no biggie. Once you really sit down and start getting into the game it becomes a lot easier, you grow to love covering the little guys in napalm gel and watching them explode. Which nicely brings me onto the weapons, they rock!! Depending on how much money you allow yourself to have, the list of weapons you have is a long one. As standard you'll get a bazooka, shotgun, snail air fight (haven't quite figured out that one yet but its good for moving about) and the schnoogie special (some kind of gun). The fun starts when you start using the rest of your arsenal. Feeling frustrated with life? No job, no prospects? Don't worry! Just unleash a nice bio air strike on a Snail and all's well with the world again. In fact, while your at, it why not try the mortars, dynamite, flame strikes, chain guns, machine guns, rockets, teargas or maybe some ants or fleas. The list is endless, well, not quite but there are a lot of weapons to choose from.

The only real disappointment comes after you played it a few times and notice that there's no real game progression. You set the difficulty, you set how much money and therefore weapons you have, you set the game stage, in fact, you setup pretty much everything, there are no missions. This is, however, the game's only real downside. Although only having five different stages might get to you after a bit too. Never fear though, because in the style of all good games, snails is customizable. Support for the smartphone version of this game is, well, a bit thin on the ground. Once you've registered on http://www.snailsgames.com and gone to the members area, you find that, as with most things that started life out on the Pocket PC, the level of support for Smartphone i.e. downloads/customizations etc is not great. However, a quick browse of their forum and you'll soon be in the company of like minded individuals who have taken matters into their own hands, made their own levels, weapons, music and are happy to share them with you and show you how it's done so you can have a bash at it. Now I only had a quick look but I've already found a new weapons.dat file that gives you such classics as the exploding pineapple! From the looks of it this stuff is quite easy to do yourself, although, I haven't managed to find any levels that work with the smartphone version'yet.

This game basically rocks. Don't let the lack off missions put you off. It's a great little game and is perfect for venting a bit of stress. The ability to create/download different levels, weapons, music is a lovely feature that will surely make for good longevity and I'm sure in due course the issue of missions will be addressed. Even if you're not really into gaming this is still a great thing to have on your phone, if not for the fact that it has great playability then for the pure 'look-at-what-my-phone-can-do-ness' of it. I love this game and think its well worth the $9.95 pdamill charge for it. Especially when you realise it's a one-off fee and you're free to download new versions/upgrades as and when they appear at no extra cost! More information on how to buy etc. can be found at http://www.pdamill.com/smart.shtml

Go buy it, now!

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