Kingdoms Live was one of the first games I downloaded from the App store and it’s one that I still play a couple of times a day.
It’s an MMORPG which follows a medieval theme. You choose your character type and their strengths then work to build them up using quests, battles and upgrades.
The first game of this type which I saw was the Facebook game “MobWars” which I played for a few weeks before getting bored of it.
Mobwars on Facebook had 2 major problems:
You could only add actual Facebook friends as “army” members, so recruitment was slow
The barriers in certain parts of the game were ridiculous (having to upgrade 100 levels to acquire new property types)
Level Up
Neither of these problems exist in Kingdoms Live. You can easily add people and there’s no downside or privacy issue. You can easily trawl other peoples comments looking for “friend codes” and grow your army to the necessary size.
The only problem I have with Kingdoms live is that it can only be played online – perfect if you have an iPhone, not so great if you’re reliant on WiFi, as I am.
It’s a familiar concept, and one that’s been duplicated by the company themselves several times, with rockstars, vampires and space traders all getting the same treatment. Personally I couldn’t play more than one of these games but I like this one and I’ll be sticking with it (My army code is 4VRSU).
While I’ve been experimenting with lots of iPod applications I’ve come across what I think is going to be my number one bugbear. Some games handle it beautifully and some abuse their privileges completely.
You see I’m usually trying to review these apps while listening to something on the iPod. I’d like to be cool and hip and be able to say it was the latest single from someone or other but the truth is, being me, it’s just as likely to be the Archers podcast.
SOme applications, when I start them, switch off my music and make me lsiten to theirs, I’m sure they’re beautifully crafted (actually, often they’re not) but that’s not the point. I wasn tot listen to what I want to lsiten to – that’s the main reason for having an iPod after all.
So this is my plea- don’t force me to listen to your music – let me listen to my own!
My name’s Brian and I’m an addict. I can’t seem to stop playing Airport Mania. It’s a fairly simple game concept but it’s beautifully executed and highly addictive.
You are the controller of an airport and you have to land planes, disembark passengers, repair and refuel aircraft and send them on their way again.
You guide the aircraft around by touching their destinations in order. In that way it’s possible to set up a series of movements, waypoints if you like. IT sounds very simple, and it is, but there’s a definite art to it and the scoring system encourages you to reach for airport handling perfection.
You can upgrade the airport, adding runways, gates and other facilities. This makes life easier but every 6 levels or so you move airports, which means starting from scratch, or close to it.
There are around 50 levels to play, and there is the challenge of re-playing difficult levels to aim for the “supreme score”. I’m on my second play through, trying to work win all of the trophies and awards, and trying to complete every level with the highest score level.
The graphics and sounds are perfect and make the gameplay so much more entertaining.
I bought AirportMania on a whim, and I’m glad I did. I hadn’t realised that there was a lite version which you can get to try it out. This has fewer levels but will give a good taste of what is in the full version.
