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Top 10 best Android games: July 2011

Jet skis, easily annoyed cats, and a lovesick robot – on a hoverboard

Top 10 best Android games: July 2011
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While the big box consoles take their bizarre summer hiatus (do people really stop playing Xbox 360 / PS3 games in July?), the Android scene has been flooded with quality releases.

There were no indispensable, Gold Award-winning games reviewed by the Pocket Gamer team during this month, just a steady downpour of solid titles covering the gamut from ultra-fast racing titles to languorous boardgames best served with a chilled glass of Chenin Blanc.

So, choose your relaxing beverage of choice, fire up the Android Market, and make your selection from July’s finest vintage.

Riptide GP
Review - Buy Riptide GP

If you’re lucky, or solvent, enough to own an NVIDIA Tegra-powered device, then last month’s highlight was undoubtedly jet ski racer Riptide GP.

With the team behind XBLA hit Hydro Thunder Hurricane at the helm, we knew Vector Unit’s title would have something to do with racing really fast over water, but we didn’t know just how spectacular it would look on Android.

While the hollow sense of progression and lack of multiplayer put some holes in the hull, this remains the best showcase of just what the Tegra chip can do.

With pin-sharp jet ski models, early Sega-like blue skies, and water physics that bob you around with eerie realism (especially as you wait on the starting grid), Riptide GP is stunning to gawp at and a solid racer to boot.

Roboto
Review - Buy roboto-android

One of the first games in a while to appear on Android and iOS at the same time (hardware fragmentation be damned), this Unity-powered platformer may be a hotchpotch of other game’s ideas, but it still possesses some personality of its own.

There’s a healthy dose of Mario, Sonic, and Cordy in the formula, but the vibrant colour scheme, frantic gameplay, and stern challenge give Roboto a distinctive appeal – and he rides a (always cool) hoverboard.

Played on touchscreens, Roboto can be tricky to manoeuvre and a little too unpredictable when navigating the less forgiving later levels.

Fortunately for owners of an Xperia Play, the game gets a major boost from the device’s physical controls – earning that version an extra review point from us as a result.

Spirit HD
Review - Buy spirit-hd-android

Marco Mazzoli’s Spirit HD is a smart spin on the ‘bullet-hell’ shooter in that you can’t fire at all. Wait, what?

Have no fear, though, as you can fight back against the waves of glowing neon enemies by circling them and creating temporary black holes to suck them into oblivion.

There’s a distinct Geometry Wars vibe about the smooth, grid-based visuals, but Spirit HD still has its own distinct character and runs beautifully on most handsets.

The only drawback is the lack of online leaderboards, which normally form the core of such high score-chasing gameplay. Beating your personal best is one thing, but taking on the world is quite another.

WipEout
Review - Buy wipeout-android

If, like this writer, you’re old enough to vividly remember the TV spots for WipEout, you’ll know just what a game changer Sony’s futuristic classic was back in 1995.

A launch showcase for the first PlayStation, this cutting-edge title blended pounding techno beats with lightning fast racing, shifting millions of hardware units in the process.

Even now - more than a decade and a half later - WipEout still looks and plays like a dream on Sony’s Android-fuelled Xperia Play. Its familiar tracks (both racing and musical) provide a heavy dose of nostalgia, but have barely aged at all.

It would be an essential purchase if we didn’t know the superior, more fleshed out sequel WipEout 2097 was inevitably racing towards a relaunch soon.

Carcassonne
Review - Buy Carcassonne-android

Relaxation and video games often make strange bedfellows, but not so when playing Exozet’s near-flawless adaptation of hugely popular board game Carcassonne.

Deceptively simple, the concept of building towns and villages by laying tiles depicting castles, roads, and monasteries is also intrinsically satisfying.

It would all be deeply soporific if the AI didn’t put up such a stern challenge in its efforts to claim as much of your beautiful land for itself.

There’s real strategic depth buried under the charming visuals, but the lack of online multiplayer is a strange omission that saps some of Carcassonne’s long-term appeal.

Grow
Review - Buy grow-android

Eating like a glutton to grow steadily larger and munch on even bigger dinners may be the cause of our national obesity problem, but it makes for a pretty addictive gameplay formula, too.

Grow is not the first game in which you eat everything smaller than you, while avoiding larger enemies until you’re big enough to swallow them whole, but it’s playful piscine style and colourful goldfish bowl backgrounds give this a fresh, fishy flavour.

A little light on content - beyond a brief story and an endless Survival mode - Grow is still worth a taste for those on the lookout for a quick bite of cutesy action.

Fieldrunners HD
Review - Buy fieldrunners-hd-android

It took a while, but everyone’s favourite iOS tower defense game final made its strategic debut on Android last month.

At three year’s old, Fieldrunners HD should be showing its age, but the cartoony units, streamlined tower upgrading, and immaculate touchscreen controls still mark this out as one of the pinnacles of the genre.

Placing, tweaking and, occasionally, ditching your towers of death is a delightful breeze, which is handy, because the ever-attacking enemies show no mercy in decimating all but the sturdiest defences.

Although this HD version isn’t quite the definitive version Android owners were hoping for, with some bonus iOS content presumably held back for in-app purchases, it’s still a towering success that thrives on large screens and tablets.

Cranky Cat
Review - Buy cranky-cat-android

A feline-fuelled spin on the match-three genre, Cranky Cat does a little more than just cough up another fur ball of Bejeweled-alike gameplay.

With events presided over by the moustachioed titular critter, the game is essentially Columns wrapped around a ball, though it's jam-packed with content and bristling with challenge.

Each level starts with an array of coloured balls around a central point, which can be rotated to match up the balls with extra ones drifting in from all sides to create lines of three that then disappear.

It’s been done before, but the addition of Puzzle challenges (where you get one ball to dismantle an entire pre-set layout) and a trio of Endless modes mean this Cranky Cat will be curling up on your Android device for some time to come.

Tilestorm HD
Review - Buy tilestorm-hd-android

Tactile puzzle games are hardly in short supply at the moment, but Tilestorm HD quickly hits that sweet spot where something seemingly simple becomes mind-meltingly tricky.

You have to a guide a cute as a button robot from A to B by sliding tiles around to form a direct path. It’s a familiar formula, yet the game is packed with challenge over its 100 levels (divided into Industrial, Medieval, Jungle, and Egyptian stages).

Tilestorm HD also makes a welcome habit of mixing up the mechanics as you play to keep things fresh. Most levels are based around simple tile sliding, but some require you to shift them about using the X and Y axis in true Rubik’s Cube fashion, and it’s this constant shifting of play styles that keeps you hooked.

Orbital Defender
Review - Buy orbital-defender-android

Some mobile games help you to relax and unwind from a tough day doing whatever you do for a living (office drone, drug kingpin, goat herder): Orbital Defender is not one of those games.

Instead, it’s the type of game where you end up hunched over the screen, with your fingers always seconds from painfully cramping, as you try to survive just one more wave and make it to the next level.

The main source of this tension is the lack of control you have beyond tap firing at meteors, asteroids, and alien craft, who are trying to reach the planet you’re tiny satellite is in charge of protecting.

There’s no way to control the speed or direction of your satellite’s orbit – so, if you miss an encroaching hazard on the first run, you’ve got to wait until you spin around again before you can finish it off. By which time, normally, Armageddon-sized meteors are taking chunks out of the planet you swore to protect.

Yes, it’s a tense and tricky beast, but Orbital Defender is still ruthlessly compelling. So long as you’re up for a serious blaster test.

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo