Dojo Madness

There must have been a moment during the presumably brief design meeting for Dojo Madness when someone suggested using swipe controls for the kung fu combat.

After all, if you're playing a character twirling a wooden staff and fending off waves of enemies it makes sense that you’d be swishing away at them (as in Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword on DS or Samurai II: Vengeance on Xperia Play).

But whoever made this suggestion was ignored, with the result that you half-heartedly tap on enemies rather than enthusiastically slicing them.

Without any genuine sense that you’re involved in martial arts combat, you’re left with desperately lacklustre highscore chaser that’s just about sharp enough in its presentation to be worth a couple of prods.

With no Mr Miyagi substitute on hand to guide you through the basics of Dojo Madness, a simple text and annotated button tutorial has to suffice.

You’re controlling a young raccoon schooled in the art of kung fu whose normally peaceful dojo is under attack from endless waves of invading wildlife. You have to stay alive long enough to rack up a highscore worthy of the OpenFeint online leaderboards by taking out any attackers with your staff.

With the smoothly animated hero rooted in the middle of the dojo, enemies - mainly Samurai Wolves (there’s a subtle animal theme going on here) can approach down any of the eight spokes stretching out from the centre. When they get close enough, you tap in their direction and - most of the time - skewer them.

When the pace starts picking up, however, a slight lag between taps emerges and gives the hostile wildlife a chance to sap your health bar. With combos of hits needed to elevate your score, it’s a pain when you miss shots that you’re sure were certain to connect.

In essence

Half decent reflexes will take care of standard enemies, but tougher foes - like gorillas, which wait at the end of a spoke and blast you with health-sapping rays - need a more powerful counter-approach.

Using magical essence drawn from a slowly recharging bar to your right, you can blast individual enemies by double-tapping, take out two on opposite spokes by simultaneously pressing two digits towards them, or wipe out a whole screen by tapping three fingers together.

The latter move does require a full bar of essence, so you'll rarely get a chance to use it - though stockpiling enough to survive each level’s final battle (when you’re surrounded by enemies) is a smart tactic.

Also, it’s easy to start accidentally blasting away your essence reserves when the dojo gets crowded and you're tapping away like a madman, which can leave you high and dry at critical moments.

You can block attacks by pressing on the raccoon, but this doesn’t give you much of a reprieve. Along the way, though, power-ups like energy boosts and temporary weapon upgrades do help to ease the pressure when you remember to activate them.

While the game is free to download and play, between rounds of Dojo Madness you’re forced to sit through around 20 seconds of adverts and constant efforts to get you to pay 69p to permanently remove them.

It’s a nominal fee, but the lacklustre combat is hardly scintillating at the start and - despite some smooth animation and atmospheric martial arts sound effects - it never really evolves beyond mindless tapping.

And a Game Over screen that always decries your failure as "disgraceful" hardly inspires you to protect the racoon’s dojo once the tedium-triggered madness sets in.