Julia Channel Exposed

The arcade and retro genres have been identified as scenes that can and indeed should be exploited by the mobile market. Tetris and Puzzle Bobble are just a couple of games that have formed a backbone of mobile revenue. That's not to say they don't work well on mobile as games, though. Just look at our reviews and you'll see.

Julia Channel Exposed does, strangely enough, belong to this ilk. It uses a traditional arcade formula to satisfy its more gamer-oriented punters. However, it can't be denied that a good proportion of downloaders will be enticed by the promise of seeing model Julia Channel in her not-too-all-together.

This game sees you revealing various pictures of the aforementioned star in equally various states of undress. To do this you have to section off areas of the game screen using the cursor. The cursor is controlled using the '2', '4', '6' and '8' keys of the keypad, or the thumbstick should you be blessed with one. However, these proceedings are made more difficult thanks to the enemies that whirl around the screen.

So far this may sound like a risqué MS Paint, but Julia Channel Exposed complicates things by introducing said opponents that threaten to curtail your disrobing of said beauty. These enemies fly about like comets in the ether, bouncing off objects. When you try to section off a part of the screen, your cursor leaves a trail. Should this tail be met by the path of one of these objects, not only will you lose a life, but you can also wave goodbye to revealing more of the saucy image,

To move onto the next level, you have to section off 75 per cent of the pic. Although this means you might miss some exposed flesh, completing a level unlocks the image in the gallery, which can be easily accessed from the main menu. There are ten shots to unlock, and the same number of levels.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is a very poor example of a formula we've seen done much better a number of times. Throughout the game you're essentially doing the same thing: trying to cut off parts of the game area so that new game elements introduced every now and then are needed to keep your interest up.

There's none of this in Julia Channel Exposed, though. Sure, the enemies get a bit faster and more numerous, but the fact that you're just trundling up an uninspired and frankly yawnsome difficulty curve is always painfully apparent. There might not be long enough for you to get genuinely bored though, as even fairly casual gamers will be able to blaze through the ten levels in 20 minutes or so.

Perhaps we're missing the point here. Perhaps you do just want to blaze through the levels to reveal the saucy pictures. Unfortunately, we don't find it quite that easy to switch off our critical engines. Games like Volfied have done this classic formula much better, and, to be honest, beautiful as she may be in the real world, Julia Channel Exposed does make the model in question look a tiny little bit like a man in drag.