MTV Star Factory

In an age when you're hard-pressed to find a band that doesn't have a Saturday night TV series behind it, MTV Star Factory couldn't be a better pitch.

Here's a game that makes mini-games out of everything from recording tracks to rocking out a gig. A celebration of creativity this is not. If formulaic music is your thing, then MTV Star Factory and its gang of Gorillaz-like ghouls may well be your bible.

Not that music really plays a major role, in truth. Taking a pass on rhythm-action gameplay, MTV Star Factory takes the form of a management sim that pulls together a catalogue of touch mini-games.

You take the role of a manager, putting together bands and signing up artists with a view to pushing them up the top of the charts.

Once you've assembled your first act, your daily activities centre around getting the word out – either by paying for promotion, or sending them out to perform at gigs – and putting together tracks for release.

It's these releases and their performance in the charts that are your long-term goal. Notching up the CD sales relies both on their quality and just how well known your band of brutes is.

Putting the tracks together – an act you carry out again and again – is a case of moving a pointer around the screen to pick up a series of floating symbols. The more symbols you get before time runs out, the greater the quality of the track with strings of matching icons sending the grade soaring.

It's a set-up that bizarrely doesn't feel suited to a touchscreen. Instead of ideally using the accelerometer to guide the pointer around, you hold a finger down in the direction you'd like to move. It's neither a delicate, nor an especially fun way of doing things.

Gigs are similarly awkward. This is as close as MTV Star Factory comes to traditional rhythm-action, with set button presses needed in quick time. It's not easy to accomplish, however, since the buttons are laid out in a line. This means darting from one to the next is especially clumsy and, as the pace picks up, increasingly unlikely.

It all adds to the feeling that MTV Star Factory hasn't been adequately tailored for iPhone. Identical to last month's mobile release in almost every respect, none of the mini-games included does anything especially inspiring. In fact, the transition to touchscreen hasn't benefited them.

Indeed, there's a feeling throughout that despite being far from easy at times almost all of the games have been watered down.

It doesn't help that the structure feels positively archaic when compared to other mini-game packages. Rather than offering up all the games at once, the game's calendar-like format only lets you take on one at the time: there's a set order of just what games can be played when and how often.

Considering how unremarkable these mini-games are, MTV Star Factory is a missed opportunity. Contemporary visuals can't hide the fact that the line-up here feels entirely unsuited to iPhone, with gameplay just as formulaic and lax as the groups that inspired it.