Epic Meal Time

There are plenty of games on the App Store that fit into the single digit swipe-a-thon genre. They're not line-drawing games as such - they're just about flinging a lot of stuff at a certain point on the screen.

Adult Swim pretty much perfected the genre with Velocirapture, and it's not too unkind to say that Epic Meal Time pales in comparison. Its humour is crasser, its mechanics are simpler, and its odd dude-bro tone is a little bit unpalatable.

Based on a Canadian YouTube cooking show, the game is all about meat, and the consumption of meat. A glum, bearded face sits at the bottom of the screen, and foodstuffs tumble down towards it. It's your job to toss away the fruit and veg, and ensure the meat products are devoured.

You'll fling lumps of steak and bacon, sausages, burgers, and other fatty foods into the awaiting maw, while concentrating on keeping anything healthy away by flicking it off screen.

Various power-ups, in the form of sauces and drinks, are thrown into the mix too, with bottles of bourbon making you impervious to the evil greens, and brown sauce inundating you with chunks of cooked flesh.

Larger morsels, like pig-stuffed chicken and octopus pancakes, require rapid taps to stuff into your hideously stretched gullet. The more fatty foods you force down, the more points you score. Conversely, choke down too many lumps of broccoli and death follows.

Things get frantic pretty fast, and you'll soon find yourself desperately hurling lunch items around the screen, trying your best to avoid any of the turnips that endanger your life. It's certainly tough, but after a few rounds it gets quite dull.

Nothing really changes, and despite the ability to buy new food lumps, hats with different special abilities, and new backdrops, none of them alters the basic food-flinging core of the gameplay.

Add to that some unpleasant attempts at humour, as well as some slightly cloying in-app purchases, and you're left with an underwhelming title whose initially appealing sheen quickly turns out to be a patina of revolting grease sweat.

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