Game Reviews

Call of Snakes

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iOS
| Call of Snakes
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Call of Snakes
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iOS
| Call of Snakes

Snake is a classic game, brought to the casual gaming masses when it was pre-installed on Nokia mobile phones from the late '90s. It's simple, accessible, and fiendishly addictive.

The only way one could conceivably improve on Snake is to add guns, and that's exactly what Magic Cube has done with Call of Snakes.

You play as one of six commanders, each of whom has a different set of weapons. Your job is to run around each of the four maps, clearing them of enemies and rescuing up to five comrades.

These rescuees then follow along behind as the body of your snake, adding their firing or healing skills to yours.

Finishing a level injured means your commander needs time to heal before playing again, and dying results in him being unavailable for six minutes. You can use the in-game currency to heal or unlock them faster, and naturally you can either earn this currency in-game or spend real money on it.

You'll start with a balanced leader - he's not very fast, doesn't have great range or impressive firepower, but he gets the job done. But soon you'll unlock the melee guy, who wields a shotgun. He moves quickly but has a very small attack radius. This is followed by the sniper, who can shoot clear across any map but with a slow rate of fire.

Running in Circles

Most intriguing is the final class - the medic - unlocked halfway through the game at level 20. She has no offensive powers, so it makes sense to prove you have some snake-management prowess before being allowed to play her.

Until you gather a good combination of followers, playing her requires an evasive style, very different to the aggressive tactics of the other classes.

The marked differences in class styles adds plenty of replay value. It's just a pity that this isn't reflected in the Game Center achievements, nor in the level rating system. In fact, ten of the 11 achievements are simply about winning between one and 1,000 multiplayer matches.

And winning multiplayer matches isn't generally much fun. Magic Cube has recently patched the multiplayer, but it still doesn't work very well. The matchmaking menu frequently gets stuck looking for a suitable partner, or drops out with no warning or error message. Other times you'll get as far as selecting your player only for the game to freeze and/or drop back into the main menu.

When you do get in, the majority of matches will either drop and leave you with a free in-game dollar prize or your opponent will slam face-first into a wall. The frequency with which this happens suggests that it's a lag issue. That or everyone else is really bad at Call of Snakes.

As a pure single-player game, Call of Snakes is excellent. Its difficulty curve provides a good challenge, and the variety of gameplay styles helps stave off frustration when you reach a particularly awkward level.

If the multiplayer were as solid as the single-player it would be an essential purchase. As it is it's merely a recommended one.

Call of Snakes

Call of Snakes sounds ridiculous but is actually quite fun. Good depth despite the overly-simplistic three-star level system
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