Game Reviews

Tornado Mania (iPhone)

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Tornado Mania (iPhone)

It's easy to get twisted up in figuring out which iPhone games are really new or just updates of older mobile titles. Tornado Mania falls into the latter category, funnelling the best parts of the original mobile game into an enhanced iPhone release. While it's not a from-the-ground-up original, our hands on with the game affirms the need to not miss this quirky game a second time around.

A cross between SimCity and I Love Katamari, Tornado Mania gives you full control over powerful twisters in a bizarre effort to shape a utopian city. The crazy brilliance of an Antarctic scientist yields a battery-powered tornado machine that you use to collect buildings for his perfect city.

In Utopia mode, your objective lies in sweeping up buildings in your funnel cloud and then situating them SimCity-style in your South Pole haven. Just like in a city building simulation, you must concern yourself with meeting residential, commercial, and utility needs.

Instead of building these structures, though, you must warp to another spot on the the globe and sweep up your desired building by encircling it with a tornado. Ideally, you do so without damaging the structure you're trying to pick up.

The twisting motion of a tornado has you controlling the direction of spin, not its actual direction. By default, a tornado spins clockwise, but holding a finger on the screen switches it to counter-clockwise. Altering the direction of spin enables you to influence the tornado's path.

In this way, you're able to surround buildings and attempt to snatch them up. There's also an accelerometer-enabled control scheme that works decently, although the touch setting is more intuitive.

Tornado Mania's challenge lies in this unique method of control, which ensures that picking up buildings isn't too easy. You're likely to damage buildings a bit whenever you try sweeping them up. When you manage to do so flawlessly, it feels like an accomplishment.

Of course, there's the temptation to simply wreak havoc, and the game allows you to do just that in Rampage mode. Here you're asked to demolish all the buildings in an area within a specific time limit while evading helicopters loaded up with dry ice that reduces your twister's size. It's a good break from Utopia mode, delivering quick action in contrast to deliberate city planning.

Despite its superb gameplay, there's a sense that Tornado Mania isn't entirely native to iPhone. Slightly longer-than-normal loading and minimal detail in some of the visuals betray its mobile origins.

This doesn't destroy the experience, but it does show that there's room for improvement. Ultimately, it's not worth getting all twisted up in these minor details - not when there's so much fun to be had.

Tornado Mania (iPhone)

Tornado Mania is like a vortex that will eat up your spare time with its unique mix of twister action and city planning
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Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.