May 8, 2012

It’s Right In The Title. Of Course I Tried It.

I was on the app store, and there was an app called “Rocket Fox” and because I am literally the most predictable person, I downloaded it. Well, the free trial anyway. But I’m thinking about going ahead and ponying up for the full thing, because it was a fun time.

Basically, you are a fox (Yay!) who is tasked with bouncing around between these “rocket flowers,” that shoot off fireworks. You have to clear all the flowers in a stage by falling into one, riding the rocket up, and then gliding to fall into the next one. Every time you fire off a rocket, swirling foxfire springs up around you, which you can collect to unlock shit like silly hats and new firework colors. It’s pretty simple, but it’s easy to pick up and has a decent difficulty to it where you rarely feel like the game is fucking you over when you die: it’s always your fault.

This game is one of the best uses of accelerometer controls I have seen. The game is played in a top-down view, and basically you just tip the screen about to lean the fox around while he’s gliding in the air. This works way better than I anticipated: You kind of want to do that anyway, and they have it calibrated like… perfectly, even on the gyroscope-less iPad 1 I am using to play. It would probably be even better on a phone, where you could lean it easier.

I found the unlocks pretty rewarding. They’re just cosmetic, but getting new burst patterns to add to the random rotation, and new colors of fireworks feels pretty good. Eventually I’ll probably get all of them, though, and the little outfits didn’t seem very cool. I kind of liked how the fox looks without accessories. He looks much cooler. Oh well.

Anyway, give this game a try. It has a very nice demo, and it’s fun. It also has a fox. So, you know.

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