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Amazing Alex Review: Setting chain reactions can be a tedious task

When you mention Rovio, you think of slingshots and birds and pigs. But that’s changed. After four successive Angry Birds-themed games, Rovio’s latest release doesn’t involve slinging birds into pigs or anything of that sort. Instead, it’s a remake of a popular iOS game (Casey’s Contraptions) that they had bought over not too long ago.

Name: Amazing Alex | Developer: Rovio | Genre: Brain & Puzzle | Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.0 | Size: 22 MB | Price: Free (lite), $0.99 (regular) & $2.99 (HD) |

While the theme has certainly changed, Amazing Alex, just like its Angry Birds predecessors, is a physics-based puzzle game. In the game, you goal is to complete a certain task like getting a ball into a basket or popping a balloon with a dart. There are three stars in each level as well and this will definitely get your brains working especially in the latter levels as getting even one star can be a problem.

Gameplay

Basically, a scene is set up in each level and you’re given a few objects to complete the task at hand. What you have to do is place the objects such that it results in a chain reaction that allows you to complete your task. As you go further in the game, there will be a wider variety of objects at your disposal.

Amazing Alex starts off rather easily. If you had downloaded the free trial version from Google Play and decided not to purchase it in full because the first chapter was all too easy, then I’m afraid you’re wrong. Difficulty in general ramps up pretty fast. I played through the first 8-10 levels or so and managed to solve them all on my first try with 3 stars, but things get so difficult that eventually solving a level feels like an insurmountable, tedious task.

The way I look at it, Amazing Alex requires a lot of trial-and-errors (be prepared!) and maybe a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking. The good thing is that the physics involved are realistic and not random. If you repeat the exact same arrangement twice, you will get the exact same result. Also, once you fail, you don’t restart from scratch. Instead, you go back to your last arrangement. This means you can improvise little by little.

Graphics & Sound

The graphics, at first glance, look very cartoon-ish and may give the impression that the game is aimed at children. However, that’s of course not the case, the evidence of which is a rather steep difficulty curve that will be a challenge to everyone regardless of their age groups.

There’s not much actually going on in terms of graphics, as things are fairly static. But the environments are cheery and colorful, and when you set a chain reaction in motion, things move along smoothly. Speaking of graphics, I must comment that I couldn’t find any difference between the HD and regular version of the game on my Acer Iconia Tab A510.

Sound wise, things are pretty dull. There are sound effects from the chain reaction, such as when the ball drops to the ground or a balloon is popped. But that’s to be expected anyway. The background music accompanying the game is slow moving. The music on the menu screen fares better, with a slight arcade-y touch to it.

Controls

There’s nothing to talk about the controls, really. All you need to do is use your index finger to drag objects from the inventory and line them up as you please. The tricky part is lining the objects up, as sometimes placing them a mere fraction to the right or left can result in an entirely different chain reaction.

Level Editor

In addition to the 100-over levels in the game with more to come in future updates, Amazing Alex has an extra weapon that will no doubt enhance replay value – a level editor where you can create your own level and then upload it to the Internet so that anyone can play it or email the level you’ve created directly to a friend.

You can’t just create a level which is impossible to solve, since first of all you have to be able to solve it yourself and get three stars in the process. This is actually fun and I won’t be surprised if Rovio decide to include some of the user created levels in future game updates. You can download user created levels through the app itself and see how you fare against other people’s imagination.

Conclusion

Amazing Alex is a highly polished game, with a slick interface that’s all-too-familiar if you’ve been playing the Angry Birds series. However, whenever I played Angry Birds, I’d find myself telling “just one more time” but I cannot seem to replicate this level of enthusiasm in playing Amazing Alex.

No doubt Amazing Alex is a good game on the overall, but the latter levels can be frustrating and you will need lots of patience and persistence to endure till the end. Some may even find the game to be boring after a while. Overall, I’d say get this game if you’re a fan of puzzles and what-not, but if you don’t like slow moving games or just puzzle games in general, this may not be for you.

Overall Rating: 3/5

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