I play it over Assassins Creed and The Sims 3

Contradicting what I’ve said in the past it turns out I had to un-jailbreak my iPhone.

I was having some issues, mainly surrounding sound and the fact it would drop out of calls for no reason, that added to that the recent press about Rick Astley finding his way onto the iPhone and I thought it was time to go back to the preffered Apple way.

To that end I now have a pure phone that I can use to review without fear of occasional crashes.

Since it’s been a while since I wrote my first article (and I apologise for that to those that actually care) because I have enrolled on a new course to broaden my horizons, I decided now would be a good time to come back and do a light-hearted article that I can use to get back into the swing of things.

Enter Cube Runner, a game with a simple formulae and a more than simple method of control.

In essence you are a triangle, don’t take that in an offensive way it’s just a very easy shape to program into a game, especially a game as small and quick to load as this one.

Your job as a triangle is to avoid crashing into the blocks that spawn in front of you and present you with potentially lethal pixels.

A simple formulae like I said, the twist is the method of controlling your little triangular you, tilting the iPhone. Taking the phone in two hands, or one when you’ve mastered it, your job is to guide the little guy through its maze until it eventually gets so hard you crash anyway.

To this day I still have no idea whether or not it’s possible to finish the game and I’ve played it religiously.

There is the added bonus of the increase in difficulty, you can set the game so that you play an Easy, Normal, or Hard game right from the off.

The pros are that the game is very small and as such it is very easy to just pick up and play for five minutes while you’re waiting for a bus or sitting through those annoying commercial breaks, it loads in an instant and you can be playing in seconds.

The ability to add user-created content is also a big plus for this game, entering the settings for the game gives you the option to ‘Manage Level Packs’ and the ‘Add Packs’, what more could you want?

If the game starts to bore you because you go on for too long without dying, or because you keep dying at the same bit, swap it out! Go for a newer level pack and try your hand at mastering that one instead.

The fact that the initial levels you are given randomly spawn blocks (during the random block areas) every time you start a new game, means that you shouldn’t get bored of a level pack too quickly.

You can be cruising along quite happily only turning slightly one minute, and the next your throwing your hands from side to side in a vain effort to escape a sea of death.

Apologies for this bit of a moan from me but the cons are that I really don’t find the graphics that impressive, sure the game was designed to be small and nippy, but a bit of a change from the red yellow green and shades of white wouldn’t go amiss once in a while… I’m fed up of surfing on grey gliding forward into slightly blue tinted grey.

If you believe their official opinion, Apple didn’t initially want an App Store so you come to my next niggle: the accelerometer.

Although a great piece of technology and easily the thing that sells the iPhone for gaming, it isn’t quite up to speed sometimes.

This isn’t Cover Flow, this is Cube runner and a couple of seconds can mean death, if the tech doesn’t keep up with you it can get very frustrating very quickly.

Cube Runner greets casual and hardcore gamers alike with its ability to draw you in for a few blissful minutes, to this end it should be a king among games on anyone iPhone or iPod touch and I heartily recommend you go and download it right now, it is free after all.

Added levels and unique gameplay make this game one of the best I have ever downloaded and it is surprising considering it is also one of the most simple I have ever downloaded, like your run of the mill flash games (where it has its origins) it’s amazing that such mindless games can convince you to part with that Playstation for so many minutes of the day.

Overall I love it and I still play it over Assassins Creed and Sims 3 on the iPhone, the lack of interesting graphics some times is my biggest irritation and because of this the game receives a four and a half out of five, perhaps a future update will convince me to change my tune.