Ice Age Adventures review – A surprisingly decent universal game for Windows Phone and Windows 8

Back when Xbox games for Windows Phone were more than of a matter, Gameloft published a complimentary to play city edifice game called Ice Age Village. That particular genre is mostly worthless, but many of us suffered through it any manner for the Achievements. I do mean suffered, because Water ice Historic period Village is a buggy game and the Windows Phone version was never updated with issues fixes or new content.

One year afterward, Gameloft brings a sequel called Ice Age Adventures to Windows Phone and Windows 8 and RT. The new game is withal technically a gratis to play metropolis architect, only vastly improved production values (How-do-you-do, vox acting!) and several design changes make for a much more enjoyable experience. Will it agree gamers' attentions without Achievements, though? Aye, if y'all can tolerate the IAP mechanics, you'll probably take a bit of fun with it.

Saving the herd… again

Ice Age Adventures starts with well-nigh the same premise as the last game. Something bad happens, and all the animals in the Ice Historic period entourage get separated. Sid "Suffering Succotash" Sloth is charged with rescuing them. Soon he will recruit Manny "Man, Ray Romano is abrasive" Mammoth and Diego "Promise you lot don't date my daughter Gwen" Saber-toothed Tiger, and the iii volition piece of work together to find more animals.

Now, I don't treat the Ice Age movies (and I accept endured several), but Ice Age Adventures' storytelling is still impressive. Every piddling exchange between characters is fully voiced-acted by very practiced audio-alikes of the voice actors from the films. At that place are manner more discussions than y'all'd expect, too – Gameloft went all-out with the story in guild to go along players motivated. The story doesn't go anywhere (of course), but kids will love the many conversations between characters.

Rebuilding the island

Although the goal of saving lots of animals is the same as in Village, the manner you go about doing so differs greatly hither. Sid and team really get to visit new locations via ship, calculation an chemical element of exploration that you seldom see in games of this type.

When y'all reach one of these places, you lot'll detect a variety of obstacles to clear, including trees, rocks, ice, enemies, mushrooms, and more. Tap one of these objects and one of your three heroes will articulate it out of the way (some take two taps), gaining shells (soft currency) equally a reward. Getting rid of stuff consumes berries, which function equally energy in Ice Age Adventures. The berry costs get a lot college as you reach new islands, limiting players' power to zoom through the game.

Each isle also hosts several buildings from which y'all tin can earn various prizes, including animals, berries, shells, items, and on rare occasions, acorns (premium currency). Simply tap a building and its roulette bicycle will spin and and so pop out the item.

You can revisit buildings to endeavour for meliorate prizes, but they have anywhere from ten minutes to several hours to become active again. This gets annoying when the building has an animal or item you need, because some of them have very low and unfair drop rates. It might have quite a few visits to get that item you're looking for, to the bespeak that information technology delays progress in the game.

Rescuing animals

If the creature-hosting edifice decides to be kind and award you the creature, y'all'll nevertheless have to play through an endless runner-style minigame as Sid in order to actually rescue the animal. The minigame isn't really countless – you'll notice the animal halfway through a level that lasts for a couple of minutes, and you win past reaching the end of it. Fail and you'll take to either spend acorns to continue or wait a few minutes-hours for the mini-game to open up once more.

Alternately, some animals sit down within circular prisons of water ice. To free these guys, you'll need to complete a match-3 minigame inside a certain number of moves. The puzzle game is usually off-white (once you fully learn the mechanics), but sometimes it but doesn't give you enough moves. Failure means you have to spend acorns for more moves, or expect a few hours to try once again.

Later on rescuing an creature, yous'll desire to return to your village and build it a home. These cost more than and more shells, to the betoken where you'll eventually have to save upwards for a while simply to build a new dwelling. You can't rescue additional animals until the first creature'southward dwelling has been built – not unless you lot spend 50 acorns (~$3.50) for an extra nursery slot. Each animal habitation produces berries over time.

Minigames

Back in the village, you can play an endless running minigame using tokens that yous dig up from snow piles or receive from friends. Instead of Sid, this version stars Scrat the Masochistic Squirrel. It actually goes on forever or until you dice, which is really easy to do. Rescuing certain animals will cause those creatures to randomly spawn equally ability-ups within the Scrat game. They enable bonuses similar a berry magnet, a 1-fourth dimension shield, and the power to destroy obstacles for a short time.

The Scrat runner more often than not pays out in berries, although you can also get a few items needed to unlock new areas if y'all survive long enough. I don't care for the minigame, though. Gameloft uses the aforementioned 3D engine in all of its Windows Phone 8 games, and that engine is fairly poor. The game runs at a low frame charge per unit on my Lumia 1520. It's not unplayable, but the hardware can do then much better. Also, scientists tell united states of america that most endless runners are boring every bit crap. Who am I to argue with science?

Become far enough in the game and you lot'll unlock a 2nd island on which to extend your hamlet. This island allows yous to spend your tokens to play the match-3 minigame. It can be an fantabulous source of shells if you practice well.

The mini-game has a few advanced mechanics that yous might struggle to effigy out on your own. Matching five of the aforementioned item creates a meteor, of course. Touching ii meteors together volition eliminate all of the items on-screen. Impact 3 meteors together and the whole screen will make full with hearts, which is very useful for completing puzzles.

Limp social features

Like about games of this type, Adventures offers Facebook connectivity for deject saving and social features. The social features are disappointing, though. First, the game replaces some player names (merely not all) with random animal names, making it difficult or impossible to tell who those players are.

2d, y'all can't visit friends' villages or send them truly useful items. All we tin can exercise is gift each other mini-game tokens. Tokens max out at v, and then I ordinarily can't even accept near of the tokens my friends send. Not very engaging! Just if you're looking for a few friends for token sharing, exist certain to stop past the Ice Historic period Adventures thread in our forum.

Overall Impression

Ice Age Adventures suffers from many of the typical free to play trappings. It's far also easy to spend premium currency by error, and everything costs too much equally well. Sometimes you won't exist able to make progress in an area unless y'all have items that the game never gives y'all. In these cases, yous'll have to spend acorns to unlock the area (as pictured above). I look you'll have to make at least one in-app buy in order to reach the second island as a upshot.

That said, the exploration sequences and mini-games offer some enjoyable diversions from the typical free to play city edifice monotony. The voice-acted story is pretty skillful too, probably more so for fans of the atrocious movies. And hey, it'due south a universal app!

I retrieve Gameloft is on to something with the mixture of metropolis building with honest-to-goodness game play. People who can tolerate the energy and IAP mechanics will certainly enjoy Adventures, at least for a while.

• Ice Historic period Adventures – Windows Phone 8 – 89 MB – Free – Store Link
• Ice Age Adventures – Windows 8 and RT – 92 MB – Free – Store Link

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/ice-age-adventures-review

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