Mobile Security and You

I’m going away for the weekend, so this week’s update is coming to you a bit early. I also thought this would be a good chance to discuss Mobile Security, especially Anti-Theft tools.

Currently, the majority of all viruses and worms are aimed at the Android OS. Statistics say that 92% of all malware is targeted at Android devices, thanks to the open-source programmability designed by Google. This, coupled with a rising popularity over iPhones, has increased mobile infections significantly. This isn’t to say iOS and Windows smartphones aren’t completely immune to attacks. For iPhone users who ‘jailbreak’ their devices, there are viruses and worms that pose a threat and Windows is still in its infancy and isn’t much of a target, but so far there haven’t been any reported cases of attacks.

Viruses and Worms, the two big threats, are slightly more complicated to create for mobile devices since it is more difficult to actively infect these devices. In addition, a virus or worm must be written specifically for a mobile device OS, so you can’t pick up a desktop or Mac virus on your phone.

Most forms of viruses require mobile users to seek out and install Trojan applications, usually occurring when users download ‘cracks’ or imitations to avoid paying for apps. iPhone and Window’s users are protected by a ‘walled garden’, which filters all apps before making them available, with a fee charged to the developer. Google later implemented the ‘Google Play’ app as a similar product, but users are still free to download apps from other sites if they disable some security settings.

Worms, the more dangerous of the two, can infect a device through many other means, including BlueTooth, WiFi, SMS and MMS. Currently, only Android and ‘jailbroken’ iPhones are vulnerable to Worms.

Android users have access to Anti-Virus software which is a hard-line defence from all methods of infection. Both iPhone and Windows mobiles do not have Anti-Virus software available in their app stores, and although the risk to those devices are significantly low, they are extremely vulnerable if their systems are eventually hacked.

With mobile phone thefts on the rise, Anti-Theft software is another big issue some developers are tackling. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, an estimated 826,000 people in the United Kingdom had their phone stolen during the year of 2011/12. This has prompted governments to address concerns to mobile producers to incorporate more security into their mobile devices.

In the meantime, there are various applications you can get that offer a variety of features including Anti-Virus and Anti-Theft protection. For Android users, the top two products are avast! and Bitdefender Mobile Security and Antivirus. There is also a more universally available application called Prey, which works on iOS, Macs and Windows PCs; an ideal product for securing your laptops and notebooks.

These products, with the exception of Prey, also offer full anti-virus protection. avast! is a free product with premium available, but provides the basic tools necessary to protect your device. Prey is also free, but has limits on various abilities unless you pay for the premium service.

Anti-Theft protection can vary between products, but they offer multiple forms of protection and recovery. They can attempt to ping local WiFi networks or activate GPS to alert you to its location. They can activate the microphone or front camera to record thieves trying to access your device, some even activate an alarm if the SIM card is removed. Whichever product you decide to use, be sure to read into each one carefully, as they each offer a wide variety of options and abilities and with mobiles carrying increasingly sensitive data and costing a great deal, you’ll want to protect your investment.

You can find these products on the Google Play marketplace and you can also check out Prey here.

Universum: Jack in the Hole?

We delve back into the wide open pastures of Kickstarter this weekend, this time a game has surfaced that has got a few heads turning. Universum: War Front is a FPS, RTS, MOBA RPG and a DOTA-style game all in one. If that seems like a mouthful, well, it probably is. Now feel for the developers making this game.

Not too long ago now, there was a mammoth of a game called Spore; an idea spun off the top of Will Wright’s head and produced by Maxis. Spore was unique, there was nothing like it back in the day, but there were problems. Spore had five stages of evolution, each one played very differently than the others, in fact, you could go as far as to say they were different games altogether in one package. This was also Spore’s problem and despite the fact that producing one polished game is difficult enough, the developers were instead asked to produce five completely different games. Suffice to say Spore was both an ingenious idea and a technical letdown, lacking in overall quality.

Universum is striving for a similar goal, though on a much less linear scale. Firstly, it’s a RTS, with multiple planets divided into territories and then each territory is a DOTA game. Followed by another layer of FPS, you can join the troops on the ground and help blast the enemy away personally, finally followed by a slather of Space Combat and even a splash of underwater combat.

On the technical side, Universum is boasting destructible terrain and even natural disasters and phenomenon. The early production video on the Kickstarter page shows the game already has very good graphics, especially since its only been produced by a single person so far. Also boasting a single player campaign as well as full online support and they have already met their meagre $20K target. However, the stretch goals will each add a new planet to the solar system, expanding the war zone even further.

Universum could be a fantastic game and certainly something very unique that will attract players of all calibres, if it can pull each style off successfully. It would be a great disappointment if the FPS gameplay was excellent while the RTS was left lacklustre. Unlike the issue Spore had, there is no problem here of making different games within the game; rather, it is a single game with multiple gameplay elements that need to be perfectly balanced and designed. This will be a monumental task as they try to implement the balance of an RTS with the customisation of a FPS.

Can they pull it off, or will Universum be a Jack of all trades and a King of none? Well, either way, you can check out the Kickstarter page and have a look. The game is already initially funded, so any extra will just be icing on what’s left of the war-torn cake.

Mobile Review: Bloons TD 5

Balloons. One of Earth’s greatest threats has never been so dynamic, versatile and…pretty? The only thing standing in the way of the Bloons taking over the world is a troop of very resourceful monkeys. So we have Bloons TD 5.

The TD stands for just what this game is, Tower Defence. Bloons will enter the map from various points and only your resourceful placement of dart-hurling monkeys will prevent them from reaching the end. The design of Bloons is pretty standard for a tower defence, not really trying anything new, but rather putting a quirky spin on it. Looking back on the previous incarnations of Bloons, it really has grown and they’ve taken a lot on board for making the fifth iteration into one very solid game, standing out from the crowded tower defence genre.

The design has evolved to always feel the same; bright colours, simple cartoonish style, but it looks significantly better with each iteration. It has a charming seriousness about it; all monkeys are dressed for war. Your enemy is also extremely resourceful, with multi-layered balloons requiring several pops to destroy or the dreaded regenerating or MOAB balloons. There are several Bloon types, each posing a new problem. Lead Bloons can’t be popped by regular spikes and darts and Camo Bloons can’t be seen by regular towers either. Each map requires careful tower placement to best deal with the Bloon threat.

The tower options are both diverse, but not overwhelming. As with most tower defence games, players will have their favourites and the towers they never touch. Each tower has four upgrade options followed by two upgrade tracks with a further two upgrades, but you can only upgrade one track per tower. Each track transforms your tower into something completely different, usually providing more popping power, or popping more Bloons per shot, though others provide special abilities.

As with most mobile games, there are micro-transactions. Even though you pay for games these days, it’s very common to still be asked for more money. In this era of gaming, I can’t scrutinise a game for having micro-transactions, I can however complain full-heartedly if you have to pay for significant aspects of the game. Bloons TD 5 doesn’t do this, as all items in the game can be purchased with the in-game currency of ‘money’ (creative name right there) and you earn ‘money’ by playing the game, earning more on harder difficulties. Only if you have some compulsive need to get those items quickly, then you’ll never even notice the game asking for your cash.

It’s stylish, fun and challenging, and those things make for a very good game. Each map takes about fifteen minutes on medium difficulty, so it could be a quick time-waster if you need it to be. You can also quit and resume a map at any time between the quick rounds, handy if you want to squeeze in a few on the go.

Review: 1953 KGB Unleashed

There were many unusual and bizarre experiments by various nations in the early 20^th century, many may know of Germany’s experiments with the supernatural as highlighted by games such as Wolfenstein. Seeking an edge over the enemy, these experiments ranged from EMP devices to spirit warfare and genetic mutation. 1953 – KGB Unleashed is set around supposed experiments during the escalating Cold War.

Warning! Spoilers ahead! But you already knew that.

 

Although I couldn’t find much genuine information about the experiments, the game is set around a supposed series of real-life experiments conducted by Russian scientists during the 1950’s into the power of telekinesis and ‘spirits’. True or not, the oppressive and cruel nature of these experiments are revealed through various documents.

KGB Unleased is a first-person point-and-click adventure puzzle. Waking up alone in a room with no memory of how you got there, you must find your way out of the strangely deserted underground bunker. It’s the usual ‘amnesiac’ start, but it plays its part to the story well enough. You haven’t forgotten who you are, Gleb Ivanovich Nikolayev, a mechanic/engineer sent to the bunker to repair equipment within the facility. The rest of the details are hazy, but a few memories flicker back as you progress through the bunker.

I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of point-and-click games, but I do enjoy them on occasion. In KGB Unleashed it’s the usual journey of solving various puzzles and figuring out the meaning of various objects in each room. This game features more of the latter rather than the former. More often than not, I struggled to progress due to the obscurity of some elements, and despite the fact that I agree with the logic of each puzzle and the idea behind it, I believe it could have been far better designed. Many elements were misleading, or failed to emphasise the reason for its use. There are several examples I could give, one of which was a simple switch in a safe which gave no indication of what it did, yet it unlocked a door in another corridor that I did not realise until I had backtracked through most of the game to try and discover its purpose. In another part of the game, you have to descend a trap hole and there is a crate in the hole. Your cursor highlights to indicate there is something you need to do with the crate, but while I spent almost 10 minutes trying to open it, turns out it was actually where you had to put the tape recorder. Confusion like this could have been easily avoided by making the object anything other than a crate; a crate I had to break open not two rooms before.

I almost quit outright in frustration upon the first 10 minutes of starting the game. I don’t know if it was just my settings, but the initial two rooms are dark, so you have to strain your eyes to hardly see anything and the incessant alarm tone became annoying and headache inducing very quickly, beating the puzzles to the punch. The game significantly lacks any Russian undertones, with the main character voiced with an English accent. Aside from some radio stations and a few scraps of propaganda, the game could be set in the USA or England and you wouldn’t notice any difference.

The ending became downright bizarre, ending very abruptly with little resolution. In the last area, you find a glass (hopefully) eyeball which you roll under a door. You can then look through the eyeball as if by magic and somehow that opens the door. Now here is a big spoiler for you, but the game stops, tells you that guy who has been talking to you is dead and then shoos you out the exit. The exit, by the way, is a subway tunnel that somehow goes directly into a bathroom and the wall just disappears after you pick up a subway token. It almost seems as though the developers gave up at this point, or just didn’t know how to end the game. It was an abrupt and confusing ending that severely jarred the experience.

Aside from me failing at puzzles, the game also failed on technical levels in many places. It’s very slow to load, which is very unusual for my high-end PC. It could take as long as ten seconds to load one room, yet I can load Fallout New Vegas with 50+ mods faster. It only had to do this once per room though, which reduced the annoyance, but it’s still unusual for a game of this era. I also had trouble with sluggish cutscenes that left me locked in the cutscene long after the dialouge ceased. There was also no option for subtitles, which was a bit problem for me when there was poor audio quality dialogue and I couldn’t understand what was said, making me miss what may have been important plot points.

The game looked decent, and the mood was set as it should have been, but it felt empty and void of any character. With constant backtracking to and from rooms, I tired from walking the same slow corridors over and over. It became a grind and that’s no fun at all.

An engine that just isn’t up to scratch, inconsistent gameplay and design ruined this game, which showed great potential. Some may enjoy the puzzles, I know some people who will get more satisfaction from games such as these than I do, but the price, the length of only a mere 2 or 3 hours coupled with all the letdowns made KGB Unleashed a great disappointment.

And where was all the Vodka? You can't have Russians without Vodka!

A Card in the Hand

Dungeons and monsters and loot, oh my! Don’t forget the precious loot. You can have all this and more in Blue Manchu’s great interpretation of the Dungeons and Dragons formula with Card Hunter.

So far I have slain only a few Kobolds and am still a mere pipsqueak compared to the great Heroes of Legend, but this flash game is more than mere skull bashing. It puts far more emphasis on strategy with a card-based system forcing you to plan your actions carefully for the best results.

Characters have action cards which you play to have them perform said action, and you draw a new set after the end of each combat round, which occurs when both sides of the combat pass their turn because they’ve got no cards left. What you get is random, you might not draw any movement cards leaving you stuck in a possibly bad position. Do you use your weak attack cards to flush out their defence cards or try to finish them off quickly? Has your ranged Spellcaster ended up in melee combat, perhaps your Priest has a handy card to shift them away? It will take clever use of your actions to keep your party members alive, especially during the harder battles, but the whole system is very well fleshed out, letting luck only determine your options, rather than your actions.

The whole premise is made even more fantastic with a cardboard-cutout style design, making it feel very much like a tabletop game. It comes loaded with effects, despite its flat appearance and so far I’ve found the levelling up characters to be both sensible while allowing a great deal of customisation for your personal tastes.

You can play Card Hunter for free, only account registration is required, here. There also isn’t much in the way of gimmicks yet (ie, microtransactions or advertisements), but they are there, but not imposing, which is nice.

Mobile Review: The Room

I went and did it. I actually paid for a mobile game. I always considered buying a mobile app to be a risky venture, mostly because of all the cheap ripoffs. Free apps usually nag you with ads, but I can get past that, they need to make money somehow after all. I always knew the notion of buying a game should mean that I got the whole game, and wouldn't be held back by micro-transactions and have ads waved in my face every few minutes. So this was my first app purchase, and it was fantastic.

The Room is a sequence of exploratory puzzle-boxes, each new box is found inside the box before, but a complicated series of mechanisms and secrets stand between you and the depths of the rabbit hole. It gets a whole lot trippy when you obtain the eyepiece; an unusual device that can perceive the unperceivable, to view holes in our dimension. Just when you thought the puzzle boxes were hard enough, added dimensional puzzles are just more mind-numbing clubs to whack your brain.

With that said, the puzzles are not ridiculously vague and all are both logical (the ones well within dimensional limits anyway) and all can be solved when you follow the sequence. The hardest point is usually when you start, but they solved this with the eyepiece revealing a fingerprint or other marking to hint you where to begin. Eventually, things start to get disturbing as dimensions begin bleeding into each other, and while not leaving you on a cliffhanger, the game will be continued in a second part. Despite the shoestring story, it is still effective enough to provide some sort of purpose that doesn't hurt the immersion of the game. You are following a man who perhaps ventured too far down the rabbit hole, in the hopes you don't end up lost like him.

On the tech side, I have a Galaxy S2, not the latest I know, but it still a damn good piece of hardware. The game looked amazing and had fantastic 3D rendered graphics. Even when zoomed in on a part of the puzzle box, it was still impressive quality for a mobile game. The clicks, whirrs and groans of the puzzle box are all very well done and provide a hearty feeling of satisfaction.

The Room, while not too easy, it doesn't frustrate, which I like in a puzzle game. It was shorter than I expected unfortunately, but the reasonable price of a dollar feels balanced for what you get. And you get a very impressive game that is going to at least chew up a few hours and give your brain that little bit of a bashing.

Review: Waking Mars

There have been many movies and games that have depicted life on mars. Some perhaps less alive and some from another dimension, but they all took place on mars nonetheless. I suppose when it comes to alien life, Mars is our next port of call, at least in our solar system. Since we’ve already looked on the moon, the Red Planet is the next most habitable planet that we can hope to find anything on. We’re still decades away from the technology to get there in any reasonable time, but Waking Mars depicts a ‘what-if’ scenario of the possible not-to-distant future of 2097 (but when haven't we said that before?).

With evidence of alien life discovered, a team is dispatched to venture into the depths of a massive cave system to make first contact. Deep inside, the explorers discover a developing alien ecosystem that has lain dormant for countless millennia. With the aid of a nifty jetpack you must navigate to the depths of the caves to find out the source of the alien growth.

Originally designed as an iOS game, Waking Mars received a PC release late last year. The side-scrolling puzzle platformer makes navigating the rocky caverns easier with a jetpack and requires that you carefully develop the alien ecosystem to your own needs to increase the biomass and open plant barricades. While you won’t be blasting everything in sight, that doesn’t mean you’re safe from danger. Some of the local flora is not as safe as you might expect and environmental hazards are your biggest threats. You’ll collect seeds and manipulate the growth of the environment by planting them in particular spots of fertile soil. The game slowly introduces additional plant-life that you can breed and further increase biomass. By the end, you learn the secrets of the ecosystem and why it’s here in the first place.

I don’t play very many space gardening simulators these days, my green thumb has been itching for some extra-terrestrial agriculture. The premise itself is simple enough, but requires some deep thought to actually master, which was quite enjoyable. The slow introduction of various new tools to solve those deeper problems was perfectly paced, though it would have been better to not introduce you to rooms that you couldn’t solve easily without said tools. I spent a good portion of my time fighting an uphill battle in a room I thought I was supposed to have passed to continue the game. The problem with an ecosystem simulator, is that it does just what a good ecosystem should, operate without you, sometimes to its own detriment. I had several rooms that would actually start killing off the ecosystem I had very carefully and painstakingly developed.

The progression of the story also became very confused at some point, with the first half of the game being a linear journey; it suddenly throws branching paths and optional quests into the mix. At that point, you can just head straight towards the exit, but miss out on some of the most important aspects of the story, which seemed a shame. It relies on you to have a genuine curiosity to find out the truth and with it having built a decent story up until that point it feels like the game is giving up on itself. A real shame, because the game does so well up to that point. The characters are well voiced, though their dialogue occasionally breaks the mood. The AI character ART was also an interesting addition to provide support during your exploration, but after a while it was grating and annoying and seemed to grow worse as the game went on. Occasionally the characters begin talking in scientific terms, and in the early game they do well to simplify it so you can understand, but by end game you’d need to be a space alien botanist to understand what they are talking about. Does that job even exist yet?

I definitely applaud the game for its unique idea and implementation, but the rest of the game pales in comparison. Considering the game was developed for mobile, the graphics are smart, but simple in design. It reminds me of paper cut-outs, similar to ‘And Yet It Moves’, but just trying much harder to not look that way. I got seven hours out of Waking Mars, which is pretty decent for a $10 game and although the rest of the game is pretty lackluster, the concept was new and enjoyable to experience.