Game titles are often chosen for how they sound, and aren't always the most accurate description of what's on offer. But not so with Parachute Panic, which will have you tapping and swiping across your Nokia C5-03's screen in a blind panic. Read on for more!
There have been a good few games in this sort of genre in the past. Plane glides across the screen, man dives out, and you've got to open his parachute and guide him into a boat. But with Parachute Panic currently 60 per cent discounted and selling for just £1 over on the Ovi Store, we thought we'd take a closer look.
Check out our Nokia C5-03 Review Roundup
Developer Connect2Media has gone for an interesting line drawing design approach that could easily look cheap, but is pulled off quite well here.
In fact, the deliberately basic graphics style works particularly well when one of your parachutists falls into the water to be devoured by a shark: it's graphic, but in a stylised, slightly MadWorld-esque way.
Anyhow, on to the gameplay, and sadly things aren't so great.
As we've mentioned, the idea here is to safely guide each parachutist from the plane that flies across the top of the screen to the waiting boat at the bottom of the screen (and not into the aforementioned sharks' mouths). To do this, you first have to tap on the falling character to open the parachute, then if necessary swipe side to side on the screen to introduce a gust of wind in case he's not dropping directly over the boat. For each jumper who lands in the boat, you get a point, for each that doesn't, you lose one of your five lives. The problem is the learning curve effectively goes from non-existent to ridiculously steep in just seconds. The first five jumpers fall out of separate planes perfectly over the boat, all in good time for you to tap their parachutes to open and watch them plop down gently on board. But then planes and parachutists start falling in rapid succession, and not over the boat either, so from doing practically nothing you're suddenly stabbing at the screen to get parachutes open, then furiously swiping underneath to try and get the wind to blow them to safety.
Invariably this doesn't last too long before you've run out of lives, so you start again and repeat the process: five safe landings, then instant carnage. Parachute Panic also works with keypad-equipped handsets, which we suspect will make a significant difference to the gameplay. But on the Nokia C5-03, of course, it's touch only, which makes this a particularly frustrating game to get to grips with.
In the end, it's a game that looks great, and probably works well on other handsets, but on the Nokia C5-03 Parachute Panic comes with a little too much “panic” for our liking.
Size: 0.60MB Price: £1