Worms HD
The iPad runs iPhone apps either in a small window or blown up — and rough-looking — across the width of the screen. Neither is satisfactory. If you want to show off your new gadget to best effect, buy HD versions of games. Worms’ colourful graphics look good on the big screen, but where the HD version scores is that you no longer have to squint at a 3.5in image to work out what’s going on in this busy game.
Your job is to control a team of invertebrates, using limited weapons and ammunition to destroy a similarly equipped foe. Wipe out one wave and the next forms up, and so on for 50 levels. Fans and newcomers to this long-running title will relish the latest addition.
Advertisement
Angry Birds HD
The iPhone version of Angry Birds has been a soaraway hit; the iPad edition matches it for entertainment and addiction, but not for value — it now costs just 59p for the iPhone and you get more levels. The game sounds simple. Green pigs have stolen some birds’ eggs — hence the avian anger — and your job is to catapult a selection of feathered friends at the pigs’ towers to make them collapse.
As you progress, the porcine defences get tougher while your birds pick up new abilities, such as splitting into three in mid-air. There are 105 levels to play through, and the just-one-more-go factor on completing each one is nearly irresistible. If you need to justify the cost, playing on the big screen makes it easier to aim your birds.
Foosball HD
It’s an impossible task to recreate the sheer physicality of real-world table football on an iPad. That said, Foosball HD does a great job of adapting the pub sport for the tablet and, unlike Worms and Angry Birds, it’s a game that simply wouldn’t work on the smaller iPhone. You move and spin your rows of players by dragging them on screen, and some impressive programming makes the ball ping around the table in realistic fashion.
Advertisement
You can play solo against the machine, with a human player on the other side of the screen or, if you’re feeling ambitious, as two on two. The iPad is shaping up as an excellent communal gaming device: Foosball HD is one of the games that best demonstrates this.