March of the Penguins who need to go to the gym.
What’s it about?
Feeding the penguins. Political correctness be damned, we’re not sure why Chillingo didn’t just call this app Fat Penguin, not only would it have been a more truthful way of advertising the game but they missed out on using one of our favorite pickup lines (you know, that thing where you go up to a girl and say “fat penguin” and she’s all “what?” and you’re like “i just needed something to break the ice.”). Anyway, Greedy Penguins is the name they’ve gone with but, no matter what you call it, you’re getting a puzzle app for your iDevice that takes the gameplay of Cut the Rope or Contre Jour, blends it with the style of the Madagascar Penguins and polishes it with an incredible attention to (sometimes weird) detail.
How does it look?
Greedy Penguins’ style comes from what looks like a mix between Candyland and a trip to the Bronx Zoo. Massive ice cream mountains can be spied in the background of levels and a variety of animals make appearances throughout, whether there’s a point to them or not. One of the more interesting quirks of the game comes from the ability to earn new animations as a reward for honing your skills. The animations don’t add anything to the actual gameplay but will give you a chuckle here and there when you tap on a Penguin or a Walrus or a Shark and watch him snicker, smirk or outright laugh in your face. Keep it up, Walrus, you’re gonna be a blubber lamp soon.
How addictive is it?
Keeping up the tradition of puzzle games, timing is clutch here and makes the difference between you yanking out chunks of hair or coolly boasting about your skills as a human metronome. The game may have a childish look but the puzzles are definitely aimed for an older demographic, requiring the poise that can only come with age. Seriously, the worst thing you can do in Greedy Penguins is get impatient because, 99% of the time going too fast will inevitably end with failure. In the end, Greedy Penguins pays off for playing with patience and will have you coming back for second helpings of raw fish and ice cream.
What’d they screw up?
The biggest downside to the app is the weird, non-sequiturs that have been included to beef up gameplay without explanation. Every time you get a penguin to eat a fish, they burp up ice cream...which you then tap to send to the Walrus’ mouth. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to us either. That might be a nit-picky thing to point out but it sticks out in our minds because the game is so well executed in every other respect. Weirdness without purpose feels like an afterthought that was thrown in at the eleventh hour and doesn’t go very far towards improving or impacting the game at all so we’re left to wonder why they bothered with it at all.