Kingbreaker: Crush The Castle 2

The iPhone version of Armor Games' original Crush The Castle has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a while. I was about to pick up the Android port now I've changed to an HTC Erotic or whatever it's called, but then helpful reader Norskov appraised pointed our eye-machines at to the arrival of a browser-based sequel. This highly-emprettified follow-up to the game I like to call "Angry Birds For Medieval Sadists" is going to fulfill all my royalty-splatting needs for the time being.

Basically, you're lobbing bloody great rocks at kings and queens with a bloody great catapult, balancing speed and power to kill everyone with as few shots as possible. It's the same mechanics as irritatingly omnipresent iPhone gamette Angry Birds, only more elegant, more subtle and not based around a joke about fat robins that doesn't quite work. Plus it's quite deliciously violent in its odd, static way.

It's the physics that does it. The way stuff wobbles for so long, always leaving that slim hope that maybe, maybe that girder will topple and squash that last footsoldier. It's the top of the end of Inception, only with iron walls and fatal head injuries.

I'm pleased to see that the sequel hasn't replaced the odd, motionless statue-characters will fully-animated versions, as their microscropic helplessness is part of the charm. The general level of detail, especially in the backdrops, is up though.

The level editor's still in there too, which is where the real fun lies. Sadly it's resorted to paid unlocks, one of which grants you all the ammo types right off the bat and thus rather defeats the challenge of the game. Still, the evil cunningness of player-made levels means it's never going to be a cakewalk.

A mechanic people are perhaps getting tired of, but for my pretend money this is comfortably one of the strongest cata-games around. Play! You'll need a Kongregate account if you want all that achievement bollocks, mind. I didn't bother.