And the award for most unwieldy game title goes to… ((opens envelope)) … Super Crazy Guitar Mania Deluxe 4!

If you’ve played any of the Guitar Hero games, you’ll know what to expect here. Play along to the tune by hitting the right buttons at the right time… obviously you’ll be using a keyboard rather than a mock guitar. It’s surprisingly gratifying when you pull off a complex rhythm or combo.

You will need Flash and, while sound is not strictly required to play, the game is more than a little pointless without it :)

–> Click to Play <–

Ah, it’s Friday – that must mean it’s time for something to have fun with. The Tickler is a flash game placing you in the role of a military robot gone wrong… you wander around the levels grabbing people with your extensible claws and, er, putting them out of their misery.

You can upgrade your claws’ reach, electrify them, add a laser, and so on. The sound can be safely put off without losing much of the gameplay experience.

Have a go and wreak some havoc! :)

–> Click to play <–

I have to admit it, I’ve occasionally wondered what it would be like to run my own Formula 1 team. The engineering challenges of developing the best car possible, the thrill of seeing my cars come home at the end of a race (hopefully in a good position) and the glamour of travelling all round the world.

Sadly, I’m almost certainly never going to find out what it would be like, but a great little game for Android and iOS devices does give me a chance to play around with some of the concepts.

You may remember, just before Christmas, Will Judd reviewed a game called Game Dev Story for us. In that game you ran a virtual software company trying to release hit games. Well, Grand Prix Story is another release by the same guys, and has you running a racing team instead.

So what sort of stuff do you get up to? There’s car development – which starts off very simple as you only have one chassis and a couple of drivetrain options available, but you can also research different body types, drive options, and upgrades like aerodynamic wings and improved engines.

You can hire new drivers, choosing to take on a rookie and train him up, or go for someone with plenty of skill and a high salary. Hire mechanics to repair the cars after a race, and to research and build new ones. All of these people can be upgraded in some way to improve their skills and get the most out of them.

In short, it’s the fun parts of team management without the grind of having to break up fights between your drivers or explain to the FIA why your car’s front wing seems to be flexing a little more than it should! It’s obviously very simplified, but it’s still great fun. It’s worth pointing out that this really is about team management, however – you won’t do any actual driving in the races. After all, that’s what you pay your drivers for.

The key to winning is research and knowing which setups work well at which tracks. Taking a road car to an off-road track will result in a poor finish. Some of the tracks reward cornering ability, while others require a good top speed. Some even need a setup that can cope with ice. Don’t expect anything like an accurate replica of Monaco, but by knowing the conditions at the various tracks on your race calendar you’ll do better than if you just approach it randomly.

That semi-thoughtful approach really works for me. You can pay careful attention to the details if you want, or can just have a bit of fun playing with cars, and it’s good either way.

At the end of the game (which is 14 “years” long) you can choose to start again with some of your technological advances in place. Just don’t think that by taking your most advanced car with you you’ll breeze through the early races… I tried it and still struggled!

Grand Prix Story is a fun little simulation of a racing team. It captures the essence of motorsport management without becoming overwhelming or delving too deeply into detail. It’s a great distraction and, if you do have an interest in motorsport, I’m sure you will enjoy it.

Grand Prix Story is available from the Android Marketplace and Apple iOS App Store.

Mobile phone games are trivial and pointless. The genre hasn’t sufficiently advanced since Snake 10 years ago – when I excitedly found Snake 3 on a handset a few weeks back, it was a total letdown, silly 3D movement and all.

That’s what I thought about the state of mobile gaming for some time… until I found Game Dev Story for Android a few days ago. Where other popular games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds introduce a single physics mechanic then bang on about it for 30 levels, Game Dev Story actually contains something worthwhile.

The game is a loose simulation of a game development studio – starting with a few programmers and artists in a back room, you make your way through video game history, developing games to beat the budget and please the public. You can choose to make games in a multitude of genres and themes, with more combinations being unlocked steadily as you progress.

Beyond the fairly simplistic gameplay, which is mostly just making executive decisions on staffing and development via a menu, there are clever ways to get ahead — some combinations of genre and theme work better than others. There are ‘hacker’ characters that’ll lend their elite skills to your team. New video game systems will be released, offering new possibilities for development if you can afford the steep license fee. You can even make your own console, assuring a steady stream of income and a lasting impact on the virtual world.

The feedback provided is beautifully done, with each step being reflected in the company’s fan numbers, trade show attendance figures and ultimately that most precious prize – reviews scores and sales. The rewards are given out slowly; you watch first as your game’s fun, innovation, sound and graphics scores tick slowly upward, receive release scores from the world’s most finicky gaming magazines, and gradually sales ramp up. It’s an addictive process that you’ll find yourself repeating for years in the game world.

It’s this slow release that makes the game so impossible to put down, like eating a packet of Skittles or Malteesers one by one. Sure, it’s mostly empty calories, but the periodic sugar injection will really keep you going on a long train-ride. And for a man stuck writing a review on a long train-ride, that means a lot.

I thought we’d revisit a previous Friday Fun this week, seeing as it is so close to Christmas and all!

This week’s Friday Fun isn’t a game as such… it’s a row of reindeer that all play different notes when you honk their noses. Use the guidance to play Christmas carols, or just play around and come up with your own tunes.

You’ll need Flash, and the sound on (obviously). Try not to annoy the other inhabitants of your house too much :)

–> Click to play <–

Paper aeroplanes are such simple fun, aren’t they? But there’s quite an art to creating the “perfect” plane… flaps, tail, different folds, all with the aim of getting more flight time out of that little paper aircraft.

This week’s Friday Fun has you trying to deliver a letter via paper aeroplane. The idea is to throw it as far as possible, collecting power ups along the way. The plane can be upgraded, as you earn money depending on how good your flights are.

The game is fairly repetitive, but a nice distraction all the same :) You’ll need Flash to play.

–> Click to Play <–

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of the Griffin Survivor, HTC accessories and the Panasonic Lumix case.

Skyrim is the latest entry in the venerable Elder Scrolls series and the follow-up to 2008′s Oblivion. As with its predecessor, Skyrim presents a sandbox-style fantasy world of laudable size and scope.You have an immense amount of choice in how you conduct yourself in Skyrim, with options for playing as a muscle-bound warrior, surreptitious assassin, sagely magician or anything in between.

Often the problem with these games is that the strength of any individual experience is diluted by the vast amount of ground that needs to be covered by the game designers; quests, locations, NPCs and items all need to be fun in and of themselves as well as meshing with the world as a whole.

Thankfully, the development team at Bethesda performed excellently in this regard; each microcosm is detailed and unique. Dungeons, which felt rather stale in Oblivion, seem rather more varied here. This is helped in part through more unique dungeon designs, but also through the upgraded graphics. Like Oblivion before it, the game features a range of styles corresponding to the race of the dungeon’s builders, with Dwemer dungons having a vastly different look and feel to creepy barrows or rocky caves inhabited by other races.

Outside, there is even more variation, with the Scandinavian-inspired countryside containing beautiful mountain meadows, treacherous snow-covered peaks and roaring rivers. The joy that you gain from these encounters is doubled when you realise that you could climb that mountain you see in the distance, if you wanted to. Where first person shooters revel in the immediacy of their action, Skyrim appeals because of the consistent believability of its world and the smorgasbord of opportunities that lie in a great tableau before you.

Of course, Skyrim suffers the same kind of inevitable flaws that its predecessors in the series do, but these only add to the game’s charm. From Yahtzee’s famous encounter with an old lady who floated twenty feet in the air before sinking sadly through the floor to my own exploration of outer space courtesy of a troll’s club, the game’s glitches are amusing conversation pieces rather than game-breaking nightmares.

Perhaps the only genuine flaw I found with Skyrim was with its dungeon-based enemies. In each dungeon or area you encounter, there are a host of easy-to-kill monsters that can be dispatched with no effort or strategy, and a single boss monster which is vastly harder to kill. These boss battles can be enjoyable, but the vast chasm in difficulty interrupts the game’s flow; instead of a gradual ramp up in difficulty as you progress into a dungeon, you instead race to the very end, then start thinking about the boss.

Often, the winning strategy is to take advantage of a peculiarity in the enemy’s AI, such as attacking with ranged weapons from a point they cannot reach. This cheapens the whole encounter, but can be necessary to advance as otherwise the bosses are needlessly difficult to defeat. A redressing of the game’s balance, by making bosses slightly easier and normal enemies increasingly harder, would do a lot to make dungeon crawling more enjoyable.

Otherwise, there is little to complain about in Skyrim. It’s easy to see why it has been given universally excellent reviews; it is certainly one of the greatest sandbox worlds ever presented. Like the best open world games before it, there is a such a multitude of choice that there’ll be something to suit any palette — if you are a fan of finely made video games, Skyrim is worth your time.

Skyrim is available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

This week’s Friday Fun is a simple puzzle game – you have to remove as much red as possible from the screen by making three slices. Gravity plays its part, and the key is to make your cuts in the right places for the red blocks (or parts of them) to drop off the screen.

You will need Flash to play and, if you already have it installed, should see the game below.

It’s over – December has come, Movember has ended. I promised you photos, and hopefully you have been keeping up with them on the Geek-Speak Facebook page. But in case you haven’t, here they are, including my “bald face” photo from today.

Of course, there’s still time to make a donation. Why not make a donation online now? Money raised goes to The Prostate Cancer Charity, The Institute of Cancer Research, and The Movember Foundation.

Make a donation online

Sometimes you can’t beat a good old fashioned platform game – and this is no exception. Move around the levels, avoid the dangerous obstacles, and open the exit to move on to the next screen. There is, however, an added bonus… focus power. You’ll have to play to find out more ;)

You will need Flash, and while the sound can be put off it is helpful for hearing when enemies are about to attack.

–> Click to Play <–