Review written by Jason Surguine

First, I'd like to point out that this game was still in beta form while I reviewed it and some features may or may not change by the final version. If the game does change, I will update the review as necessary.

Okay, The Fly... no this is not a really cool action game based on the movie, it's just another nondescript title of a Pocket PC game. In fact it's not really an action game at all, nor a puzzle game, and I really can't seem to fit it into being a great strategy game either. To me, it really feels like I'm playing an interactive screen saver.

The object in this game is to catch a fly which roams around the screen at random by enclosing the walls around it until it can no longer move. However, you have to enclose the walls one by one (by doing a simple tap on the screen) without hitting the roaming fly, and thus harming him. Also, you cannot tap on the fly itself, because that harms him too. So the object is to catch the fly without killing him. If this sounds a bit odd to you, good, this is odd. Odd doesn't necessarily mean that a game is bad though. There are plenty of odd games that have been classics (e.g. Parrapa the Rapper, Abe’s Odyssey, etc.); this just isn't one.

Let's start with the graphics. While I do have to admit that the character design of the fly itself (including it's different frames of animation) is actually very good, that's it. The background is white, and the Enclosing Walls are different shades of flat blue. This was pretty disappointing to see after the nicely detailed and deceiving opening graphic (also deceiving is the graphic itself showing a figure with a fly swatter, swatting a fly. Which is absolutely the opposite of the goal of this game!).

At the bottom of the screen you have the generic gray user interface, with the contrast of black showing how many flies you're allowed to kill before the game is over (lives), what stage you've managed to persevere to get to (level), the fly's ''health'', and your ''score'' which is based on a highly complex mathematical system (5 points for every wall you manage without killing the fly). In addition to these graphics, there is also the colorful ''wait'' clock which pops up in the middle of the screen while playing. This must be because this memory intense game is taking up so many resources that the processor can't handle it <sarcasm>.

You already have a pretty good idea how the game plays, but I do need to point out a few more things about the game play itself. Hit detection is extremely poor. Sometimes, the fly will slam face-first into a wall and kiss it the whole time the wall is moving out, and this will take off 10 points of the fly's health. Other times, the wall will just barely graze the fly and it'll take off 70 points of his health! This can be extremely frustrating and annoying, and might prompt you to just start tapping the fly just to kill him out of spite...

There is no increase in difficulty, from level to level, at all. The fly doesn't get any faster, there's still only one fly, and you have until the end of the world to complete every level (or until your battery dies out) because there is no time limit.

Also the fly needs more animation to have more indication of its direction changes, which sometimes are extremely fast, but a lot of the times are way too slow. This is where it becomes an interactive screen saver, you're just waiting there watching for a stupid fly to move, just so you can tap the screen and wait again. This might not be too bad if you could look away for a while and listen for when the fly decides to move.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have cool little ambient buzzing sound effects though while the fly was flying around? Of course it would be. Too bad this game only has one sound effect, when you have a game over and you're in the top ten, people clap. Yay. I suppose it goes without saying that the game has no music (not many titles do yet - is it that hard to program?), and this would just be another way to possibly help the monotony of this game.

I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone. Well maybe someone with a LOT of time on their hands and they have the extreme laziness enough to only be involved in a game enough to tap the screen a few times per minute. Otherwise, unless you're very curious about this game, don't waste the time downloading it. Spend your time more wisely playing a good game like Doom.

Pros:

• Good Character Graphic/Design

• Interesting Concept

Cons:

• Bland Graphics

• Bad Hit Detection

• Slooooww and Boring

• Glitchy

• Lack of Sound

Overall Score: 2/10

Many thanks to eSoft Interactive for providing us with our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from eSoft Interactive. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Jason Surguine.