Something I used to do a fair amount was review things on my old blog. On that one, I only really reviewed new musical things I’d just acquired. I think it’s time to expand that and what better way of doing that then combining a few loves in my life. My iPhone, gaming, and cartoons from Weebl’s Stuff.

Lets hope I don’t bollocks it up.

"Lookit mah horse ..."

Russian Dancing Men on iOS (in this case, my iPhone 3GS) is a game based around not just the Russian Dancing Men cartoon from the aforementioned source, but a lot of the other cartoons as well (such as Narwhals, Magical Trevor and those god forsaken Badger Badger Badgers). You must guide your band of dancing Russians over various types of hurdles, loop-de-loops, chasms and spiky things, and even combinations two types of obstacle, such as a loop with a hurdle in the middle of it. As you clear obstacles points are awarded as usual fare for this kind of thing, but as you chain together successful clearing of obstacles, you slowly build up more dancers, and the more you have the bigger your score climbs, and of course you get more points for timing your obstacle clearing with the beat of the music. Sounds pretty simple, especially for someone like myself who just about knows all the different Weebl’s toon songs off by heart. It’s not so. The tracks are remade and lengthened slightly for decent levels, and there’s a few quirks that I was not expecting bringing some surprise into the fray … and a few swearwords when my last dancing man has a run-in with a spiky thing I wasn’t anticipating.

Dance Completion!

The integration with iOS’s Game Centre in the forms of high score leader boards and a good smattering of achievements for finishing both levels and the game on Normal and Hard difficulties to give a bit of challenge. There’s also power-up downloadable content available for those having problems with a particular stage. With all games though it’s not all pretty pictures and praise all around. On the iPhone the buttons to clear particular obstacles sometimes didn’t respond, and with me having big heavy man-thumbs I found the small size of them a bit fumbly especially when the speed picked up. I suspect this would be a bit better on the iPad rather than the iPhone but unfortunately I haven’t got one to try it out. I was also a bit disappointed in the lack of songs in there given the incredible amount of comedic toon music available at Weebl’s. I’m hoping for a DLC soon of more tracks. Bit of Cat Face or Parsley Boobs maybe?

All in all I’m giving the game a 3/5 on the iPhone/iPod Touch. It feels like this game would be more suited to iPad, and more tracks initially would’ve been nice.