The Blocks Cometh

The Blocks Cometh By Halfbot is sort of like a perverse version of Tetris, where instead of said blocks neatly falling into place, they squash and subsequently kill you. On paper, it's a premise that should make for an excellent game, but this is one of those Apps that's hard for the sake of being damn hard, and it's tough heaping tons of praise on something that was designed to anger us.

Thankfully, the game's somewhat entertaining, so long as you consider yourself a masochist. As one of five characters, including two from the enjoyable League of Evil, it's your job to navigate these warriors through a futuristic environment, where the goal is continue climbing as blocks randomly fall from the top of the screen. Using them to your advantage means achieving new heights and a chance to climb the leaderboard. Make one mistake, and you die, thus restarting from the beginning. That's right. It's one of those one hit kill and you're screwed games.

The fact that you can only play The Blocks Cometh with the iPhone held vertically doesn't help. If anything, it makes the game more difficult, since we need to bunch our hands together to hold the device/hit the on screen buttons.

On the flip side, we keep coming back for more, largely because the developers did an excellent job making it seem easier than it is, like doing a keg stand or tying a cherry stem with one's tongue. What? Not everyone can do that? Nonsense. Well, in this case, we spend upwards of 30 minutes failing to break 200 meters.

That said, it's easy to fall in love with The Blocks Cometh, largely because of its NES style graphics and music. Hey, it's fun and worth the $0.99, but the best games (no matter how difficult) throw newcomers a bone and then slowly turn up the heat across a nice even curve. In this case, the developers just want you to suffer, and it takes a certain type of person to be OK with that. We're someplace in the middle.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later.