Name: Burn It Down
Platform(s): iOS
Price: Free (ad supported; $0.99 to remove ads)
Note: I typed this whole thing out on my iPhone to post on the App Store, so kindly ignore any typos you might see. 
The game definitely does a good job hyping itself up, but it does a very poor job at actually living up to its own hype.
The controls are...okay. They're your run of a mill iOS platformer controls, where the left half of your screen moves the character left and the right half moves him to the right. There is an auto-jump mechanic that works when the player builds up enough speed, which I've found works well enough.
The graphics are cool. Not particularly unique or novel at this point, but pixel art has always been a weakness of mine. It also does a fine job at building atmosphere, making the world generally look bleak.
So the game is technically alright. Nothing special, but that's okay. The part that really kills the game for me is the story and gameplay.
The story is hyped up like crazy, but the "plot twist" is extremely obvious throughout almost the entire game. Nothing ever really comes out of all of it.
Okay, whatever. The story is generally just filler for platformers. It's all about the gameplay, after all!
Yeah, about that. The "puzzles" all have exceedingly obvious solutions, and this is from someone who is generally very average when it comes to puzzle games. Aside from the overhyping that the author did in the App Store listing, that's fine. The game doesn't have to be a brain teaser to be fun.
The single biggest problem with this game--the one that just kills it for me--is the difficulty; specifically, the type of difficulty. This isn't your bite-sized Super Meat Boy style, adrenaline pumping insanity type of platforming, this is your "ultra strict timing, 'Do It Again Stupid'" style of platforming. The timing on the later puzzles is so strict that it makes you wonder how the person who tested this managed to keep their sanity. The preciseness of the collision detection adds to the insanity, making it so that literally every pixel of your character's body will cause him to die if it collides with a spike (even the tiniest shred of fabric on his clothing). As a result of all this, there is absolutely zero sense of accomplishment when you actually get through one of the stages. All I was thinking was "wow, finally. The ending had better be worth it." And, as I now know, it wasn't. When the game challenged me to beat my time (right around 35 minutes) I laughed out loud and promptly uninstalled it.
To make matters worse, the game features a lot of ads due largely to the number of times you'll die while you try to work out the exact timing required to clear one of the later rooms. I know that I could have just paid to disable the ads, but up through that point the game wasn't doing enough to make me want to drop the cash to do so. If the game had timed ads (i.e. every so many minutes it would queue up an ad the next time you died or changed levels) it wouldn't be so bad, but with the ads based solely on the number of consecutive deaths, the cynic in me can't help but wonder if the artificial difficulty throughout the second half of the game was deliberate.
The base rating that I would give this game is 2 out of 5 stars. Since Game of War was shoved down my throat for the entire end half, however, I'm bumping that down to 1. The game, as it stands, is not worth paying for, and the sheer volume of ads that you're likely to experience makes the free experience terrible. I agree that developers should be paid for their efforts in one way or another, but there absolutely is such a thing as too much monetizing.
Final Score: 30% - Poor
