EDGE (Android)
We here at VGN are ginormous fans of the Humble Bundle company and all of their collections and while most the games have been fun, the formula in which they’ve been distributing has been basically the same: Take a couple indie games, port them to Mac, Linux, and PC, and let you name the price. However, the latest bundle has done something rather new. You still get the aforementioned platforms, but you also get a port of the Android version.
Anyway, enough with the boring backstory. Many of you probably already know about the game EDGE on the PC, but for those of you who don’t know, it’s a puzzle/platform game in the same vein as games like Bombastic or Marble Madness. It’s extremely popular on Steam right now, and for good reason; it’s a very pretty, very addicting game.
I played the game on my Kindle Fire, and almost immediately was impressed at the presentation. First off, the resolution doesn’t seem to be stretched at all on the rather large Fire screen, which is something I find to be pretty common when you get generic iOS game on an iPad. I don’t know if this is something about the Android OS or simply a compliment to the people that ported the game, but all the same, the game looks really sharp and crisp. In fact, the game is downright beautiful on my Fire’s screen. On basically every technical level, EDGE on Android is magnificent, and looks at least as good as the PC version.
I can almost never find an instance where I can actually listen to the music when playing a portable game, due to the fact I almost never play them in the comfort of my own home, but rather when I’m out and waiting for something. That being said, the Fire has nice speakers, and EDGE has decent sound if you can find an instance to listen to it.
Really the only negative I can say about EDGE for Android is that the controls aren’t completely ideal. They give you three controller options: the default (and best) letting you slide your finger anywhere and it grabbing the direction, the second being tilt controls which are catastrophically terrible and offer almost no degree of precision, and the third being the decent virtual d-pad. The controls do ?make the game playable, but they aren’t nearly as good as the standard keyboard or controller (at least on the Kindle Fire).
Overall I very much recommend ?EDGE? ?for Android. It makes a great mobile game, and while the controls aren’t perfect, they work well enough, and the game looks great on an OLED screen.
