Four must-have game apps for your Android

Its obvious that your smartphone can do various things, often all at the same time. From e-mailing, to editing docs, to shooting videos and uploading them on YouTube, all of this is possible for users with an Android phone with high enough RAM (more than 512 MB) and processing speed.

Android phones are also part of the touch-screen phone revolution and the alternative to Apple’s iPhone mania. The deal with a touch-screen Android is simple, the bigger your screen, the better your experience is as a user. For gaming apps in particular, the screen does make a big difference. So here are four must Android game apps that we recommend which won’t be fun at all on a small screen.

Tetris: Its always best to start with the Classics. For those who grew up in the time when there was no Handheld PSP, the Rs 100-something handheld video game with tetris was the ultimate experience as far as gaming was concerned. Now Tetris is back on your Android smartphone . The game is exactly the same. Odd shaped blocks falling down the screen and one has to arrange them in a line to keep the screen free and the game going.

The really cool feature of this game is that you can move your finger anywhere on the screen to move the blocks in which ever direction you want. To change the shape of block, you simply move your fingers counter-clock wise or clockwise to get the right shape. You can also keep tapping the block till it changes.A key difference in the game however is that you can now save blocks for later by putting it in the ‘hold’ zone, which is on the top left hand side ofthe game screen.

So how is easy is it to play Tetris on your touchscreen? Well since your fingers are responsible for the blocks falling in the right place, you are saved the agony of cursing the game keys. On the other hand if your screen is not clean enough, you’ll probably have trouble getting the blocks to change shape or move faster.

As you get to higher levels, the game gets insanely fast, with blocks falling in all directions and users barely getting any time to change the block or even move it.

Angry birds in Space: Angry Birds in Space is a completely different experience from the regular version of the popular game by Rovio. The Space version isn’t simply about just firing everything in a straight line hoping that it’ll hit the pigs somehow. Since the pigs and birds are now both in Space, you need to make some careful judgement as you try to aim the birds at the pigs.

The planet on which the pigs are sitting, aren’t just for a pretty visualisation.The birds are affected by planets’ gravity, and therefore one can’t just slingshot them in a straight line at times.

The controls of the slingshot with which users attack the pigs is still the same, except that planet’s gravity has to be taken into account now. I personally like it when pigs freeze to death in space and break into little pieces. The game also introduces new birds like the Ice Bird, which converts everything it touches to ice.

Visually speaking it’s a much mored advanced level of phone gaming. The space background looks pretty awesome, almost like a Google Sky setting, the sound effects when you clear a level are quality stuff.

Temple Run: A recent addition to the Android App family, this is one game that is really addictive . On the face of it seems like a simple task. Keep the explorer running through the temple, collect coins, jump over huge gaps in the road and fiery obstacles, and duck under the tree trunks.

HoweverImangi studios still needs to fix the game for bugs, as it is slow and keeps hanging. Very often I find my explorer turned into crocodile dinner simply because the game doesn’t respond to the touch.

Bugs aside the game is good fun, especially since its so dependent on just the users touch. There’s always a question while you’re playing the game; will I turn quickly enough, slide fast enough? Its a perfect game for a big-screen touch phone

The temple background is quite a stunning visualisation and almost reminds me of how Lara Croft used to start on my ancient P4. The visualisation matters primarily because I never imagined that something like this would actually fit on my mobile screen.

Draw Something: OMGOP’s Draw Something is a perfect way to kill boredom with your friends. The game is pretty simple: Two players get alternate turns to guess a drawing that represents a word. You get to choose between three random words, ranked by difficulty.

After you finish drawing, your friend gets to see a stroke by stroke replay of the drawing. They then have to choose the word that fits best from bunch of scrambled letters, which include all the letters of the word plus some more letters.

Users have unlimited tries and time to the guess word. Users can also use"bombs" to remove extra letters when they are guessing the word. The free version has a limited set of colors and bombs; and users can purchase more coins.The game lets users log in from both Twitter and Facebook to choose which friends they want to play the game with.

Its a fun game to play since the chances of drawing something that looks remotely like what its supposed to are pretty slim. Also you can cheat in this one by just writing out the word. (Cough).

Which games do you most prefer playing on your Android device?