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‘Velocirapture’ Review – Flicking Boredom Away One Dinosaur at a Time

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I need to tell you something. You know all those dinosaur bones that were found in strange, unnatural locations? They’re my fault. I put them there. I know. I shouldn’t have. But, I was new to the whole God business back then. I wasn’t always accurate with the finger-flicking business. Sometimes, instead of landing in my divine palm, they would, well, soar elsewhere. If it’s any consolation, I can promise you they died swiftly.

Ahem.

In Adult Swim’s latest addition to their stable of “Meh, I’ll mess with this for a moment – where the heck has the time gone?!" games, you’ll be, quite literally, playing as the Hand of God. It’s the End Times for the dinosaurs in Velocirapture ($1.99) and you’re responsible for elevating the green-colored good guys to glory while ensuring that the red-scaled deviants get their just desserts.

Sounds easy? It would be if the evil reptiles weren’t strangely cognizant of your presence. Not only will you have to smite them down, you’re also going to have to do it before they can leap into your palm (thereafter granting themselves immediate access to heaven), convert others to their nefarious ways, toss unsuspecting dinosaurs to their doom, headbutt them from the skies and so forth. The list of atrocities goes on.

Velocirapture is both as silly and as simple as it sounds. To send the green dinosaurs to Paradise, you simply have to flick them in the direction of your outstretched hand. To smite the red dinosaurs, you needn’t do more than trace a line from that divine appendage to the offending critter. Want to get a better score? You can do so by chain-smiting those suckers or saving good souls in rapid succession or both. Your goal is to fill up the bar that exists under your ‘grace’ meter. Fail and you’ll have to restart the level. That’s the whole game in a nutshell. What makes it such an engrossing experience is everything else.

Much like in real life, dinosaurs in Velocirapture come in a variety of flavors. Here, you will find everything from curmudgeonly business-reptiles to T-Rex evangelists to sullen jocks. Some will be of help, others will be a hindrance. Regardless of what you encounter, you’re still going to have to fulfill your quota before you’re allowed to move on to the next stage. Additionally, you’re also going to have to make sure that your grace does not get depleted, something that will happen if too many red dinosaurs succeed at sneaking into heaven or if you send too many samari-titans pinwheeling into the horizon.

Of course, being an omnipotent force, you’ll also get a few tricks up your sleeve to help you along. On top of being able to chain-smite unfortunates, you’ll also be able to do things like induce brief, apocalyptic moments where all good dinosaurs are immediately sent to heaven and all the bad ones are, well, fried like the miserable maggots that they are. The only catch here is that you must first accumulate enough evil souls (you accomplish this by first zapping red dinosaurs and then tapping on the tortured-looking spirits that manifest after that) beforehand.

Cartoony, easy on the eyes and smoothly animated, Velocirapture looks like some twisted children’s television show’s iOS game spin-off. While hardly the deepest gaming experience around, Velocirapture remains one of those engaging sort of titles that are perfect for the long minutes in someone’s waiting room.

  • Velocirapture

    "Action gaming heaven! 4.5/5" -Apple 'n' Apps
    "A hard game to put down." -App Spy
    "If y…
    TA Rating:
    $1.99
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