Rolando is the highly anticipated platform adventure game exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Rolando was developed by ngmoco, a company that has brought us some of the best games on these devices and Rolando is definitely another step in the right direction.
Playing Rolando is fairly simple. The first few levels of the game do a great job teaching you how to control the three different types of Rolandos (regular, spikey, and royalty) and how to guide them to safety. The controls handle pretty well once you get use to them, so you won?t have to swing wildly around to get your little buddies where you want them. To beat the level you just need to get the minimum number of Rolandos through the exit. There are three different bonuses for completing a level. Those bonuses involved beating the challenge time for the level, collecting all the gems in the level, and saving all the Rolandos. The challenge time bonus is the hardest to get so don?t be surprised if you managed to fail that bonus on just about every level.
The presentation for Rolando is probably it?s strongest feature. The cartoony graphics and world are very similar in style to the Cartoon Network shows Samurai Jack and Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends. You?re given the option to listen to the game music, which is pretty catchy as far as video game music goes, or you can play your own using the iPod app. If you exit a game of Rolando by pressing the home button, the iSave feature of the game will actually give you a notification bubble telling you how many Rolandos you have to save in that area.
Rolando is a really enjoyable game that offers you 36 levels to play through. There presentation is really enjoyable and the gameplay is great. The issue is, we?ve seen games like this before on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Toy Bot Diaries is a great example of a similar style game. Rolando is definitely a challenging game that will offer you plenty of replay value once you manage to beat it initially. It?s just unfortunately not the definitive iPhone game it was hyped to be. You won?t be disappointed if you purchase Rolando, it just might not be what you were hoping for if you?ve been following the hype.