iDroidsMania is Artificial Life’s first original game for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms and it’s as eye-fetching as a steaming stack of buttery pancakes smothered in genuine maple syrup.

iDroidsMania is a beautifully rendered side scroller in which you assume the role of HAXX, a robotic oil-field farmer from iDroidAbama (evidently someplace in iDroidOpia).

Enemy denizens of iDroidOpia kidnap your family and you’ve got to get them back by adroitly battling droido-a-droido and throwing a grappling hook to swing over obstacles and make your way through Socket City and other nasty places like spooky, derelict back alleys and sewers.

Along the way, iDroidsMania rewards for saving cuddly BabyBots from BAD RAMM and his deranged cyber-posse. You have at your disposal weapons to blast, vaporize, and in general, maim everything HAXX encounters.

This game is not only terrific to look at it, it’s also clever, especially for a genre that was worn out years ago. It’s just fun. The controls are easy to use and the interface gives you innovative ways to view your surroundings, switch weapons and perform other essential tasks.

iDroidsMania also enhances the conventional side scroller concept with social networking connectivity that enables players to share their progress with friends on Facebook. Thanks to the implementation of Facebook Connect, players can quickly and easily change their status, publish their game results and compare their scores with their Facebook friends and networks.

The soundtrack is early Sega Sonic-style but not overly monotonous as some of these games can be.

Like so many games these days, the tutorial is built in to the early steps of the game with tips about what to do next. and who the bad guys are.

iDroidsmania loads slowly at launch and between transitions from one mode of function to another, which is not surprising given that it’s so graphics intensive.

If you like iDroidsmania, you may also like the Toy Bot trio of apps.

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category: Arcade, Games