iRoach 2

iRoach 2 – Bug squishing, err... fun!

Now before any animal rights activists decide to flock onto their bandwagon and preach to me or anyone else about how wrong it is to squish bugs, absolutely no real bugs come to harm from playing this game (apart from the ones you may tread on whilst distracted by playing it).

I admit that I have occasionally splatted the occasional creepy crawly when I was younger and didn’t really know much better. Now I know better but don’t wish to get my hands dirty I was intrigued to play iRoach 2.

The premise of this app is pretty simple; squish any bug that scurries across the tiled surface on the screen. Each hit you make results in a rather gooey, mushy and disgusting bug-like mess. If you fail to make contact, each attempt costs you points! So ultimately, be as accurate and as fast as you can to get the highest score possible in the allotted time.

Weirdly the different bugs make different sounds, which to me didn’t really resemble the real thing much. Although the sound effects were quite good, it would have encouraged me to hit them more if they mocked me if I hit them or missed them.

The creepy-crawlies appeared pretty realistically and watching them scurry around as they did was a little stomach churning. Thankfully in the back of my mind I was able to remind myself that this was just a game and not the real thing.

If you don’t like cockroaches, spiders or flies on the one hand you’ll be pleased to note you can squish them all, but on the other hand you may not wish to look at this title as there’s loads of those ugly critters.

Effectively you are scored on the speed and accuracy of each kill. The faster or tougher the bug, the more points you get (as you’ll require either one quick kill or three good hits to kill it). You must also try to avoid hitting the ladybirds which cross the screen as they will cost you even more points than a miss.

After your two minutes are up, you can check out where you ranked against all your other attempts. You will see how many points you received as well as the total kills you notched up.

For me, this is not a very expansive game and relies purely on our sadistic nature of squishing horrible bugs. The game can’t be modified in any way, so no new bugs will appear to offer some variety, you can’t alter the surface or take a picture of your floor or wall and have the bugs scurry over that surface image. What’s more, there’s only the one game mode so you can’t even alter the length of time you can squish things.

So to sum it up, it’s a nice idea in lots of ways but falls short of being genius but I hope that as the game gets updated, the producers will use the suggestions above as well as any others to improve it.

Rating 55%

Positives

A creepier version of whack-a-mole

Very realistic

Moderately entertaining and does offer a bit of distraction

Negatives

No way to change any settings e.g. time or mode

Very, very, very repetitive

Not to be played with anyone of a squeamish disposition