PocketWarwick Review (iOS)

It was with a palpable sense of trepidation that I installed the beta version of PocketWarwick to my iPad; he’s a funny guy after all, but celebrities as video games? The aim of this game is a simple one, manage Warwick’s daily routine and rocket him from Z list nobody to A list superstar with all the wealth and trappings fame affords.

Starting out with naught but a seemingly endless supply of chocolate biscuits and a few t-shirts, your Warwick will need instructing on when to: shower, eat, workout, relax, sleep and educate himself with Sims style happiness meters for each of the attributes you’re managing. I found the balancing of these much more forgiving than similar games and really there’s nothing to challenge you here; my niggle with this part of the game is in the UI.

I find it clumsy that the “leveling up” tasks are judged on whether various bars are at Very Good, Good, Average etc. but in order to see these descriptions you have to touch the screen to get the bars to unfurl – it’s a pain in the arse on an iPad and I’d have thought all but impossible on a smaller screen.

Once the basics are taken care of you’ll need to work towards increasing Warwick’s fame levels; event invitation after role -asting opportunity after award ceremony will follow and to reap the rewards you’ll need to meet a list of prerequisites. These will include: the aforementioned meters, an occasional task such as a script reading and various items from your inventory, or the item shop. This is where the now inevitable IGC (in game currency) rears its ugly head.

I made sure I completed every task perfectly and I still got to the point where I couldn’t complete one without spending my pennies. You can get past this but not without a rather ominous warning of not being able to repeat that task in the future (should you want to discard the event), or a wait of three or so minutes before it chucks up your next mission (should you want to be patient and I guess retain the task in your play-through).

It’s annoying but I think we’re all pretty much over being outraged about games not being truly free-to-play and this title’s balance isn’t as bad as some I’ve played.

Even with the slightly gimped UI and somewhat restricted game play, if you take this release as what it’s billed to be, it’s actually a good waste of time. There were quite a few snorks of laughter thanks to Warwick’s brand of humour and the levelling mechanism is interesting for a bit (or in slightly more limited amounts than I played it for). The only thing that remains to be seen is whether total abandonment of my Warwick will result in any amusing injuries, accidents or death. It’s been three days and nothing yet.

PocketWarwick is free to play out now for iOS 3.1.3 and above.