Games for Android

Speedx 3D

• £0.99 / No free version

Speedx 3D is a cool-looking tunnel accelerometer. It sends you hurtling down an angular tunnel at ever-increasing speed, twitching the phone left and right to avoid solid blocks that pop up in your path. Trails of colour warn of approaching obstacles, but it's still very hard to see what's coming up next - games of Speedx rarely last longer than thirty seconds.

It's expensive for thirty seconds of fun, then, even if it's technically quite impressive. The tilt sensing is a wee bit dodgy, too, but as long as you hold it absolutely still whilst it calibrates, it's at least functional. More than one mode or visual theme might have made it more than a cheap, quick thrill.

6/10

Flight Director

• $1.99 / Free version: Flight Director (LITE)

You might guess, from the title, that Flight Director is rather a lot like Flight Control. It is. You guide planes to runways, drawing paths for them with your finger on the touchscreen. The difference? Flight Director uses maps of real airports taken from Google Earth - including that most illustrious of global transport hubs, Edinburgh Airport!

As opposed to a cute and cartoony flight game with chubby little planes, then, we have a more sombre experience, with several types of real plane doodling around the screen until you direct them to safety. A little audio cue lets you know when your finger has found its target runway. The rest of the soundtrack is comprised of calming beeps and chimes, the peace broken by screeching alarms if two planes come too close together.

It's soothing, compelling and definitely worth £1.50-ish of your money - the lite version has three maps instead of seven and locks off the harder difficulties. It also has infuriating ads that are easy to accidentally touch when you're trying to guide a plane, an irritation absent from the full game.

8/10

Robo Defense

• $2.99 / Free version: Robo Defense Free

Robo Defense is the best tower-defence game on 'Droid, and how much you like it will depend entirely on how much you like tower defence. I'm not wild about it. You get a lot of levels for your two quid (or one level with plenty of difficulty settings in the free version), as well as achievements, and it plays smoothly. But with extremely basic sound effects and fuzzy sci-fi-styled graphics, Robo Defense doesn't look or feel significantly different from something you might get on a Nokia. Not quite what I bought an Android for, then, but amusing nonetheless.

6/10