Are you a serious gamer and love to play and read about games? If so, this article will be an eye-treat for you

In this article, we are going to discuss the top-5 Android games till date, their features, their critical reviews and their reception or sales they have made so far. We will also discuss the awards won by a few games. So, continue reading and treat your eyes!

Angry Birds

Angry birds can perhaps be renamed ‘Famous Birds’ because it is the Android based game that has the maximum It is not only the game that is famous among people of all age groups but there are also plethora of other Angry Birds products that have been launched, fuelled by the amazing success of the game like:

Angry birds toys: There have been several toys made featuring Angry Birdscharacters. The game’s official website offers plush versions of the birds and pigs for sale, along with T-shirts featuring the game’s logo and characters. The most notable toys are the Telepods, created by Hasbro. These figures are created for Angry Birds Star Wars II, Angry Birds Go, Angry Birds Stella, and Angry Birds Transformers. These are figures (devices) that are used to ‘teleport’ a character of the corresponding figure (toy) into the game by scanning it, via the device’s camera. Telepods can also be used with the toy sets that come with Angry Birds board games.

Print publications adaptation: In 2011, Rovio published a cookbook titled ‘Bad Piggies: Egg Recipes’, along with doodle books based on some characters of the game. They also released Angry Birds Space books about numbers, alphabets, and stickers. The National Geographic channel published a book titled ‘Angry Birds Feathered Fun’for learning all about birds in a fun-way.

Angry Birds food products: At Spring 2012, Olvi, a Finland based soft drinks company, started to manufacture Angry Birds soft drinks, after making a deal with Rovio. At first, it launched two different flavors: Tropic(made from tropical fruits) and Paradise (made from pineapple and mandarin). Fuelled by the initial success of the two brands, Olvi later released two new soft drinks brands: Lagoon (made from pear and apple) and Space Comet (made from orange and cola) later in September 2012.

Angry Birds Land adaptation: In September 2011, the ‘Window of the World’ theme park in Changsha, China inaugurated an unlicensedAngry Birds amusement park. Visitors to the park use a large slingshot to launch stuffed toys of the bird characters at green pig balloons. Upon learning of the amusement park, Rovio Entertainment collaborated with the Chinese government and officially licensed the park.

Angry Birds Space center adaptation: On June 2013, Rovio and NASA opened an Angry Birds Space-themed park at the Kennedy Space Center, titled ‘Angry Birds Space Encounter’. It features various scenes from the Angry Birds Space video game, such as creating characters and shooting the birds at the pigs.

Asphalt 8, Airborne

This game was released in the year 2013 as a part of the Asphalt series. It was released on August 22, 2013 for iOS and Android, on November 13 for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and on January 15, 2014 for BlackBerry 10.This game has stunning graphics and is available for free download on all the OS platforms. It is arguably the second most popular game on the android platform and is the ‘game of choice’ for those who love car racing games but cannot afford the costly ‘NFS’ series of car racing games. The players are given four control options; ‘Tilt to steer’ (auto-acceleration with movement controlled by tilting the device), ‘Tilt and icons’ (manual acceleration via an on-screen icon, with movement controlled by tilting the device), ‘On-screen controls’ (auto-acceleration with movement controlled by an on-screen virtual steering-wheel), ‘Tap to steer’ (auto-acceleration, with movement controlled by touching the side of the screen), and a traditional WASD keyboard scheme for Windows 8/Windows 10 devices. There is a five star rating system for each race. Three stars are awarded for finishing in first place, two for second, and one for third place. Achieving secondary objectives, such as performing a given number of stunts or knocking down opponents, awards the player with one or two additional stars depending on the number of secondary tasks completed. Players who finished first in an event without completing the secondary objectives may replay the race and obtain a five-star rating. The game has a lot more ramps than in previous games. In addition to performing standard jumps, players can also perform flat spins by drifting onto a ramp and barrel rolls by driving on curved ramps. Performing flat spins and barrel rolls in the game gives the player a lot of additional free nitro which boosts the car’s speed greatly.  Crashing into obstacles such as bus stops or lampposts or hitting (or near missing) civilian cars also earns nitro. Another new feature is the ability to get a ‘Perfect Nitro’. When the player hits the nitro boost, a small red zone appears in the boost bar. If the player hits boost again when the boost meter is in the red zone, the car will accelerate even more. There were forty-seven licensed cars available initially, but due to game updates, there are a total of 155 cars available as of June 2016. The cars are divided into five classes, and their performance is now determined by the new Rank rating feature. The player starts with one car in the lowest class (Class D), the Dodge Dart GT. Unlike in previous games, all cars are immediately available for purchase without the need to collect stars to unlock them. These include: the Cadillac ATS, the Scion FR-S and the Alfa Romeo in Class D; the MiTo GTA, the Chevrolet Camaro GS, the Lamborghini Gallardo and the Lotus Exige S Roadster in Class C; the DS Survolt, the Aston Martin V12 Zagato, and the Ferrari 458 Italia in Class B; the Marussia B2, the McLaren 12C Spider, and the Pagani Zonda R in Class A and the GTA Spano, the Ruf CTR3, and theBugatti 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse in Class A. The car with the highest Rank is the Devel Sixteen Prototype (Class S).

Locations: Asphalt 8: Airbornefeatured nine different locations initially, with six new locations added through updates. Each location features multiple tracks. The tracks are either new to the series or old tracks which have been redesigned to satisfy graphical needs. The locations are Nevada, Iceland, Tokyo, French Guiana, London, Barcelona, Alps, Venice and Monaco.

Soundtrack: Asphalt 8is the first game in the series to feature a licensed soundtrack. There are three selectable music ‘stations’: bass, rock, electronic and rap.

Reception: Asphalt 8is highly praised by critics and became the leading game of its genre. The iOS version holds an aggregate score of 91 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on eighteen reviews and a score of 92.38% on GameRankings, based on thirteen reviews.

Clash of Clans

Clash of Clansis a freemium mobile MMO strategy video game developed and published by Supercell. The game was released for iOS platform on 2 August, 2012. For Google Play and Android on 7 October, 2013.

Buildings: To earn and store gold and elixir, players must build gold mines and gold storages and elixir collectors and elixir storages, respectively. Elixir is used to train new troops, carry out research in the laboratory to upgrade troops, to re-load X-Bows (available from Town Hall 9) and to build and upgrade certain buildings, mostly buildings used in attacking another player’s base. Gold is used to build defensive buildings and to upgrade the town hall, which allows access to more buildings and higher levels for existing buildings. At higher levels, dark elixir becomes available; this type of elixir is used to train and upgrade dark elixir troops and heroes, create dark spells, and fuel the Inferno Tower, a defensive building that is available only at Town Hall 10. The Eagle Artillery which is a defensive building available at Town Hall 11 only is fueled by elixir. Town Hall 11 also provides access to a new hero – The Grand Warden. He is the only hero born out of an elixir. To earn and store dark elixir, players must build dark elixir drills and dark elixir storages. The defensive buildings used to defend the village include cannons, mortars, bombs, teslas, traps, archer towers and wizard towers. Players can also build walls, which can be upgraded as the player-level increases.

Clan Wars: Clans are groups of players who join together to support each other, either materially (donating troops) or verbally (giving advice). Players can join clans once they rebuild the ‘Clan Castle’ building early on. A major feature of the game, Clash of Clans,is clans clashing against each other. Clan leaders and co-leaders can declare wars against other clans. Each clan is then given one ‘preparation day’ and one ‘war day’. When a player attacks a member of the opposing clan, they receive stars based upon the number of units and buildings they destroy in the opponent’s community. Each player is limited to two attacks per war and the team with the most stars at the end of the war day is declared victorious. If the ‘number of stars’ is equal for two clans, then the victorious clan is the one that did a greater percentage of destruction. Players receive bonus war loot if he/she uses their attacks in the war. This loot is different on different bases and is decided by Supercell, the top most base has the most war bonus loot and the last base has the least amount of bonus loot. If the clan wins the war, the bonus loot is fully delivered to the player but during a loss, only one-third of the loot is delivered to the player.

Reception: Clash of Clanshas generally received positive reviews. The iOS version holds an aggregate score of 74 out of 100 on Metacritic and 80% on GameRankings.

Modern Combat 5

Modern Combat 5: Blackoutwas launched in 2014 and is a first-person shooter based game developed by Wil Lane Bucharest and published by Gameloft. It is 5^th in sequel to Modern Combat 4. It was released on July 24, 2014 for the iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8.1, and BlackBerry 10 OS platforms. It is available for free download on all OS platforms except BlackBerry 10.

The Gameplay: Players can shoot, crouch, sprint, throw grenades, aim, reload their weapons, leap to obstacles, knife enemies and change/pick up weapons. A new key feature to Modern Combat 5is the ability to pick a soldier and assign a class of weapon ranging from assault, heavy, sniper, recon, support and bounty hunter, although the player’s class does not prevent the player from picking up different classes of weapons in the game. The campaign focuses on Phoenix (a minor character in Modern Combat 4) trying to hunt down Saunders (a supporting character in Modern Combat 4). As you play in a certain class and acquire a ‘weapon score’, you unlock new guns and attachments you can use in both the campaign and multiplayer. Modern Combat 5 is the first Modern Combat game which requires an internet connection to play.

Brief Plot: The campaign begins with a cut scene, in which Phoenix and Daviau discuss current events in Gilman HQ, Tokyo. One month prior, the World Liberation Army had launched a surprise attack on Venice, Italy and a week after that an attack on several Asian networks. Phoenix tries to convince Daviau that the attack on Venice was a cover-up for something greater, but Daviau does not believe him. The cut scene ends and the game begins as a flashback, with Phoenix and Jonathan Taylor infiltrating Venice as part of a Gilman Security Special Forces Unit.

Reception: The game has had mostly positive reviews from critics. The iOS version holds aggregate scores of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 17 reviews, and 81.10% on GameRankings, based on nine reviews. Critics had praised the game’s, visuals, sound and realistic grenade explosions but criticized the slow-paced game-play.

Minecraft

Minecraftis a sandbox video game originally developed by the Swedish programmer Markus Notch Persson and later developed and published by Mojang. The creative building aspects of Minecraft enable players to build buildings out of textured cubes in a 3D generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, resource gathering, crafting and combat. Multiple gameplay modes are available like the survival mode where the player must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health, the creative mode where players have unlimited resources to build with and the ability to fly, an adventure mode where players can play custom maps created by other players and a spectator mode where players can fly around and clip through blocks, but cannot place or destroy any. The PC version of the game is renowned for its third-party mods, which adds various new items, characters, worlds and quests to the game. Minecraft received five awards during the 2011 Game Developers Conference. Of the Game Developers Choice Awards, it won the Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award and Best Debut Game Award. From the Independent Games Festival, it won the Audience Award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In 2012, Minecraft was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the category Best Downloadable Game.

Commercial reception: As on October 2015, the game had sold approximately 60 million copies across all platforms, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.

Critics’ reception: Minecrafthas been praised for the creative freedom that it grants to the players, as well as for the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have praised Minecraft‘s complex crafting system. Critics also liked the game’s adventure elements because the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. Reviewers have criticized the game’s lack of in-game tutorials and instructions, making it difficult for new players to learn how to play the game.