APP OF THE DAY: Tom Daley Dive 2012 review (iPad / iPhone / iPod touch)

Splooosh!
Tom Daley Dive 2012 - iPad, iPhone, iPod touch

Yep, after all the shouting, the London 2012 Olympic Games are almost upon us. The thought will have some running for the hills, others frothing with excitement, and it is the latter that app developers are hoping to cater to with a swarm of applications, practical, whimsical and playable.

Today's Pocket-lint App of the Day is from the playable gaming camp, but features no less than Team GB poster boy and the youngest person to have represented his country at an Olympics since 1960. It is, of course...

Tom Daley Dive 2012

Format: iPad (version tested), iPhone, iPod touch
Price: Free (+69p in-app purchase to unlock more dives)
Where: iTunes

There's one thing you can absolutely guarantee every two years, summer and winter alternating, and that is that there will be a host of videogames that feature some form of Olympics-themed sporting events. Ever since Track and Field back in 1983, there have been button mashers and joystick wagglers that share the same gameplay DNA.

However, while Tom Daley Dive 2012 shares some of the play mechanics of such titles, it delves far deeper into the teenager's own sport, diving, than any before it.

The game has been developed by the London-based Chelsea Apps Factory which has previously focused on enterprise applications, so comes at it from a unique angle. Its experience outside of the games industry is certainly apparent in this particular app's presentation, and there's plenty of content and features to explore.

Core gameplay is a gesture-controlled diving simulation, where strokes of the finger equate segments of a dive, successful or otherwise, but splashing down into the water isn't the only goal. To begin with, most of the individual dives in the game are locked, with well-received and executed ones needed to make others available.

There's a tutorial to help you learn the basics, and each dive can be viewed beforehand with the virtual Tom showing you the perfect positioning and timings needed. A multitude of camera angles are on offer too, so if the timing is hard to get from one viewpoint, you can always switch to another to see if that helps.

The practice/qualification levels allow you to take on individual dives in order to unlock others. And, when you've opened up enough of them you get the chance to compete in championship mode too, with new locations to compete in: Beijing, Barcelona and London.

Photos of Tom Daley can also be unlocked through completing different achievements, and the whole app?links up to Game Center for you to log your scores.

Tom Daley Dive 2012 is free to download, and is a universal app, so runs on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Not all the dives are available in the free version, however, and to access them all, you'll have to pay 69p as an in-app purchase (which pops up when you try to perform a paywalled dive). This is extremely cheap though, and at least by that point you'll know whether you liked the game or not.

We certainly do.

Tags: Apps iPad apps iPhone apps iPod Touch apps App of the day