No hunger for this game

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire for iOS became available on the same day as the launch of the movie, and while it is free, it's only moderately fun for a very short time. As a person who read the books, maybe I hoped the game would be better, but it is about as good as most movie games: more about advertising the movie than playing the actual game.

The game is an endless runner/survival game with the object of staying alive as long as possible. The 8-bit graphics are charming initially, but the gameplay makes you forget the look quickly. There are two levels you can run on (on the ground, and above the tree tops) and you use a swipe up to jump to the top level, and a swipe down to jump down to the lower level. As you run, enemies (Tracker Jacker wasps) fly in and shoot electric orbs at you. To fight them off, you use Katniss' bow and arrows by tapping on the screen in the direction of the Tracker Jackers and by dodging to the upper or lower levels. Later, the Tracker Jackers get force fields, and apparently at some point you face Capitol hovercraft, but I no longer cared after playing a couple of times.

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire also lets you buy tickets to the movie, watch the movie trailer, add a ringtone to your phone, and other tie-ins appropriate to a movie game.

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire is little more than an advertisement and -- if you're excited about the movie -- will probably be fun for a few minutes. In the end, however, it's a good thing that it's free because there's not much to this game.