We’ve been playing a game again. This time it’s Abduction! 2, which maker Psym Mobile kindly sorted us out with a review copy of a few days ago. It’s just gone live on the Android Market this morning, and here’s what it’s like.

You should know what Abduction’s about – the original has been downloaded through the Android Market more than two million times, and is a superb accelerometer-controlled platform game in which you bounce silly animals up through increasingly complex levels.

What’s changed in Abduction! 2 is mostly visual, with the look of levels given a massive overhaul and the general front end and presentation upgraded loads. You get new character customisation options, a much prettier and larger world map to travel around, plus the level backgrounds are more detailed and filled with silly little weather effects.

We’re no fans of motion controlled games in general, but Abduction’s system works. Because you’re only making small movements left and right, it’s easy to control to a high degree of accurately. Also, you can’t argue with a game that lets you buy a top hat to put on your seal. When people say there are no polished, professional games on Android, show them this.

We’ve been reviewing Abduction! 2 on an HTC Desire, where it runs without glitch. We also gave it a spin on our older, Android 1.6-powered HTC Magic and it worked on that, too, although there’s a weird bug – acknowledged by the developer in an on-screen tip – that stops the world map displaying on older phones. So you have to disable the map and access the levels through a list instead.

Apart from that weird little technical wobble, Abduction! 2 is a great, stylish, fun little game that deserves to be HUGE. Out now for £1.95 on the Android Market.

Psym Mobile’s just popped up an official announcement about Abduction! 2, confirming the bouncy cow sequel is done and ready for launch. It’ll be out on the Android Market this Friday, and here’s a little list of features and what to expect:

- 60 hand crafted adventure levels
- 60 dynamically generated classic levels
- 14 colourful and varied landscapes
- New platform types, including trampolines, spikes, fans, and rockets
- 38 characters to unlock and play
- Dozens of accessories to customize your character
- 6 original music tracks
- Special levels to unlock including a pie-eating mingame, 8-bit, and 3D modes

All we’ll say is there’s a bit more skill involved in playing Abduction! than there is in certain other high-profile recent releases…

The sequel to Abduction!, that very slick motion-controlled game about a bouncing cow which collects presents, is nearly ready. The maker has been running a closed beta test for some time, and recently tweeted to the world that a final release candidate is ready and in testing.

Here’s what it looks like:

Images taken from Droid-Gamers, which was lucky enough to get in on the beta. Expect Abduction! 2 to appear for download very soon.

That beta test version of Angry Birds for Android that we mysteriously decided was so exciting we’ve written about it twice this week already, has gone live today as promised. It’s there. We’ve just looked. Here’s the announcement direct from Rovio:

Angry Birds Lite Beta is now available at the Android Market. Please note that this is the beta version of the application, which is still undergoing final testing before official release. Angry Birds Lite Beta is an unfinished version of the application and may not reflect the final gameplay.

Help us create the best game ever on Android! Please take a moment to give us feedback on how the game is performing on your personal device. Should you have any problems running Angry Birds Lite Beta, you can simply click the report a bug button in the main menu of the game.

If you have trouble starting the application, particularily on the HTC EVO 4G try starting the application again a few times and reboot your Phone.

Alternatively, you can access the feedback survey directly from this link: Angry Birds Lite Beta feedback survey

Make sure you don’t accidentally pay $1.99 for the spam apps. Second one down.

Rovio, maker of smash iPhone game Angry Birds, has come out with a full statement on the status of the imminent Android version of the game, following this morning’s unofficial announcement.

The good news is it’s ditched its plans for a private beta, and will instead be making a test version of “Angry Birds Lite” available to download for everyone with “second generation Android devices” through the Android Market. Here’s the announcement, from Rovio’s blog:

This week, we were planning to run a closed beta test of Angry Birds Lite for Android. Due to the massive response and demand from the Android community, we have decided to make Angry Birds Lite Beta available for everybody through the Android Market this Friday.

Please note that this will be the beta version of the application which is still undergoing final testing before official release. Angry Birds Lite Beta is presented on an “as is” basis, and we cannot guarantee its functionality on every Android device.

Angry Birds Lite Beta will run on second generation Android devices and upwards.

To get all the latest information about Angry Birds on Android, sign up to the mailing list at android.angrybirds.com.

We’ll have screenshots of the Android version up on here six minutes after it launches, time zones permitting.

According to an email sent to reader of Droid-Life by the maker of the amazingly popular iDevice game, a beta version of Android Angry Birds is set to arrive for Android phones by the end of this week.

Rovio’s had its Android beta registration page up and accepting beta registrations for quite some time – it’ll be good to finally see some action. Register yourself there and you should gain access to the beta this week.

To be honest we prefer games with a bit more skill to them than Angry Birds’ slightly random trial & error physics approach. But a lot of people like it so we’re officially HAPPY ABOUT IT. Link via Gizmodo.

Game publisher Gameloft has launched a scheme for gamers it’s calling “Try & Buy” – which lets users trial games before buying them. This isn’t the same as the standard Android Market 24-hour purchase refund scheme, it’s a separate promotion being run outside of the Android Market.

The only way to get the trials is through direct download from Gameloft itself via a link sent to your mobile phone. Which now involves NO COST to you, you lucky end user. Apart from a chunk of your data allowance for the download.

If you look at Gameloft’s Android section right now, you’ll notice everything’s been tagged with a “Free Trial” link. Which is pretty reassuring, isn’t it?

Oh lord, this is HUGE GLOBAL SUPER-NEWS. Tech blog Engadget claims a forthcoming, unannounced Sony Ericsson Android phone will carry both the Xperia AND PlayStation branding, offering an official PlayStation presence in mobile phone gaming for the first time.

The new Sony Ericsson Android phone will be totally custom hardware, in the form of a “landscape slider” in a similar layout to Sony’s PSP Go portable games machine, with an elongated laptop-style touchpad replacing the QWERTY keyboard and taking care of analogue gaming input.

This is a mock-up created by Engadget, which has just coloured in a PSP Go a little bit:

Engadget’s spy says the new phone runs on the Android 3.0 platform, which will include an all-new gaming section of the Android Market specifically created to carry games compatible with this new device and its custom controls. And it could launch in October of this year.

This news is all too exciting for this time of night, basically. Read the full report over at Engadget (and blame them if it turns out to be nonsense).

We’ve been a bit slack on the games-reviewing front recently, but were convinced to give Scramble Touch a go by a couple of visiting iPhone users we encountered. They were MAD for it.

The actual iPhone game this is based on is called Word Scramble 2 and is a Zynga production, but the Android Market only features this clone. But it’s a good clone.

Scramble Touch is basically a free-form word scramble game, with words drawing themselves upwards, downwards, diagonally and sort of next to each other in one huge jumble. The twist is you can go left THEN diagonally in the same move. It takes the word search genre to the next level.

It’s a great game, especially if you live with competitive people – the ‘Play & Pass’ multiplayer challenge is superb. Sadly this is one you’ll have to pay for – but if you’re the wordy type you’ll easily get £1.99 of fun out of it. As long as you’re OK with the concept of paying money for cloned games.

Thought we’d throw in another couple of screenshots to make sure you get the concept. It’s wonky word search.

HyperBees, which sort of impressed us a bit with its release of Android game Prism 3D last week, has updated its popular real-time strategy game Space STG.

The free version of Space STG has been around for a few months, and earned itself quite a lot of fans, but there’s now a new paid-for branch – offering… more. More stuff. Here’s what HyperBees says is new:

“The free version has been on Market for some time and has around 50k active users. The paid (GBP 1.49) version offers more levels, more types of space-ships, technologies and game time than the free one. The free version was an ADC2 finalist. Space STG was developed by InventiVenture and published by HyperBees”

So there you go. And now you know. Here’s what it looks like:

We won’t be troubling the RTS genre, it is not our thing. There’s a video of it in action up on HyperBees’ site if you are able to cope with the mental and time demands of the RTS. QR codes for it are through that link, too.