If you're at all interested in run 'n jump platformers from the days of yore, Castle of Magic will be right up your alley. There's an abundance of levels, power ups, gameplay ideas and a high standard of presentation throughout. As we've come to expect from Gameloft, they deliver a premium product at a fair price - and if you act quickly, you can snap this one up at just 59p.

But like their other games, Castle of Magic boils down to a well presented clone instead of a truly original effort. If you're like us, you'll appreciate iPhone games that offer something new, or at least a challenge. Virtual D-Pads have always been hit and miss, which can often be blamed on the lack of tactile feedback - here's it's extremely possible to mess up with the D-Pad and so the fun you get out of the game is directly proportional to how your experience with the controls goes.

Because the controls are somewhat error prone, levels are fairly forgiving. They're also paired with a 100 item = 1 life system, which is slightly broken - in that if you die the items (diamonds) will respawn and you can collect them again for a new life. Indeed, only a few levels in we had about 20 lives, and that number kept going up and up.

The gameplay is standard platform fare - in that we've seen just about everything here elsewhere. The protagonist can collect certain items in order to don costumes that give him special abilities, like Wario - there's all sorts of them, such as an inuit that grants an ice pick, or a special one that increases the size of the character so he can waddle about, munching on cake and enemies. A certain number of bosses inhibit between area movement, but these are often attack the weak spot affairs and not terribly challenging.

Each of the stages has it's own presentation that ties into the abilities that you can activate. There's forest, a pirate theme, a snowy environment, one set in outer space and some other ones. Worth mentioning is the cake themed level set, which explores the sticky properties of the sweet stuff to create some interesting gameplay ideas. Certainly, the presentation makes Castle of Magic worth playing - especially for younger gamers, but everyone can appreciate the bright colours and lively music. It's a shame that the story is totally forgettable.

Strictly speaking, Castle of Magic is not a bad game at all. You will enjoy, especially for 59p, the overall package. Even though the controls are a little fiddly, it's pretty easy to adjust to them. For us though, the game feels overly derivative of past titles - in that it's a good show off for your device but won't provide any lasting value past completion.

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