iPhone and iTouch wielders rejoice, we have yet another addictive game to waste several hours with! Panda Mania: Legend of the Fu Manchu contains 50 levels over 5 zones of play, pitting the master archer Panda against those who have stolen his mojo (contained of course in his fu manchu mustache) and are terrorizing all five lands that he has sworn to defend.

Gameplay:

PandaMania: Legend of the Fu Manchu is a 2D 3rd person archery game that fits together the best aspects of tower defense games with those of artillery games.

Panda must defend his tower against the onrushing hordes of tougher and faster enemies using only his bow and his upgradable arrows. Panda starts out with standard arrows, which you can upgrade between levels with the money you collect from the spoils of war. Like Green Arrow of the Justice League of America or Hawkeye of the Avengers, Panda is not content merely to use standard arrows, he has a few tricks up his sleeve by way of upgrading to multi-, ice-, electrical-, or fire-arrows. Each is more useful against certain sorts of opponents, but I found that used well, the fire arrows gave the biggest bang for my buck (and once maxed out on upgrades, the "bang" is impressive). As you fight, you build up panda power which you can release as a PandaMania smart bomb attack. The more you've built up, the bigger the bang.

Each zone is comprised of ten levels, the last of which is home to the "Boss" of that level, a larger, slower, tougher, but ultimately easier to beat baddie that drives the overall story of Panda's recovery of his fu manchu and saving of the good citizens of all five lands.

For those wondering how they stack up against the rest of the players of PandaMania, OpenFeint provides online leaderboards.

Cons:

While I don't know of others displaying the same issue, I found that PandaMania crashed often at startup and always before I could complete level 50 to finish the game. This may just be me, but it strangely didn't much affect my enjoyment of the game.

Overall:

For the price, PandaMania is hard to beat. It's a fun little game that's hard to put down and has a cute and clever storyline and changing enemies to keep you interested. The art and animation is enjoyable and perfect for an iPhone game.

ComicsOnline gives PandaMania: Legend of the Fu Manchu 4 out of 5 bullseyes.

Get PandaMania on the iTunes Store for only $1.99 – for a limited time, it's only $.99!

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