‘GamesRadar’ Mobile App Review

When you're stuck on a game, you have three options:

* Flop around for hours, if not days or weeks, using your meager skills and tactics in hopes that you luck into the right path.

* Stop playing entirely and focus on more productive pastimes, like playing other games until you get locked down and frustrated.

* Shrink your testicles down to size and rely on a walkthrough.

In the long run, we all choose the third option, which usually requires a walk of shame toward the computer, no doubt leaving an embarrassing web history for our roommates or loved ones to laugh at us for not being able to figure out how to make our way past that chomping teeth part in Gears of War 2.

Luckily the GamesRadar app is there to make it easier to swallow our pride, as well as eliminate that walk of shame. If you've hit a gaming bottleneck, all you need to do is pull up the app, execute a quick search and be on your way, all in the time it would take to pound out a text message.

The app covers an impressive range, providing extensive walkthroughs for just about every game we're currently playing. Even releases as recent as Prototype 2 are there, with near-comprehensive advice on how to find hidden items, beat bosses or find secret areas.

The GamesRadar database is more impressive for modern games, but not so much ancient classics. The Legend of Zelda on the NES was nowhere to be found, although we were impressed with the presence of the GameBoy Zelda titles.

Most of the walktrhoughs and cheat guides are well-written, but some are amateurish and overly complicated. Still, we'd prefer sifting through GamesRadar's treasure trove of walkthroughs to the Wild West of web searches, which often promise the goods but channel us to empty stub pages or endless ad loops. Yep, we've got a lot of experience with such searches.

GamesRadar is far too good of an app to be free with no catches. Sure, it's possible for someone to come up with a more thorough and comprehensive game walkthrough app, but we'd probably have to pay for that. We'd rather stick with this free one.

GamesRadar: Video Game Cheats, Guides and Walkthroughs (free), is available on iOS platforms and published by Future US, Inc. We looked up cheats and walkthroughs for 10 games that are giving us hell, using an iPod Touch.