Archive for category iPhone Game Reviews

Game Review: Sword & Poker

Casual strategy and puzzle games have long been standout genres on the iPhone, as their gameplay tends to fit perfectly with the iPhone’s interface and mobile usage. So it’s particularly exciting when we come across an excellent game in this area. Sword & Poker ($3.99, link) is an addictive, challenging game that belongs in the top tier of casual iPhone strategy games. Poker and RPG elements may seem like strange bedfellows, but here they combine perfectly to create a deep game with layers of strategy. We found Sword & Poker to be rewarding casual gaming.

At the heart of Sword & Poker are the mechanics of poker. Players are given 4 cards each round that they place on a gameboard of 9 random cards to create poker hands like pairs, straights, flushes, etc. Forming hands deals a certain amount of damage to the enemy depending on your character’s weapon and other factors like shields and spells. And that’s where the RPG elements come in. As enemies are defeated, you gain gold and collect treasures, with which you can buy new weapons, shields, and health points (in the form of “coins”) to make your character stronger.

The blending of Poker and RPG strategies makes for a great if somewhat strange combo. The poker element has you running through the various possible hands as well as watching your opponent’s cards. The RPG element has you waiting for the right moment to cast spells that can favorably rearrange the cards and deal massive damage. The blending of the two requires a multi-layer approach to your thinking. Yes, the game eventually grows complicated, but it also does a good job of slowly introducing each layer of strategy so players are not overwhelmed at the start.

Although Sword & Poker is mostly a thinking man’s game, it’s also possible to play (and win) with minimal brainpower. But that approach takes longer, and battles will be much messier. A clever use of a spell and cards can sometimes end a battle in a single stroke, preserving your own resources for the next opponent. It’s this blend of a casual difficulty level with rewards for advanced strategy that works so well on the iPhone.


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Review: Assassin’s Creed II Discovery

Assassin’s Creed II Discovery ($6.99, iTunes link) is a companion to the current console game Assassin’s Creed II. You play as the same character—the Assassin Ezio, in an adventure taking place around the same time period as the console/PC version.

Your task, as Ezio the Assassin, is to travel to Spain to investigate the Inquisition’s attacks on your brotherhood. Along the way you’ll face predominantly three types of gameplay: normal, where you have complete a goal on the level; stealth, where you have to make it to a certain point without being seen; and chase, where you must escape from attacking hordes.

If you played the original Assassin’s Creed iPhone game, you’ll notice the sequel is very, very different. Rather than a 3D game, ACII is a polygon sidescroller. The advantage being that instead of having a large virtual joystick to control the main character, there’s only a slider for traveling left and right. Jumping, fighting and other such niceties are controlled via buttons on the right of the screen. If you figure that this control scheme still takes up too much space on the screen, you can alter how big it is through the games options.

The controls are good, except for one or two hiccups with the way they’re integrated. A large chunk of the game is spent climbing and jumping from rooftop to rooftop—in fact one of the games strong points is the fact that every level has many different routes that you can take, each with different advantages. Another major gameplay objective is sneaking, so you aren’t seen as easily. When you’re in sneak mode, you can’t climb walls, which makes no sense. You can jump and fight, or hang on the walls, but you can’t climb them. Likewise, it’s very tricky to control jumping over a ledge vs. slowly lowering yourself over the edge. A critical difference when being chased by hordes of enemies.


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Review: Secret of Monkey Island, Special Edition

All the laughs that made it a classic are still there in this iPhone version of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition ($7.99, link). And that’s ultimately why players should revisit the game and why we give it our recommendation. But grab a walkthrough, because its interface wasn’t ported well. The ill-designed touch-cursor system replaces mouse and keyboard and slows the game way down. And the iPhone’s tiny screen makes discovering the game’s innumerable tiny hidden objects a joyless task. But once you get the general idea of what to do, Secret of Monkey Island plays out like the world’s funniest interactive comic book, and you’ll enjoy nearly every moment.

I had never played Secret of Monkey Island until this version (I was a Maniac Mansion kid myself) but knew of it via word of mouth. Still, I was caught off guard by how funny the game is. Most surprising was the great voice acting. Already working with a great script, the actors deliver the lines in a way that wrings out every last drop of comedy. The graphics, music, and sound effects are likewise professionally done.


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Game Review: Spider, The Secret of Bryce Manor

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ($2.99, iTunes link) is a unique iPhone game that lives up to all the hype surrounding it. The gameplay is captivating and provides enough variation to keep things interesting. Add that to responsive touch controls and stunning graphics, and you have an iPhone game worth recommending.

Developed by Tiger Style, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor has two main objectives. As a spider, your first objective is to build webs and trap food while you move from room to room in an abandoned mansion. As the levels increase, it becomes more challenging to navigate the rooms and trap your food, but you also uncover clues about the mansion and who lived there. This unique back story helps keep the game interesting as you move through the 38 rooms.


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Review: Catan

Catan ($3.99, iTunes link) is based on a popular German board game, Settlers of Catan, that has recently gained global popularity, having been translated into over 30 languages. Part of its appeal is that the game mechanics are relatively simple but game strategy can be deep and complex.

If you haven’t played the board game version, Catan is the name of the island that the four players are attempting to colonize. The island is composed of hexagonal tiles that represent resources that players slowly gather and build settlements and cities on in an attempt to defeat their opponents. Each turn a player roles two dice to see which tiles produce resources, which can be used to build new settlements or be traded to other players.


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Review: Riddim Ribbon, A Music Game From the Makers of Tap Tap

Riddim Ribbon featuring the Black Eyed Peas ($2.99, iTunes link) is a new music game from Tapulous—the makers of the ultra-popular Tap Tap music games. Can they replicate the successes of their first franchise? While there’s plenty of music yet to come to the app, we weren’t impressed with Riddim Ribbon in its current state.

Riddom Ribbon is a combination racing/music game. You guide a sphere along a twisting race-course, attempting to follow a path marked for you on the track. Along the way you pick up spheres, hit jumps, avoid obstacles, and interact with the music. At certain junctures in the course, the path will branch, giving you an option to play different remixes of the song. There are also jumps which take you to an elevated path, and add audio effects to the song. If you stray from the path or hit too many obstacles, the music warps and slows.

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Game Review: Castle of Magic, A Colorful, Mario-Like Platformer

Those who wish to jailbreak their iPhones in order to play Super Mario may want to check out Castle of Magic (iTunes link), an excellent platformer with well-designed stages and a unique, goofy style. And like Super Mario, it has great pacing with many surprise powers and gameplay twists that pull the adventure along.

Castle of Magic’s objectives follow a familiar platform formula: navigate the platforms while avoiding or taking out monsters, and at the end, defeat a mighty boss character. While the game plot may be a little worn, Castle of Magic manages to keep things fresh through its 5 different game worlds with varying themes like winter, sea, forest, candyland (my favorite), and space. In all, the worlds are beautifully sketched and detailed, and the graphics are rendered in a rainbow of colors that pop. And just when things start to get a little redundant, you move on to the next world.

The main character is a goofy young wizard that’s more Link than Harry Potter, and his powers are more reminiscent of a short-ranged, fireball-spitting Mario. Along the way, you can collect various power-ups that give him a long-ranged wand, make him a tremendously fat Augustus Goop-like character (and nearly indestructible), or turn him into a Robin Hood-like character with arrows that, when lodged, turn into platforms themselves.

The biggest worry a gamer should have about a game like this are the controls. Yes, Castle of Magic uses the dreaded simulated d-pad and buttons, but here they are implemented correctly, not requiring hair-splitting turns or precise jumps from the non-tactile screen. I never had moments where I cursed the touch controls for a frustrating death of my character.

But what makes Castle of Magic a great game is the quality design of the gameplay. There is a degree of challenge that, like Super Mario, ranges from easy to medium hard with some light puzzle solving. The various power-ups often come into play, such as using the arrows to create platforms to climb up a tree trunk, or switching up the gravity in the space level to navigate around a blocking obstacle. There is a constant mix of surprise, challenge, and action that keeps the game fun.

Castle of Magic has few flaws. The ones we did find are nitpick. Some of the boss levels are not very challenging and require redundant actions to solve. And we also felt the final space level was not quiet as interesting as the others.

Conclusion:

Castle of Magic is as close to being the Super Marios of the iPhone as any app. Beautiful graphics, surprising twists, and moderately challenging gameplay pull you through this whimsical platformer. 8.2 out of 10, highly recommended.

Castle of Magic is a $1.99 download from the iTunes App Store.

Review: Blades Of Fury

Blades of Fury ($4.99, iTunes link) by Gameloft is a frantic button-masher of a fighting game that borrows heavily from the Soul Calibur franchise. However, despite its derivative origins and occasional flaws, it manages to be a decent—if easy—fighter.

Blades of Fury (hereafter BoF) uses an onscreen control system that functions relatively well given the often fast-paced nature of fighting games. The four-way pad moves your character in space, and there’s a horizontal attack, vertical attack, block and special buttons. Each character has a wide variety of combos, which are performed by stringing together different movements and attack types.

I mentioned before that BoF is heavily drawn from the Soul Calibur games, and if you’ve played any of the series you’ll feel instantly at home. The combos are almost identical in feel; many of the characters are extremely similar in look and play style (Machiavel=Voldo, Danling=Seong Mi-na, Skurd=Astaroth); the female characters share the distinct lack of clothing; the controls are almost identical; etc. While none of these are bad things, the game does feel extremely derivative because of this.

BoF starts with six characters available for play, and another four (as well as alternate outfits) become unlocked by beating Story Mode with each one. Beyond Story Mode, there’s also Arcade Mode, Survival and Training. BoF excels in terms of the options presented to the player: multiple difficulties, control styles, round lengths. There’s even a left-handed mode for all you southpaws out there. Multiplayer is available over Wi-fi or bluetooth.

The graphics in the game are very well done for the iPhone, and each character is interesting in their own right. If you play through Story Mode, there’s also two or three frames of gorgeous still art as a reward, though they’re unfortunately not saved to see again later.

What didn’t we like about the game? Well, on normal difficulty it’s ludicrously easy, but that’s just an option you can quickly change. The voice acting is utterly atrocious, and on more than one occasion borderline racist. It sounds like they just got some of their friends together, and shoved some scriblled lines in their hands, and told them to speak into the microphone. Rather disappointing. As I mentioned above, the gameplay is extremely derivative, which isn’t necessarily bad, but certainly feels unoriginal.

Conclusion

Our dislikes for this game are mostly superficial, and deal with minor finishing touches to the complete package. Underneath the scantily glad, poorly acted, Elven maidens hitting each other with swords on a chain, lies a solid, though easy, fighting game. While it might not have the depth of Street Fighter, it’s fast and fun. The price is on the high side, but if you’re a fan of fighters, it might be worth it. Otherwise, check out the free lite version to get a taste of the game. We recommend Blades of Fury and give it a 7.5/10

Blades of Fury is a $4.99 download from the iTunes App Store.

Review: Battle Bears 1.5

Battle Bears 1.5 ($1.99, iTunes link) is a first-person shooter game with a pretty ridiculous—but funny—story line. The game is consistently featured on the top paid apps list, and while the game can be repetitive at times, you can’t help but be amused by some of the wacky scenarios.

The main character in Battle Bears 1.5 is Oliver, a brown teddy bear who is trapped behind enemy lines and must defend himself against other teddy bears who want to hug him to death. Oliver has a sandbagged position and a healthy selection of weapons, including automatic rifles, a “bearzooka” that shoots parts of dead teddy bears, and a crossbow for dead unicorn horns.

There are 20 levels of gameplay, and you have the option to select easy, medium, or challenging modes. The controls for Battle Bears 1.5 are very responsive, and it’s easy to aim with one thumb and shoot with the other. The opposing bears are killed pretty easily, normally with one bullet, except for some of the bigger bears that require multiple shots. You can add additional gore or “blood effects” if you’re not satisfied with just seeing rainbows shoot out of their heads. The graphics are also good, even if the bears are a little rough around the edges.

While there are a variety of levels, most of the beginning levels are all pretty much the same, which saps your motivation for wanting to continue to higher levels. Each level does get a bit harder, either because there are more bears or they come at you faster, but there’s not much variation. There are some pretty funny moments, though, like when the bears start chanting ‘hug me’ over and over. And there are also some random, head-scratching characters like the Bearbershop Quartet. It’s cute.

However, it seems like the game needs a little something extra to keep you entertained. I found myself getting bored a few times—how many bears can you shoot before you’ve had enough? In my case, it doesn’t take many. The game is also very slow to load, especially between levels, but the movie scenes provide a good dose of entertainment and some are pretty cute. Most of the scenes take the form of Oliver communicating with his commanders.

Conclusion

Overall, Battle Bears 1.5 is certainly an enjoyable (and affordable) game for the iPhone. It has good graphics, easy-to-use controls, and an amusing story line, but it needs a little more variation to be an excellent game. We rate it a 7.3 out of 10, recommended.

Battle Bears 1.5 is normally a $1.99 download from the iTunes store, but it’s currently on sale for $0.99.

Game Review: Zenonia

The word epic rarely applies to iPhone games, where developers frequently whip up games in a matter of weeks compared with the years it takes to develop console games. But if any iPhone game is rich and deep enough to deserve the label of epic, it’s Zenonia ($2.99, iTunes link).

Zenonia is somewhat similar in style to 16-bit classics like Zelda and Final Fantasy, only with much more pure RPG elements. It is filled with at least a hundred hours of questing and leveling. Those who want to buy an iPhone game with enough fresh gameplay to last for several months, this is it. The only thing holding Zenonia back is its squint-worthy graphics, tiny controls, and sometimes frustrating menu system. But overall, Zenonia’s deep and detailed gameplay triumph over its flaws—it’s simply a great game. We rate it an 8.4 out of 10, highly recommended.

Zenonia has all the elements you’d expect of a deep fantasy roleplaying game. There are the basics: kill monsters, gain experience, skills, spells, and equipment, and create as powerful a character as you can. But there are also many advanced elements, such as deteriorating equipment that must be repaired, magical enhancements that can be applied to equipment, a hunger/food management system, and two good/evil story paths your character can take. Zenonia does a great job of balancing it all. And it’s not fluke the game feels so refined—it’s a ported version of a mobile game that’s been popular in Korea for years.
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