Archive for the ‘3D’ tag
Best iOS Games January 2012
Our ratings for games we reviewed in January are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.
Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in January, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in January.
5 Stars
Super Crate Box, $1.99 – [Review] – [] – Vlambeer knocks it out of the park with this ultra-frantic crate collecting game. With great virtual controls, and gameplay that is great for pick up and play mobile gaming sessions, Super Crate Box is a game you shouldn’t miss.
4.5 Stars
Blockwick, Free – [Review] – [] – A really slick puzzle game that you can try for free. After that, level packs of increasing difficulty are sold in bundles of 60 for 99¢ a pop. Don’t let the initial pack it comes with turn you off, think of it more as a really long tutorial.
Hero Academy, Free – [Review] – [] – This multiplayer tactical game by Robot Entertainment has become incredibly popular amongst our community, and even was the topic of a . If you’re looking for people to play with, hit the forum link and you’ll find tons of people looking for a game.
Run Roo Run, $0.99 – [Review] – [] – From the creators of Scribblenauts comes this super-fun mini-level jumping game. Most levels will only take a few moments to complete, but thankfully, there’s a ton of them. Clearing a world unlocks some really difficult levels that’ll really put you to the test.
Smash Cops, $2.99 – [Review] – [] – Not only does Smash Cops have great graphics, but it also has a new control method that we haven’t seen before for controlling your cop car. You use your finger to “push” the car where you want to go. It sounds strange, but it works great.
Triple Town, Free – [Review] – [] – There’s a definite learning curve to Triple Town but once you get over that hump and come to grips with how the mechanics of the game works, you’ll be building amazing towns and cursing at bears in no time. Argh, those bears. They ruin everything.
Windosill, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This iPad exclusive puzzle game originally started its life as a Flash title. It’s aged incredibly well, and feels like a perfect fit for the iPad. Multitouch adds so much, even if you played the original, it’s worth trying again on the iPad.
The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.
As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.
For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer.
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‘Shogun’ Review – A Short but Solid Shooter with Plenty of Eye Candy
After spending some quality time with a preview version of ’s new bullet hell shooter Shogun: Rise of the Renegade [Free] last week, we were eager to get our hands on the final version to see how it all came together. And sure enough, earlier this week Shogun quietly snuck into the App Store.
It was interesting that Int13 was departing from their typical augmented reality based games, like ARDefender [Free], and trying their hand at an established and nuanced genre like arcade-style manic shoot ‘em ups, especially with veteran shmup developer Cave basically cornering the market with their stable of high-quality ports. However, Int13 has surprised me with just how right they got Shogun, and while it might fail to totally impress the more discerning bullet hell enthusiast, fans of shmups in general will find a lot of action and fun brimming from the game.
The very first thing that pops out at you about Shogun are its graphics. The environments are done up in 3D and give off a great feeling of depth as you’re scrolling by in your ship. It’s also Retina Display ready, meaning it’s razor sharp. Enemies are your standard alien-type of spacecrafts, and there are some rather interestingly designed mid-boss and end-boss fights that will give you a run for your money in terms of challenge. On the whole, gameplay in Shogun doesn’t divert too far from your typical bullet-hell shooter formula, but it executes the components of that formula extremely well.
However, Shogun does show some more innovative signs in a couple of areas. One is the method in which you change your weapons. Your ship comes with 3 weapon types: spread shot, laser, and homing. Whenever you lift your finger off the screen, the game slows down bullet-time style and a small menu pops up above your ship that lets you choose from the 3 weapon types, as well as trigger a screen-clearing EMP or choose to add small wingman ships for added firepower. It’s nice that the action slows down to allow you to concentrate on what weapon you need to pick, but you can still take damage in this mode so you’ll still need to stay alert.
The other thing in Shogun that I found very interesting is the system for filling and using your shield meter. You have the ability to scrape bullets that pass you by, which basically means getting your ship extremely close to them without actually getting hit. With each consecutive bullet you scrape, you build a multiplier, and this adds to your shield meter above which can go past the 100% full mark. Every time you fill up your life meter completely, it fills one of the 6 reserve tanks above the meter.
Now, these reserve tanks can be used for various things, like setting off the aforementioned EMP blast or adding one or more sets of the satellite helper ships to your own ship (which VASTLY increases your firepower, I might add). Also, when you do get hit by enemy fire, the game will automatically clear the screen of bullets and shield you for a brief moment while giving you a refilled meter, but it will cost you one of your reserves.
The scraping and usage of reserve tanks aren’t totally new ideas in the shmup world, but they’re done well and add a ton of strategy to how you go about being the most effective in Shogun. It’s in your benefit to scrape as much as possible and always strive to keep your reserves well stocked for particularly challenging sections and boss battles. But, you can’t concentrate too hard on just scraping, as inevitably that will lead you to take damage if you aren’t paying enough attention to killing the enemies as well.
While the graphics are gorgeous and the underlying mechanics are sound, about the only thing I don’t like about Shogun is that it’s pretty short. Featuring just 4 levels to play through, it comes to an end pretty quickly, but it’s a satisfying and challenging ride while it lasts. The pay model is also pretty accommodating, allowing you to download and play through the entire first level for free. The remaining 3 levels are accessible as well, but you can only play them for a brief minute – just long enough to get a taste. Each full level is then unlockable separately for 99¢ each, or $1.99 to unlock them all at once.
As a big fan of Cave’s shooters, I find it hard to really get into most of the other shooters on the App Store. They really did set the bar that high. But Shogun is a game that instantly drew me in with its visuals, and then backed it up with a ton of solid action. It even Universal and has iCade support, to truly complete the arcade experience. As a free download, there’s really no reason not to give Shogun a try for yourself.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘The Lighthouse HD’ iPad Review – Skirting The Shoals of Ship Management
Ship management and pseudo line-drawing make an appearance in ’s The Lighthouse HD [$4.99]. Offering a different take on the classic genre, The Lighthouse HD’s great visuals and variety offset some choice design decisions holding the game back from loftier heights.
In The Lighthouse HD, you take the role of an all-seeing lighthouse operator helping ships get across hazardous waters. Tap anywhere on the screen to shine a light on that area. If you shine the light near a ship, it’ll alter direction towards the direction of the light (and will then continue straight on its new path). The game plays somewhat similarly to line drawing games like Harbor Master [$1.99 / HD / Free], with the difference being that you can’t directly alter the course of your ships and instead must use the light to indirectly manage your shipping lanes (rather than drawing routes).
The goal of each mission is to accomplish various objectives (which include goals like getting ships from one point to another and leading fishing boats to giant schools) before losing all your ships. In addition, you’ll encounter barriers such as rolling fog, ship-seeking sharks, and giant krakens looking to trap your ship. As expected, a lot of multitasking, coordination, and precision are required to pass missions and hit the highest scores. Overall gameplay is executed well enough, although I would have liked an option to speed up the map when I’m working with slower boats (considering the game is on a timer, I could see why this wasn’t on the top of the list).
The areas that The Lighthouse HD does a really great job with are its visuals and presentation. The game succeeds in conveying a moody, dark atmosphere at the onset of each mission. Weather effects such as rain, lightning and fog add even more to the general feel of the game, although there were a few times when the various effects made it hard to see some of the baddies swimming underneath the water (call it part of the cruelty of the sea, I suppose). As you get towards the end of each mission, the sun begins to rise, the music starts swelling and the whole map gives off a sense of seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I rarely see a game succeed at achieving a play on emotion, but The Lighthouse HD does a good job of getting there.
Unfortunately, there are several areas in The Lighthouse HD that feel rough around the edges. Specifically, the game is filled with a lot of frustrating gameplay nuances that just seem out of place. For example, there are no on-screen notifications when ships are about to come into play on the map. Considering that several levels charge you with taking ships from one end of the map to the other, with both entrances also posing as exists, it can be very frustrating when you get close to an exit and a ship appears out of nowhere and collides with your existing ship, making you lose both in the process.
Another example deals with actual gameplay mechanics. One of the items available to you to make guiding ships easier is buoys, which force nearby ships to divert course automatically. The problem is I could never get the buoys to work correctly – I’d place one in a certain location thinking ships would divert one way and they end up going another way. Considering there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove them once they’re placed. This ends up being a waste of resources and can make or break a level.
Another concern is in regards to content. The Lighthouse HD offers 30 total missions, making the game good on content for at least three or four hours (depending on whether you like collecting objective medals). However, I imagine that most gamers will clamor that the game could use more missions, particularly at its current price point. The developer has stated that additional levels are coming, and I hope they arrive sooner rather than later.
Despite these shortcomings, The Lighthouse HD should appeal to fans of vehicle management games and line-drawers. Its nuanced changes to the standard gameplay and overall visual presentation do a decent job of differentiating itself. Assuming you can get past the relative lack of content and occasional strange gameplay missteps, I’d recommend The Lighthouse HD .
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Macworld | iWorld 2012 – Catching Up with Gameloft
I was able to stop by Gameloft’s San Francisco offices while at the conference, and chatted with them about some of their recent releases as well as some of the backlash they’ve received over them. First was the issue of how they put advertisements into Hero of Sparta II [$4.99], and after an overwhelming amount of negative feedback they decided to take them out. I think it’s good when a company goes out on a limb to try something, and then can admit they were wrong about it and make things right in the end.
Next we discussed the reception to Dungeon Hunter 3 [Free], which was pretty mixed. The game itself was actually pretty good, but so drastically different from the previous two entries that I think it alienated the established fan base of the series. Had they positioned it as a spinoff rather than a direct sequel, I think the outcome would have been a lot more favorable. Plus, it’s a freemium title, which is the type of thing that will always draw criticism from some folks.
Finally, we talked about their recent release Urban Crime [Free], which was essentially a repackaging of an older Gangstar title into a freemium model. The game has not gone over well with either critics or players, and we didn’t have too many good things to say about it in our review either. The combination of outdated visuals, a rehashed game world that many people had already played to death, and tough freemium restrictions was just a recipe for disaster with Urban Crime.
(Left to right: Hero of Sparta II, Dungeon Hunter 3, and Urban Crime)
So what do these three games all have in common? Well, they’re all examples of Gameloft trying to find out the best way to sell their brands in a turbulent market like the App Store. Honestly, I think putting ads in Hero of Sparta II and making an old game into a freemium game with Urban Crime were just their way of experimenting to see what works, and although neither of those really went over so well with gamers the negative feedback was actually invaluable to Gameloft moving forward. And as for Dungeon Hunter 3, I think they made a good game but just didn’t position it right, which is another lesson learned the hard way.
What I did take away from our meeting is that Gameloft is not going completely freemium with their games from here on out, as some people have been quick to conclude. Part of these experiments is finding the best way to go about selling their future titles, and with nearly all of their development cycles lasting from 10-14 months, it can be hard to keep up with a market that moves as quickly as the App Store. But they assured me that they do have a mixture of the types of premium games that they’ve built their iOS reputation on still coming down the line, as well as titles that take advantage of the freemium model, which seems to be the prevalent model in the App Store as of late.
To wrap up our meeting, they let me get some hands-on time with their upcoming Unreal Engine title, which is still extremely early in development and doesn’t even have a title just yet. I’m sworn to secrecy on most of the nitty gritty details for now, but let me say that I was really impressed with how good the game is shaping up to be, and of course it looks absolutely gorgeous with the Unreal tech under the hood. About all I can say is that it’s a fully 3D real-time action game that will have a full storyline to play through. It will be a paid game, but will have some in-app purchase items. Finally, we should be seeing the game in the second quarter of this year, which should be by this summer.
I’m really hoping to be able to share more on the upcoming Unreal game as it gets closer to release, and after meeting with the representatives of Gameloft in person, it’s easy to see that they’re a passionate bunch who care a lot about putting out products that their customers will enjoy. Their recent missteps really seem like a part of a larger learning experience in a marketplace where traditional rules are pretty much thrown out the window. I’ll look forward to seeing how Gameloft adapts and grows on the App Store this year, and if they’re able to unlock the key to a happy medium between being profitable and keeping their huge stable of fans happy.
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‘Pizza vs. Skeletons’ Rolling Into The App Store Next Month
First, the news: IKAROS [$.99] creator has finally dated Pizza vs. Skeletons. The wonderfully bent, 100-level pizza rolling game is currently in submission and set to release this February 25 as a paid Universal app. Perhaps as a commentary on current iOS trends, Riverman that this release will be “the whole game, for one price” and all updates will be free forever.
And now for a reminder, because hey, it’s been a really, really long time since we’ve talked about Pizza vs. Skeletons. May 2011, actually, was the last time we had anything meaningful to say about the project, which at the time, the developer was struggling to pitch. “How do you hype up something that has no clear genre, a nonsense plot, and a main character that’s a thirty foot tall conglomeration of cheese and tomato sauce?” asked.
But here’s the deal: In Pizza vs. Skeletons, you control a massive, fully customizable pizza across a dizzying array of levels that’ll have you smashing pyramids, killing robots, and hey, even rescuing puppies. “On one hand it’s an ode to all the classic NES and SNES era game we all loved as kids,” a . “But it’s also got tons of new stuff that has never been put into a game before, with mechanics carefully crafted for iOS.” Say no more, guys. I’m sold.
The thing that’s really drawing our all-seeing eye is its art style. This looks like the kind of game that Tim Burton would make if he actually had a sense of humor. Definitely spend some time with the images in this article, and get pumped with us!
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‘rComplex’ Heading to iOS This February
A dark, moody endless runner with an actual narrative hook? That’s the elevator pitch for rComplex, according to the game’s developer, . Originally released for PC back in 2009, InterWave is breathing new life into the title with a Unity 3D powered re-imaginings across multiple handsets and platforms, including iOS later this February.
A new trailer for the game is embedded below, and you should check it out. Basically, you play as a mysterious dude with a lot of stamina who is being chased by a dream-like tentacle monster. As you run, you’ll steadily “piece together the events that led to your current situation,” and ultimately the mystery. Well, unless you die. You’ll probably be boned on that front, then.
[Via ]
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‘Paper Monsters’ Review – A Straightforward and Visually Stunning Platformer
The just-released Paper Monsters [99¢], co-developed by and , has been in the works for a long time. In fact, development originally began way back in mid-2010, and we didn’t learn until well into 2011 that Crescent Moon had actually jumped into the project to give it a graphical makeover (as they’ve been known to do from time to time).
With such a long development cycle, it’s easy for the hype over a game to do one of two things: either people start to lose interest as the months drag along, or the hype builds up to the kind of level that would be hard for any game to deliver on. Well, Paper Monsters finally has reached the App Store, so if you’re part of that first group then it’s time to start paying attention again.
More importantly, however, are the folks in that second group – the insanely hyped crew. Paper Monsters is an incredibly fun platformer, and it’s downright gorgeous to look at. Plus, it’s full of all kinds of whimsy and little touches that bring up those warm, fuzzy nostalgia feelings that will take you back to platformers of days gone by. But, if you’re looking for a genre-defining game that breaks all the boundaries that you thought you knew for platformers, well, Paper Monsters isn’t quite at that level. With tempered expectations, though, it’s one of the nicest platformers currently available on iOS.
First off, Paper Monsters takes more than a few cues from the iconic Mario series. It doesn’t try to hide this fact, either. With every jump your character makes, he lets out an excited “whoo!” that you almost expect to be immediately followed by “here we gooooo!” or “it’s-a me, Mario!” The majority of enemies are dispatched by jumping on their head, you’ll hop into gigantic pipes to warp to different parts of the levels, and there’s even a giant mouth built into a mountain that you’ll escape through after beating up on a boss, à la Super Mario Bros. 2.
These things don’t detract from the game though, in fact, they add to the already rich character and personality of Paper Monsters. As I said previously, the game is gorgeous. Graphics are all done in colorful 3D, though gameplay is strictly old-school 2D style. The music is also a big part of the experience, and it manages to create incredibly moody atmospheres to explore and play through. The many Mario-like flourishes merely enhance the already fantastic presentation of Paper Monsters.
Gameplay itself is simple and straight forward. You can move left or right, jump, and double jump. And… that’s about it. Occasionally, a level will have you playing as a helicopter or submarine, effectively playing more like a shmup which breaks up all the platforming nicely. These sections are actually quite fun, and I wouldn’t have minded more of them. In fact, one of the big downfalls of Paper Monsters is that it’s a pretty short game.
You get 4 chapters in the game, each with 4 levels, for a total of 16 levels. The environments run the gamut of familiar themes like grass lands, ice levels, the desert, and jungle ruins. Each level is a fairly good length, with checkpoints in the middle so you don’t have to restart from the beginning should you die, but they really won’t take too long to complete anyway. Some replay value is added in the form of 3 golden paper clips and a single hidden tile that need to be collected in each level if you wish to fully beat it. You can also collect buttons, which are essentially the “coins” of the game, and which can be accumulated and spent in an in-game shop on additional clothing items to deck out your character. It’s a fun distraction, but pretty non-essential. Also, if you don’t have much patience, you can get more buttons as IAP if you wish.
Finally, a really cool inclusion in Paper Monsters is the Dash Mode. This is essentially an auto-running version of the game, where your character runs to the right on his own and you just need to worry about jumping on enemies and over hazards while collecting buttons. It’s really quite fun, and could easily have been a full game on its own, so the fact that it’s included as a bonus is pretty nice. You can also try this mode for free, if you’re curious.
But where Paper Monsters really wins is in its presentation and overall “feel”, which is something that’s hard to describe. I’ve played a TON of platformers in my day, and while some of them appear to have all the right components, sometimes the most basic mechanics of running and jumping just don’t feel right, and it pretty much ruins the rest of the experience. Paper Monsters pulls this aspect off well, as just playing through the levels is fun in and of itself, even if it doesn’t wow you with a ton of new ideas or endless amounts of levels. For lack of a better expression, it just feels right.
It seems the developers set out to make a throwback to some of their favorite old-school platformers, with awesome graphics and solid controls, and at this they completely succeed with Paper Monsters. If you don’t go in expecting the game to reinvent the wheel, and can appreciate the eye candy and simple fun of platforming, then Paper Monsters should give you plenty of enjoyment for your dollar. People sure seem to dig it, and with some additional levels planned for updates, there should be even more fun coming in the future.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Order Up!! To Go’ Review – Flipping Burgers Doesn’t Seem So Bad
Are your time-management titles missing the hands-on charm of cooking sims, and your cooking sims missing too much restaurant management? If so, you’ll want to take a look at Order Up!! To Go [Free]. A combination between a time-management restaurant game and a touch-screen heavy cooking sim, Order Up is filled with great stuff: charming characters, varied locations, fun recipes and surprisingly decent voice acting, for starters.
Order Up!! was first released for Wii in 2008, and is due to come out soon for PS3 and 3DS at full retail price. I haven’t played the console version of the game, but it sounds as though To Go is essentially the same game. For the mobile outing, has added advertisements, removable with IAP, and taken away certain goals to encourage players to purchase currency. Aside from that, it looks like everything else is intact. Intact, and downright entertaining.
Just one catch: you’ve gotta like grinding. Every day you buy meals in preparation for your customers, and those you sell give you a small profit. That profit goes toward buying spices and special meals, cleaning your restaurants, unlocking new recipes and working your way into new locations. Eking out a living this way takes time, and nicer restaurants are pricey. Originally this was handled by letting players unlock new restaurants once they met certain goals. In this freemium version, you have to earn the cash – or buy it.
If you’re down with grinding, though, Order Up is great. It looks like Cooking Mama at a glance, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t similarities. But Order Up goes deep, ending up with as much focus on the management elements than the chopping and stirring.
At the highest level, you’re responsible for caring for your restaurants. As I mentioned, this means, amongst other things, earning enough money to open them up and keep them running. Each day you pick out the menu based on a randomly selected special, a descending list of popularity and a daily customer total. Say you expect 14 customers in a day. 6 might order the special, 5 the most popular item, and 3 the second most popular. Or maybe 12 will order the special. You don’t have those numbers, so you have to balance buying enough stock to cover all your customers’ potential desires with your rather slim profit margin.
One you open up for the day the customers start to stream in. You send out your server to take their orders one table at a time, and she or he brings them back to you to cook up. Take too long and customers will start getting unhappy, which will cut into your profits. You’re given up to a handful of orders to handle at once, and you have to time your preparations to keep anything from getting cold, doing as much as you can at once to keep things moving but holding back some steps to send your orders back out piping hot.
Preparing food is very hands-on. To make a burger and fries, for example, you have to drop meat onto the grill, then gesture to flip it when it’s at the perfect temperature. You drag fries down into the oil and then up when they’re cooked. You pull the leaves off a head of lettuce by swiping, and chop a tomato by tapping at the moment its guidelines meet. As each part is finished you tap it onto the tray, and once everything is ready you hit a bell to send it off to the table. Each meal is ranked by how well you complete each of its steps, and your profits depend on that rank.
The game’s setting, Port Abello, has six restaurants currently, each with its own unique theme and a slew of recipes. You work your way through a greasy spoon to a Mexican joint, up to a slightly swankier Italian place, through Asian fusion and finally into fine dining. Each setting has thematic decor, recipes and servers, and each of those servers has several lines of dialog with which to compliment your work and butter up your customers.
Port Abello also has a few characters of its own that show up at your restaurants as special guests. They too have voiced dialog to express their spiciest seasoning desires. If you’ve purchased the right spices and figure out their hints in time to add the right one to their dish you’ll earn a hefty bonus, something every struggling restauranteur can appreciate.
Assuming you manage to keep on top of everything else, you can put your coins toward upgrading your kitchens. There are currently a few options available for faster food prep, but it looks like assistants and mini-games are en route as well. You’ll also want to keep your kitchens clean with regular payments to the cleaners. If you don’t, you’ll end up dealing with tedious mini-games like flicking away rat infestations or showing the health inspector that you can, in fact, wash lots of plates.
Other than its sheer grindiness, the only real problem with Order Up is that you’re going to be doing a heck of a lot of gesturing. Each recipe you pick up increases your daily customers, increasing the length and complexity of your day. By the time you’ve grilled your thousandth burger it starts to lose its charm, and days dragging on longer and longer doesn’t help. But that’s just a sign that it’s time to take a break. Give your wrist a rest, have some real food and come back refreshed and ready for another day at the grill. It’s hard to fault a game for having too much to do.
Really, it’s hard to fault Order Up!! To Go for much at all. It’s virtually free, though it would probably be hard to live with the ads for long. It’s filled to the brim with a variety of tasks and locales. If not for the damage done to the game’s pace by its freemium elements it would be a nearly flawless casual restaurant management title. It’s a shame that the best way to monetize the game was to make it frustratingly slow, because that will undoubtedly turn away many potential players. Don’t make their mistake. Slow and steady wins the restaurant race, so take it easy and cook up something nice.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Hands-On With ‘End Night,’ A Survival Horror Experience
It’s Z-Day, baby, and the cure for what ails the undead populace isn’t going to find itself. In SKS Games’ upcoming , you play as a grizzled marine dude on a simple quest: find the core components of a vaccine that might end the crazy stuff that’s going on outside of a cozy lab. In a not-so-unusual video game turn of events, most of these ingredients have to be discovered in the wild.
It ain’t going to be easy. It’s the apocalypse, man; Z-Day. The dead have risen and are roving anxiously. Some are even armed or armored. These aren’t your typical slow-walking types of creeps, either. In my short preview session, I met runners as well as amblers, and even had the pleasure of running into one or two seriously hopped up bullet-sponges.
Zombies are bad and all, but SKS heightens the tension with a few tried and true old-school survival game mechanics and systems. As you’d expect, the dreary adventure begins at night. The darkness seriously puts a limit your situational awareness, while the lack of everyday sound ratchets up your ability to hear the undead’s footfalls. When you get hurt, your vision is also obscured by a layer of crimson.
Also, like an old-school Resident Evil or Silent Hill, bullets are few and the camera perspective is restricted. In this specifically, you’ll be dealing with an over the top camera that successfully limits how you move and react to threats. But it’s not like you can shoot your way through everything, anyway. You’ll need to know when and how to run.
One of the more interesting things about End Night is its world; it’s open, but isolated to a small, hole-in-the-wall town. There’s a lot of commercial real estate to liberate, as well as a police station to pilfer for supplies like ammo and armor. The walking dead spawn randomly throughout the environment, and as you close in on the vaccine, they also start spawning more frequently. It gets tough, fast.
A fair amount of the game’s buildings carry a core component for the cure being worked on back at the lab. You’ll need to hull back a vial of some anti-zombie juice every time you find one, which makes the experience fairly fetch-quest-y. These houses also have, for a reason I can’t explain, documentation that feeds into an experience points system.
I think that’s the other really interesting thing, by the way. Like Infinity Blade, End Night is meant to be played several times. Whenever you meet an untimely death, you’ll be prompted to start over from the beginning and then use the experience points you just gained to pump up the marine guy for another go.
I spoke with one of the devs behind the project to get a better sense of what you’ll be able to upgrade by playing through multiple times. Spoiler: your guy will get better at smashing zombies, provided you’re using the stuff you upgrade.
“One of the most useful upgrades is for pistol accuracy, which drastically increases the chance of getting headshots, and is especially helpful towards the end of the game with lots of fast moving armored enemies,” a representative told me.
“Other upgrades such as Armor effectiveness allow your armor take more hits before being destroyed. Upgrading your shotgun allows you to blow enemies apart even from far away, while the health increase means you’ll be able to take a lot more hits before dying.”
At the beginning of the game, you’ll get to choose one of three starting weapons: a pistol, a shotgun, or a fireman’s axe. Tools of the trade, right?
The town might be dangerous, but one of the hardest enemies I’ve come across is my own guy. If you get cut up too bad, you’ll need to search around for medical supplies and clean the infected blood off your body. To do the latter, you’ll need to find a tub. If you end up killing too many zombies, you’ll need to wash away the remorse with booze or bible pick-up items.
In my experience, some of the game’s most heart-pumping moments are spent in bathrooms; as you clean your wounds undead can stumble through the door, which leaves you little time to adjust to the conflict. This is some pretty feral stuff, but that first the vibe of the world; there’s a lot of undead and they all want you to join in on the party.
Technically, I think you’ll enjoy this. It’s 3D all the way — even though you won’t get a great sense of this courtesy the camera — and it has some decent assets to boot. The controls, which are your usual virtual array of bits and bobs, respond well enough. You’ll want to be sitting down to play, though, as this definitely isn’t an on-the-go kind of joint.
I think the camera and the leveling systems are going to be the biggest hurdles for people. I gave up arguing that survival-horror games’ cameras are poorly designed. A restricted perspective never gives me any pleasure, but I suppose the tension that it artificially stirs up is a valid plus. As for the rinse-and-repeat nature of the game, it’s just personal preference. If you like this stuff, you’ll dig this.
On the other hand, the open-world and the fetch-quest model provide some of the most satisfying stuff. Runs feel epic, if not downright dangerous, so getting back in one piece is powerfully redeeming. The weight and feel of weapons is satisfying, too, and the world has a lot of stuff to explore and discover.
End Night is in submission, so we should see it at some point this February. As of right now, it’s slated to hit the iPad exclusively at $2.99. An iPhone version might follow at some point down the road.
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Remake of C64 Classic ‘Barbarian’ Hitting the App Store Next Month
Developer and publisher have announced that Barbarian – The Death Sword will be hitting the App Store early next month. Barbarian is a modern remake of the classic Commodore 64 title Barbarian – The Ultimate Warrior, also known in the US as simply Death Sword. Released in 1987, the original Barbarian was a one-on-one fighting game pitting buff and brutal warriors against each other.
Despite the fighting genre being in its infancy, Barbarian was critically acclaimed for its competitive gameplay. However, most of its notoriety outside of the gaming world was garnered by its violent nature where you were able to decapitate your opponent in a shower of blood, as well as the scantily clad models featured on its packaging.
The new version of Barbarian looks to be a similar one-on-one fighter, but with visuals that have been crafted in 3D. Check out the promo video below, which features both scantily clad women and violence just like its original inspiration:
One other really cool aspect about Barbarian – The Death Sword that was pointed out in the video is the ability to compete against other players across different platforms. I’m not sure if this extends all the way to the PC and Android platforms, but at the very least you’ll be able to play against your buddies no matter if they’re on a Mac, iPhone or iPad. Another thing I’d like to find out is if this multiplayer is online or just local. But, it shouldn’t be long before we can find out, as Barbarian – The Death Sword is set to launch in the first half of February, and we’ll be checking it out when it hits then.
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