Archive for the ‘Blades of Fury’ tag
‘Bruce Lee: Dragon Warrior’ Review – Become The Legend In This Visually Impressive 3D Fighter
Bruce Lee: Dragon Warrior [$4.99 - iPhone / iPad] is an officially licensed 3D fighting game featuring the iconic martial arts star Bruce Lee. The game was released on the iPad almost two months ago to some user complaints of serious AI deficiency and control issues. Those issues have been mostly resolved in an update issued for the iPad version in conjunction with the release of the updated game for iPhone and iPod touch. The result is a visually striking fighting game that leans towards the casual side, with a core combat functionality that likely won't appeal to some hardcore players. It still remains a fun affair, and has a wealth of content and a stellar presentation that makes it well worth checking out.
Right off the bat, you'll notice that the graphics are incredible. There are 10 fighters in the game, each one distinct and well designed. The character models are colorful, although not highly detailed or complex. They end up looking marvelous in motion though, thanks to the game's excellent animations. The movements are fluid and lifelike, and each character has a ton of personality with their different facial expressions and fighting styles. There are only 5 different locations to fight in, but they are all richly detailed and beautifully rendered in 3D. There are small details such as leaves blowing in the wind or birds flying about that bring the stages to life, and each one can be played during day or night increasing the variety somewhat. All these elements work together wonderfully to create an experience that is visually top-notch.
The meat of Bruce Lee is the Story mode, although there are Arcade, Survival, Time Attack and Training modes present as well. Strange for a fighting game, there's no sort of multiplayer functionality at all, although there is a Versus mode against the CPU. Unlike most fighters, there's actually a fairly captivating and cohesive plot underlying all the action. The different story segments are told via text and comic book style character art. You'll start out as a young Bruce Lee, trying to make a name for himself partaking in street fights around Hong Kong. You're noticed rather quickly by a member of a local martial arts school, and after proving your worth by beating him in a fight, you are invited to study there. This springboards you into the storyline, and lets you enter Tournaments and compete against rivaling schools in addition to street fighting as you evolve into a martial arts master.
You progress through the game by choosing from a collection of events on an overhead map, one of which is always the next step of the Story mode. The others are various types of challenges, such as survival matches, one-on-one fights, time trials, and more. Experience is earned as you progress, and playing in these non-story related events can net you some extra XP. All kinds of rewards are unlocked as you level up from experience, like new characters, levels, and artwork. But most interesting of all is the ability to unlock the different offensive moves of your opponents. An option called the Style Editor allows you to swap out your default special moves with ones you've unlocked through play. Mixing and matching the different attacks provides a simple but enjoyable level of customization with your own character, and is a really nice aspect of the game.
The actual fighting gameplay mechanics are where Bruce Lee is hit or miss. The controls work well, with either a d-pad or analog stick for movement and single punch and kick buttons. The methods for different moves are simple combinations of directional inputs and/or attack button presses. The system is easy to execute with touch screen controls, but still contains a decent amount of depth. A special Chi meter fills up as you fight which let's you pull off special attacks or finishing moves, some of which zoom in on the action and give you a closer look at the punishment you're dealing out. There are plenty of moves and combos to learn, and a decent computer AI to compete with.
It's the makings of a solid portable fighting game, but the one oddity that sticks out is the way the game queues your button presses. Commands that are input will still carry out even after you've been knocked down and get up, or are furiously trying to perform a different move. Many fighting games allow for command queueing, but the way it works in Bruce Lee is funky and can be disorienting. You can learn to work with it, and there's a certain rhythm to the fighting that once learned alleviates the queueing problem to an extent. Based on the impressions in , some players are having more difficulty with it than others. In my experience, it's caused me to lose a match here and there, but never derailed my enjoyment or ability to progress.
Despite these shortcomings, Bruce Lee: Dragon Warrior is a high quality and entertaining (albeit casual) fighting game. There is a lot of content to unlock, a competent AI to play against, and plenty of modes to keep you busy for quite some time. It's not as deep as Street Fighter IV, but is much more so than the similar Blades of Fury. As a result, if you crave a highly precise and complex fighter, this may not satisfy you. It's also really disappointing that there's not any sort of multiplayer present. Still, it works exceptionally well as a single player game and offers a lot of entertainment for the money. The game is available for $4.99 for either the iPhone or iPad versions which, aside from the iPad's upscaled graphics and the iPhones slightly easier to wield form factor, are virtually the same.
[]
Freebie Friday & Game Sales: ‘Earth Vs Moon’, ‘Transformers’, Gameloft Games & Others
I'm still kind of stunned it's already Friday, after GDC madness last week and playing catch up this week I'm not even sure where all the time went. Regardless, we missed our sales and freebies post this week, so I've dug up an extra helping of freebies in attempt to make amends this week. As always, the standard iTunes price change disclaimer is in effect. These prices are all current as of Friday afternoon, but due to the nature of the App Store are subject to change at any time. If you've got your eye on one or more of these games, you're probably better off grabbing them ASAP.
Earth Vs Moon, 99¢ → FREE
Quite possibly one of the best missile command spinoffs on the App Store, we loved Earth Vs Moon in our review, and since then it has only gotten better with updates. This one has been free for a few days now, and likely will return to normal price any time now, so grab it while you still can… And if you miss the free promotion, it's still totally worth a buck if you haven't heard of it before.
Other notable freebies include:
- Crazy Turkey Blast, 99¢ → FREE
- DJ Jones, 99¢ → FREE
- Kaloki Adventure, $1.99 → FREE
- My Brute, $3.99 → FREE
- TowerMadness, $2.99 → FREE
As far as game sales are concerned, a few Gameloft games were recently dropped to 99¢. I've had a good time playing through all of these, so if you don't own them yet, I can think of worse ways to spend $5:
- Blades of Fury, $4.99 → 99¢
- Dungeon Hunter, $4.99 → 99¢
- Earthworm Jim, $4.99 → 99¢
- Real Soccer 2010, $4.99 → 99¢
- Skater Nation, $4.99 → 99¢
And of course, there are a ton of other games with recent price drops:
- 2012 Zombies vs Aliens, $1.99 → 99¢
- Across Age, $6.99 → $5.99
- Alien Glyphs, $3.99 → $2.99
- Azkend, $4.99 → $2.99
- Battle for Wesnoth, $4.99 → $2.99
- Boom Brigade, $3.99 → $1.99
- Doodle Bomb, $1.99 → 99¢
- Dragon Portals, $4.99 → $2.99
- Electric Box, $1.99 → 99¢
- Fighting Fantasy: Deathtrap Dungeon, $2.99 → $1.99
- Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, $2.99 → $1.99
- Geared, $2.99 → 99¢
- Hottie Hookups, $1.99 → 99¢
- Occurro!, $1.99 → 99¢
- ReBounce, $1.99 → 99¢
- Tall Bike Joust, $2.99 → 99¢
- Thumpies, $2.99 → 99¢
- TRANSFORMERS G1: AWAKENING, $4.99 → $2.99
There are many other games with recent price changes, and you can see a listing of and on sale over on AppShopper. Stay tuned for more freebies and sales next week, same bat time, same bat channel.
[]
Gameloft: Raising the Bar in 2009
Amongst the thousands of iPhone developers in 2009, the developer that single-handedly had the most dramatic impact on the App Store gaming scene has to be Gameloft. An international company with thousands of employees scattered throughout the world, Gameloft took an early interest in the iPhone. In March, 2008, three months before the official launch of the App Store, Gameloft pre-announced that they were working on 15 games for the platform. This early interest should have come as little surprise as they have built a business trying to deliver gaming to mobile handsets.
Most of their early 2008 titles ended up being ports of their existing mobile titles, but they must have done well enough during the first six months to decide to dedicate themselves full force into the iPhone scene in the following year. In 2009, Gameloft has released 35 games for the platform and most of those releases were amongst the most ambitious titles we've seen on the iPhone. And we cover Gameloft's releases consistently, not just because they are a large publisher, but because their games are consistently interesting, of high quality, and technically impressive.
N.O.V.A.
There's always some detractors to Gameloft's releases as many of their titles are clearly clones of popular console franchises. Our opinion is that Gameloft is successfully filling popular niches and adding much needed legitimacy to the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming platform. We suspect 3rd party interest by companies such as Rockstar and Epic Games is in part due to the massive success Gameloft has had in the iPhone space.
We highlighted N.O.V.A. and Let's Golf in our 2009 Games Roundup but here are a selection of other impressive titles from Gameloft this past year:
- Gangstar (Review, App Store)
- Driver (Review, App Store]
- Castle of Magic (Review, App Store)
- Modern Combat: Sandstorm (Review, App Store)
- Blades of Fury (Review, App Store)
- Dungeon Hunter (Review, App Store)
- James Cameron's Avatar (Review, App Store)
[]
Apple Picks Best Games of 2009 on iTunes
Apple has compiled a list of what they consider the best iPhone games of 2009. The list is part of their where they are highlighting the best content across 2009 in music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, podcasts, and apps.
Apps are broken down into games and more traditional applications. Anyone who follows TouchArcade regularly should be familiar with most of the games on this list. While we've only recently given out star ratings, our currently rated 5 star games are well represented in the list.
The game names are linked to iTunes alongside links to our own reviews of the games.
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Article
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Article
- – Review
- – Review
- – Article
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Article
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- –
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
- – Review
Congratulations to the developers who made the list. We'll be compiling our own "best of" list for 2009 in the coming weeks.
[]
