Archive for the ‘iPhone 3GS’ tag
‘N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance’ – Deadspace Halo Prime
Few games have generated the amount of hype that Gameloft's N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance [] has, and even fewer have managed to live up to that same hype. NOVA is one of those rare instances where a upcoming game is everything we wanted and more. It's not perfect, but there aren't many games to even compare it to on the platform. NOVA feels like a complete video game experience, something which is quite rare indeed on the landscape of bite sized games that make up the App Store.
In Nova you play as Karl Wardin, an ex-space marine who has been reactivated to investigate some strange alien activity in a futuristic setting where the Earth has depleted its resources and no longer can sustain life, forcing humanity to live on nearby orbiting colonies. Admittedly, the plot isn't anything to write home about and the voice acting ranges from passable to downright cringe-worthy at times– Especially whenever Karl himself speaks. Thankfully, the gameplay itself more than makes up for these shortfalls.
The first series of levels will leave you wandering around on a space ship while you're guided by various characters communicating over the radio. An arrow guides you from objective to objective, and gameplay amounts to simply following this arrow, killing anything that moves, and flipping switches to activate or unlock different objects and areas. Deadspace fans will feel right at home when the game asks you to traverse the hull of the space ship, even going as far as to mention enabling your magnetic boots. What do you do while you're outside the ship? Run from pressurized area to pressurized area while avoiding incoming asteroids of course. (If you haven't played Deadspace, you do exactly this several times throughout the game– The hull is even laid out similarly.)
Eventually after fixing a few different parts of the ship and killing oodles of aliens, you will make your way to the bridge to initiate the self destruct sequence and escape back to your ship. You then fly down to a planet with beautifully rendered lush forests which also happens to be infested by these same (although slightly different colored) aliens. The rest of the game continues in a similar fashion, with different characters telling you where to go and what to do across 13 different levels that take place in five distinctly different environments.
The run and gun action is broken up by mini games, a level where you man the turrent on a warthog-like truck from Halo, and even a couple boss fights. Scattered throughout the levels are locked crates which must be opened by playing a brief mini game where you move different objects around on a grid to solve a puzzle where you're directing a laser beam from its source to the target. None of these are particularly difficult, and depending on how you feel about mini games you will either find these to be enjoyable distractions or just too annoying to bother with. Thankfully, it seems like there is enough ammo dropped by enemies and laying on the ground that the crates are optional but you will be forced to solve a few of these puzzles throughout the game as you "hack" things to progress.
Similar to Halo, your life is measured by a shield meter at the top of the screen which depletes when you take damage and recharges slowly afterwards. Your shield gauge also serves as your oxygen supply when you're in space, and your super abilities also take off a chunk of your shield's power. Super abilities? Oh yes, straight out of Metroid Prime you will slowly gain new abilities such as the ability to freeze enemies, shoot a charged up energy beam, and even run faster with speed boots.
If you've played Modern Combat: Sandstorm [ / ], the controls in NOVA will be instantly familiar to you. If not, the game uses a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen for movement, and moving your thumb around the right side of the screen changes your view around. Different buttons frame the screen that do things like fire your weapon, toss a grenade, change weapons, reload, etc. There are two other included control schemes, one where the screen is split in half and moving your left thumb anywhere controls your movement while your right controls your view (essentially just removing the virtual joystick) and another with two virtual joysticks where you tap the screen to fire. I've found the default controls to be fine, although I did spend some time fiddling with the sensitivity.
Another nice feature is the ability to move all of the elements of the game's UI around. I've moved the reload button closer to the fire button because I'm a compulsive reloader in first person shooters, but you can customize it however you want. (Although currently this option only seems available by adjusting your controls mid-game, and not from the main menu.) Strangely enough, even though it seems that Gameloft has put a great deal of thought in to different control options and customizations, the ability to invert the Y-axis of the camera control is notably absent. What will leave you scratching your head even more regarding the lack of invert look is that Modern Combat: Sandstorm, a game which shares a similar engine to NOVA includes Y-axis inversion. You can however flip the screen orientation, something that should make iPod touch users happy.
The performance of the game is phenomenal on the iPhone 3GS with fast load times, high frame rates, and everything else you could ask for in a first person shooter. Meanwhile, reader reports all the way down to the have been said to be smooth. Even while playing online in NOVA's four player deathmatch mode, which surprisingly enough seems to be working just fine for everyone, a nice change of pace from Gameloft's recently released Modern Combat: Sandstorm multiplayer update.
Playing online requires both WiFi and a Gameloft Live account. Registering for Gameloft Live is easy, and once you're online you will have the option to play deathmatch or look at the worldwide leaderboards of players with the most points and kills. When creating a deathmatch game, available options include choosing one of the five maps, as well as enabling or disabling weapon stay and aim assist. Games can be set with a time limit or a frag limit, and both can be set to none to play for as long as you'd like.
When joining a game, you're thrown in to a lobby which lists available games that have open slots for you to join. Those of you waiting for an Eliminate "killer" will be disappointed to discover that currently there doesn't seem to be any random matchmaking, or the ability to have friends-only private matches. All you can do is create a game and hope that three of your friends join it before other people do.
Despite its limitations, online multiplayer (as well as local bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer) is a lot of fun and performs surprisingly well. I haven't come across any lag or connection issues, and so far it just works– Although the true test of NOVA multiplayer will be how well it holds up once players start getting good at the game and scrutinizing the weapon balance. It's too early to say how large the online community will get and what kind of staying power NOVA's online presence will have, but it seems quite enjoyable right now.
If you're a fan of first person shooters, or any of the previously mentioned console classics that NOVA is obviously inspired by, then you too will also likely really enjoy NOVA. It's one of the most ambitious iPhone games I've played so far, and despite the questionable originality of the game I've really got to hand it to Gameloft for creating such an amazing iPhone experience.
App Store Link:
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‘Ridge Racer Accelerated’ – Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer!
It doesn't seem that long ago that I was completely blown away by Ridge Racer on the original PlayStation (which actually was a port itself) along with most of the gaming press at the time. Nearly 15 years later and here we are playing a comparable game on our phones. Namco's recently released Ridge Racer Accelerated [] provides a lot of the same arcade racing feel as the rest of the game series, but similar to Ace Combat Xi or Pac-Man Championship Edition, the game has launched with part of the total content– the rest either requiring in-game microtransactions or apparently coming via future updates.
Like most racing games, steering is controlled by tilting and other functions like braking or changing gears with a manual transmission are linked to on-screen buttons. Auto-acceleration is configurable in the options and defaults to off. The controls work well enough, but it seems like the tilt steering is a little touchy, even after fiddling with the sensitivity in the options. It wasn't anything game breaking, just noticeably less smooth compared to other racing games on the platform.
The arcade driving style will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played a Ridge Racer game before, but may seem strange to newcomers to the franchise as performing well in races requires a great deal of drifting around corners. Drifting is easy to initiate, all you have to do it steer in to a turn, let off the gas, and press it again and your car will be going sideways. Learning to control your drifts instead of just spinning out takes quite a bit of finesse and a lot of trial and error until you get a feel for how much to turn in to them.
The graphics of the game pale in comparison to other racing games available on the iPhone– Especially when it comes to the shockingly low complexity car models. You would think these comparatively low levels of detail would be part of a trade-off for an insanely high framerate, but Ridge Racer Accelerated's iTunes description mentions that the iPhone 3GS is the "recommended" platform with 3G optimizations "coming soon". Except the game doesn't even perform particularly well on the 3GS, and forum members are reporting the game is flat out unplayable on older devices. (Something we haven't entirely been able to replicate in our testing.)
For reference, here is me racing poorly on an iPhone 3GS:
Much like other recent Namco games, Ridge Racer Accelerated is a veritable DLC piñata. Initially coming loaded with only two tracks (or four if you count driving the opposite direction on those same tracks) and 18 different Class 1 and Class 2 vehicles are available (6 unlocked, 12 unlockable). 6 (3 + 3 in opposite direction) additional tracks are available for $2.99 and 9 Class 5 vehicles available for $1.99.
Early reactions have been on the game. Basically, it seems if you can get past the disappointing performance, long time Ridge Racer fans can still have fun with the drift-heavy racing style the game offers. The ultimate goal of each level is really to beat your previous lap times across the tracks and cars included. There's no career mode or global high scores offered. Ridge Racer offers Arcade, Duel and Survival modes using the same tracks and cars.
Further can be found on our forums.
App Store Link:
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A Case of the Mondays: Game Updates, Freebies and Sales
In what is likely the calm before the storm of an onslaught of pre-holiday iPhone releases, here are a few games that were recently updated or put on sale (along with a few freebies) that are worth a look:
– The recent episode 3 update that we previewed last week has finally arrived, bringing several new playable characters in to the mix as well two characters that are unlocked via a 99¢ in-app purchase. A grenade launcher, upgradeable weapons, and a day/night cycle were added as well– And of course, Minigore fans are already going crazy in the Minigore thread.
– IUGO's best-selling physics-based demolition puzzle game was updated with 20 new levels (10 of those sporting a holiday theme) as well as a bunch of other tweaks and improvements like saving the locations of your bombs between attempts, replays, and decreased load times.
Video by
– The lite version of Bryan Mitchel''s wildly popular Geared [] received an update recently doubling the amount of content in the free version of the game. If you haven't tried out this fantastic gear alignment puzzler, you have 16 levels waiting for you. If you need any more reason to try the lite version, take a look at our review.
– The enhanced version version of the original Dark Raider [ / ] is now free for a limited time. This dual stick shooter adventure game features all kinds of fancy lighting effects and bump mapping and serves as a decent little tech demo for what the platform is capable of in those areas. This version of the game only will work on the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch– Sorry previous-generation device owners.
– Adult Swim recently released what amounts to a holiday re-skin of their silly surgery game, Amateur Surgeon [ / ]. Five levels are included where you will use Christmas-themed instruments to patch up elves, yetis, and even Santa himself. If you like the Christmas Edition, I recommend giving the full Amateur Surgeon a try for even more of the same wacky gameplay.
– The revealed Polyhedra, a relaxing gravity-powered puzzler, as the free game today. Different levels provide different shapes to work with, and to complete a level 66% of the screen must be filled with those shapes, and you only have a limited number of shapes that can be used on each level. Unique, and totally worth a download especially while it's free.
(Originally $1.99) – Today's entry in EA's holiday sale series, Mass Effect Galaxy is somewhat disappointing with tilt to move mechanics, a combat system that doesn't make sense, and extremely long-winded dialog segments. But, if you're a fan of the Mass Effect universe, Galaxy might be worth picking up just to take in the small bit of Mass Effect lore inside of this game.
(Originally $1.99) – Yet another physics based puzzle game, Pocketball asks you to navigate colored balls in to their respective bins using ropes that you connect to pegs on the game board. This is one of my favorite puzzle games that has been released lately, we enjoyed it in our review and there's even a to try.
(Originally $4.99) – Last but certainly not least is Revolutionary Concepts' fantastic port of Cobra Command, a laserdisc arcade game of the 1980's. It was hard to recommend to people who weren't retro fanatics, but at 99¢, Cobra Command is a game anyone who even had their interest remotely piqued by the above video should snag. If you need something else to push you over the edge, check out our review.
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