TouchArcade.ru

Way back in 2010 when Monster Dash [$0.99] was released it felt a tiny bit lacking. Not that it wasn’t a fantastic game, but it could have used a little more depth. You know, upgrades to earn, a complex mission system, maybe eventual retina support?

Now there’s no need to worry about any of that. Not because One Epic Game [$0.99] brings any of that to the table, mind, but because Jetpack Joyride [Free] came out a year later and blew its predecessor out of the water. So why is it we’re still seeing retreads of an older, lesser product? Could it be, she wonders, because Grip Games forgot their own game’s roots when bringing it back from PlayStation Minis?

Say it ain’t so, but I can’t see many other explanations for what’s happened here. One Epic Game isn’t a Monster Dash clone, but there are some obvious similarities. To name a few, both have a humorously hardcore hero, randomized levels and weapon drops, the same flavor of non-stop platforming, the same methods of murdering slow-moving enemies, and three-life heart system. Maybe one wasn’t inspired by the other, but that reads like a bit of a stretch. Now, all’s fair in love, war and game development, especially when it comes to making games on different platforms. But if you’re going to bring your game back to compete against its grandaddy, you at least ought to be sure you’ve made a few improvements in the meantime.

Here’s the thing: One Epic Game has more content than Monster Dash. The latter is an endless runner, period. The former has a handful of levels in a story mode and seven challenge modes on top of that. But more isn’t the same as better, and that’s doubly true here.

The game is presented as a parody, hanging a lantern on all those silly things we’ve seen in games. It’s the broadest sort of parody, satirizing concepts that are virtually universal. Ha ha, tutorials are a pain, aren’t they? And so many games have zombies, am I right? Look at this obnoxiously jingoistic story, and mock these bland heroes and villains.

But here’s the rub – the story, heroes and villains are extremely bland. The tutorial is horrid. It’s not a great joke when you actually respect your audience so little you feel you have to teach them the ins and outs of the jump and shoot buttons. One makes you jump. The other makes you shoot. Got it? And yes, there are zombies. And aliens. And World War II settings. Hah, I bet you haven’t seen so much of any of those things before that you might actually be profoundly tired of playing games that fail to use them in any sort of interesting way.

Maybe I’m just not getting the joke, but does it extend to clarifying why the rest of the game is so sloppy? The lack of Game Center and Retina support are the biggies, but if you look any deeper it’s just issues all the way down. The game makes due with the bare minimum of animation, for example. Alpha Dog, your musclebound space marine stereotype, has just one: running. Jumping is just the running animation slowed down. The enemies only get to walk (or fly) in a straight line until they fall off something, still walking. Only the weapons and jetpack do anything of note with the visuals.

So it goes with the platforming. The game just loves to screw with you, sticking the best power-up in a place you can’t survive or hiding the fact that a platform is too small to hit until you’re already mid-jump. That’s the joy of intentionally frustrating design, but then occasionally a platform crumbles away before you can reach the end or an obstacle you jump over stretches a little too far to be survivable. It’s sloppy, pure and simple.

One Epic Game has two things over Monster Dash: you can chain kill enemies to build up a score multiplier, and you actually have a score, making killing monsters distinctly more valuable than avoiding them. All other things being equal, maybe that would be enough to set it apart. But all other things aren’t equal, and we’ve had nearly two years to find better endless runners in the interim. There’s just no reason to go back to something that might have been an okay (if slightly familiar) title two years ago when there are so many fantastic games coming out right now. If you decide to take the plunge anyways, share your thoughts in the discussion thread. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

TouchArcade Rating:

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With it being extremely doubtful that Apple will ever roll out any kind of official game controller for use with iPhone and iPad, it’s up to third-party creators and wizards to fill in the gap. 60beat is the latest we’ve seen to throw a hat into the ring, and its product, the GamePad, seems like a cool accessory.

In a nutshell, the $50 GamePad is a slick-looking, PlayStation-style kind of controller that connects, unlike many third-party controllers, to the headphone jack. No blu-tooth black magic — just seemingly straight-up plug-and-play connectivity.

It features of total of ten buttons, two joysticks, a d-pad, and ships with an audio splitter and a luxuriously long four foot cable. We haven’t had any hands-on with one quite yet — it’s in the mail — but creator 60beat has uploaded a video of the thing in action. Take a look:

Looks cool, right? The biggest hurdle for the GamePad — other than being a good and meaningful product, of course — will be grabbing the attention of the iOS development community. It apparently requires some game-side tweaks to work properly, so 60beat and its friends will have to collaborate. As of this moment, only two games support the device: Bugdom 2 [$2.99] and Aftermath [$1.99].

The official web site for the device says we’ll hear a lot more about games support in February 2012. Expect more from us on the device in the future, too.

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In a bit of a surprise today, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia Classic [99¢] into the App Store. Now you might be thinking, “Hey, Ubisoft. Didn’t y0u already release a classic version of Jordan Mechner’s influential platform adventure last year?” And the answer to that is, yes, it’s called Prince of Persia Retro [99¢]. That game was basically a perfect port of one of the earliest versions of the game, Prince of Persia for Macintosh, with some very sub-standard virtual controls tacked on. The nostalgia factor was there, plus it was cheap and Universal, but Prince of Persia Retro was far from the ideal way to play such a finicky game that demanded precision control.

Today’s release is actually another port, this time from the 2007 Prince of Persia remake that was available on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Prince of Persia Classic is essentially the exact same game as the original – same level layouts, same enemies and hazards, same storyline and one hour time limit – but completely redone with fantastic 3D visuals and what appears to be a more zoomed in camera to better suit iOS. Sure, if you’re a purist then that might not sound like such a great thing. But if you love the original gameplay and can appreciate a shiny new coat of paint, then Prince of Persia Classic fully delivers.

As for the translation from controller to touch screen, obviously it’s much more difficult without tactile feedback but at the very least the controls feel leaps and bounds better than those in Prince of Persia Retro. There’s a more intuitive use of action buttons, and there is a slider for movement as opposed to directional arrows which gives you more control over running or walking. The controls aren’t perfect, and they make an already difficult game that much more frustrating, but I think they’re the best they can be while still being true to how the original game played and they certainly shouldn’t prevent you from playing through the game with a bit of practice.

So if you’re in the mood for some good old fashioned Prince of Persia gameplay, but want an extra dose of shiny, then Prince of Persia Classic is where it’s at. From my limited time with the game, it appears to be a very faithful port of the 2007 remake with virtual controls that are about as good as you can expect from a touch screen. You’ll get a headache from some accidental leaps to your own death, but after a bit of play it’s pretty easy to work within the confines of the controls in order to play through the game.

As an aside, some players in our forums seem to be having trouble installing the game on an iPod touch device. Indeed, the App Store notes that it’s compatible with “iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S” only, with no mention of any iPod touch or iPad devices. I’m not sure if this was just an oversight when uploading the game to iTunes or if the game really does require the two latest iPhones in order to run. If you own an iPod touch or iPad, it might be worth waiting a few days to see what the final verdict is on that, but if you’re an iPhone 4 or 4S owner and enjoy yourself some Prince of Persia, then I’d jump all over Prince of Persia Classic for just 99¢.

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In April of last year, iOS gamers scored big when longtime Japanese developer CAVE decided to task their mobile division with bringing some of their classic shooter titles to the Apple App Store. All of these games – Espgaluda II, Dodonpachi Resurrection, and Deathsmiles – received critical acclaim from media and gamers alike, and set the benchmark for what we should expect from our bullet hell shmups on the App Store.

In between two of those releases, CAVE decided to branch out into something different, and brought out an iOS exclusive game called Mushihimesama Bug Panic. It was a departure from their typical offerings as it was a dual-stick action game, but it retained the frantic nature of their bullet hell games extremely well and was equally adored amongst critics and fans.

Now we have CAVE’s latest release, which kind of brings things full circle. Mushihimesama is a vertical shmup released in Japanese arcades back in 2004. It’s seen a sequel with Mushihimesama Futari, and a spinoff title called Puzzle! Mushihimetama. Bug Panic on iOS is actually based in the Mushihimesama universe, featuring the same female main character and insect-based enemies. Now the original Mushihimesama title is available on the App Store as Bug Princess [$4.99].

Typically with CAVE’s iOS ports, there will be the full original arcade version of the game along with an enhanced Smartphone Mode which contains additional things like scoring tweaks, different enemies or ships, and alternate ways to play the game. Bug Princess bucks this trend and doesn’t have a reworked Smartphone Mode, but the original game had three different modes anyway so there are still different ways to play through the game. The three modes in Bug Princess are Original, Maniac, and Ultra. Sadly, the special Arranged mode from the PlayStation 2 port didn’t make it to the iOS version.

Gameplay across each of the 3 modes is similar. You can pick from 3 different ships to play as, each offering a different firing style. One sends a concentrated spray of bullets in a straight stream, one fires less powerful shots but in an incredibly wide stream, and the third ship fires both straight ahead and diagonally at the same time giving a balance between shot coverage and power. You’ll play through 5 stages absolutely filled to the brim with enemies and bullets flying everywhere, along with crazy mid and end of level boss fights. In every mode, you can choose to play straight through the 5 stages in a single run, or choose each level individually to play through score attack style.

Along the way, you’ll be able to collect upgrades for your main firepower, increasing the strength and quantity of your shots. There are bombs which will clear a huge area of the screen, and you can also pick up a little squad of support ships to fly along with you and add some firepower. You can choose two different formations for this support squad, a wide spread or concentrated in a narrow spray.

Scoring in Original mode is fairly straightforward. Shoot every enemy you see, collect the gems they leave behind, and have them tallied up at the end of a level to determine final score. Maniac and Ultra modes, however, add a wrinkle to this formula. In those modes a counter in the upper corner increases with every shot that connects with an enemy, and decreases when no enemies are being shot. Whenever you kill an enemy, whatever the number that the counter is at is added to your score as a bonus. So if you’re at the 2000 mark on your counter, ever enemy you kill gives you an additional 2000 points, each.

Needless to say, this tiny facet can drastically change how you approach the game, and adds lots of strategy to getting high scores. If you’re mindful of the need to always be shooting something, you can get that counter up into the tens of thousands or more, especially with some of the larger bullet sponge enemies and bosses. This added score complexity makes Maniac and Ultra the more interesting modes to play, but they are also significantly more difficult than Original mode.

Speaking of difficulty, you can choose from 4 of them in Bug Princess. It’s a trip to see just how different they are from each other too, in terms of the amount of bullets onscreen and the complexity of bullet patterns. Novice is an easy trip for any casual gamer who merely wants to be able to play through the game without much fuss. But crank the difficulty up to Hell, which is basically exact to the arcade original, and you will be crying for momma before the halfway point of the first level. The 3 modes and various difficulty options really help cater the game to a wide audience, and even if you’re not a bullet hell pro (which I’m not!) then there is still plenty to enjoy.

There were a couple of things about Bug Princess that I didn’t enjoy, though. First off, the game uses both Game Center and OpenFeint for achievements and leaderboards which is great, but they plaster that awful OpenFeint game feed onto the title screen. Admittedly that’s not a problem with the game itself, but the feed is distracting and ugly, slow to load, and cheapens an otherwise top-notch presentation. At least give me the option to turn that bad boy off, please. My other issue with the game is that the load times in general are a bit long, which isn’t a great feature for a mobile title.

Aside from those small quibbles, Bug Princess offers yet another stellar entry in CAVE’s series of iOS shooters. It’s probably the most straight forward and least complex out of them all, which makes it a great starting point for bullet hell newbies, but it does have its share of depth for those looking to master its strategies. And like all CAVE shooters, the touch controls are fantastic, the visuals are striking, and the action is non-stop. Plus, Bug Princess is the first from CAVE to be Universal, and while I prefer playing on the iPhone, it plays pretty nice on the iPad too. At its current price of $4.99, Bug Princess should be a no brainer for your next bullet hell fix.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Prior to Grand Theft Auto III I’d say I had fun messing around in Grand Theft Auto games, but never really enjoyed myself. The top-down view felt incredibly claustrophobic, and, at least for me, made getting immersed into the game world incredibly difficult. I don’t think it’s hyperbole at all to say that GTA 3 changed everything.

Originally released in 2001 as a Playstation 2 exclusive, Grand Theft Auto III featured a full 3D game engine for the first time in the game series. At least for me, this transformed a silly and entirely too controversial set of video games into a living and breathing universe. It’s debatable how well the game has aged in ten years, but in 2001, after the initial cut scene rolls and you’re driving through the beginnings of Liberty City, there was no way your jaw wasn’t on the floor.

This magic is alive and well in the iOS port of Grand Theft Auto III. There have been a number of open world crime games, most notably Rockstar’s own Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Gameloft’s highly “inspired” Gangstar games released on the App Store but neither game holds a candle to the original GTA3 The level of immersion that’s possible in the full 3D Liberty City, especially as you become familiar with the cast of characters you’ll spend your time taking missions from, feels downright incredible. In games like this, that very same level of immersion is what has kept me sucked in for potentially hundreds of hours, as when you feel like you’re actually playing your part in a virtual world, your role in it becomes that much more compelling.

Gameplay in GTA3 is typical of other open world crime games, which would make sense since Rockstar essentially wrote the book on the subject. Your time in Liberty City will be spent doing whatever is asked of you by various gangsters, drug lords, and other unsavories. Often times you’ll be doing jobs for multiple people, and between missions will have the choice of which story line you want to continue, and which you’ll revisit later.

Alternatively, you can immediately abandon the storyline of the game and instead focus on side missions (such as stealing a taxi and ferrying passengers around the city), looking for secret (and some not so secret) ramps to get ridiculous amount of air off of, or really, anything else you feel like doing. I’ve always been partial for stocking up on weapons, and seeing just how long I can survive from the police.

I think I’ve provided a sufficient recap of what GTA3 is for the half a dozen people out there who somehow haven’t played it, so the real question is, how does it translate to iOS devices?

I’m happy to say that the game plays surprisingly well. I’ve found myself preferring the large screen of the iPad 2, but GTA3 is just as much fun on the iPhone. If you think back to actually playing the game on the PS2 (or other console ports), you’ll remember that nearly every button on the controller did something. Sadly, the only way GTA3 can work on iOS devices is by replicating all of these functions as virtual buttons.

This results in buttons galore. On foot you’ll have a virtual joystick for running around, along with individual virtual buttons for running, jumping, attacking, stealing cars, changing the camera angle, and pausing. Inside of a car, the virtual joystick changes to a set of buttons to steer, along with buttons for the gas, brakes, hand brake, shooting, honking the horn, starting secondary missions (such as the previously mentioned taxi missions), and getting out of the car. Moving the camera involves dragging your finger around in the middle, and viewing the minimap as well as changing weapons involve hitting the top corners of the screen.

These controls are workable, and are easy enough to manage while doing simple missions or just tooling around Liberty City. Unfortunately, things get crazy as soon as you get involved in actual combat. GTA3 uses a zany lock on system for shooting, and it seems like more often than not when you get into an actual firefight you’re fighting the camera, the lock on system, and your character’s diminishing health supply more than you’re fighting the enemies themselves. Things get better as you get more accustomed to the virtual controls, but it never feels like you have the same precision as you would with an actual controller.

Still, it’s Grand Theft Auto III on your iPhone (or iPad), and given both the overall quality and depth of the actual gameplay content of GTA3, it’s really easy to get over the clunky controls. The performance is great on recent iOS devices, although pop-in on the game’s horizon can be pretty noticeable if you let it get to you– Looking at videos from the PS2 version of the game, it seems like this pop-in was mostly hidden by the relative low-resolution of the game. The retina display, however, makes it really clear.

Picking up GTA3 seems like a no-brainer, especially at the launch price of $4.99. Regardless of the less than ideal control scheme, you’ll get five dollars worth of entertainment out of this game, even if all you do is drive around Liberty City listening to the fantastic in-game radio stations. (My favorite is the talk station.) As you become more accustomed with the splattering of virtual buttons all over the screen, you’ll find hours upon hours of content to plow through.

Having played GTA3 to completion many times in the past, I’m incredibly happy to be able to take it anywhere with me on my phone of all things.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The Bard’s Tale originally began as a trilogy of hardcore dungeon crawling RPGs released in the mid-80s for desktop computers and gaming consoles. In 2004, InXile Entertainment created a new The Bard’s Tale for Playstation 2, Xbox, and PC. This game was related to the original series in name only, and featured 3D action-adventure gameplay rather than first-person dungeon crawling.

The Bard’s Tale didn’t take itself too seriously, and poked fun at all sorts of RPG and fantasy clichés, many of which were present in the original games in the series. For its humor and storytelling, The Bard’s Tale is a fondly remembered adventure from the previous console generation.

And, we’ve now learned that this adventure is making its way to the iOS platform. The Bard’s Tale on iOS will feature all of the content of the 2004 release, as well as iOS exclusive leaderboards and achievements. It will also have an in-app purchase system that will let you deck out your character with some sweet gear, but everything available here will also be available to earn through normal gameplay. The IAP is just for the impatient folk.

We’re eager to get our hands on The Bard’s Tale to see just how well the game translates to the touch screen platform. It’s currently submitted to Apple, so if all goes well it will be launching soon. We’ll let you know once we get a firm launch date or pricing info for The Bard’s Tale on iOS.

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Look up. Are pigs flying? Ok, just checking, because in case you hadn’t heard True Axis’ Space Tripper [$3.99] is now available in the App Store. If you’ve heard the tale of Space Tripper’s perilous development cycle that spanned more than three years, then you might be apt to think that pigs flying would be about as plausible as the game being released. However, after a late push from the developers these past couple of months, they have finally released Space Tripper out into the wild.

As a quick recap, Space Tripper started as a Mac and PC game created by PomPom Games back in 2001. In 2006, it was rereleased on the PlayStation Network as an enhanced version by the name of Astro Tripper. True Axis began working on an iOS port of the game back in mid-2008, but were riddled with setbacks that pushed the release back many times.

It features 14 different levels across 4 worlds in Campaign, Time Attack, and Challenge modes. There is OpenFeint and Game Center integration for leaderboards and achievements, and there’s even a built-in cheat menu if you’re finding the game a bit too difficult (though this will disable leaderboard and achievement tracking), just like the old days!

Now I don’t think anybody would argue that Space Tripper doesn’t look quite gorgeous, with vibrant colors, interesting enemies littering the screen, and huge boss fights. But, I’m betting at least a few of you are feeling hesitant about the game’s tilt-only control scheme. Heck, I’m not typically a fan of tilt controls either, unless they’re done extremely well. After playing with Space Tripper for just a short while, I can see that the tilt controls are indeed rock solid. However, as good as the tilt controls are, if enough people request it True Axis will look into a touch control option. They’ve tried it already and weren’t happy with the results, hence why they aren’t included already.

At any rate, Space Tripper seems to be good arcade shooter action already. We’ll be taking a closer look at the game in the coming days, and you can check out early impressions of Space Tripper from gamers in our forums.

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There’s something particularly apt about the timing of the iPad release of Greed Corp HD [$4.99]. While Occupiers around the world freeze and protest sociopathically greedy behavior by major corporations, Greed Corp explores the ultimate end of that behavior. What happens when you’re so bent on profit that you’d destroy even the ground under your own feet to keep the other guy from getting it? Greed Corp has the answer.

It’s a turn-based strategy game that encourages players to engage in something one step shy of mutually assured destruction. You destroy the lands you harvest, and firing on your enemies crumbles away the ground beneath them.You win as long as you have at least a single unit on a single hex and your enemies don’t. This brutally aggressive game first made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network in the early months of 2010, but it’s hardly aged in the time it’s taken to arrive on iPad. It’s also extremely well done for the most part, offering a natural touch interface and both single and multiplayer content.

Greed Corp is initially overwhelming, so it’s for the best that the single player content starts off slowly. The first few maps are slow and the beginner AI is pretty incompetent. This gives you the chance to practice the concepts you picked up in the tutorial, which you better have played before launching into the campaign. There are only a handful of units in the game, but without a basic understanding of how to use them, you won’t survive for long.

Harvesters trigger at the start of your turn, dropping themselves and every hex of land around them by one level and giving you gold for the land they destroy. Eventually that land will collapse. Walkers can claim hexes and attack other units, defeating them on a one to one basis. Armories let you build new walkers, cannons fire at enemy hexes, and carriers can lift your isolated units out to the enemy.

Everything is costly, and resources are scarce, so you’ll need to make trade-offs. Do you harvest your land, collapsing it as you go in order to afford to fight? Or do you preserve your land, but in doing so fail to defend your troops? If three corporations set out to claim every bit of land and damn the cost, one pacifist on the board won’t last long. No matter your politics, you’ll have to buy into greed eventually.

Greed Corp’s battles are lovely to look at. Though the environments are often bleak, it’s a visual feast to watch them crumble away to dust. As they do, the battlefield becomes more and more isolating until each team stands alone on tiny islands in the sky. Or maybe not — depending on your choices, battles can go many different ways. Directly charging your enemies may be the best call at times, but waiting and letting them destroy each other can be just as effective.

This is the sort of game best played with time and attention. It’s long and challenging, with 24 single-player levels divided between the four corporations. The battles themselves are quite time consuming. You have to watch as each of the CPU teams take their turns — they’re not especially slow about it, but any time spent out of control can drag on. Greed Corp is worth the time, though, with a thoughtful storyline and clever gameplay.

I can’t comment on the online multiplayer, unfortunately. During my time with the game I wasn’t able to connect to a single other player. Hopefully this will improve as the player base grows. Greed Corp allows you to set up a multiplayer game and wait for matchmaking while you play single-player, so if you want to find a game your best bet is to start matchmaking at the beginning of your play session.

But if you have someone local to play with, you don’t need to wait for strangers to join you. Multiplayer games can be set up with any combination of single-device local, online and CPU players. The one thing you can’t do is play online with friends with any reliability — the game uses its own matchmaking service rather than Game Center, and there’s no friends list.

The exclusion of Game Center is mystifying, actually. Greed Corp includes 12 achievements and 4 leaderboards, but all of them are local. Even more worrying are the bugs I encountered while playing. There weren’t many, but one resulted in a couple losses that shouldn’t have happened, and one had the game crashing every time I rotated my device (the system-wide rotation lock will let you avoid that if it happens to you). These flaws stand out in a port that’s otherwise very well done.

Still, I’d recommend Greed Corp — flaws and all. It’s a strategy board game that feels right at home on iPad, and it outdoes much of its competition on the platform. I wouldn’t get it solely for online multiplayer, but with a vast single-player campaign and support for up to four local players, it’s a gem of a game for any other purpose. If you’re on the fence, swing by our discussion thread for more opinions, but they’re mostly glowing. Rightfully so. For a game that drags you into despicably greedy behavior, Greed Corp HD is gorgeous, well designed and fun.

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Wizardry is a series with a pretty long history, and the older you are, the more of it you’re likely to recall. Thirty years after its original release, gamers still think of the same thing when they hear the word: a long dungeon crawl in the dark, careful stat management, and a pen and graph paper by your side. In fact, Wizardry was really the first graphical incarnation of the Dungeons & Dragons model, and gamers familiar with it would feel right at home on those subterranean treks through poorly lit mazes.

Fast forward to 2011, however, and you may see a game like Wizardry as nothing but an exercise in punishment. Or would a clean-up and polish of the interface make for a more modern experience? This version of Wizardry, called Labyrinth of Lost Souls [Free] ($9.99 IAP unlocks full game), is not exclusive to iOS — it’s already seen its original debut on the PS3 earlier this year.

At that time, my impressions of it were that it was presented beautifully and had gorgeous art, but offered the exact same type of experience that its namesake was so well known for. For hardcore fans of the dungeon crawling genre, this was great news, but what about new players who would be facing the genre for the first time? Did they have any hope of enjoying this game?

Simply put, Wizardry is just a hardcore game. Check it out on iOS, and you will find it is almost exactly like the PS3 version, with two small differences — it’s Game Center enabled, and the lovely detail of the art is more or less lost on the iPhone’s tiny screen. I think the game would be much more enjoyable on the iPad if you chose to get it for a portable device, but if you had access to all options, PS3 would be the way to go. It’s clear lots of attention and effort was put into the art, and it’s a shame to see it all tiny and squished up on a little screen.

Gameplay is — well, it’s okay. It’s like every other dungeon crawler of this type you’ve ever played, and it doesn’t deviate by a hair. You choose what sex and race you want to play from a small selection, choose your alignment and finally your class. Head to town, get a quest, and choose some recruits to go down in the dungeon with you. If you’ve never played a Wizardry game before, you may not be aware how crucial this initial party structure is. If you choose poorly, you’ll get hammered, even for your first journey into the dungeon. One thing that has stayed true to form in this modern version is the learning curve — absolutely steep.

I believe that thirty years ago, stumbling around in the dark with no map (unless you buy one in town) and repetitive battles with large groups of enemies might have been exciting, even inspiring as you struggled to get your bearings. After all, it was all so new then. It’s the same formula here, and people who loved doing it then may enjoy Wizardry now. That being said, any modern gamer is sure to throw up their hands in frustration.

Tapping the darkness in front of you works just fine to navigate these underground tunnels, but it doesn’t necessarily make it fun. Menus are also set up in a way that makes you spend a ton of time jumping in and out of them, which is no big deal for a seasoned RPG player. However, I found myself stabbing at the screen with my finger here and there, and I wished the controls could have been a bit more responsive, especially in the dungeons.

The hard thing about Wizardry is that the gameplay experience it offers can be fun and satisfying if you put effort in, if not somewhat generic. On the other hand, the format will alienate many gamers, but that is what the genre is and will likely always be, so this cannot be blamed on the game.

(Trailer from PlayStation3 version)

“Not for everybody” is probably the best thing I can say about a title like this. On the other hand, if you cut your teeth on this stuff back in the day, slipping into Labyrinth of Lost Souls may feel like putting on a well-worn glove. Accepting quests and gathering loot, or even grinding to level your characters, can still be appealing and surely fulfilling for the right gamer. However, since most gamers are not used to working so hard to keep their characters alive anymore, I believe Wizardry will satisfy a very limited audience. The game demands a high level of competence from the people who choose to play it, and there is no hand holding whatsoever.

In an age where we are literally led through our games, often with more instruction than necessary, Wizardry stands as a testament to the games that may have made us gamers by a very different set of standards.

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A survey was distributed amongst 1,000 video game industry professionals that are attending the upcoming London Games Festival, respondents were asked to compose their own list of the top five people and hardware in the video game industry and, both Apple and Steve jobs ranked in first amongst both categories:

Products

• iPhone: 17%
• Wii: 7%
• Xbox Live: 3%
• PlayStation One: 3%
• Steam: 2%

People

• Steve Jobs 26%
• Gabe Newell 16%
• Shigeru Miyamoto 7%
• Tim Berners-Lee 4%
• Mark Zuckerberg 3%

Curiously enough, amongst all the people who responded, the iPhone was somewhere in 53% of the voters’ top fives. Similarly, Steve Jobs made it into 46% of all the top fives. Like most surveys, you can read into them a variety of different ways. If the London Games Conference is like most US video game conferences, it could be nearly taken over by iOS developers, who’d naturally respond the iPhone and Steve Jobs. Alternatively, Steve Jobs is likely still fresh in everyone’s memory. Either way, I feel like Shigeru Miyamoto should have gotten way more than 7%.

[Eurogamer via The Escapist]

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