Lightraycer [Green Ferry Games] - $1.99

Racing games coupled with the iDevice’s accelerometer control option works extremely well. Thankfully, developers are going above and beyond your typical racers, expanding the genre, and creating new and unique games. QuBIT, Protoxide, Axon Runners and others are great examples of this. Green Ferry Games first iOS release, Lightraycer, is another attempt at pushing the genre beyond the typical trends. 

In Lightraycer, you control a space ship trying to outrun a supernova blast by racing along a track through space. The controls are typical of other racers on the platform, tilt to move, but you can also jump by tapping on the screen. With the inclusion of the jump mechanic, Green Ferry was able to include light walls, breaks in the track and falling orbs which slow your ship down. 

The graphics in Lightraycer are fantastic, with beautiful, vibrant backgrounds, a great looking track, and when the supernova gets closer behind you, the sides of the screen start closing in on you with a bright orange and yellow glow accompanying shaking from the blast. Unfortunately, this is pretty much all that the game encompasses. 

There’s only one gameplay mode, one ship, no power-ups, no GameCenter or OpenFeint integration, no objectives, and no real drive to keep playing, or get a better score, which makes Lightraycer seem like a pretty bland and basic title when compared to the rest of the genre. This is made more disappointing by the core gameplay, which has loads of potential, but isn’t taken advantage of. 

Being priced at $1.99, it’s hard to recommend Lightraycer, especially with so many other great racers for the iOS at either the same price or cheaper. Until more is added on to the game, chances are it’s not going to reach it’s target audience, and will fade into the background as so many other iOS titles have, which is unfortunate, because there’s clearly talent behind the game, and unique ideas floating around Green Ferry Games studio which isn’t being fully taken advantage of. 

Read More

Golf Squared [Dynamo Games] - $0.99

One of my favorite iOS games ever is Super Stickman Golf. It’s sucked hours upon hours of my life away one swing of the golf club at a time. So seeing Dynamo Games title, Golf Squared, which looked AMAZINGLY similar to SSG, the excitement hit me instantly. But along with that excitement came unease. Would Dynamo Games be able to match the amazingly addictive gameplay of Super Stickman Golf, or would it fizzle out, being a less than mediocre clone? Well… it’s time to find out.

Starting off, the graphics of Golf Squared look great. The boxy look of the characters coupled with the nice modern retro type inspired environments, minimal user interface and vibrant colors all come together to create a very appealing graphic styling. 

The animations and physics add a bunch to this, with your characters showing obvious disappointment when things don’t go their way, sand kicking up when you hit a bunker and grass and flowers popping up when you roll through the rough. The physics when hitting a ball in these areas is also effected, which is a great addition to the gameplay. Sadly, other areas of the game don’t stand out like the graphics, animations and physics.  

There’s only one Mode, no online features like multiplayer, and no GameCenter or OpenFeint support. Within the one mode of gameplay, you’ll be able to choose between a male or female character, and have only one environment (golf course) to pick, with a “More Levels Coming Soon” message when you click the misleading arrow, thinking there’s more than one area to play in. In this one area, there’s 18 holes, each having an available 3 star ranking. That’s it. 18 holes. 

Once you actually get into the game, you might notice right away that zooming in and out can become quite a hassle. Once you zoom out, and then hit the ball, the camera automatically zooms back in, and stays there until you zoom it out again. This can get pretty annoying, and winds up taking away from the immersion of the game quite a bit. 

You’ll also probably notice that there’s no in-game currency, no in-game store, no customization what-so-ever. Now, this does mean that there’s no extra IAP, which I guess is a good thing, but with every single golf game out there these days having in-game stores, with extra balls, clothing, clubs, characters, and more that you can purchase, it’s kind of a let down. No powered up balls to unlock, you can’t even change your characters colors. 

Now, with this being Dynamo Games first real game released in the AppStore, it’s not exactly bad. But once you get past the graphics, the game doesn’t stick out. At all. The levels are designed kind of like Stickman Golf’s courses, but each is very short, and with only 18 of them, there’s not much gameplay here. You can replay the holes until you get 3 stars (which is done by achieving a Birdy [2 hits under par]), but then that’s it, and there’s not much drive to even do that with no online leader boards, and no store to purchase items. Hopefully Dynamo Games will keep working on Golf Squared, because it does have a ton of potential. But right now, it really just feels like a bare bones, graphically enhanced, lite/demo version of Stickman Golf. 

Read More

Arrow of Time - 1.99 (Puya Dadgar)

The Unreal Engine has considerably opened up the world of iOS gaming since it’s introduction late last year. Games taking advantage of the engine generally have incredible graphics and fantastic gameplay. Dungeon Defenders, Infinity Blade, Dark Meadow, Gyro13, these are titles that truly take advantage of what Unreal can do on the iDevice. However, there are a few titles that really do not grab onto everything that Unreal has to offer. Sadly, Puya Dadgar’s title, Arrow of Time is one of these titles.

First off, the graphics in Arrow of Time are done fairly well, however, the animations are really clunky, and not very impressive. Most of the time, it looks like characters are sliding along the ground while running or walking, and it looks like multiple frames have been left out of most of the animations.

Control-wise, you’re able to move with a joystick, aim by swiping on the screen, shoot your weapon by tapping the fire button in the lower right corner. Here’s where it gets pretty uncomfortable. To jump, you’ll need to flick your device either to the left or to the right, and to do an avoidance roll, you need to flick your device forward, or towards yourself.

The collision detection is also something that needs to be worked on quite a bit, as it makes the game extremely frustrating, and almost unplayable. In the second level of the game, you’re required to jump up and grab onto a part of a wall, then pull yourself up. While grabbing onto the wall is done automatically, running up to the wall, and then quickly flicking your device to the left or right will make your character jump up and grab it. Here’s where the collision detection comes in. Half the time, the game will automatically move your character to the left or right, rotating them, having them holding on to air. Your character can get stuck like this, not being able to flick the device again to pull yourself up, or use the joystick or dodge flicks to make your character let go of the wall, forcing you to re-start the stage from the beginning. About 40% of the time, your character will go straight into the wall, getting stuck as well, with no way to get them out, again, forcing you to restart the level. There are some cases in which your character will go into the wall, but still be able to climb up with a left/right flick of your device, and some times the act is done the way it’s supposed to be done. In short, you’ll be able to pull this off about 1 out of 7 or so times, and with level 2 requiring you to do this three times, it’s almost impossible to make it through the stage. There are other sections where collision detection gets to be VERY frustrating, like in stage 1, when you’re supposed to protect a girl, but somehow the enemies swords are able to reach through you, and about 4 times the length of the sword to kill the woman, requiring you to start over. I think you get the point.

There are various cut-scenes throughout the game, which are not terribly voice-acted, but there is no option to skip, and no pause button, so you’ll need to set aside a certain amount of time when you have no chance of being bothered. Some of the cut-scenes give you information which you’ll need in order to progress through the game, so they can be fairly important.

Summed up, Arrow of Time is a game that still needs a lot of work. It feels like a demo or beta version of what could eventually wind up being a decent game. Considering the game was made by two people over a period of 3 months, it’s not incredibly bad. However, the game shows that it was made by two people who worked on it only for 3 months. Priced at $1.99, it’s one of the cheapest Unreal powered games you can get in the AppStore, and the game is Universal. There is no GameCenter or OpenFeint integration, but the game doesn’t really call out for it. Basically, if you’re dying for a 3rd person action adventure game, Arrow of Time might be worth picking up. It does have 8 ratings in the US AppStore, 7 of them are 5 star ratings, however, if you read them, most of them sound like they are from friends or people that might know the developers. Hopefully, Puya Dadgar has plans of working on the game, and fixing as many issues as they can in future updates, but as it is now, it’s a very frustrating experience.

Read More

Corridor Fly - 0.99 (Gripati Digital Entertainment)

Tunnel racers are fairly popular on the iDevice. The utilization of tilt controls, along with pretty simple gameplay appeals to casual and hardcore gamers alike. The most recent addition to this genre is Gripati Digital Entertainment’s Corridor Fly.

The game does take a little bit of getting use to. You’re able to fly all around the tunnel you’ll be racing through by using the iDevice’s accelerometer controls, along with a button on the bottom left to tilt your aircraft sideways, and a button on the bottom right to use whatever power-up you might have stored. This wouldn’t normally be too hard to get acclimated to, but Corridor Fly’s collision detection seems to be more than just a tad off, and with the doors closing in on you as you try and make it through them. But usually, you’ll end up crashing without touching anything. It’s the worst when you’re basically right in the center of the tunnel, and the doors are just starting to move towards you from the sides, and your ship blows up with just the edges of the doors showing. This is even more upsetting because the trailer doesn’t really show the collision detection as being this bad.

There’s also the issue with the IAPs. ITunes does not list them all, but here they are; 5,000 coins for $0.99, 10,000 coins for $1.99, 20,000 coins for $2.99, 30,000 coins for $3.99, Aircraft 2 is $0.99, Aircraft 3 is $1.99, and unlocking all the Aircrafts will cost you $3.99. So far, I’ve got about 20-30 coins per game. Even better? I have no idea what the coins can be used for. In the shop, there’s only options for IAPs. There’s no upgrade areas, and you can’t buy the extra ships with coins, you’ll buy them with stars that are fairly difficult to earn in-game. Another little issue, once you do finally get a star, a pop-up telling you that you earned a star comes up, and you have to hit okay. 4 times. It keeps popping up.

Now, I guess all of this isn’t so bad. If you play the game enough, you should eventually learn how to get your ship through doors, and deal with the poor collision detection, as well as get good enough to earn enough stars to maybe unlock the ship that costs 2. But you might not even get that far. The loading screen takes, literally, a minute and a half to load on a 4th gen device. With the graphics far from being amazing, and the gameplay usually lasting about 20 seconds, most people will not sit and wait over a minute for the game to load.

All of this seems really bad, and it kind of is. With the amount of really good tunnel racers out there, it’s hard to recommend Corridor Fly. All of these issues could be fixed in an update, and hopefully they all will, but it’s not looking promising, with no iTunes reviews, and only 34 GameCenter scores, it doesn’t look like sales will be pushing a quick update to be submitted, if at all, but if one does come, you know that we’ll keep you informed of it.

Read More

RGB Defense - 0.99 (Red Winter Software)

RGB Defense is a new arcade game from Red Winter Software, it is also their first release in the AppStore. In the game, you’ll need to drag cannons around the bottom of the screen, matching their color with the color of the enemies coming down at you in waves from the top of the screen. It might sound simple, and in the beginning it is, but at level 5, you’re not just moving around red, green, and blue cannons, purple and yellow come into the mix, and you’ll be shuffling around 5 different colored cannons while a mass invasion of quick enemies comes barreling down at you. Needless to say, it can get pretty hectic, and drive you crazy.

There are different types of enemies, some that stay in one lane, and only need one hit to be taken out, others that change which lane their in pretty quickly, and others that require multiple hits, and change color after being hit. This mix up of enemies adds quite a bit of extra challenge to the already pretty challenging game. Though with the amount of enemies, how quickly they come at you, how long it takes for a cannon to fire once you get it where you want it, and the cannons sometimes getting stuck in the right corner because of un-responsive controls, it feels like getting past level/wave 7 and anything afterwards is pretty much only accomplished with luck instead of skill.

There are a couple of power-ups that you’ll be ableto get by killing enemies. Health drops, bombs that clear out the screen and hourglasses which slow down the enemies for a very short period of time. There’s also stars that the enemies sometimes drop, and these add to your score.

The graphics, animations, and sound is all nicely done, making it a good looking arcade shooter game. But the sometimes unresponsive controls, seemingly laggy cannon fire, and the very quick jump in difficulty throughout the game make it pretty frustrating. Also, if you do manage to get the controls and timing down, there is no online support, so your scores will end up stuck on your device, for your eyes only. Though with the game only being $0.99, I don’t really consider it a waste of money. It does have quite a bit of potential. Once the control issues are fixed, GameCenter or OpenFeint is added, and the amount of time it takes for a cannon to shoot once you get it into place is sped up a bit, the difficulty level might not need to be changed. Also, if more than one mode is added in the future, this could turn into a very well rounded game.

However, we really won’t know until the game is worked on a bit more, and with the release your game and disappear if it doesn’t sell well dealings of the AppStore, we might never know. Hopefully Red Winter Software won’t give up or get discouraged, because this could turn into an awesome hectic arcade game. We will definitely be keeping our eyes on this one with the hopes that Red Winter Software is in it for the long haul.

You can check out the game on the developers website in the Unity Player, but keep in mind that it responsiveness of controlling with your mouse does not transfer over to the touch screen just yet.

RGB Defense gets a score of 2 out of 5. But we will keep you updated if the game is updated, and could possibly end up re-scoring this one.

Links -

Full Version - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rgb-defense/id465513928?mt=8

Lite Version - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rgb-defense-lite/id467474638?mt=8

Website - http://rgbdefense.com/

Read More