Random Heroes [Ravenous Games] - $0.99

Ravenous Games is best known for their breakout hit, League of Evil. If you don’t have it yet, chances are you either just got an iDevice, or detest platformers with a passion. If you do, then you know how extremely high Ravenous set the bar for the rest of the platforming development community, as well as themselves. Playing LoE, it was hard to believe that the same developers of Cave Run had come so far, and gained such an incredible understanding of what made a Speedrun Platformer great. But they did, and after the releases of Burger Cat and LoE 2, it was again hard to believe that it was the same development team. Granted, it was great seeing another side of the studio, but they were far from touching the same bar that LoE set. Now, Ravenous has released yet another title, Random Heroes, another action platformer, originally a Flash game, with Run’n’Gun elements. 

Random Heroes is the story of a city who’s been overrun by monsters from another dimension after a couple of kids knocked over the wrong tombstone in the city’s cemetery. Now a group of unlikely heroes are the city’s only hope. The story doesn’t come back into play until after you complete the 30 stage (33 if you include boss battles) game. You’re right if you’re thinking that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of content. A lot of players have beat the game in roughly an hour. Then there are others who might not have a chance.

Seems Random Heroes is plagued by random crashes and lost iCloud save data as well. Crashing has the potential of sending you back close to 15 stages, depending on how long you spend playing, and playing on more than one device could potentially send you back just as far, if not more so, depending on how far into the game you got before trying it on another device. There are quite a few users who haven’t even gotten through the first stage because of crashing, which can be pretty upsetting. There’s also quite a bit of lag and slowdown. 

If you’re lucky enough to not have to deal with those issues, chances are, you might not enjoy the game as much as you thought you would. The enemy AI is pretty bad, requiring a simple jump over and shoot from behind maneuver to outwit them. There are also multiple areas where enemies will get stuck in walls when turning around, making them very easy prey. It does get a little more complex in the later stages, but basically only because of the amount of ammo the enemies pump out, and how quick they are. You’ll also soon discover that there’s a lot of just standing and shooting, as even with a high powered weapon and character, you’ll still need between 2 and 6 slow reloading shots in order to take the enemies out.

Speaking of high powered weapons, there is a shop where you’ll be able to spend your collected coins purchasing various weapons with different reload and firing speeds as well as damage stats. You’re also able to purchase different characters, each having different health, damage, and agility stats, which is nice, and does give the game a little bit of replay value if you’re determined to unlock them all. Also adding to the replay value is GameCenter integration with 24 achievements, but with no scoring or timing system, there’s also no leaderboards, which is kind of a downer. 

The level design isn‘t bad, with multiple branching paths giving players some sense of exploration, which is nice. Though this does lead to some levels becoming very easy if you’re not into exploration, and only taking about 10 seconds to complete. 

Graphically, Random Heroes looks a lot like League of Evil, especially the user interface, which looks like it was ripped out of LoE. For platformer fans, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the graphics and UI in LoE are one it’s strong suits. The animations add to the gameplay’s aesthetic, and never get dull, and the controls and physics are, as you would expect coming from Ravenous, top notch, so long as you aren’t playing on an iPad, which, to be comfortable, requires that your thumbs are as long as hot dogs. 

I really tried to like Random Heroes. I tried not comparing it to League of Evil, I tried to overlook the crashing, lagging and saved data losses, I tried not to get upset when loosing over 2,000 coins, and be positive when barely moving around when confronting enemies, but it’s hard to really focus on Random Heroes strengths with so many issues, problems, and the lack of content constantly staring you in the face. For $0.99, it’s worth checking out to see if it’ll run on your device(s). Coming from Ravenous, there’s no question that a lot of these issues will be dealt with in a future update, though how long that update takes, and what all it adds to the game is up in the air. Basically all I can say is this; if you want League of Evil, stick with League of Evil, if you want a Run’N’Gun platformer, INC is your best bet, and if you ever want to see Ravenous release another LoE, you might just want to get rid of those hopes.

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Wizorb [Tribute Games] - $2.99

Ports are always a pretty big deal in the iOS gaming world. The most recent port to hit the AppStore, Wizorb, is a mix between an old-school block-breaker and an RPG. Sound good? We thought so too. And so did thousands of PC/MAC gamers when the game was released on Steam and the Mac AppStore back in March. Since then, Tribute Games, a very small, 2 person studio, with roughly 10 years of development experience (working with Ubisoft, Eidos and Gameloft), has been figuring out the best way to port Wizorb over to the iOS. Well, last Thursday, it finally hit the AppStore, and the first ever brick-breaking RPG was made available for mobile devices around the world. 

Wizorb starts off similar to other RPGs; After an introduction level, you’re taken to Tarot, a small town in the Kingdom of Gorudo, where you find out that a curse cast by demons has whipped out most of the town, and that monsters came from Gorudo castle, attacking the townspeople. Seems Cyrus, your badass wizard, is the only hope for Gorudo’s salvation. And here’s where you might start to get disappointed. The control scheme is horrid.

Starting off in the intro level, you’re able to see two buttons, labeled A and B in the lower right corner. During the block breaking segments, these are used to launch your ball, and to cast spells. To move your paddle left and right, you can drag anywhere on the screen. This isn’t so bad, especially on the smaller iPhone/iPod screen, but you might have some issues on the larger iPad screen, needing to constantly pick your finger up and re-drag it in order to move the paddle all the way across the screen, and the A and B buttons are fairly small, and have a pretty large dead zone, so you’ll constantly be missing the buttons. During the town sequences, movement is done by touching in the direction you want to go. So to move upwards, you’ll need to touch above your wizard, left, on the left side of the screen, ect. Again, this isn’t too much of a problem on the smaller iPhone screen, but on the iPad, it’s a real pain, and you’ll wind up blocking a lot of the gameplay area. The collision detection in the towns areas doesn’t help movement much, as you’ll need to be completely clear of an object in order to get around it. This generally just makes things a little more frustrating. 

Once you get out of the first town, you’ll be taken to the world map, where you can move on to the next town, and start the real brick-breaking gameplay. Here, as you destroy bricks, mana bottles, gems, extra lives, keys and coins will occasionally fall, depending on what color the bricks that you’re destroying are. Also thrown into the mix are evil monsters which you’ll need to destroy in order to complete the levels. Like most brick-breakers, if you can manage to get your ball stuck up above the bricks, you’ll be in for a smooth and easy ride, just needing to collect the items that fall down towards you. Also, learning how to control the ball is a very valuable asset. Hitting the ball in the center of your paddle will send it straight up, while hitting it on the edge will send it flying in that direction (left edge = ball goes to the left), and everywhere in-between sends it at a different angle. Getting this perfected will make the game a lot easier, while at the same time, provide another level of challenge to the gameplay. 

Unfortunately, I have experienced quite a few drops in framerate, and some lag, especially in levels that are packed with bricks. In a game that’s dependant on quick movement and reflexes, this can be a real downer. Another issue I’ve experienced is having buttons get ‘stuck’. Occationally, if I hit the A, or launch ball, button before the wizard completely changes into the paddle, the game will read the A button as being held down, and I won’t be able to launch the ball. The only way to fix this is to quit and restart. 

Another complaint that others have had is that the game only takes up ¾ of the screen. The developers have said that this is because re-sizing the game to fit the iDevice’s screen caused the gameplay area to distort, and that they would have had to re-do all of the game’s artwork in order to have it display correctly. This has left a giant black bar on the bottom of the screen. Something to fill in this black bar would have been great. For instance, Cave’s games also do not necessarily fit the iDevice’s screen, so instead of having a large black bar around the gameplay area, they’ve included some nice artwork along the outside. 

Now, even with all these issues, if you’re a huge fan of the original PC title, it’s nice to have the game available at any time and fit in your pocket. The town segments do not take a lot of time to get through, and the real meat of the game is, in fact, the brick-breaking gameplay. Again, a lot of the issues with the controls are not as prevalent on the smaller iPhone/iPod Touch screens, but on the iPad, can be very frustrating. Priced at $2.99, which is also the same price on Steam, you might want to check out the PC version that doesn’t have all of the touch-screen’s issues. But if you’re a huge fan of the brick-breaking genre, Wizorb has the potential to be another great title. However, you might want to hold off until a couple of updates have gone through, fixing the control issues and gameplay lag as well as the drops in framerate. Right now, it seems like the developers over at Tribute Games tried to spend as little as they could, and worked as fast as they could to port the game over to the iOS. Luckily, updates are a huge deal in the iOS gaming world, and all of this can be fixed and dealt with; if the developers care enough to put the time and effort into it.

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War on Geometry - 0.99 ($0.99 HD) (Lei Cao)

Dual-stick space shooters are fairly popular within the AppStore. It seems like every time I turn around, there’s another DSSS available. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because since Meteor Blitz, one of the very first games I ever bought in the AppStore, I’ve been hooked on them. Lei Cao’s War on Geometry is the most recent title at the moment, but it’s not exactly what you would expect from a game that’s set-up like a dual-stick shooter. There are no joysticks.

The controls are set up so you’ll need to place your finger over your ship, and drag it all around the screen while using another finger to tap and hold where you want to shoot. It plays as frustrating as it sounds, leaving you to try and keep your hands and fingers out of your field of vision as much as possible while moving your ship all around the screen, and firing, usually banging your fingers together and wrapping them around one another quite a bit. That’s not to say that this is a bad game, because it’s not, and I’m sure that the controls are a lot easier to use on an iPad, with the HD build, but on a small screen, the controls do pose a very big issue. Especially once you find out how the game starts.

You’ll find yourself in the middle of the screen, needing to shoot a white orb to start the game. Once you shoot the orb, circles and triangles start coming directly at you from all sides of the screen, making it extremely hard to get out of the way, because you’re always going to be blocking a section of the screen with your fingers. Good luck trying to shoot your way out, because it’ll require you to block even more of the screen with another finger.

But if you can make it out of this first wave of enemies, the game starts to open up, but it’ll take a while to get use to the controls, because each following wave follows the same pattern. Enemies moving to the center of the screen from all sides of your device. But you’ll generally be able to face them with more firepower, as while you’re maneuvering out of the way of the first wave, or usually almost right after that, two optional power-ups appear on the screen, one a laser, and another a slightly powered up version of your original weapon.

There are no GameCenter leaderboards or achievements, but there is an in-game world leaderboard, which you are able to submit your highest score to, which means no hacked scores, but also no competing with GC friends, or replaying for achievements. For $0.99 (also $0.99 for the HD build), it’s not bad by any means, especially if you’re looking for a game with a real challenge, but hopefully in a future update, some joysticks will be added, making the game less frustrating for the majority of players out there. It would also be nice to see some added modes, as there are tons of dual-stick shooters available in the AppStore that almost all have loads of gameplay modes, and provide a more entertaining gaming experience for the same price, or even less (yes, that’s right, free - think PewPew).

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Zombie Slaughter - 0.99 (Tapkee Games)

Zombie Slaughter is a new swiping action game from Tapkee Games. In it, you will fight wave after wave of zombies. You’re given 3 difficulties, Easy, Medium, and Hard. On Medium and Hard Modes, you’ll need to figure out strategies to take out the hordes of zombies in order to beat the game, but in Easy mode, you can pretty much just learn the movements, and how to play the game without too much of a challenge.
There is no story in the game, and very little environmental change. As you progress through the levels of 3 waves each, the platforms you can jump on will grow, but apart from that, you won’t see much different between the levels. There’s 1 health pick-up for each wave you’ll go through, and once you reach level 2, you’ll be able to pick up a sword and slice away at the zombies for a limited amount of swipes. This lack of story, or extra modes can put some people off of the game, especially since there’s no online leaderboards, achievements, and actually, no scoring system at all.

This lack of content could very well be the downfall of the game. Which is sad, because Tapkee Games has built up a very decent base for a game. The rag doll physics work extremely well with the animations, and gravity + swipe physics of the game, and the random zombie spawning leads to different types of gameplay with each and every game. But it’s plat former aspect also makes me wish that the developer would have added some virtual buttons along with the current swipe controls, and Zombie Slaughter could also use some power-ups and maybe even a shop. If all of this was added, Tapkee Games would have one hell of a game on their hands.
The lack of content can be overlooked by the amazing, addictive, action-filled gameplay, but not for too long. The developer has realized this, and has mentioned on the Touch Arcade Forums that he will be adding more content, different environments, achievements, item-drops and more weapons, as well as an endless mode.

The game, right now, is $0.99, the perfect price for a “let’s check it out” kind of attitude, and it is worth checking out. The developer has given me 5 promo codes to share with our readers, so if you’re slightly interested in the game, and are one of the first to be reading this review, you can try and snag one of ‘em;

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I am looking forward to future updates, and hope that this game gets more content. As it is now, I’m going to give it a rating of 2.5/5, but it has the potential to be a 4 or even 5 star game if the developer keeps working on it like he’s promised. Here’s hoping this game doesn’t fall into the huge bundle of games that have been forgotten by developers over the years.


Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zombie-slaughter/id457408130?mt=8

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