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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ArkanoArena - 1.99 (Sketch Games)

ArkanoArena is a new brick-breaker game from Sketch Games. Early this year, iPhone users were given a taste of this steam punk styled brick breaker with a free demo version. It got a lot of great feedback, and produced a little following of excited gamers anticipating the release of the full version. Now it’s here. 50 levels of beautiful brick breaking action. The story adds to the atmosphere of the game as well, as you’re invited to take part in a competition put together by Mr. Arkano, held where “the land meets the sky and the laws of physics do not apply.”

The graphics in ArkanoArena are great. Various environments and, like I’ve said, steam punk style objects, which I’m just a sucker for, make this one of my favorite brick breakers available for the iOS. Animations are great, especially when your platform changes. The explosions are done extremely well, and there’s a lot of polish and professionalism shown with the look and feel of the game. The backgrounds look amazingly beautiful as well, which only helps add more style to this already stylish game. The addition of a store where you can buy weapons, ammo, extra life, and power-ups that you can use to take on the various enemies that can fire missiles at you even more interesting. The controls are like any other brick-breaker, hold under the platform, called the Stinger, here, and move left or right to bounce the ball off of it. To use your weapons, a shotgun, missiles, and a lightning strike, you tap on their icons on the right side of the screen. These icons might look like they’ll get in the way, but become transparent when you move or the ball goes to the right side of the screen. To launch your ball, you double tap in the direction you want to launch it.

There’s 2 different game modes, the Arcade Mode, which you can choose to play on normal or hardcore difficulties, and Survival Mode. In normal difficulty, you get as many retries as you’d like to get through all 50 of the levels, and in hardcore, you get your 3 lives, and when you loose them, it’s game over. In Survival Mode, you get one ball, but all of your weapons are unlocked at the beginning of the game. When you loose your ball, game over. The store is accessible in Arcade Mode, between each level, but not given to you in Survival Mode.

The scoring system is pretty nice, giving you different scores for each of the different blocks, and a time bonus at the end. The block mechanics are pretty interesting, as there’s regular blocks that take one hit to destroy, other blocks with numbers on them that take that amount of hits to destroy, blocks with timers that start when you hit them, and reset the block if you don’t hit it again before the timer gets around the circle in the block, bomb blocks that blow up blocks around them when hit, skull blocks and gold blocks.

The enemies in ArkanoArena are one of the best things about the game. Having them shoot missiles at you really helps bump the challenge up a bit. I would love to see more types of enemies added in the future though, as I think the developers could really do a lot with different enemies, attacks, and attack mechanics. For instance, seeing an enemy that shoots some goo at the Stinger, causing it to slow down for a second or two, or kamikaze enemies that come barreling at you, knocking you half way across the screen on impact would be awesome.

ArkanoArena is one of the best looking brick-breakers in the AppStore, and it’s looking like it’s going to quickly knock Anodia out of the #1 spot on my device. $1.99 for this game is a great price, as it delivers tons of replay, loads of levels, GameCenter leader boards for both difficulties of Arcade Mode, and Survival Mode, and 50 achievements. Aside from more enemies, there’s nothing I can think of that I would like to see changed or added. Sketch Games has done an amazing job with ArkanoArena, and it’s recommended to anyone who’s into the genre, or just loves great looking arcade games.

ArkanoArena is getting a score of 9.5 out of 10

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arkanoarena-for-iphone/id452680768?mt=8

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