Consolation Prize

It has been quite a while since I last took the time and effort to investigate the flood of free games that appear with startling regularity on the Apple app store. Perhaps it was the recent OS 3.0. presentation that reawakened my interest in the iPhone slash iTouch as a serious gaming platform that jerked me into action, but I hereby present you with my humble opinion on some free games available for you to download.

In this post I look at Time Crisis Strike Lite, Brick Breaker Revolution Free, and Zombieville USA Lite. You can find the other parts in the guide by following these links:

iPhone Free Games Guide - Part 1

iPhone Free Games Guide - Part 2

Time Crisis Strike Lite

In theory an on-rails-shooter is a good match for the iPhone slash iTouch. There’s no need to worry about the need to map complex controls to the limited functions of the device; the very nature of the genre imposes its own set of constraints and therefore the player only needs to concern themselves with the ability to shoot and reload – that should be easy, right?

Unfortunately Time Crisis Strike has a fundamental flaw with one aspect of the controls that has a profoundly negative impact on the game. The culprit is the “reload” action, which unsurprisingly is a critical part of playing Time Crisis. To reload, or in fact in order to take cover as they are one and the same action, you must tilt the device. Although this may seem like a positive use of the accelerometers, the net result is that for a few critical moments the screen is obscured. The situation is worse if you actually want to remain in cover and you’re forced to hunch over the screen to view what’s happening. It beats me why Namco Bandai didn’t just decide to use a virtual button for this purpose, after all there’s an icon at the bottom of the screen to indicate this anyway.

This “Lite” version offers one full level whilst the premium version offers just three, but given that this first stage could be completed in a couple of minutes, and the aforementioned critique, I really can’t see myself being tempted to splash the cash for another five or ten minutes of action.

Rating:  

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Continuing a series of posts looking at free games for the iPhone, this second part focuses on Tap Defense, Maze Finger, Topple, and Space Deadbeef. If you’re interested in reading the first part of the guide then you can find that
here.

Tap Defense

As it is only the second Tower Defence game I’ve played on the iPhone, Tap Defense has a lot to live up to considering my last journey with the genre was with the sublime Fieldrunners, however, this game can more or less hold its own comparatively speaking.

In Tap Defense your role is to defend the gates of heaven from hordes of demons, all intent upon gaining entry into the Promised Land. As is the norm with the genre there are a variety of towers to choose from ranging from the basic Arrow, Bomb and Water towers; to more specialist varieties such as Storm, Ice, Magic and Earthquake, but unlike the basic towers these more powerful variants must first be researched – using awarded halos – before they can be picked from the build menu. All of them can, as you may expect, be upgraded for a price to increase both there power and effective range.

Tap Defense features a number of hellish creatures like Gremlins, Succubae, Hell Hounds, and of course the Devil, but it’s a shame they’re all quite hard to differentiate between and sometimes merge together like a muddy mess when swarming because of there minuscule size and lack of detail. Visually, Tap Defense is passable, and in no way does the average appearance detract from the overall playability, but it does compare unfavourably with Fieldrunners which is in an altogether different graphical class.

The levels in Tap Defense use one of three different maps depending upon the difficulty chosen. The path to the gates of heaven is predefined and knowing the route the demons will traverse leaves you free to concentrate on the strategic placement of towers, but personally I miss the freedom and flexibility of being able to design “rat runs” for the hordes to wander through. Speaking of the level design it must be mentioned that Tap Defense not only features a Classic mode, but it also offers five Challenges that alter the game rules dramatically like “Sudden Death” which gives you just the one life, and “Ten Towers” that limits you to ten towers - unsurprisingly.

In addition to the normal tower defence game mechanics Tap Defense also incorporates an interest rate - awarding you additional gold per round based upon the amount saved in the coffers. It’s a great little feature which promotes money management and strategic depth as you to balance spending versus saving – the more you save, the more you will have available during the latter rounds when the difficulty curve really spikes.

Although Tap Defense may not have the presentation and the overall spit and polish that Fieldrunners has to offer, it’s still a very playable and enjoyable tower defence game and is well worth investigating.

Rating:  

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It seems to be traditional during the festive season to offer up some sort of list, whether it’s the “Best”, “Worst”, “Overhyped” or whatever adjective fits the agenda – well it’s my turn so I’m going to dish up my top 5 favourite games played this year.

There is, however, a small caveat – and that is to be considered for the list I must have at least played the game to completion this year. You will therefore notice that some high profile games like Fable 2 and Fallout 3 aren’t on the list, as even with the best will in the world there just aren’t enough hours in the day to play EVERY game that’s released in the mad rush towards Christmas. This isn’t a vapour-ware list of games I think should be worthy, but just a plain and honest list of games that I’ve enjoyed above and beyond my expectations this year.

5. Castle Crashers (Xbox 360 - Arcade)

There is something incredibly joyous about returning to the good old simplistic hack ‘n slash genre that is so representative of Castle Crashers. It’s as if the shackles have suddenly been thrown off and your inner child has suddenly been released and you’re free to play a game just for fun again - without worrying about “what it all means”. Castle Crashers wraps this shackle free gameplay up with some beautiful art design, adds a smattering of guttural humour and gives you a game that’s a joy to play time and time again.

Read what I thought of Castle Crashers here.

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Over the years we’ve learnt many things courtesy of the film industry; chief among them is the fact that space is certainly not a safe place for humanity to explore. And we’ve also learnt that when contact, be it with a colony, vessel, or even a town has suddenly and inexplicably been lost it’s not because of something simple like a communications malfunction, or due to static interference, it’s usually because the crew/colonists/residents have all been horribly slaughtered.

Alarm bells should be ringing loudly in the ears of whichever bright spark has decided to lead an expeditionary mission to determine the cause of the silence, but instead they will wander unconcerned (mostly) into danger like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. This blasé attitude, although not good for promoting a long and prosperous life, does however provide the perfect setup for horror films, or alternatively in our case a Sci-Fi survival horror game.

The reason I’m making such a tenuous link to the film industry is that in some respects Dead Space feels like it’s borrowing aspects from some of the great Sci-Fi flicks of the last 30 years. However, instead of just being a carbon copy of something like Aliens, Event Horizon, or even Solaris there’s enough originality here, and delivered with such panache and polish that makes it a game that is worthy of your attention.

Playing as Isaac Clarke, an engineer aboard the USG Kellion, you and your crewmates are dispatched to the USG Ishimura – a “planet cracker” class mining vessel that rips planets apart in search of valuable minerals and ores. As you may have surmised contact with the Ishimura has been lost after an initial distress signal was received, and on rendezvousing with the stricken vessel above the planet Aegis 7 a decision is made to dock with the ship and provide any help required. It is however, only a matter of time before things go completely pear shaped leaving you to repair various systems on the Ishimura so that you can escape the nightmare.

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Think of War World as the poor man’s Unreal Tournament - but with Mechs. That’s probably the easiest way to summarise the game and definitely my overriding impression from my brief time with the game. This therefore is predominantly an arena based deathmatch shooter with a selection of Mechs that have vaguely differing capabilities. Smaller Mechs tend to be quicker but have less armour, whereas the larger behemoths compromise speed in favour of a thick protective coat.

It’s quite difficult to formulate an in-depth opinion of War World due to the heavily restricted nature of the trial game. Given that you’re only able to choose from one mode (deathmatch), one arena, and one Mech (Panther Striker), and then given an embarrassingly miserly 50 seconds of game time before being told “Game Over” and unceremoniously dumped back at the title screen, its little wonder then that my overall impression isn’t going to be a glowing one. The cynic in me wonders if it is deliberately handicapped to avoid revealing all the game has to offer within 300 seconds, let alone 50 seconds.

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I noticed that while searching for the Mercenaries 2 demo on Xbox Live Marketplace last week that a demo for Fracture had been released. Now, I must confess that the idea of this landscape deformation game certainly had me intrigued, so it went straight to the top of the download queue… However, after playing through the tutorial and demo level I have to say that I’m not completely sold on the game just yet.

It all started off very promising with the tutorial; starting aboard an airborne assault craft flying over what looks like was once San Francisco Bay and past the Golden Gate Bridge while the commanding officer explains the fundamentals of your HUD, before finally getting dropped into the incursion point at the beginning of the training level. After my initial disappointment at realising there are design restrictions to the landscape deformation (there were bound to be!), which in reality meant I could only raise or lower the landscape by about 10 foot wherever some “dirt” was present, the tutorial actually turned out to be a pretty good introduction to the controls and the various weapon types and abilities on offer.

The main selling point of Fracture is of course going to be the novelty factor involved from being able to manipulate the landscape using the “Entrencher”; implemented via pressing either the left or right controller bumper buttons which in turn fires off a pulse that will lower or raise the landscape respectively. It’s an integral part of the level design and throughout the demo you’re invited, nay required, to use this ability in order to reach inaccessible higher platforms, jump over or tunnel under obstacles, and even to provide tactical cover. It all works reasonably well, even with the noticeable limitations.

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The summer season of Xbox Live Arcade which delivered exceptional high quality releases in Geometry Wars 2, Galaga Legions, Braid, and of course Castle Crashers has unfortunately come to an end and it seems like we’re once more back into the familiar “hit-and-miss” territory that’s so representative of the service.

Shred Nebula is a top down space shooter, similar in some respects to Asteroids, in which you control a single ship that rotates on a central axis, can fire and thrust in the direction you’re facing and whereby the ship’s inertia has a significant effect on movement and controls. However, unlike the simple joys of Asteroids this is a far more complex beast to handle.

Taking command of the prototype ship: the RIP Rocket, your task is to explore the nearby solar systems trying to locate the lost Algron Exploration Fleet which failed to return from an expansive exploratory charting mission 12 years hence. Along the way you will encounter both hazards and hostile aliens all of which are detrimental to the integrity of your ship.

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Rebooting a franchise is not an easy task to undertake but the same development team that brought us the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition have managed yet again to apply the same skill and panache to an arcade classic reinvigorating Galaga with Galaga Legions.

Galaga (1981) is a top down shooter and sequel to Galaxian (1979), which in turn was born out of the success of Space Invaders (1978) and took the formula one step further and instead of the processional left-right pacing of the invaders introduced waves of alien ships that left the formation and dive bombed the player in desperate kamikaze like manoeuvres. Galaga Legions retains the feel of Galaga yet builds upon the core game-play successfully fusing it with some new game mechanics that hauls the franchise into 2008, and thus makes this a much more interesting prospect for the modern gamer than if was just a rehash of the old classic with enhanced graphics.

The game-play in itself retains the simple single screen “kill everything” nature of the original and basically requires the player to destroy wave-upon-wave of enemies in order to survive as long as possible and notch up the highest score. Each wave of aliens becomes progressively more complex but the game affords the player some foresight of enemy attacks as fading blue lines trace flight paths across the screen and entry points are momentarily highlighted with orange glowing squares.

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