Android – Iphone – Applications

In Somersault, the new release game from Enter-Brain-Ment, you take control of Flip, a helmeted hero who is trying to save his home from invading aliens. You must guide Flip across a fractured world to save his people. Instead of walking and jumping, however, Flip gets around – with your help – by bouncing everywhere to collect coins, defeat enemies, and battle bosses.

While there’s a neat idea behind Somersault, it isn’t executed well. For one thing, Flip doesn’t bounce with real physics – he bounces like a Super Breakout ball, a weightless thing propelled by your push through space. This makes planning his bounces a difficult task; and while the game tries to mitigate that with large gray arrow pointers, the fact that they needed to add those arrows is telling. I would much rather see a more realistic and reliable physics to the game that I could anticipate and plan for.

In part because of the physics, bouncing Flip is also more complicated than it should be. You don’t just flick him or tilt with the accelerometer; you have to draw bouncing pads in his path, with their length determining the force of the bounce and their angle determining direction. I found that the easiest way to direct him was not to let him bounce, but instead to draw a pad and then swing it, almost like a bat, not so much bouncing our hero as swatting him forward, then jumping over to draw a second pad in front of him to slow him down or redirect him. I do not think that this is what Enter-Brain-Ment intended, but the bounce physics almost demand it.

Actually, many things in Somersault seem to be more complex than they need to be. For example, to select a menu option, you don’t tap a button, but instead have to slide a slider. Or, when you lose a life, you must tap Flip in rapid succession to “resuscitate” him. I enjoy novel touch interactions as part of the game play experience, but Enter-Brain-Ment would do much better to innovate more touch controls during actual game play, then to unnecessarily complicate these ancillary moments.

The whole design sense of Somersault also takes some getting used to. The visuals are bright and gaudy; characters are bulbous orbs, “coins” are perfectly square, colors are cartoon-bright, and whole worlds are built from candies and cookies. The soundtrack, in contrast, is very synthy and very 1980s sci-fi. The two do not mesh well together.

Ultimately, Somersault has some interesting ideas behind it, but it falls flat in the execution. Especially for its regular price of $5.99, it’s not a game that I can recommend.

[ Somersault Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by zulu \\ tags: $5.99, action, bounce, enter-brain-ment, hero, iphone apps and games, somersault, super-breakout

CutHimUp is, without a doubt, the most angry Streets of Rage clone that I have ever played. The whole concept of the game, along with the graphics that power the experience, are gruesome and bloody. The game just oozes violence.

Violence itself though does not make a great game, great game mechanics do. You can throw all of the sexy black and white, Sin City style graphics at me you want, but deep down, I know that I’m just playing Streets of Rage. The game revolves around walking around the screen ruthlessly beating people up. Along the way you get health and adrenaline, as well as some extra weapons to use (the chainsaw is pretty amazing), but most of the game boils down to button mashing and occasionally using the right button combination to perform a combo.

There are also the same pitfalls in this one that occur in an average side scrolling fighter too. For one, you have to be directly even with a bad guy to hit him. Too far up or too far down, the leeway isn’t that large, and he is home free. Another major issue is the collision detection which makes enemies un-hittable if they are too close. You almost have to develop a striking sweet spot to get some hits in, but when enemies start swarming it becomes a button mash fest.

If the genre, with all of its pitfalls, excites you though, there is plenty to like about CutHimUp. The story is intriguing, the characters are all sinister, and there is oh so much blood. Every enemy you kill leaves a pile of it flying through the black and white game, and it looks oh so good. I really would prefer a more freestyle fighting system, maybe where the “hero” could swing a bit to the left and right to hit an enemy, but I guess I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

For those of you looking for a violence fueled bloody mess, CutHimUp is your meal ticket.

[ CutHimUp Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: action, Application, characters, cuthimup, experience, Games, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, rating, review, side-scroller, using-the-right, violence-fueled

Hero of Sparta 2, the sequel to the Gameloft hit, Hero of Sparta, sees your Spartan king’s re-entrance to his homeland. Unfortunately, the lord of the underworld isn’t too happy about your escape and has damned you to hell on Earth if you decide to return home. Of course, you, as the proud Argos, return and your Spartan homeland as it is overrun by demons and evil mythical creatures. Your quest throughout the game is to bring peace to Sparta and to finally get that pesky Hades guy off your back.

The first thing that you will notice, and this is a typical Gameloft trait, is that the game looks extremely pretty. The menus and the cut scenes, as well as the in-game graphics look almost console worthy. There is some real eye candy in some of the sequences with the bigger monsters, and the developers have done a good job making big things seem big. The sound and the voice acting are also just about as epic, really making the game feel like a big budget romp.

Unfortunately, and this is also a typical Gameloft trait, the game almost feel soul-less. Sure, there is a story, but you really don’t grasp the anguish that your character, Argos, goes through. He just returned from the underworld, only to have Hades wipe out all of the citizens and turn your land into a topside hell. This is a classic tragedy, a hero coming from far away only to find nothing when he gets back, so where is the drama? Where’s the pain? All you get is an empty fighter fighting waves and waves of evil.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s fairly formulaic, but does enough to keep you entertained throughout. Most of the game has you running around Sparta until you get “fenced in” and have to fight a battle. Once you beat the enemies, the “fence” goes away and you can move on. There are some things that you have to climb over and some things that you have to jump over, but they feel more like a chore than a real piece of the game. Then there are the bosses, which typically consist of a bunch of mini battles alongside a mini puzzle to find out the bosses weakness. The bosses themselves usually aren’t that tricky, but the long battles beforehand can get tedious.

The battles themselves, the meat of the game, are controlled with dual virtual joysticks as well as a crouch and a jump button. For me, the placement of the buttons/ the way the buttons work left a bit to be desired. The real problem for me is with the right combat stick, which is set between the crouch button below and the jump button above. Being a four directional combat stick, I would expect to easily be able to move the stick in any number of ways to pull off different moves, but when I moved the stick up or down, my finger tended to also be touching crouch or jump, and that action is performed. I can’t tell you how many jumps I performed accidentally in combat before i just resorted to tapping in the button. I honestly would’ve been happier with a combat button and a special moves button rather than a stick.

All in all, Hero of Sparta 2 is what you would expect from God of War clone on the iPhone. It’s really pretty but is fairly soulless and leaves a bit to be desired. If you are a true fan of the genre or just want to be wowed by the technical marvel of your new iPhone 4, Hero of Sparta 2 is the game for you.

[ Hero of Sparta 2 Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: action, bosses, buttons, Game, gameloft, Iphone, iphone apps and games, price, rating, voice

Cat-In-A-Box Games claims that their newest app, Fastar!, “is an Action RPG for when you just don’t have time for an Action RPG”. After a few hours of play, their claim is absolutely confirmed. The whole game seems like a rush, from killing the enemies to upgrading your stats… and the end result is surprisingly good.

In all reality, Fastar! can only loosely be called an RPG. There’s no story to guide the action and no characters that you need to worry about, only the ability to upgrade your attack and defense stats with money that the dead squares drop. The way the game plays is more along the lines of a side scrolling action game, just with a simplified system of movement.

Instead of using a complex control scheme, there are only four things that you can do in Fastar!, move forward/backwards with either the accelerometer or the D-Pad, attack with your sword by tapping on the screen, cast a spell by tapping on the spell icon, and upgrading your stats, also done by tapping on the icon.

The goal of the game is to get to the end of the level as fast as humanly possible, fighting off an army of colored squares along the way. The colored squares hurt you simply by touching you, and all have unique attack patterns, so you must tread carefully so you won’t run into one. Like all good action games, you have to kill the squares with a combination of sword slashes (button mashing) and spells. You are only given one spell per level (except for the Battlemage game type), and can only use it a certain number of times. The spells range from a lightning bolt that momentarily stuns the enemies to a one time only blast that causes instant death.

Since everything happens so fast, my main concern was burnout. How many times can you play the same quest before it gets old? Thankfully, there are 24 different level types ranging from the normal quest to more specialty levels like “Goliath” and “Profit”. The levels all have their own gameplay parameters, most require just pure speed to get to the end, but some require you to collect money and other various tasks.

To keep things fresh, each level has its own online leaderboard. I’m reviewing the game before the official release so I’m on the top of a few of them (CTH), but I’m assuming that all of my records will be broken at launch.

Unlike many side scrolling action games on the iPhone, I really enjoyed my time with Fastar!. It’s challenging, requires a surprising amount of thought, and most importantly, is fast. Pick it up for some great action, just don’t go in thinking that you are playing the next Final Fantasy.

[ Fastar! Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by zulu \\ tags: accelerometer, action, along-the-lines, cat-in-a-box games, enemies, Games, Iphone, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, price, rating, rpg