Infinity Blade 3 (iOS)

Yes, I've been playing it quite a bit

It's an odd game given what it is and what it could have been but for what it IS as a game, Infinity Blade 3 could be a lot worse than it is. The highly touted and greatly promised 3rd game in the Infinity Blade series started off as THE killer app for the iPhone and iPad series, promising stunning graphics, fast gameplay and an in-depth and involving storyline. I'll be taking a look at the 3rd game, as I've not got the other 2 installed to review those ones, just yet.

Drops, rivulets, stunning looking game.

Some liken the game to Punch Out on the NES in terms of gameplay but I suppose you could say that if you say that slapping two slices of bread together and calling it a sandwich while placing those slices of bread next to a burger with lettuce, onions, beef patties, ketchup and ... I really should have had breakfast before writing this one. I lost that metaphor, but either way it's NOT the same game and NOT the same mechanics.

The story so far: Bear with me on this.

STATS AHOY!

Guy goes to avenge father, fights into castle, meets Godking and gets killed. Every 19 years, son of guy goes to castle to meet the same fate. Eventually someone kills the GodKing and takes from him the Infinity Blade, dying words are that "now they'll come for you", while ignoring side quests and bonuses. Which is game 1 in a nutshell.

I live... again...

Game 2 has guy now resurrecting and realising he's a deathless, meaning that if he dies he returns a little while later, turns out it's always been him just slowly resurrecting in the first game. Incidentally, SPOILERS BACK THERE and shut up. Guy then goes to find the Worker of Secrets who is believed to be the one to make a weapon that can kill the deathless. Guy kills lots of deathless, finds the Worker but needs to go back and kill the GodKing again and bring him to the Worker to switch places in the prison. Guy does so, Worker pulls a fast one and reveals that Guy put him there in the first place, now he'll take over the world.

Power Move!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS game, guy (who realises he was another guy beforehand but had a case of explosive amnesia) seeks to find the Worker of Secrets and kill him before he burns the world from space. Yes we really upped the ante in this one, while teaming up with another deathless and seeking for a weapon that will kill the Worker of Secrets, who happens to be immune to his own weapons. Makes sense really, why make a weapon that could be used against you?

He's big, he's ugly, he's going to hurt you a lot if you let him.

With this in mind, cue fights against ninjas, knights, walking tanks, mutants, dragons (yes, BIG ONES at that), various plot based bosses, arenas and online modes with ClashMobs to level up your characters and weapons. Yep, there's a grind fest in this game.

Steals items, sells them back to you, but can sell you unique things too.

The game is nothing but stylish. Set in a possible future with slight steampunk/medieval settings and a touch of magic thrown into the mix, you guide Siris (The Guy) and Isis through multiple gorgeous levels and have them duelling with various enemies to gain levels, which can be used to boost your Health, Attack, Shield/Blocking and Magic powers. Once you progress far enough you'll unlock a gem cutter who can create extra boosts with gems you've collected that can really ramp your weapons and stats up but only if your equipment has the right shaped slot for them, otherwise that +10 mace will have to be swapped out for the +8 cabbage on a rope to use your +2 magic and many, many, higher numbers involved later. Further progression gives you an armourer who will upgrade armour that has been maxed out in exp which can be worn again for more exp.

"...On the third day, ride out to the sun..."

The levelling system is a little odd. You don't gain exp PERSONALLY (though you do) you gain it by the experience gained by the equipment. Weapons, shields, armours and magic rings all have an exp limit, they gain it through the fights you win and for each exp point THEY gain, you gain as a level progression. But once they're maxed out, you have to change weapons (or sooner) to continue levelling up. Once they're maxed out, you can have them upgraded with the armourer and then start over to boost your level even further. For every level up you attain, you get 2 stat points to increase and for every item that maxes out, you get another stat point.

Gotcha!

Sounds complicated but you steadily learn that having maxed out items will not progress you. Each time you beat a level (or have to replay it if you lose to the boss) your "Awakening" increases which means the enemies will get harder. Eventually you'll hit a brick wall if you're not increasing stats and boosting equipment, but you can roll back the difficulties by 1 or 10 levels if you wish, but that means less exp after each fight. It's an odd mechanic but thankfully stops the issue in earlier games where people would not be able to progress because of under-levelled characters.

HA! Easy! Full magic and power move = WIN!

There's side quests too, the mission involving dragons that randomly turn up and cause an epically scripted series of Quick time events, bonus items and missions against key recurring characters that seek "GLORY IN TH FIELD OF COMBAT" or just want to fight you for your weapon, but you can win theirs too, or going toe to toe with your former persona.

Vore fans have problems here, they tend to get eaten whole, a lot.

Combat within the game stems from swiping to strike, tapping to stab (where necessary) and using the buttons at the left, middle and right to either dodge or block depending upon the weapon you hold. Sword and shield has 2 dodges and block but can't block every attack, heavy weapons have 3 blocks (no dodges) but you CAN block every attack if you time it right and dual wielding gives you full dodges no blocks so you can avoid every attack. Survive enough of a flurry of attacks and you'll tire the enemy out which gives you the chance to attack back and score combos, repeat until someone's dead. Super moves and Magic steadily charge through the fight until you use them, magic's ranging from elemental damage, shielding, health restoration and such, while the super move gives you an instant free combo followed by a free flowing combo until the enemy recovers.

Great Parry! Much Skill! Doge!!1!one!

There is a HUGE amount to do in this game, if you like the tactician method of fighting and countering moves and like the grinding, you'll find there's a wealth of things to do in this game. Side quests and missions are a little disappointing in that once you've done them, that's it. Dragons don't return even in the "newgame+" modes and for the truly hardcore there's the Deathless Mode which has other weapons you can't normally find but if you die there, whatever killed you KEEPS your stuff until you go back and beat them!

Siris looking suitably badass here.

Graphically, this is one of the most impressive games I've seen on the iOS systems and really should be a benchmark for future games if it isn't used as an industry standard already. Though you will need to have the latest iOS appliances to get the benefits, i.e. iPhone 4 will not see the extra effects that iPhone 5S can see, likewise between iPad 1 - 3 and beyond. But it's playable, still looks good but not great with older gear. But that's the limitation of hardware and not a fault with the game per se.

The music is stunning, from slow ambient background noises and deep base notes to the faster, more frantic fight music's (of which there are many) culminating in multiple tracks per fight depending upon how damaged the enemy is. For fans of the series, it shows that the makers ChAIR have really pulled out the stops on this title and with regular (read: Daily) bonus online challenges for more cash, chips and loot, there's almost ALWAYS something to come back for and play.

The state of play, missions and bonus quests to be done. Avoid the one at the top...

The downside is that soon it does become repetitive and eventually you WILL run out of things to do, but it's more than likely you'll have had more than enough of the game before you reach that point. I can't really recommend this higher. 

Bubble Witch 2 (iOS)

ADVENTURE!!! No, it's bubbles.

There's something about King that means their games are the equivalent of gaming cocaine. Whatever it is that there company agenda is, I hope it's not sinister as their approach to integrate themselves into items and devices has gotten themselves a potential method of taking over the planet. Not through violence but by distracting everyone with brightly coloured games that are a piece of piss of to start playing but quickly becomes a nightmare in trying to master and progress beyond a certain point. Bubble Witch 2 is no different.

What type of tree was that?

Bubble Witch 2 is a bubble popper game which was made popular by the game series Bust A Move, where you have a selection of brightly coloured balls in an arena and get to fire upwards into that arena, more balls to try and pop the balls that are there, by colliding balls of the same colour together in sets of 3 or higher. That's basically it. You can bank shots off the sides, slip them between other bubbles and use special bubbles if you need which can count as blank bubbles that connect and cause an instant correct colour to align. Failure to hit the right bubble will cause that bubble to be "stuck" and the game carries on until you run out of bubbles or achieve the objective.

You WON! Everything falls and gains points.

Thankfully in Bubble Witch 2, there's multiple objectives to be met from "Free the Ghost" Where there's a single ghost block in the middle surrounded by bubbles, all you've got to do is break the 6 bubbles surrounding it to free the ghost, within a very tight limit of bubbles. Other modes include "Get to the top" where you just get 6 bubbles removed from the uppermost line of the field, and "Free the Animals" where you've got to release multiple bubbles that have animals trapped in them. At the time of playing, I've yet to encounter more modes but there could be future levels and updates.

...So here's a witch in a fashion crisis

The first levels ease you in gradually, showing you the ropes and making it almost impossible to lose unless you're going WAY out of your way to deliberately scupper yourself, though if you've got yourself linked into Face book you can also compete with other like-minded 'socialites' for the best score though most will just be glad to have gotten through the level by that point. You can also donate gifts of lives and such for the other players or if they ask for it, tickets to get through to the next set of levels. Thankfully even nobby-no-mates can progress as once you hit the end of a level and win, you automatically go through after a day of waiting. Or pay...

Lesson 2: Grandma and sucking eggs.

Yes it's a freemium game. You can pay for bonus time, bonus balls, extra moves and special and almost anything else you can think of save from actually BEATING the level itself. With enough cash you can pass most things but the challenge is to get through the game without paying a penny. Which makes the harder levels even harder. It becomes a point that you're going to NEED to be lucky to make much progress in the harder levels as you'll be stripped down to the bare minimum of balls needed to beat a level and THEN you better hope it's the right sequence of ball colours. Thankfully, removal of ALL of a colour negates any more from turning up, even if they're already in the "Next to play" position.

Lots of levels, you likely won't see them all.

The game is banking of frustration to make money. "I just nearly beat this level and need one more bubble that's red to beat this, I'll pay for the 5 more bubbles" no reds show up. Or it will after 15 bubbles, you've no real control on that front. It makes a nice change though to see that there's no block on people progressing and nor is there a compulsory purchase, but the structure and difficulty means that you will feel very pressured by the game to buy things you don't really want to. Be careful as well when playing as the game gives you a small amount of in-game cash and there's no "Are you sure?" if you go to spend it, it will just take it on the first button press.

Multiple ball types keep the variation going

The game looks lovely, but then it should do given the simplicity of the underlying engine, the company has made a living out of looking nice and accessible and once again, they've done it here too. Bright, colourful and pleasantly appealing to the eye for almost all ages. A solid core of a puzzle game with just enough unique things to separate it from the others but having said that, I'd personally prefer to see Bub and Bob on either side of the bubble cannon and fight it out with Baron Von Blubba once again.

...someone kill the writer.

It's nice and it'll make them a fortune, but it's the same structure used once again. I suppose if it works, there's no need to fix it.

Smash Hit

Yes it's free, no I didn't pay.

In a change of events, I thought I would take a look at Smash Hit. Oddly for me, it's a new game and was released recently upon the iPhone. As a medium I've yet from which to properly take a review. Released in the last few months, Smash Hit is one of those games that's proudly wearing the "experimental" tag on its game, which is to that it's a game with a gimmick that has been invented and then fashioned a game around that gimmick hoping to make a game, rather than make the game and building the engine into that game. In so far as to say, there's one thing you do here and that's it.
 

The further you go, the more devious yet intriguing the designs become

In what seems at first to be one of those tunnel flying games, where one would expect to navigate around obstacles and traps by turning or tilting the controller; you instead take the guise of travelling on a straight path through the Z axis while watching a rather surreal landscape pass you by. On your way you'll encounter various objects that for some reason have irked you enough that you can hurl large steel ball-bearings at them to break them and reward yourself with more balls. If you've ever been the kid that went they threw a rock through a green-house, wanted to throw more instead of running away, this game is for you. 

Hitting the edges and such won't help, the one point you need to worry about is in the dead centre

Each time you hit one of the crystals, you'll be rewarded with more balls, while the game will also throw at you various translucent obstacles made of glass that you'll have to hurl balls at in order to smash, obliterate and remove from your pathway otherwise you take a hit from the glass and spew out ten balls right there and then. Run out of balls and you run out of game and have to start over. If you manage to hit ten consecutive crystals without missing any of them, you get to fire more and more balls per shot at the cost of a sole ball to your collection, up to a maximum of five balls at a time in a large 'X' formation.

The whole game reeks of that pseudo-futuristic cleanliness, which does add to the atmosphere, admittedly

Like a lot of games on the iPhone, it's quick to pick up, quick to play and quick to learn. Which is essential given the fast and rapid flow of gaming these days on mobile devices where the gamers will want to be in the game, playing and out again before the next bus stop, or by the time they're called in for their usual VD clinic check-up. This game is of no exception to that situation and fulfils the requirement dutifully.

 

It's a shame I can't show this as a fluid animation, it's impressive to see

Graphically speaking, it's impressive to see in action. The movement remains fluid through out and glass in the game has that slightly refractive surface while being at the same time, translucent to seem like the panes of glass in bathrooms. The physics engine happily gives room for breaking parts of the glass and watching large chunks of it fall away as one might expect but don't get your hopes up for having breathtaking shatter effects. Chunks will disappears around where your ball hits and as long as you can get your view point through the obstacle, you won't really have to worry about much else.

 

Yes, I lost a combo just to take this shot, but the translucency was impressive

The difficulty ramps up suitable with the first few areas just an exercise in aiming the balls and gathering more by destroying crystals, before stationary glass obstacles begin to appear. Later levels have sliding glass, glass that flips up into position, glass swinging from ropes, glass hanging from ropes in suspension and will break and move depending upon where the tension gives up first, glass that rotates and spins and an assorted host of different shapes and structures to smash your way through.

 

Each zone has a doorway that has one or more buttons that require to be hit, good luck

Some parts of the game allow for a rapidfire item to be collected while gives you ten seconds to effectively "machinegun" your way through the game, spewing out ball after ball towards whereever you have your finger pressed down upon the screen. This doesn't make you invincible however and you can still crash into things, lose more balls, or miss crystals and lose your multiplier effect and becomes a little jarring the first time it happens and realise that the power-up isn't that much of a power-up.

 

It does get hard at times to judge what's going to actually hit you are be a near miss

The music jaunts along merrily enough in the background as an ambience to the game and doesn't really add much to the experience but then again it doesn't really subtract from it either. The glass breaking sound effects have just the right pitch and frequency to be satisfyingly close to what you're seeing and don't seem to be muted down or overblown in that regard.

 

Spinning glass, another problem is working out WHICH glass will hit you and making sure not to waste shots

Overall it's a fun little arcade style romp that's found a gimmick within an engine and put it to fairly good use. You'll likely play this a few times to see the effects and feel somewhat impressed by what your device is capable of doing and a fair few people will play it to see it through to the end or to score higher and higher against their friendslist. But without something new to challenge people, there's little replay factor beyond a week or so at most for the majority of players. Give it a go, you might be surprised.

Canabalt

The Endless Runner type of game has been around about half a decade for now, being the kind of the game where a character of some non-specific denomination, is set to run forever within a setting or scene on a mixture of traps, incidents, tricks, platforms etc. that are procedurally generated within the game until such a point occurs that the player fails to make a jump, collides with an obstacle or drops dead of a heart attack (which is more the player actually having the heart attack, but we're not talking about Evil Otto at this point)

Canabalt is one of, if not THE first, of this Endless Runner type of game. The premise and controls are incredibly simple and this is a saving grace for the game. While other games might have controls like jumping, ducking, boosting and other such things that overly complicate an issue, Canabalt just has JUMP as the sole control. You do get some variation in this single command in that holding it down will make your runner jump higher.

The game is entirely monochromatic but that's not a reason to dislike it. The style is almost bordering upon the arty classification of imagery. Greys and whites adorn the scenery and background, forming the buildings and skylines and the very weird alien geometry. Having said this, the game is rich in hidden back-story all of which leads to wild guesses but easily backed up by the graphics on display.

From what can be ascertained, you're one of (if not the) last person around and decide that to escape, you're taking a full speed run at the nearest window of your skyscraper and saying "defenestration is my bitch" before hurling yourself out of the window and (hopefully) onto the rooftop of a nearby building. The longer you run, the faster you get while leaping from one rooftop to another. Sometimes you'll be required to leap into a window of a building and out the other side in a sort of "jump, but not too high" trap, which all adds to the random challenge within the game.

Other things to navigate around are the cracked buildings which will fall when you land upon them, so if your speed isn't quite sufficient you will end up falling to your doom. Other tricks and traps are the boxes littering the rooftops that CAN be beneficial in slowing your speed, but hitting too many too soon will drop your speed beyond what you'll need to make the next jump and you'll slap face-first into the wall and slide to your death.

In so far as the only real enemy involvement here, there are bombs that can be fired from off screen to land upon the buildings while you're running across them. Which can be heard to be fired if you have the sound up or headphones in (with some sound at least... I swear, some people are so overly literal...). While there is in some versions, the giant leg of one of the silhouetted monstrosities in the background which will come crashing down upon a building and take it out entirely, leaving you to land on the "knee" of the leg and jump off again quickly to the next building.

All of this occurs randomly and no two runs are ever really the same.

But that's half the story, the backgrounds and scenery do tell a sort of story. Some large mechanical quadrupeds are roaming the background and either scanning or lasering the area while plumes of cloud steadily rise from place to place. Getting to further distances show very odd and very alien looking architecture in place such as what appears to be UFO mother ships, obscurely built and positioned (ominous even) towers that are so striking out of place you can't help but ponder the origins while forgetting to leap across platforms. Ships occasionally fly past and sometimes mask partially the sounds signalling the incoming attacks of bombs or legs and it ALL adds to the atmosphere and mystery within the game.

We may never know, but we don't need to know.

The game itself is responsive, considering it's built with the idea of just one button for control; it should be and needs to be. Thankfully, it is and does its job rather well in being the sole controllable method the player has (boxes, not quite 100% controllable), and the audio of the music tracks accompanying it are testament to the talent of the composer. The game recommends wearing headphones for playing it and it really should be undertaken, if only so then nobody else has to listen to your obnoxious gaming on the bus! (Along with your Justin Bieber records, you shallow shit)

Adding into the replayability of the game (still not sure if that's a word but oh well) is the inclusion of a leader board in most of the non-flash versions, allowing you to compare yourself to thousands of other people who managed to press button repeatedly at random intervals in a non-scientifically qualify able comparison of alike and almost alike. You might get to 30,000m and doing some of the most bowel-tightening difficult jumps you've ever seen with reflexes so fast that the Flash is going to be impressed, or run 300,000m and occasionally had to hop over a few gaps with no bombs or legs turning up to fuck up your "impressive" distance.

With this realisation, there's no achievement in getting first place, or any place, or getting better if the game is bowing down and sucking the knob of the God of Random Numbers and you're getting the sloppy seconds defined as either simple running and jumping, or parkor-ering your way around orbital minefield central. BUT, ignoring the poorly situated idea of a leader board, the game itself is well worth a use as a casual time-spender or long term session burner depending upon how well you like it. It's worth a check at least if only because a) it's one of the first Endless Runner games and b) it does it REALLY well that many other types of this game could and should learn from it.