Sniper Assassin: Shoot to Kill - iPhone

Starts off well, goes down hill quickly.

Through casually looking at and checking over the apps within the store, I happened upon this little game, which I thought I'd give a try. Thinking it'd be something along the lines of Sniper Scope on the arcades or one of those pseudo-Duck Hunt games harkening back to the days of the NES, or perhaps a reimagining of an original game along the lines of Operation Wow (a.k.a, let's cartoonise Operation Wolf). Instead I got something a little more impressive and a little cynical on the whole social commentary.

The BEST rifle, for more cash than a AAA game title these days...

The plot, you're a sniper and you're given contracts from city to city that you need to fulfil. These contracts tend to be specific to an area and more often than not, will require you to take aim into the city and shoot someone. Sometimes the mission will require you to shoot down several targets, or blow up a helicopter and such.

The detail and levelling aspect brings something novel to the game, boredom.

The layout of each mission takes place within a 3D modelled city and your location can be from alleyways to rooftops and usually a long way away from the action. Using your phone, you turn and tilt the phone until you're aiming at what you want, using the slider on the left you can use the zoom function but this takes you off aim for a moment while you do it (unless very careful) and tapping the screen anywhere will take the shot. A final shot/successful shot will be mapped out in a rather impressive bullet time akin almost to the Sniper Elite games, minus the skeleton structure showing. Head shots score more points than other shots and taking too long on a mission will inevitably fail it (or missing if it's a hostage mission).

Ingame cash, for outgame cash, to upgrade a gun to shoot things. This is apparently "fun".

However, each mission requires Energy, Energy that refills over time, or can be purchased. Here's where the nasty little monster of Pay to Keep Playing comes in. On top of this, to really push the money front out, each mission has prerequisites in the form of Accuracy, Zoom, Power and Stability which can all be upgraded for your particular weapon. You can use the money you earn from missions to upgrade the weapons or take one-off missions to add further supplement of funds, but these cost Energy. Or buy more coins.

You too can BUY this GUN! For more money than a real gun costs...

Yep, now we're getting bogged down in the gameplay. Later missions and special missions will require the use of more energy and some of the missions will be increasingly awkward to complete. Such as suicide bombers that MUST be taken out with a head shot. Phone bombers that won't be identified until they pull out a mobile phone. Other maps will set you up to fail and not until you fail the mission that the "helpful" guide will tell you what trap you just fell into.

So many missions, but you'll run out of energy way before you do anything.

The game is fully geared up for the long haul of burning your cash away. New weapons cost a fortune by comparison and later upgrades take additional time to be "delivered" while the option to spend a specific in-game currency is dropped in too! The gameplay is interesting to the point that some missions require some observation, thinking, planning, taking into account bullet drop over distance and then again, there's the money issue that royally takes lets the game shove you over a barrel so it can be ram overpriced costs up your arse sideways while laughing at your feeble attempts to pay up. 

Whoo, it's like The Matrix all over again.

Or, just don't pay and play every day or so. Sadly, this game effectively forces casual play as a difficulty spike, a nice idea but very poorly executed for the sake of pay-to-play functions.

Sharknado: The Game - iOS

Pay to not play as much.

While I'm a fan of the "Forever Runner" series of games, made more popular and famous by the game Canabalt, it's not really the first game to do that kind of approach. Having played a lot of arcade games, the first ones were along the lines of trying to keep going for as long as possible to get the highest score possible, it seems the Forever Runner games are taking that quick, pick-up-and-play approach to instant gaming, further helped by titles like Flappy Birds for the side-scrolling variety of play and then there's the 3D versions with games like Temple Run and now, Sharknado: The Game.

Play from the start or spend chum in boosting to level 2, 5 and 9 respectively.

From the off, we're establishing that this is the game, not the film on which the game is based, and as such we don't get to see Tara Reid trying to avoid sharks by screaming loudly and being all breasty about it. Neither do we see a multitude of people having their heads taken off by projectile sharks launched from the circulation and upward draft of high speed air currents. What we do get however is a Forever Runner game where we try to avoid obstacles, attack sharks, go surfing and ultimately kill a tornado while riding a shark and carrying a chainsaw.

So at least some of the original film's artistic license with physics, remains.

Get coin, avoid shark, pick up Razzie.

The controls are simple enough, swipe left and right to change your "lane" as you travel into the screen, rather than tilting it, so it's more keeping in line with the Despicable Me: Minions game, while swiping up will make our hero jump and swiping down will make our hero slide. However, each round of the game is split into three sections. The first involves running down a street towards the Sharknado while avoiding barricades, vehicles and various sharks, the second has our hero surfing up a torrent of water while sharks swim towards him and lastly the final section is our hero riding a shark, while holding a chainsaw, surfing it THROUGH the Sharknado itself while cutting up enough sharks to kill the entire Sharknado.

And then it's back to the start but harder and faster.

Tyre Iron does some damage.

For the sheer audacity alone, it's funny the first few times. After that it becomes par for the course and we get to focus on the other mechanics behind the game. Coins, weapons and chum. Coins are often found amongst the level and usually in places where you have to negotiate around some risky little problems but all coins that are collected are stored and can be spent on things like the weapons. The weapons allow our hero to basically be immune to sharks (and nothing else...) in that he clobbers the shark into a bloody pulp and the weapon weakens a little each time. Once it's used up, the sharks must be dodged again. It does give you a little breathing space however. Lastly there's the chum, which lets you retry levels without restarting and can also boost your starting level to a later one. Chum being earned by killing lots of sharks and each successful defeat of a Sharknado multiplies up the score.

The "Boss" so to speak, killing it from the inside.

It can be a fun forever runner if you want to try it out, the music and audio are clearly tongue in cheek when the starting lyrics for the 2nd round are "Go go go go, Sharknado, runaway from the Sharknado" and sung in a rather kitschy style, you can't help but chuckle at the game. But then perhaps that's the problem, we're more laughing at the game and its source material than laughing with the game despite that the game is clearly making fun of the films, it's falling short of being enjoyable in the long term. But, it's worth giving it a try if only to see yourself killing a tornado full of sharks with a chainsaw.

Metal Slug Defence (iOS)

Watch her hat when you hit the screen...

Normally, I don't like this kind of game. You know the type, the Tower Defence games. Or Defence games in general. The idea for the most part that you can put down a few items without really knowing your opponents and hope that somehow, what you made and placed will be perfectly suited to kill the enemies of which you have no clue as to how many there are, nor what they have, nor what they can do. Some might argue "That's the point" or "That's what war is like" I would to take this moment to respond that for the most part, it's very unfulfilling and bores me to the point that I want to puke BLOOD in your faces! Having said that, I gave Metal Slug Defence a shot because I heard it was a little like Army of Darkness Defence and I quite enjoyed hearing Bruce Campbell sound bytes while playing.

It doesn't take long before the game becomes utter mayhem while you're spewing out units left and right

Let's get this straight first of all, you'll enjoy this game a LITTLE more if you're a fan of the Metal Slug series. It's got the graphics from the games, most of the characters and enemies and uses them all in a sort of rolling tower defence strategy.

How much? For how little?

The game itself runs on this basis, you get points by simply sitting there. When you've accrued enough points you can spend them on a unit to deploy, said unit then runs right until it gets to an enemy unit and then they fight. The loser dies, the winner goes on with reduced (usually) health until they die. You keep doing this until you're attacking their base (or they're attacking yours) and someone's base is blown up. Game over, move on.

He makes a return, he'll kill your units very quickly. Better pump out some more by now.

Progression through levels (of which there are 3-5 per area), will net bigger and bigger challenges, while gaining more and more in-game cash to spend on upgrades and improvements. There's also the Prisoners of War to rescue akin to the original series though they seem to be only found on chance when the game deems you've played enough to earn them. There might be conditions behind it but I'll be damned if I can work out what they are from here. In unlocking all the prisoners from an area you can gain boosts to specific units, to all units, to the rate at which you charge points, even down to just getting new units and items to use in battle.

So many units you really shouldn't buy. You don't need them.

Pointless items to get you to spunk money at the system. I've loads and paid for none as you win many in the game anyway.

Other nods to the game are the use of backgrounds from the games, key and recognisable bosses that have been fought across the series from the giant hermit crab to the aliens from the meteor, a giant robot with laser cannon eyes and even (almost as synonymous with the game as the main characters are) Mr "Come on, Boy" Allen O'Neil with his heavy machinegun and usual vocal insults. It reeks of nostalgia and it's loved for it.

The background is red, this is clearly hard mode now.

And that's it. However what this game does have, which a lot of similar games do not, is style. The added bonus to this kind of game is that each character has a special move which highlights even more of the series. Marco has his Heavy Machine Gun, Tarma has his Shotgun, Fio has a Rawket Lawncher (yes with the original odd accent) and Eri has a laser. Other weapons and units come in from various games including the Metal Slug Tank itself, an Ostrich with a gun mounted on its wing and an Elephant. Other units include virtually ALL the enemies but you're not going to get those straight away and I'll happily tell you as to why.

Another welcome return boss!

In-App Purchases. They're here and they don't exactly help. You win credits in the game, but stars are used to buy extra units and items to boost your abilities in the game. You can win SOME stars during the game but then these become more valuable than gold dust and by the time you've enough to get something really big like the giant tanks or walking crab monsters, you're likely upgraded enough to be able to one-shot most levels and bosses even on the hardest setting. There's a whole 2nd world at least (only played for a week, sod off) offering the same levels as before but with more P.O.Ws to rescue and harder enemies and bosses. Along with that, other bonuses too from beating the levels, new enemies to buy with REAL CASH stars and so on and so forth. But you can get to this point easily if you play through the older levels repeatedly until you unlock all the P.O.Ws, get their bonus effects and you can breeze most of the boss levels by that point in the harder worlds. The only annoying part is that you've got a Sortie points level that determines which levels you can do and each attempt costs points, but you regain one point every minute. A full refill costs about 30 stars... or you wait about 2 hours i.e. FOOADS, (Fuck Off Outside And Do Something).

Or play another time based waiting game.

...whoo

There is also a Vs Mode for people to play with friendly games and full rank versus games. The linking up is reasonable for the game itself, assuming people are still playing it by the time you get to play. You get to see what they're taking into the game from their deck of characters/soldiers/tanks and you play from your own point of the game onwards. Becomes amusing when you see what they focused on and what they actually bought and you're slapping the shit out of them with you game-won items rather than paying real cash and STILL WINNING, so I'm seeing even less of an incentive to pay for items I just destroyed while keeping all my cash-monies to blow on Jelly-Babies.

They're only memorable because they're weird.

It's good to play as a quick pick-up, as something you can come back to every now and then between work shifts, over lunch breaks etc and the multiplayer is fairly innocuous to the point of being a chuckle seeing how badly you're doing or how over powered you are compared to some other equally sad prick on the internet. It's an ok game with little depth but a lot of upgrade potential for those that want to get ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING marred by the flagrant abuse of the in-app purchases but the game itself is free (for now) perhaps if it was worth a little but had none of the in-app purchasing, I'd be more appreciative of this system and the dynamics of multiple units and the tactics behind those.

Nearly every original series, game enemy, makes an appearance here.

However it doesn't, so I'm not. An ok game that you'll get tired of eventually, likely before you beat everything and unlock everything.