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.

Alien 3: The Gun - Arcade

Thankfully, more monsters than in the film.

It's an odd circumstance when you take a film that doesn't have much in the way of action and try to fit it into the sphere of gaming that is an arcade game. Players are not likely to pump money into what is basically "Space Monster BOO!" and you can expect even less for them to be entertained by it. It needs a challenge, it needs action and it needs to be unfair enough to force people to keep playing but not too unfair that people give up on the grounds that it's just a sink for credits and cash.

If you can't work this out, you're going to lose, fast.

Alien 3, as a film and basis of this game, does not provide the suitable backdrop for the arcade game. So a little (read: LOTS) of artistic license has been used to work this game. For a start, there's more than one alien (hooray!), there's multiple types of aliens and enemies such as robots, tanks, droids, cyborgs and most of this was never in the original film.

There's quite the myriad of monsters, body parts and action here.

Plot wise, you do follow SOME of it. You're two surviving marines from the 2nd film that have remained on the original ship, except it's been overrun and infested with Xenomorphs. Grab gun, infinite basic ammo and some "kill all" grenades and let the acid-blood-bath begin! Or we would if the game was that fun to play. While battling aliens and other enemies, you get to see set pieces from the film, run across the surface of the planet, see the factory installation of Fury 161, run the gauntlet with the other prisoners and then finally battle the "Plot" Alien boss and dunk it in liquid metal before a showdown with the Bishop Android/Man.

"We'll help!" By which they mean 'Get in the way ALL the time'

Your bosses and enemies are Aliens based, apart from the robot ones which seem to be thrown in there at the last minute and take their cues from Revolution X for annoying boss tactics. Including "Not being hurt when the game wants you hurt instead" and the more annoying "Only one part of my body is vulnerable and you're NOT seeing it any time soon" types that can't help but give you a beating before teasing you briefly like a cheap stripper in a backwards club.

Anyone remember this in the film?

The music cannot really be commented upon, as it is barely heard during multiple playthroughs, the balance seems very one-sided towards the sound effects which come through rather 'tinny' and the odd speech sample makes it sound like ALL the voices were done by one person irrespective of whomever is talking, be it player characters or NPCs. Bullets sound far too metallic and aliens have that odd rasping noise synonymous with plenty of other monster games as if it's been taken from "Bad Sound Effects volume 82 - monster edition"

Or that part where the robots ran around shooting people? That in the film either?

But what of the gun? It's a bulky lump but does feel almost like you're holding something worthy of blasting aliens, but doesn't seem to match the damage inflicted upon the monsters within the game. Mainly because each time you down them, there's a chance they get back up but damaged and attack in a different way, then they could be shot AGAIN and wait a little longer in writhing agony but if you get too close (because you're in an on-rails shooter no less) they might lunge yet again. You have to keep hitting them until they're dead. By dead, we mean they've changed colour and stop physically moving. However the gun is large, meaty looking and has two key functions; the trigger for shooting and a button for hurling out instant-death to most enemies and significant damage to bosses.

Grenades and flamethrowers add to your weaponry, sadly not too often enough.

Items and power ups are far and few between. You might be able to find some health, perhaps a few extra grenades and very occasionally a flame thrower that instantly kills whatever it hits, but will never last long enough for you to make significant progress and the delay between trigger pulling and impact is longer than the bullets so you're likely to be slapped about by the aliens anyway for a while you adjust to the delay.

Red vision, or how to make the game harder by doing very little.

That said, there is some replay value in the game, in that there's multiple routes one can take through a few of the levels and trying to get better and better scores is always available for the competitive streak in some people, but the annoyance and unfairness of the aliens and some of the attacks hitting while ignoring the damage you're dealing, will turn many people away from this game.

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.