geoDefense for iPhone/iPod Touch Review

Remeber Geometry Wars for the Xbox Live Arcade? Well, there’s a little cool tower defense game for the iPhone/iPod Touch that looks similar to the said XBLA game, aptly name geoDefense. Note that geoDefense and Geometry Wars were created by different companies. Nonetheless, it’s obvious where the game’s visuals got its inspiration.

Good Points
Like I mentioned before, the graphics look like it’s the tower defense version of Geometry Wars – which is a good thing! It’s simple yet elegant. You get to see all those cool particles when mobs explode, cannons firing like pea shooters, and missiles homing on their targets, and the grid moves because of the shockwaves of explosions.

Sounds are okay and noteworthy. There are only a few sound effects present in the game, mostly shooting and exploding, and the occassional “Warning: Meltdown Imminent!” voice of a computer.

geoDefense

Bad Points
There are only 5 types of towers in the game – the cannon (or pea shooter), laser (able to fire in a straight line spanning the length of the screen), missile tower (missiles home on targets and has a blast radius), shock tower (slows enemies down), and the vortex tower (drains energies from mobs and explosions to make other towers more powerful). It’s quite a few towers really. The game would’ve benefitted more of there were a lot more towers to choose from.

There are 34 levels in total, 10 Easy, 12 Medium, and 12 Hard levels. I have no major complaint regarding the level design, most of them are out of the box and not something you’d expect, except for the last 2 levels in Hard Mode. Those last 2 levels will feature a new mob type, something I’ve never encountered on the last 32 other levels. It’s equipped with the most annoying and frustrating capability that’s guaranteed to drive a player nuts (Sorry I won’t mention what the capability is to avoid spoilers). The power the new mob has, in my honest opinion, was a bit game breaking. Imagine showing a mob type in the last two levels – in 34 levels! There you were going on your merry way, down to the last two levels of the game, then BAM! That no good mob type appears out of nowhere and makes you ask yourself “WTF”. Not funny.

Conclusion
Worth the price of $3.99 (at the time of writing) and can keep you hooked for a while. Graphics and sounds are generally okay, and with the 34 levels included in the game, there’ll plenty of time to waste playing geoDefense.

Flight Control for iPhone/iPod Touch Review

It’s not often that you see a very simple game, with a simple formula, that’s both engaging and addictive. That’s why I was happy to see Flight Control (by Firemint) for the iPhone/iPod Touch emerge from the handheld more than  a week ago. It was an instant hit in our office. Even our studio manager got in on the action. He even set the office high score of 261 (at the time of writing).

In Flight Control, you act as an air traffic controller and try to direct the multitude of aircraft flying around your screen, or air space, whatever you want to call it. Sounds complicated, but it’s really simple. All you need to do is touch an aircraft and drag a line towards its respective landing strip/platform and the aircraft will follow the flight path you have set. There are four types of aircraft in the game. The passenger jet (the most common), the biplane (the slowest airplane), the jumbo jet (the fastest, and most troublesome), and the helicopter (the slowest of the four). The biplane and the helicopter each has their own landing strip/pad, while the passenger jet and jumbo jet both land on the same strip. Remember that you have to set a flight path for each incoming aircraft to their own respective landing stips. It’s easier said than done specially when there’s a lot of air traffic in the vicinity. If your eyes and pointing finger aren’t fast enough, you’ll end up with an air disaster. Thankfully, there’s a beep sound effect everytime two or more aircraft are too close to each other, a red glow surrounds these aircraft to help you see them immediately. The single track music also helps you, in a way, to relax while you play the game.

Flight Control

The only thing lacking in the game is the absence of game modes. Still, with its simplicity and very addictive gameplay, and of course with the $0.99 price tag, I say go ahead and buy this game. It’s definitely one of those casual games that you’d play every once in a while, trying to beat your own high score.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed on iPhone Review

The company I’m currently working for bought a new iPhone 3G a couple of weeks ago. Of course, as expected, we downloaded all the cool stuff we can find from the app store. One of our programmers came across the iPhone version of Star Wars: Force Unleashed and downloaded the game. Being an avid fan of the franchise, I took a break from excreting creative juices and played the game.

Now Force Unleashed for the iPhone has already been in the market for a good 5 months now, but I just can’t help myself but write about it after I’ve played through the thing. There are a lot of reviews already out there and chances are you’ve already read at least one of them (that is if 1: you own an iPhone 2: you’re interested in the game). But I’ll write my own review nonetheless (you may not like what I’m going to say).

To start things off, Star Wars: Force Unleashed for the iPhone can be summed up in one sentence; It’s an interactive movie that makes you focus more on what you’re doing or going to do rather than focusing on the game, oh, and it’s a shame that you control a Sith with a lightsaber because you won’t even realize you’re actually controlling a sith with a lightsaber. I’ll break down my review in a more traditional approach.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed

Graphics:
Being on the iPhone, it’s understandable that the game doesn’t feature top-notch 3D graphics. Still, the developers made great work on the game’s backgrounds; they’re all pre-rendered works of art. The feel of the Star Wars universe was really captured in the 2D backgrounds throughout the whole game. That being said, the game uses scene-by-scene transitions (much like how the first Resident Evil works) to deliver the story and to progress through the game. Now, with the characters, they’re 3D quality is (most of the time) tolerable except for a few notable characters whose heads are a bit larger than usual. Take for example Darth Vader, whose looks as if Krang (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was shoved up into his helmet. His head is just out of proportion. I find this particularly funny, and disturbing (not at the same time).

Sounds:
The sounds in Force Unleashed are unmistakeably Star Wars. You’ll hear blaster fire, lightsaber deflecting blaster fire, familiar force power sounds, licensed Star Wars music as well as music that was made for the game. You’ll realize it’s a Star Wars game even if you close your eyes.

Gameplay:
Here’s the good part. The gameplay in Force Unleashed on the iPhone uses an innovative use of the touch screen controls. You’ll use force grip and throw enemies off the sides of walkways, deflect blaster fire back to the shooter, use force heal on yourself, and the like, all by drawing lines on the touch screen. The bad part, the innovation fades around 10 minutes of playing. Aside from having no direct control over Galen Marek (no directional movement, no forward or backward, no attack this attack that, no lightsaber throw, no lightsaber swing, no control at all), the touch screen mechanics will grow a bit old too fast, it will eventually become repetitive and frustrating. There will be a point where you will encounter a Jedi Master in the person of Master Kota, both of you will end up force throwing crates instead of swinging lightsabers frantically. Imagine facing a Jedi Master and just standing there waiting for him to lift crates so you can throw a crate in his face -> boring. Where are the sparks from two lightsabers clashing? Nowhere..

Fight with Master Kota

Story:
The story of Force Unleashed is short, period. It spans 6 chapters and about 1 hour worth of playtime. The story feels summarized and it’s over sooner than you’d think. It’s even shorter than Yoda’s lightsaber. It’s quite expected considering it’s for a mobile phone.

Overall, Star Wars: Force Unleahsed for the iPhone feels rushed and incomplete. It costs $5.99. Go buy Pacman. It’s the same price but twice more addictive and will last your iPhone’s lifetime.

Little Big Planet Late Review

Games nowadays really need innovation of some sort to survive the harsh environment of the game development industry. And it’s where little big planet climbs up a notch higher than the other games. Innovation. A fellow playstation 3 fanboy mentioned that only 25 developers were utilized to create this game; pretty small for a development team. Even small studios like Insomniac studios utilized about 40 in their team to create Resistance.

Little Big Planet

What makes little big planet unique is that they turned a simple platform into something like what most people do best when they are just idling around; doodling. And placed it into a world perfect for it. As little as a paper could be, it could spawn ideas bigger than the planets we know. And you can even share it to the world. Little big planet has established a solid community of aspiring level designers for them to freely share their own creation (And probably scout future game designers too, that’d be a good starting point for those aspiring ones out there). That’s the selling point of little big planet.

You play around with Sackboy/Sackgirl as your sort of Avatar within the game. Controls are simple. It’s just like your old super mario platformer with an added .5 dimension. You have the freedom to stick around stickers in the stage which in turn would sometimes unlock several items for you to use in the level editor. Characters spawn from weird to weirder. Some are as much weird as Katamari but not quite. Katamari is still the king of cuteness combined with weirdness. The physics system is great; I don’t know if this one is an inhouse physics engine or 3rd party ones like NoVoDex or Havok but it feels airy and bouncy. Level design, as far as I am right now is pretty much above average; I was expecting a little bit higher but the ones I saw are already doable. I haven’t touched the editor but as far as I’ve seen from user created levels on youtube, it looks very customizable. I think some objects are relatively scriptable which is a plus to modders and aspiring game designers.

Drawback I guess is the repetetive nature of the gameplay. I don’t know if they would patch this one up as future downloadable contents but as far as I’m in the game (and I think I’m done with the tutorial), the number of things to do is very limiting. They should’ve put more things that sackboy/sackgirl can do. I just wish that they put in a powerful scripting tool which can spawn some cool new objects like those in incredible machines or better yet, can make sackboy/sackgirl do more things than what they can right now.

I’m actually interested at how they programmed this game. They must’ve incorporated an extensive use of design patterns with this one because the level of extensibility required by the project would be quite heavy.

I’d give it a 4.5/5 score as a general score. Relatively fun. No brainer. It doesn’t need sex or violence to sell. Great for kids to grannies. More of casual though.

Let’s farm with Orchard

Last January 19, 2009, Boomzap announced that their PC casual game Orchard has just been released on Big Fish Games. Orchard is Boomzap’s first farming sim game, and their publisher Majesco Entertainment’s first PC casual title. You can download a free trial of Orchard from Big Fish Games; the full version costs $19.99

I was able to play the full copy of the game and was, in general, happy with it.

Basically, you play as an office girl who received a letter from your grand uncle stating that you just inherited an orchard and that he would like to train you on the daily grind of being a farm girl.

Your grand uncle

So your granduncle would instruct you on how to build a farm and sell different products. Note that your granduncle is a Caucasian. I’ll show you the importance of that information later.

Aunt Ella

You will also get help from your Aunt Ella, who seems to be too willing to help, but basing on her looks and fake smile, you know that there is an ill-will. Don’t you find it odd that you’re the heir for the orchard of your granduncle, and not his son or daughter?

Uncle Charles

There is also Uncle Charles, the family lawyer, who seems to be too concerned on the daily earnings of ‘your’ orchard. You may also notice how he looks at you. He’s either a dirty old man or he has some devious plans on how to take the orchard from you. He is also in charge of helping you in advertising.

Uncle Jesse

Uncle Jesse, an African-American, is the one that provides supplies for a price. As you buy supplies from him, you will notice his overpriced products. $1 for a piece of wood? $10 for a bag of sugar? $50 for a bag of flour?

Uncle Oscar

In charge of upgrading your equipment is Uncle Oscar, who is of Asian descent. He would be the one to improve the speed of production in your orchard.

Notice that your granduncle has 2 Caucasian offspring, 1 African-American, and 1 Asian. Boy, your Granduncle sure was a playboy.

Start plowing!

At first you’re alone in your farm and you would have to do everything from cultivating the land, planting seeds, harvesting, chopping of wood, and building houses. But don’t worry; you’ll have help soon enough.

Blonde builders

Meet the three helpers that you can hire. The African-American girl has 4 sisters who can also help you. They specialize in farming. The blond chick specializes in buildings and also has 4 sisters who look like her. And the dude is a woodcutter, who, as you guess, has 4 brothers. I’m not sure why the designers picked the African-American girl to be the best in farming. And the blond is a Civil Engineer!

Woodcutters

So Orchard, the supposed farm simulation game, turns out to be something more. I suppose we can expect Orchard 2 would start with the murder of the previous character and you must find out who is the culprit? Is it the gold-digging Aunt Ella, who got tired of minding the store? Is it the Lawyer/Accountant/Advertiser Uncle Charles who got tired of reporting to you Granduncle on how business is slow with you at the reins? Or is it Uncle Oscar, finally succeeding in sabotaging your equipment with his supposed ‘upgrades’? Well, I suggest you play the game and tell us who you think would most likely murder our heroine.

Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion Hands-on Review

I am an avid fan of fighting games and sure enough, number one on my list would be the Tekken series. For those of you who are not yet familiar with it (Where the hell have you been?), the game is on its 6^th installment and features the largest roster of fighters the series has to offer. 41 characters (yep, a lot to master) would be the count (including the 2 new characters Alisa Bosconovitch and Lars Alexandersson (Alex and Andersson anyone?!?). Alisa is a fembot (female robot) while Lars is a decendant of Heihachi Mishima (probably a relative of Jun, Jin and Kazuya)

That's a lot of characters to master

Bloodline Rebellion is a game upgrade from Tekken 6 and it features new stages, new characters and new upgrades for character items.

Upon playing, I noticed the long lines that this game has been making before players get their hands on the machine. Since I am a Tekken addict myself, I don’t mind the long lines just to play this game. Anyhow, you may also notice that if you have an old Tekken 6 data card, you can import your character and ranking on Bloodline Rebellion. The moment I inserted my data card, the machine asked me if I wanted to import my character on the game which, if I agreed, then my data card cannot be used on the old Tekken 6. I have 3 data cards and I chose to import only one who happens to be Bob (yeah, the big policeman guy)

Yep, that's Bob.. kinda looks like.. nevermind

The Experience:

I have a few problems with this arcade upgrade. First would be the cards. Now, I don’t know about this but it would be cool if I can still use an upgraded card on old Tekken 6 machines. I know it may have some limitations but I do hope that they could somehow make a fix of some sort. Also, it would be best if they nerfed some characters. Sure the health bar slowly goes down, the bound system is still there, and the crazy combos but easy execution of moves that only requires simple button mashing (I’m talking about Lili, Eddy and Christie, heck you can also count in Bryan) but does a huge amount of damage is also present. I’m not complaining because of all the fighters I have faced since playing Tekken 5, these are the characters that are mostly used. Maybe reducing their damages would be the solution. Imagine being beaten up by Lili using the same combo over… and over… and over again… now that is a pain in the… BEHIND!!!

Heads up!

As usual, now on to the good stuff: Upon noticing as I played the upgrade, the graphics were enhanced because of the motion blur that was placed in the game, making the characters look as if they are moving smoothly and life-like. Also, the list of in-game items that can customize your character has been added. From Dreadlocks to shades, even a grim reaper costume; talk about fashion. Also some items equipped to your character can be used while in battle. For example, Miguel’s guitar can be smashed onto the opponents while equipping a Gatling gun to Bryan fury will result to him shooting bullets. A nice addition I may say. Also some combos have been already toned down (but not the mentioned characters before this part) giving new players little chance of survival against the veterans (I’m guessing a 2% percent survival rate) while new moves have been added to some characters.

Graphics have been enhanced and new stages are available

What can I say?

Overall, Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion is a breath of fresh air to the aging series. By introducing new characters (which I’ll try to learn and see if they are worthy to be used or not), a deeper customization, and improved graphics, the game would sure eat up some money on players like me. Still, Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion is something fun to play and will surely take time to master. The console version would be available (By 4^th quarter of this year). Before that happens, see you round the machines. If you happen to fight an opponent using the !26! as their name and Bob as their character, chances are, you are fighting with me.