Category: Games
Price: 0.99
App Store Link: [Full] / No Lite Version
Review: Impartial
Recommendation: Wait and see on update.
Replay Value: It does keep track of a high score so you can go back to try and beat previous scores.
The basic concept of this game is that you have been charged with protecting a very important person (VIP) from the forces of evil. To help you in this quest you have been given several weapons as well as a few psychic abilities. The first is an intent guage which will tell you when a person intends to shoot your VIP, the unfortunate thing is you can't tell when someone is going to make a melee attack on your VIP, such as trying to choke him to death. The other power given to you is the ability to slow time giving you the time to aim your shot.
Graphics are a little blocky and generic, but didn't really affect gameplay. Obviously if a version with better graphics came around it couldn't hurt.
The controls are probably the best and worst part of this game. To move forward you tilt the iPhone forward, to move backwards you tilt back, to strafe left or right just tilt the iPhone in that direction. You use your finger to aim up, down, left, or right. Moving around is quite easy however the aiming can be quite touchy at times ending up with you looking at the sky or at your feet. Which, to tell you the truth, other than when I was crouching, I only found the up and down motion to be inconvenient as I found no enemies hiding above or below me.
Gameplay went smooth until I actually had to shoot something. Even when I would slow down time and be right in front of the person, it would still miss a lot of the time. The instructions off the main menu were great as they let you know what you're supposed to do in general, but the in game instructions were horrible. While the general rule of protect the VIP always applied, a lot of times I couldn't even find the VIP unless he started next to me. Also there were several times when I wouldn't find the VIP but would still complete the level.
Another problem with the gameplay is the transitioning between levels, or lack thereof. For the first five levels I actually thought I was on the first level and just failing it until I restarted and saw that five levels were complete. I later learned that when the screen flashed green before the reset it indicated success while a flash of red meant failure.
Overall, this game has a very good concept and once you get the controls down is fun to play. Hopefully in the future it will address some of the problems listed above, at which point it would be a definite buy.
Here are some sample images:
Developer Video
~John
