So about a year and half ago in a pissed off rage at T-Mobile for refusing to give me the upgraded that I wanted, I decided for once to splurge and despite my undying hatred of all things Apple, I purchased an Iphone. It hasn't changed my opinion of Apple but taking the device as a whole it really did hit the mark with what its trying to be. But interestingly enough the smartphone market really does seem to be trying to make a push in the gaming area where titles like Angry Birds are dominating in sales with simplistic design yet addicting to play.
Not to long a go a friend (for the sake of his privacy, we'll only call him JD instead of using his full name), had asked me if I had played Infinity Blade. I had not and he said its supposed to be the best looking game on the Iphone. I had noticed that it was half off this week so I took the plunge.
INFINITY BLADE (Iphone)
The story in this game is pretty slim pick'ns. The game opens up with an unnamed knight entering a chamber and gibberish dialogue goes though that he's a defender of freedom. You briefly learn to fight and then Sir Derply of Nameless gets his ass crushed immediately. It flashes 20 years later and you apparently take control of his son and now the game begins.
He wasn't kidding when he said the game had some really good graphics. Considering that this is a phone and not a portable game console, I was very impressed by the opening cutscene and some of the animations of the game. The colors and nice and crisp and the environments are incredibly detailed. The game continues to the change the appearance of your character with every piece of equipment you add and the some of the monsters change as you progress as well.
Sadly, this is about all the praise this game gets out of me. As far as game play goes, it gets hampered by my most frequent complaint of Iphone games in that it has no controller. The game for the most part plays like a point and click adventure game. Most of the animation is just CGI cutscenes as you move from location to location. Your character stands still and you can cam around the scene a bit to find either strewn treasures or glowing little circles that scream "hey stupid, go here". Typically after clicking one of these you either move into another room or a monster attacks you. This was kind of a disappointment because Chaos Rings had really good graphics but I was able to control my exploration.
The fighting in the game is intuitive and frustrating all at the same time. The way that it plays it could almost be described as it plays like Punch-out!!! You get two arrow sets to dodge left and right and one Shield in the middle to block. You only get so many blocks before the shield cracks and you have to see which way the enemy swing is coming and decide which way to dodge. To attack you simply slash at the screen with your fingertip. Most of the time it plays fairly smoothly. The enemy attack patterns in the beginning of the game an very very simple so its easy to pick up which way to dodge and the slashing works fairly easily. However as you level so do all the monsters, and the patterns become more difficult. This by itself seems like a good idea but the progression never works like it should and I cant think of how many times I'd hit the arrows and my character just would not dodge. Perhaps their too close to the corners and I'm missing them. Maybe its just buggy. But it would almost always happen when I needed to not miss my dodge. Learning the healing spell later helps but its still a frustration. You only can gain experience if you are wearing equipment you haven't mastered so you are constantly upgrading which is kinda nice unless you have all the best gear. Then you have to choose to downgrade or get less exp.
The sound in this game sucks. There is maybe one "song" if you want to call it that. A constant droning of the same 5 bass notes bedding a the constant shrieking of monsters. The combat sound effects are what you would expect. Clashing sounds, grunts, and glittery sounds when you cast magic. All of the voices appear to just be gibberish. Maybe is a Foreign language but I couldn't identify it.
The game is also short as hell, too. Basically in the course of an evening I had beaten the game twice and gotten two endings. Whether you beat the last boss or lose to him, the game flashes 20 years into the future and you play the next son running off to die like his father before him. The maps never change, the enemies level up but they are always in the same place every run, and there only really seems to be about three different paths to take. Essentially the game just continues to loop indefinitely (hence the title, perhaps). There is a spot where it seems like it might open up more game if you level enough to earn the actual Infinity Blade but at the price their asking I don't think I'll ever do it. Unless the game comes with free updates I don't see this game having a lot of replay value.
The game when it first came out was boasting a 7 or 10 dollar price tag, and I'm glad I didn't pay that much. It's definitely an impressive viewing of what the iPhone can handle graphically. I paid about 3 bucks for the game but you could probably afford to wait for it drop again.
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| With Apple in the world? I believe it. |
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