"If there is an app for that"

Art of Rally review

January 25, 2024 by RSS Feed

It's easy for me to forget, but the App Store--surprisingly--is home to a solid collection of good-to-great rally-based racing games. So, when a new challenger enters the ring, they really ought to bring their best. Unfortunately for Art of Rally, its visual style and relative newness are the only things that are really going for it when weighed against the competition.

Stylish sliding

Art of Rally makes a striking first impression. This low-poly racing game puts its obsession with the sport of rally on full display, both by offering a ton of historical context around the sport from the jump and also opening the game with a giant golden statue rising out of the ground, instructing a rally car to be come a master of the art of the most dangerous version of the sport that exists in the in-game universe.

From there, the world of Art of Rally opens up to you where you can free roam, play a career mode, take on daily or weekly challenges, and more. No matter which mode you are in, the game looks extremely cool due to its minimalistic styling and terrific environment design. I do sort of wish more goofiness carried on past the game intro, though. After the statue first appears, most everything else fails to rise to that level of whimsy.

Plodding performance

As stylish as Art of Rally is, there are also times where this mobile version doesn't let it shine the way it should. I don't want to even pretend to know how games are made or how technically demanding it is to serve up this game's low-poly aesthetic, but Art of Rally certainly seems like the kind of title that should be capable of running smooth and sharp on an iPad Pro, though--for any number of reasons--it simply doesn't.

I have managed to tweak the game's many graphical settings to allow my racing to proceed at a (mostly) smooth 60 frames per second, but it comes at the cost of many visual effects and quality settings being disabled or lowered significantly. Even in this state, there are times where Art of Rally may chug or hang a bit, which is both disappointing but also disruptive to what is meant to be a game about smoothly sliding around all manner of corners and obstacles as quickly as possible.

Mobile misfire

Even when Art of Rally is firing on all cylinders, it just has a hard time keeping up with the competition. Its racing model feels good, but only if you play it with a controller. Its modes and course design are solid, but all of them are better replicated in a much more stable and robust game (with better control options, I might add) called Rush Rally 3.

In being a port, I also don't really see why anyone would want to pick this version up compared to the other platforms you could be playing it on. As far as I can tell, Art of Rally runs better on those, and there isn't anything unique added to this iOS version to make it especially mobile-friendly. It's just a significantly compromised version of what is probably otherwise a fine racing game.

The bottom line

If this mobile version of Art of Rally ran a little smoother and perhaps offered up more than familiar racing with a fresh coat of paint, then it would be worth celebrating. As it stands, this game might be a worthy pickup for a mobile-first rally racing nut who's already played the other offerings to death, but probably not anyone else.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/art-of-rally-review/

Demeo review

December 19, 2023 by RSS Feed

This will probably be a short review. There isn't a whole lot to say about a game like, Demeo, after all. It is an extremely straightforward dungeon-crawler game. It looks nice, has some decent variety, and a few interesting mechanics, but it is conceptually about as simple and flat as you can get. As a result, it's a kind of experience that can fall apart pretty quickly once you've played a dungeon or two.

Knights in the round table

Demeo models itself after a sort of classic Dungeon & Dragons dungeon-crawling experience. You build a party of adventurers, enter a location, and kill monsters, gather loot, and try to kill a big boss at the end.

There are some wrinkles to this, like a card system that replaces any sense of leveling up or experience, and a simplifed combat system that relies on standardized damage dealing through dice rolls that simply determine whether you hit, miss, or critical hit what you are aiming at. Demeo otherwise fully embraces the tabletop spirit it's inspired by, going even so far as to make the game environments appear as complicated dioramas built within a table and having all characters and creatures presented as miniature figurines.

Vapid variance

Although Demeo has five different campaigns to choose from, all of them play out basically the same way. The environments may look different, and you can mix and match up to four of the seven available party members, but otherwise your core mission and your methods for completing them are essentially unchanged. You kill stuff until you find a key (or a boss if on the last stage), and then you find an exit (or kill the boss if you're on the last stage).

As you complete campaigns you may fill a meter that unlocks new rewards over time, but this meter fills awfully slowly and the rewards it gives are hardly noticeable. I can imagine there being some novelty from Demeo's multiplayer, but there doesn't seem to be a good or practical way to play it unless you somehow know three other people that own and want to play with you.

Engrossing till it's not

I know I sound pretty sour on Demeo, but I will say I was engrossed in the game on my first couple playthroughs. There is something satisfying about working your party dynamics to make things click such that you can tear through enemies with relative ease. The only problem is that once I figured out how to do that effectively, continuing to play felt a little tedious.

This is a game that also looks quite nice, though I wouldn't say it feels like it's pushing the limits of my iPad outside of how warm my device gets while playing. As for controls, they're fine, but occasionally have some wonky behaviors when trying to select characters and move them to specific spaces, which--unfortunately--can have pretty dire consequences as there is no movement confirm button or undo action you can take.

The bottom line

All in all, Demeo is a decent dungeon-crawler that I doesn't seem to do much to justify its cost given its lack of variety and relative competition on the App Store. Still, if you insist on checking it out, you could get some decent mileage out of it, particularly if you find people to play with.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/demeo-review/

Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal review

December 12, 2023 by RSS Feed

When thinking about kinds of games that tend to have an especially hard time working well on mobile, games like Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal are near the top of that list. Action games--particularly those that rely on precision, patience, stealth, and some element of trial and error--usually have too much going on or ask players to attend to too many things to make them enjoyable in a mobile format. This is precisely what makes Feral Interactive's revamped version of Blood Money such a delightful surprise. In fact, the way Blood Money - Reprisal plays and feels using a touch screen is the main reason why I fought through a variety of bugs and strange AI behavior to see the experience through to the end.

Kompact killer

Blood Money puts you in the shoes of the now-iconic Agent 47 as he is tasked with infiltrating everything from an opera house to an underground dance party to accomplish a variety of objectives, all of which invariably involve killing people without alerting too much attention. Since its original release in 2006, IO Interactive's contract-killing formula has modernized itself into somewhat of a live service model, but the groundwork for those games are well-established here and feel like they've mostly aged well.

As far as story goes, don't expect much. There is a whole cutscened frame narrative for the game, but all of it boils down to people thinking they can take down the most lethal man alive and being surprised that they--in fact--can't. Your missions are supposed to connect together some other plotline about cloning, but there just isn't enough done to convey that very clearly. In any case, none of that really matters because the coolest parts of the game are all the stealthy killing you are tasked to do, thanks mostly to how you are given a great deal of latitude and variety in figuring out how to best complete a job.

Modern murderer

This version of Hitman: Blood Money is not just a port of the original game. Feral Interactive went to great lengths to make this console classic feel natural with tailored touch controls and the inclusion of a minimap and an "instict mode" view, all of which go a long way to make things feel manageable and somewhat modern.

If you prefer a controller, there is full support, though it is far from necessary. A lot of Blood Money involves slow and deliberate planning that is easily manageable on the touch controls provided. And, if you find yourself in a position where you might want or need quick and precise inputs, it's likely because you've been caught and probably should try again. Speaking of which, Blood Money (along with many other stealth games) definitely involves a certain amount of trial and error, to the point that certain difficulty levels limit the amount of saves you can make on a stage. While limited (also manual) saves on a mobile game sound like a surefire way to make you lose progress, this game actually does a great job of auto-saving if the game happens to crash or you close out the app in the middle of a level even if you haven't saved.

Crashy contracts

It's extremely good that Feral implemented such a nice save system in Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal because my only real complaint about the game is its bugginess. I had several hard crashes while playing (which luckily auto-resumed to exactly where I was when the crash happened upon reboot), but there were also times where my character could no longer run for whatever reason.

Outside of that, there was some other odd behavior in my playthrough, though I couldn't quite tell if some of it was in the original game or not. There were times where a dead body would clip through and object to fall somewhere where it was more easily discovered, and times when guards would suddenly go on full alert for no discernable reason. All of these felt a bit like 2006 jank so my assumption is that this just comes with the territory for a game like this no matter which version you play. In any case, these odd behaviors did not interrupt or impact my progress through the game nearly as much as the crashing and bugs I experienced.

The bottom line

When Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal is behaving the way that it should, it's an amazing port of a pretty great game. The technical issues are obviously a problem, but--generally speaking--they did not sour me on the experience. The fact that the stealth-action of Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal works so well on mobile despite the rough parts almost makes Feral Interactive's work on this version even more impressive.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/hitman-blood-money-reprisal-review/

Coromon review

December 06, 2023 by RSS Feed

There have been quite a few mobile games to come along and do the Pokémon thing, but none of them (not even the ones featuring actual Pikachus and the like) feel like they have come as close to capturing the magic of this beloved series quite like Coromon. This game arguably more than simply inspired by Game Freak's mega-popular monster-collecting franchise, and it definitely falters in spots to provide a high quality Pokémon-like experience on mobile, but it is still very enjoyable and likely the best kind of this game on the App Store right now.

Pokémon proper, sort of

Nintendo has brought Pokémon to mobile in various forms, but none of them have been in the mold of the core games where you play as a Pokémon trainer and go on a grand adventure capturing and training up monsters for battles against other trainers. Coromon is very much this kind of game, though it obviously doesn't have the Pokémon license and therefore features its own cast of 120 different monsters set in its own unique world.

Outside of that, though, Coromon is genuinely pretty hard to distinguish from a classic Pokémon game. You choose a starting monster and get sent on a quest from your research lab, Lux Solis, to investigate powerful creatures known as Titans. Along the way, you'll discover more about the world, meet an interesting cast of characters, battle with fellow trainers, and walk through lots of tall grass to fight and capture your own lineup of monsters, each with their own special abilities and elemental strengths and weaknesses.

Classic conundrum

I have some strong nostalgia for Pokémon as the original games were watershed moments in my gaming career, but I have fallen away from the series because of its slow pacing and grind-heavy gameplay. For better or worse, Coromon is committed to this style of game design, though there are some novel aspects to the game that alleviate some of this slow feel. Side quests pop up here and there that give you things to do while you're trying to power level your monsters. That, and the fact that this game is easy to whip out and play on your phone anywhere, make what can be a bit of a slog feel much more manageable to play.

As a free-to-try game, Coromon cleverly disguises its grind behind a rather sizeable free starting act that flows at a pace I wish the rest of the game did. As soon as you pay the $4.99 to gain access to the full game, though, the immediate next area culminates in a boss fight you'll likely spend quite a bit of time leveling a crew of monsters to clear. Luckily, clearing bosses typically gives way to new areas and quests that resume a nice, steady pace, but then it is a matter of time until the game throws up another difficulty spike you have to grind to clear. It's probably worth noting here that Coromon has a lot of customizable difficulty options that can eliminate many (if not all) of these issues, so this is more an evaluation of the game's default difficulty tuning, which--again--feels a bit slow and grindy.

About as many bugs as bug-types

Although Coromon is very transparently just doing "Pokémon but not with actual Pokémon," I do appreciate how clear it is that Freedom Games is doing so from a place of love and reverence for the games it is imitating. The whole game looks great, is cleverly written, and has a lot of inspired and fun monster design. It also goes out of its way to include a lot of convenience features and settings to try and make it the ultimate mobile monster collecting game out there.

The only real problem with all of this is that Coromon is riddled with a bunch of bugs that put a damper on the whole experience. Several times during play, I've had error messages pop up that have crashed the game. There are also certain features advertised in the settings menu that--at least at the time of this writing--straight up don't work. I'm looking at you, cloud saves: This game would be a lot more enjoyable if I could pick up my progress on my tablet or phone interchangeably but this feature just simply doesn't function.

The bottom line

Despite its problems, Coromon seems to be the best classic Pokémon experience you can hope for on iOS right now. It is certainly far from perfect, but there's a lot of love and ambition behind this project that is plain to see, and this makes putting up with some of its rougher edges relatively easy to do.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/coromon-review/

Wizard of Legend review

November 15, 2023 by RSS Feed

I will be the first person to say that there's a good case for more PC and console games to make their way to iOS. After all, my experience with other mobile game-playing devices that folks fawn over like the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch is that they feel like bad iPads that have tremendous game libraries. That said, I don't think we need to celebrate every time a port happens, and particularly so in the case of games like Wizard of Legend that mostly feel like an also-ran among what is now an ocean of higher-quality roguelites on the App Store.

Dungeon dueling

Wizard of Legend is an action roguelite where you go on dungeon-crawling runs equipped with an arsenal of different spells you can use in tandem with each other to defeat waves of enemies and bosses. In each of these dungeons, there are also item shops, environmental hazards, loot, and sometimes random offers that may help or hurt your chances as you try to progress through three different and randomized dungeon archetypes.

All of the action moves in real time and at a pace that--personally--feels a bit too hectic for the game's unwieldy touch controls. Luckily, there is controller support, but that's not perfect, either (more on that later). There are also different difficulty tunings you can adjust as well as some aim assist features you can turn on to help you out.

Combo caster

The core of Wizard of Legend is its combat, and a lot of it revolves around mixing and matching a loadout of spells that work well together and forming combos with them that lead to seamless victories over enemies. Each spell has several different attributes, including the type of element it corresponds with, a cooldown for when you can cast it again, and a certain ability type.

By managing these appropriately, you can find yourself in a groove of hitting certain spells in a certain order at specific times to have a continous wave of damage flowing from your character. This style of play is incentivized via a combo meter that builds as you hit enemies and--once full--empowers certain kinds of spells that can be used as huge damage-dealing finishers.

Once more, with bugs

The core design of Wizard of Legend is solid and can be enjoyable, but it's also something I've seen before... a lot. Action roguelites are not new territory in the slightest, even on iOS, and the combo-based gameplay doesn't feel like enough to make me want to master it over the half dozen other games that otherwise have a lot of the same stuff but more unique mechanics layered in as well.

It also doesn't help that I have had some peculiar issues while playing Wizard of Legend that make me not really want to put in a whole lot more time and effort into it than I already have. As mentioned earlier, controller support is present in this game, but it doesn't seem fully functional? Certain commands will have button prompts next to them, but pressing the appropriate button doesn't do anything. This doesn't ever happen to any of the primary controls, but rather more on things like pulling up or closing the map. You can just reach over to tap your screen to activate those buttons, but Wizard of Legend also doesn't seem to love transitioning from controller to touch and back again. It all just feels clunky.

Perhaps more importantly, I have also most recently found in my last attempt to put in a few runs on Wizard of Legend that somehow all of my progress in the game to-date had been wiped. I'm not sure how that happened, but obviously it doesn't feel great.

The bottom line

Wizard of Legend seems like a fine game if you just want another roguelite in your game library. I'm just not sure I do, or at least if I did I'd want something that does a little more than Wizard of Legend does to differentiate itself from its peers. I'd also want it not to have the technical problems it has.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/wizard-of-legend-review/