This game had all the makings to be fantastic. It was set in space and put the player in control of a missile shooting, asteroid dodging ship but in the long run one of the greatest things about it was that it had a nice main menu. I am not saying this to be rude to the game it is just that the game is plagued with problems from start to finish.
The first of these problems is that the main menu can be held any which way and will rotate to your position but upon the start of a game it will rotate to one position causing an awkward flipping of the screen while the game is in motion. Not to mention that the user can listen to their own music but only on the main menu everything after that is strictly game music. Every time before the game begins a text tutorial is shown. This would be fine except it does not pause the game making the first time I ever played a head scratching experience wondering how I had died. After finally reading the tutorial, I discovered that the player has to swipe asteroids away from them and tap on “soldiers” to shoot missiles at them. When swiping the asteroids away it is best to swipe towards the large galaxy in the distance as it provides extra points. Although that can only happen when you see the asteroids as they tend to blend in until its to late unless they are bright blue or yellow. Although yellow is also one of the colors of the soldiers which leads to awkward decision making.
The game also incorporates Game Center. Although the game uses Game Center there are no achievements to be found. There is however a Trophy section off of the main menu but they seem to be all unlocked already as there is no description of them and they are not grayed out. There is also no notification given as to when I would have earned any of them during game play. The leader boards are barren with the Classic Mode having only 7 people and the other 2 only having 3. This is no fault of the game but the scores were easily within reach and it would have been nice if at least the developer had put up a high score so as to provide a reason to keep playing.
I did this for you, the viewers.
The game sometimes will not recognize my furious swiping of an asteroid until it is upon me or another one is so close that I have no chance of recovery. There is also no way to shoot down a missile from an enemy soldier so it is best to shoot down the soldier before he shoots you which also results in a frustrating loss of lives if the player is just a second to late. There also appear to be power-ups in the lower right hand corner of the screen but I have no idea how to use them. I have tried tapping them, I have tried sliding them, I have tried yelling “Power-Up go” but to no avail. I am still not even sure how I got them in the first place.
Those things in the right, I have no clue what those are.
There are three game modes: Classic, Arcade, and Zen. Classic provides the player with a health bar and after three hits of anything the player dies. In both Arcade and Zen mode there is a 60 second time limit and the player loses points when something hits them. The only difference is in Arcade mode which has only asteroids while in Zen mode there are both asteroids and soldiers.
However the game does show promise for the developer by showing that in his first app he made a decent space background, decent looking enemies, and okay looking asteroids. He also has figured out how to use half of Game Center I hope in his next app he uses both parts. I hope he uses the tools that he has made and improves upon them in whatever his next venture in the App Store will be.
Overall this game leaves a stale taste in my mouth with a promise of fighting alienoids in space and the promise of Game Center which it only halfway provides.
This game receives a 3.5
MasterofHubes 