The Last Rocket

Touch-based games require, above all, responsiveness. iPhone and iPad games need to read your taps, swipes, and holds well. For a game like The Last Rocket, the ability to accurately control your character rests solely on how responsive the game is. The game has serious issues with that. A lot of the gameplay involves flying straight towards a wall of spikes, grabbing a gear, and then tapping on the screen to flip around and avoid running into the spikes. That would be fine, and not that difficult if the game responded immediately to your tapping. It doesn’t though. If you tap on the screen at the time you think you’re going to make contact with the gear you need to collect and then flip back around, you’re dead. In order to get the gear and avoid dying, you need to tap a second before you get there. It’s stupid, but it’s doable when you’re not being rushed too much. Later in the game, you start getting shuffled through levels with rotating fans that push you around, and when they’re doing it quickly, your ability to remember that you have to tap a second earlier than you should have to goes right out the window.

That’s not to say The Last Rocket isn’t a good game. It’s got spotty control at times, but the idea is fun. The art is cute, the sparse bits of dialogue from the computer terminals you talk to are good, and the music’s spot-on. Even the death jingle is annoying just enough that you don’t wanna hear it over and over when you die, but that you feel like you deserve it for getting yourself killed. That’s how death jingles should be. It’s just $2.99 and it’s worth it.

Infinity Blade: First Impressions

I started playing Infinity Blade this morning. I had my iPad with me so I figured I’d try it out on the bigger screen first, but that turned out to be a mistake. While it’s a very good looking game on iPad, the block and dodge buttons at the bottom and corners of the screen are too hard to reach comfortably and the delay in between switching from evading and attacking means you’ll wind up taking a few more hits than you should be. After I gave it a try on iPhone 4 (it is a universal app after all) I was much more satisfied. The retina display makes the graphics look even crisper and the shorter distance between buttons make the controls very useable.

The game isn’t what I expected after messing around with the Epic Citadel demo. Sure the graphics look just as good, but instead of having total control of your movement and the camera, you’re stuck on a set path and you just tap a destination like you’re in an adventure game. I’m sure Chair (the developer) did this because dual thumbsticks and fast action don’t work on touch devices. I think there could’ve been a compromise where when not engaged in battle, you have control of the camera and your movement, and when you come across an enemy, the game locks you down as it does now. Since there aren’t random enemies roaming around for you to get into random battles with, I think they could’ve added an element of exploration into the game (collecting stuff or secret treasure) while maintaing the pretty tight controls for the big battle scenes.

Overall the game is fun and it’s the best looking portable game I’ve ever seen. On any platform. The iPhone 4 puts the PSP to shame in the visuals department. This game would make a great launch title for the tv should Apple ever decide to build a real controller that you could play iOS games with. As for the controls, I wish I had dual thumbsticks and total control over my character, but no existing handheld could do that anyway.

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