1. Meteor Blitz

This is probably the most traditional of the dual stick shooters I’ve played on the Ipod.  In it, you tasked with defending several planets from incoming meteors, aliens, and assorted baddies.  The board loops around rather than giving you a walled level, so if you’re in trouble, you can fly off in one direction and come back at the bottom of the action, you know, like orbiting around a planet.  (Think SuperStardust HD).

The game features refined graphics (not mind blowing, but pleasant, and smooth), and with the amount of stuff going on on screen at times, there is never a hiccup.

There’s a persistent power up system for your three guns (cannon, fire, ice – which each excel at a different type of meteor), speed, grav gun (a tractor beam which lets you pull in a chunk of meteor or unhappy alien and then throw it out causing mass destruction), and boost, which you will use to bust out of ugly situations.

The game features a number of levels for each of the 6 worlds, and each level ends with a boss fight (always the same swirly boss who throws steel balls at you).

The game absolutely nails the pick up and play concept of ipod gaming.  If you take your thumbs off the sticks, the game automatically pauses.  This is incredibly smart and totally necessary, as having to reach for a pause game would undoubtedly end in your certain doom.  Likewise, dropping out of the game will automatically save the game exactly where you are to return whenever.

Essentially, this is the Iphone’s geometry wars.  A must have shooter that can entertain you for a few minutes or a few hours.

Highly Recommended.

2. Minigore

Minigore riffs on the dual stick shooter as a survival game.  Basically, you play on one level, with adorable and evil fuzzy things constantly coming at you.  Your goal is simply to not die for as long as you can.  You’re assisted in this task by occasionally getting a shotgun or grenade launcher, but most of the time, it’s just you and your trust machine gun, mowing down fuzzy dudes.  You can also occasionally collect enough powerups to become an angry fuzzy dude of your own, ripping the little critters apart just by touching them.

What makes minigore fun, and memorable is it’s unique art style, unlockable characters, and fun tempo.  It’s also priced well, at .99.

The developer seems to put a lot into the game in terms of updates, and it’s easy to recommend if you want something a little different. different feel.

Recommended.

3. Project Phoenix

I picked this up for free as part of the appventcalendar.com promotion, and was pleasantly surprised.  This takes the dual shooter genre in the direction of Assault Heroes, except, instead of a progressing level, you’re dropped onto a map, RPG style with a mission (generally to blow up a lot of stuff).  You have a tank to help with this, and as you explore the map you uncover more of it.  The game can get very frantic, and there are a ton of items to buy for your tank with the loot you get for killing baddies.  The game is relatively short (under an hour of play if you’re really working it), but by the end you definitely get the sense of being an unstoppable dual stick killing machine.  If you’re at all good at dual stick shooters, this probably isn’t going to be extremely challenging, but the graphics are great, the maps are big enough to be fun to explore, and there’s enough weapon variety to keep it interesting throughout the missions.

This is one that I’m comfortable recommending, although if the developers came up with a way to have a randomly generated level system, that would greatly add to the replayability, and make this a highly recommended game.  In that vein, I note this game was just released (12/02/09) and per the developer:

“We are already working on an update that will add more levels and some major features to the game in the future, including something really special.”

It’s still easy to recommend with the amount of game already there.  It’s fun, frenetic, and has just the right touch of “something different” to stand out in a sea of shooters.

Recommended.

Who it’s not for: Anyone looking for a deep RPG in the style of Diablo.

Dungeon Hunter is a game that I really wanted to love.  It has a few things really going for it.  Better than average graphics, tons of items with varying properties to wear and/or wield, and a fairly responsive “left analog stick” control.

I downloaded the game because it is billed as a “3D epic quest set in a dark fantasy world, in the tradition of the most successful action RPGs.” The ITunes Store description goes on to describe an enormous world where you will complete different types of quests and missions.

There’s nothing technically wrong with the description, but it’s hard to really classify this game as an action RPG.  There are definitely elements that are RPG-like (you can choose one of three characters to play through the game, utilizing brute strength, stealth, or magic; you can allocate how you utilize your experience points as you level up), but the game is far too linear, both in map design and mission choice, to really be considered an RPG with an “enormous world” to explore.

The game has other problems too.  The combat system itself is simplified to a point of taking vital control out of the player’s hands.  Targeting is accomplished by tapping on the enemy you’d like to attack.  When this is done, your character immediately heads for, and starts attacking that character.  When there are several enemies on the screen attacking you at once, your character will divvy his attacks up amongst the enemies rather than sticking to your targeted enemy.  This is a major problem as it makes it difficult to pick off enemies one at a time, thinning out the group.

With the exception of that combat annoyance, which was responsible for almost all of my deaths, the game wasn’t particularly hard.  Loot flows like water from every dead enemy, discovered chest, or broken barrel.  There’s so much loot that the game includes a “transmute” feature, letting you turn any item in your inventory into gold right on the spot.  In fact, you end up using this feature so much to manage your limited inventory, that the options include the ability to “auto-transmute” all items under a pre-determined level.

Because there are so many items, the game also includes an “auto-equip” option to automatically deck your character out in the best items you own.  With few exceptions, this took all of the effort out of managing your character’s load-out (a staple of RPG strategy), and at the same time, made me care a lot less about the loot.  One other note on items, with the exception of one or two items I came across, there are no “special” items in the game, further limiting the intrigue in hunting for goodies.  There are shops, but they almost never have items as powerful as what you picked off your targets.

As for the quests, I said before, the game is highly linear.  There is a map, but by the time you’ve unlocked most of it, it’s a line with a few branches for individual quests in specific areas.  This linearity doesn’t stop at the world map either.  The levels themselves are extremely linear.  For the most part, while there are sometimes a few paths to venture down, the paths that don’t lead you to the end of the level will dead-end quickly, typically with a treasure chest for your trouble.  Because there’s no level map whatsoever, I can’t really be too offended, as making the levels any more complicated would have simply resulted in getting hopelessly lost.  Still, I would have enjoyed a dungeon map system, letting me track my exploration, and more detailed levels to explore.

I understand why Gameloft made the decisions they made.  The result is an RPG “style” game that is very easy for someone to pick up and play without putting too much thought into it.  I can easily summarize my frustration with this game.  It has a great graphics engine for this type of game; it has a detailed stats system governing hits, dodges, magic, strength, critical chances, etc… and a deep enough item system allowing for items to be randomly generated with properties that will impact that system, and a big enough world that could have had a lot to explore. None of that was put to good use.  If Gameloft took this engine, added a basic dungeon mapping system, built some complicated dungeon maps with lots of nooks and crannies to explore, and made loot matter (fewer, but more unique items), this could have been a great game.  As it stands, it’s a simple hack’n’slash, with passable controls and a 2-dimensional story that exactly lives up to its generic name.

A lot of people like this game.  It’s gotten some terrific reviews, but it just seems like so much wasted potential.

Not Recommended.

In Soosiz you play as a little guy with spiky hair trying to rescue his spiky-haired companions who have been scattered around the world as a result of some evil bad guys who have caused all manner of havoc to break out in spiky hair land. 

The on screen controls are as basic as they come:  left, right, and jump. 

Using these most basic of all tools, you explore the various levels looking for your friends, collecting coins, and either head-stomping or avoiding various bad guys. 

What sets Soosiz apart from other Platformers is the gravity mechanic.  Essentially, each surface has its own gravity, so you can easily walk around and under the various pieces, and can jump from one surface to another getting pulled by the individual gravity bits. 

This mechanic is by no means as gimmicky as it sounds, and makes for some great level design and play style.  For example, if you’re having trouble reaching a distant platform above you, you might be able to walk to the underside of the platform you’re on, and jump off, simply falling to the seemingly out-of-reach ledge “above.” 

The graphics are simple but very artistically drawn, and the levels ratchet up the challenge in one of the better measured paces I’ve seen in recent memory.  I never felt like I was getting sandbagged by a level I was simply not ready for, but definitely hit a few levels that required an amount of finesse I wouldn’t have had without mastering the basics. 

All in all, the game is a masterful presentation of what Iphone/Ipod Touch gaming can be.  It is currently $2.99, provides several hours of gameplay, silky smooth and responsive controls that feel natural on a touch screen device, and a unique concept that is almost perfectly executed.  It’s hard to find anything negative to say about the game. 

Definitely Recommended.