App of My Eye » Blizzard

Mage Story

Art — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:59:13 +0000

What’s fascinating about the App Store is that I can enjoy plenty of RPGs for the cost of a single console version. Whether that game is Dragon Age: Origins or Eternal Sonata for the Xbox 360, I can buy between 6 to 8 RPGs for the iPhone, which would probably more than double my play-through time in the process. But are there enough RPGs worth purchasing for the iPhone? In my opinion, there are and what’s even more impressive is that they get better and better. An example of this is VeryPixel Inc.’s Mage Story, which pays homage to Blizzard’s Diablo franchise (as well as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings and to a lesser extent, Dumbledore from Harry Potter series), while carving out it’s own niche on the platform with unique features, such as network play via WiFi and level design. While I may not agree with its own description of being the first Diablo-style action RPG on the iPhone (I thought Pixel Mine’s Underworlds had that distinction), Mage Story still has solid graphics, improved controls, and the right gameplay balance to level your character at a fair and steady pace. Although experienced RPGers may find the story a bit light and the game length somewhat capped, improvements and additions to the game by the developer have begun, which is always an awesome experience knowing the makers care about their audience by reading the feedback from the community. It’s definitely something you’ll never get from a developer on another platform. Highly recommended. Price: 99¢.

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Underworlds

Art — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:57:23 +0000

It’s been close to a decade since we’ve seen a sequel to Diablo and it may take just a little bit longer. With issues raised last year by fans about the art direction for the game (which was rumored to have led to some internal strife in the dev team) and now a purported delay of its release to 2010 along with StarCraft II, we may need to satisfy our Diablo fix in other ways. Sure, we can dust off the old CD-ROMs and give both Diablo and Diablo II another spin, but, how about checking out Pixel Mine’s Underworlds instead? Seemingly paying homage to the Blizzard classic, this adventure game for the iPhone has everything from the head’s up display (HUD) to the actual gameplay being eerily familiar. Yet, with fantastic controls, plenty of items to obtain, and enough hidden traps and treasure to uncover, Underworlds can pretty much stand on its own as you play as a guard of a local tavern taking odd jobs to carve out a nice little existence as a sword for hire and the occasional deterrent for Orc raiding parties. Trouble with Orcs, oh my! While it may be a little short in regards to playthrough time, updates promise to make it a better value than it already is. A lite version is available to test drive. Recommended. Price: $2.99.

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UniWar

Art — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:14:54 +0000

When I’m not in the mood to surf the entirety of the App Store, I can always trust on the Games category because it’s many subcategories guarantees something beyond their own Top 50 lists will qualify for our humble little website. Yet, I sometimes can’t help but look in anxious anticipation at “fringe” games that are so close to being outside of the Top 50 that I can taste it. Many of those games I have downloaded on a hunch that one day very soon, I can finally recommend them to our faithful readers. So far, my luck has been 50/50, but today is the greatest day I’ve ever known: UniWar, a critically acclaimed turn-based strategy game from Xpressed, has temporarily fallen outside of the Top 50 for Board and Strategy. Why ‘temporarily’? Well, let’s look at the facts: Xpressed is also known as Javaground USA, a mobile dev studio that has been around for quite a long time making, porting and testing apps. So they know what they’re doing, which is further evidenced by their choice of game mechanic. Obviously inspired by Advance Wars by Nintendo’s Intelligent Systems studio, they took the Godfather of Handheld Turn-Based Strategy Games (Don Advance Wars anybody? Okay, how about Oyabun Advance Wars?) and geeked it up with eerie facsimiles of Halo and Starcraft units. In addition, the game offers 50+ maps, seamless online head-to-head games with up to 7 other friends, a global ladder board, a campaign mode with 21 missions, chat and even email notifications when it’s your turn, not to mention the pretty solid AI when playing in Single Player mode. For the price, it’s a virtual steal. Jump on the bandwagon so you can brag that you found the game before it was on the Top 50… for the nth time! Price: $4.99.

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