Category Archives: shooter

Dodonpachi Resurrection Review

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Dodonpachi Resurrection Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: CAVE
Price: $8.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
Device Reviewed On: iPod Touch

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 4.38 out of 5 stars

I like to think of myself as a well-rounded gamer. But one of the game genres I have never been strong in is the Japanese danmaku, usually translated as “bullet hell.” So, for me – as I suspect it will be for many a more casual iOS gamer – Cave’s recently released Dodonpachi Resurrection may be something of an introduction to the genre.

And oh, what an introduction! Dodonpachi Resurrection is far and away the best top-down shooter I have played on my iPod Touch, and possibly one of the best top-down shooters I have ever played, period. It’s a wild, over-the-top action shooter that will leave you both baffled and exhilarated at the same time.

If you’re new to the genre like I am, the game may take a little getting used to. You begin by selecting a mode – iPhone or Arcade (I recommend iPhone) – then selecting a ship and, if in Arcade mode, selecting a combat style. A few seconds of cutscene later and … bam! The whole screen becomes filled with bullets, missiles, explosions, and enemies. It can be a bit overwhelming to the new player, until you are able to grasp the flow of the game.

Once you get used to it, though, it’s a whole lot of fun. Controls are simple touch; you slide your thumb to move the ship, tap buttons to change weapons, spin a frantic circle to charge up your hyper cannon. There’s a scoring system in place that rewards multiplyers and the collecting of badges released from destroyed enemies – still a bit arcane to me, but important if you’re going to try and improve your score.

It all runs smoothly, embracing its fast pace and letting you slide comfortably into the destruction zone. And the graphics presentation is well executed. Even with the sky full of munitions, you can generally keep track of what’s going on — though sometimes the screen does become little more than a fugue of colors. It’s finely managed chaos, set to a funky sci-fi soundtrack.

Do be advised: the game sports high technical demands, such that any device older than an iPhone 3GS will not run it properly. It also comes in at a relatively short seven levels for its $9 price tag; so if you are the more casual gamer who only expects to play through once, you may find the price a bit steep.

I think that you will want to play it again, though. I know that I am certainly enjoying it enough to keep going back, doing my best to fight my way up the leaderboards (I’m currently 10,775th … sigh … ). If you have the right device, and if you don’t mind the price, then you must play Dodonpachi Resurrection.

As a final note: after playing through it myself, I introduced the game to my six-year old son, who loves to play “shoot-em-up” games. He spent the next twenty minutes giggling over the screen, making shooty noises from the side of his mouth and occasionally noting with glee, “You get to blow everything up!” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

[ Dodonpachi Resurrection Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Cave Releases Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite

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Cave Releases Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Cave has launched a free Lite demo version of its acclaimed bullet-hell shooter Dodonpachi Resurrection. If you haven’t yet purchased the full version, you need to play this, badly.

Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite includes the first level of the game, playable in both Arcade and iPhone modes. The demo also offers a taste of the new SM scoring system, which includes two weapons exclusive to the iPhone version of Dodonpachi Resurrection.

Be aware that both the full and Lite versions of the game are only playable on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the iPad, and third-generation iPod Touch devices. Earlier hardware generations are not supported.


Upcoming ‘Phoenix’ – Bullet Hell-Style Shooter for All Devices

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Upcoming ‘Phoenix’ – Bullet Hell-Style Shooter for All Devices is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

With the recent release of Dodonpachi Resurrection [$8.99/Lite], developer Cave has set the gold standard for bullet hell shooters on iOS devices. One problem with that game, however, is that it just pushes too many pixels to be able to run well on older devices, leaving gamers with anything below a 3rd generation device out of the loop. For those people, developer Firi Games, who previously brought Flare Elite [99¢] to the App Store, have something in store for you. Their upcoming top-down shooter Phoenix features quite a bit of onscreen action of its own, and runs smoothly even on the original iPhone.

Phoenix looks to do a couple thinks differently than your typical shmup as well. Instead of progressing through a series of predesigned levels, the entire game is one randomly generated level that scales the difficulty based on how well you are doing in the game. Tijmen Roberti of Firi explains how the gameplay will work:

The game centers around a single, procedurally generated infinite challenge. The goal is to destroy as many enemies as possible, going as far as possible, in an attempt to achieve the highest score. There is no set difficulty, instead Phoenix uses an AI director that adapts the difficulty on demand, depending on the player performance. In this way, Phoenix generates an exciting challenge for players of all skills. The procedural content generator can create millions of enemy variations, and combined with the adaptive AI director, no single play through will be the same.

Firi has developed their own game engine called the Flare engine which allows Phoenix to run well on all devices despite the intense action onscreen. To prove this, they created a video of the game running on an original iPhone exclusively to show readers in the upcoming game thread in our forums:

Phoenix will feature regional and worldwide online leaderboards to compete for high scores. One point brought up in our forums is that the ship you use seems unusually large for a top-down shooter. Firi explains that while the ship model itself is big, the actual hitbox is just the blue circle of the cockpit, and that will be the only part of the ship where you will have to avoid getting hit. True that Firi doesn't quite have the pedigree of Cave when it comes to developing shooters, but Phoenix is looking pretty good based on the video and should offer another alternative for bullet hell gameplay. If you've been feeling left out of the bullet hell fun due to having an older device, you can look forward to blasting and dodging bullets when Phoenix hits the App Store sometime this month.


Rockstar Announces ‘Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD’

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Rockstar Announces ‘Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD’ is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Moments before the Apple keynote is scheduled to start today, Rockstar announced Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD for the iPad. The game sounds like it will feature the same content of the existing iPhone version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the iPhone, with HD graphics and modified controls like most HD-ized games.

Chinatown Wars will be available on September 9th for $9.99. For more information on the iPhone version of the game, buzz on over to our comprehensive review from when it originally was released. During keynotes, Apple has historically shown gameplay footage of yet to be released big name titles from large publishers like EA and Gameloft. If we're lucky, maybe we'll see Grand Theft Auto on the iPad today.


Shot Shot Shoot Review

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Shot Shot Shoot Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: ERIK SVEDÄNG
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.44 out of 5 stars

With the wealth of imitators, copycats, and genre retreads in the App Store, it’s nice to see new things like Erik Svedäng’s Shot Shot Shoot, a two-player shooter designed to be played across the table from an opponent. I applaud Svedäng’s for trying something new, but I think the result is a bit lacking so far.

The game is very fast and very simple. You have five squares in your color, plus a limited number of bullets. Every game consists of firing off bullets with a flick of your finger, taking aim at your enemy while taking hits in return. You can shoot the enemy’s bullets, as well, but too much of that will deplete your ammo. So you shoot, they shoot, and if you hit their five targets before they hit yours, you win.

That’s basically it. You must shoot quickly and accurately before your opponent does you in. It is, quite literally, shoot, shoot, shoot. It’s a bit frantic and fun in the moment, but it becomes repetitive after a few games, especially against the computer AI opponents, which are very aggressive and not prone to mistakes (even on Easy). The one complication here is that ammo is limited and you must collect more from the middle of the board; but it’s first-come, first-served, and a round of play goes so fast that you’ll never be able to concentrate on collecting. Just cross your fingers, hope that you don’t run out, and keep shooting.

I am a big fan of multiplayer gaming on the iPad, and Shot Shot Shoot is designed with multiplayer in mind. And the game does get better against another human opponent. Not only is the human player more prone to mistakes, but there’s the fun in trying to watch your opponent, anticipate her shots, and exploit his errors. The social dimension does add to the experience, and it may be enough to hook some players.

One thing I did like about Shot Shot Shoot was the design. The look of the game is completely abstract, all circles and squares and simple colors, and it’s accompanied by a tech-y little soundtrack that suits it well.

Simple ideas can sometimes lead to great and complex games. Here, simple ideas and simple design lead to, quite simply, a simple game. It’s nice to see new ideas in the App Store, even if they don’t entirely pan out. In the end, the play experience in Shot Shot Shoot is too shallow, but the promise of iPad multiplayer may be enough to draw you back for a few more games.

[ Shot Shot Shoot Review is a post from 148Apps ]


A ‘Max Adventure’ Update, Level Building Video

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A ‘Max Adventure’ Update, Level Building Video is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Back in June at Apple's WWDC 2010 in San Francisco, we had a chance to sit down with Natalia Luckyanova of Imangi Studios, the folks who most recently brought us Harbor Master HD [free], to take a look at their upcoming dual-stick shooter Max Adventure, which we first previewed earlier in the year.

Max Adventure paints a friendly end-of-the-world scenario where all the adults have been abducted by aliens. That leaves you, young Max, as the only one who can save the other children and the world, in general.




We recently checked in with developer Keith Shepherd to find out how the game is coming along. As it turns out, a lot of progress has been made on the title since we saw it back in June. The game engine is now basically complete and the focus is currently on levels and content. Imangi is shooting for around 20 levels in Story Mode, with a handful of Survival maps available at launch. According to Keith, they're halfway there, with a mix of mission types currently in place:

  • Rescue missions, where you go around saving kids trapped in the neighborhoods
  • Escort missions, where you have a lead a particularly scared friend to safety while battling off enemies
  • Area clearing missions, where you have to get rid of all the enemies in the area
  • Bonus levels, where you get to run around and collect as much treasure as you can in a limited time
  • Survival missions, where you have to fend off waves of enemies
  • Boss battles

To give gamers an idea of what goes into putting a Max Adventure level together, Imangi recently released a time-lapse video that condenses four hours of level building footage into just three minutes. The video shows progress from a blank slate to a rough, playable draft, all within their own, custom-built, Mac OS X-based level editor. The accompanying score is taken from original, in-game music that Natalia is presently working on.

[ See our WWDC Max Adventure interview / hands-on footage. ]

Keith stresses that four hours to build a level may seem short, but it doesn't factor in the work put into the art assets by designer Kiril Tchangov, programming time, and play testing and tweaking time, which can take up to several days for a single level.

And the latest addition to the game? Keith tells us that, recently added, is Max's ability to take over the flying pods of groups of aliens that attack on the wing, giving him the ability to take advantage of a pod's powerful weapons and to fly over low obstacles.

We'll post a close look at Max Adventure when it goes live in the App Store. Stay tuned.


Upcoming ‘Gun Bros.’ – Brothers from Different Violence-Prone Mothers

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Upcoming ‘Gun Bros.’ – Brothers from Different Violence-Prone Mothers is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

My favorite game that I played at the Glu iPhone Games event was Gun Bros. Gun Bros. is a top-down dual-stick shooter with a completely over the top style in just about every way. You play as one of two brothers, Percy or Frances Gun, as you destroy wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies. The game is set on a series of planets in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, and each planet has 10 levels (called revolutions) with 50 waves of enemies per revolution. You'll earn XP with every enemy that you kill, which goes towards leveling up your character. You will also earn something called Xplodium, which is an unstable ore that can be refined after each level and sold for gold to buy new weapons, armor, and equipment.

The greatest thing about Gun Bros. is the huge arsenal of crazy weaponry. Sure, we've all played games with a shotgun or a spread gun, but what about a triple barrel shotgun or a gun that spreads in seven directions? If you fancy gatling guns, why not up the ante and add three together for a triple gatling gun. Don't even get me started on the Shuricannon (cannon that shoots shurikens) or the Machete Mayhem (a dual pistol that shoots – you guessed it – machetes). These are all realities in Gun Bros., and it makes mowing down enemies a ton of fun. In all, there will be 30 different weapons across 6 different weapon classes, and your character can carry two weapons at a time and switch freely between them.

Besides the regular weapons in Gun Bros., there's also a number of special items and tons of different armors. The special items can be pulled up in a small window during play and give you benefits like health refills, increased damage for a short time, or powerful full screen attacks. The armor in the game is almost as cool as the amazing weapons, and give you many options for enhancing your attributes and customizing the look your character. There will be over 40 different pieces of armor, each capable of upgrading your character in areas like defense, strength, and speed. With the right combination of armor pieces you can choose which areas you are most effective in, and look bad ass while doing so.

Another key element to Gun Bros. is the social aspect of the game. Since you are a pair of brothers, there is always an AI controlled partner blasting away at baddies with you while you play. You'll have the ability to add friends in the game, and then import their specific character to play as your AI companion in your own game. If your friend happens to have some seriously upgraded gear compared to yours, you'll get the benefit of his extra firepower on your computer controlled character. You will also both keep all the XP you earn, which will transfer back to your friend's game when you're done playing. There is extra incentive to play with your friends as you can earn daily bonus items by doing so. Perusing the in-game friend list allows you to check out what bonus items are available for each friend, as well as how their various characters are equipped.

Much like Glu's other game Magic Life, Gun Bros. will launch fully featured for free, but of course there is a way to spend money on the game if you wish. You can purchase additional types of chambers for refining your Xplodium at the end of levels, thus earning more cash per unit and getting to buy weapons and armor much more quickly. This isn't necessary, however, and those who don't want to pay and have patience can still see everything the game has to offer. Gun Bros. was the game I played the most at Glu, thoroughly enjoying every minute of it, and I'll be impatiently waiting for its late October release.


Irem’s Landmark Arcade Shoot-’Em-Up R-Type Arrives on iPhone

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Irem’s Landmark Arcade Shoot-’Em-Up R-Type Arrives on iPhone is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

It’s a great day for shooters in the App Store, with Cave’s modern-day shoot-’em-up Dodonpachi Resurrection now joined by one of the genre’s best-remembered hits from the 1980s.

R-Type ($1.99) is a port of Irem’s 1987 horizontally scrolling shooter, adapted by Golvellius developer DotEmu and published by Electronic Arts.

R-Type set high standards for the shooters that followed in the wake of its initial arcade release. R-Type boasts multiple subweapons, a chargeable laser, and a deployable force unit that doubles as a shield when attached to your ship.

It’s also maddeningly, hair-pullingly difficult. While modern shooters attempt to overwhelm the player with showers of bullets, R-Type’s difficulty lies in its unforgiving enemy placement and brutal attack patterns. Succeeding at R-Type requires equal parts skill and memorization. Be warned: it’s not for the easily frustrated.

The iPhone version of R-Type includes two difficulty levels, along with tilt, touch, and virtual d-pad control options.


‘Dodonpachi Resurrection’ Review – A Little Slice of Bullet Hell Heaven

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‘Dodonpachi Resurrection’ Review – A Little Slice of Bullet Hell Heaven is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

We've been following Dodonpachi Resurrection [$4.99] for a while now, from its first announcement, to the first gameplay trailer, and even the pricing and release date.  And after all this anticipation, developer Cave's follow up release to the excellent Espgaluda II [$8.99/Lite] actually lives up to the hype. In fact, I like it even more than Espgaluda II, though I'm not necessarily saying one is better than the other. They're very different beasts, and really it's worth owning both if you like top-down shooters. But Dodonpachi Resurrection feels like a more well rounded experience, and caters really well to both casual shooter fans and the most hardcore of them all. There's near endless replayability due to an ingenious scoring system, and Dodonpachi Resurrection deserves a spot on every shmup fan's home screen.

Visually, Dodonpachi is a very striking game. There is no fancy Retina Display support, as this is originally an arcade game running at an entirely different resolution, and it would be unrealistic for Cave to redraw all of the artwork to suit the iPhone 4. That said, the game still looks damn good. There are three different screen sizes to choose in the options. Small has a huge border area but makes the graphics look the sharpest. Large fills the iPhone screen with the game and a small border on the bottom, but the sprites and text look slightly blurry. Medium is the default and it's in-between the other two settings. I fancy the large setting, as I don't really like borders in my games and the blurriness honestly isn't that bad. The game is filled with tons of huge explosions, humongous transforming bosses, and dozens of enemies and bullets onscreen at any given time. No matter what screen size you play with, it all ends up looking really impressive.

There are two game modes in Dodonpachi, the original arcade mode and a new iPhone mode. Arcade has you choose from three different ships and three offensive styles. These styles can give you unlimited bomb use, a more powerful alternate cannon to switch to, or a combination of the two. They all can help you in different ways, and as such each ship and style combination has its own leaderboard in OpenFeint. The arcade mode is a lot of fun to be sure, but the iPhone mode with its unique scoring system and brand new Hyper Cannon weapon are what really stand out in the game.

In iPhone mode, there is no need to pick styles, just which ship type you want to use. A divided gauge in the upper right of the screen is used for the SM scoring system. A circular area surrounds your ship, and narrowly avoiding these bullets but letting them pass through this area (known as “scraping”) fills the gauge towards the M side while also building up a multiplier in the upper left of the screen. You can continue to do this all the way until your multiplier hits x1000, if you wish. When the M side of the gauge is full, you can hit the Hyper button to start your ship firing wildly, and control the direction of fire by touching the ship and turning it. If you touch the ship and spin it in circles during this time, you build up your Hyper Cannon which unleashes an enormous beam of destruction that obliterates everything on the screen.

Killing enemies in rapid succession is what fills up the S side of the gauge, and once it's completely full you will gain whatever your multiplier is at for every enemy you destroy. Essentially, you use this SM gauge in a yin-yang like harmony of avoidance and utter destruction in order to achieve incredibly high scores. It's really brilliantly designed, and it may sound complicated on paper but it's pretty easy to grasp onto after playing for a bit. Admittedly, I'm not a hardcore bullet hell shooter guy. I love me some shmup action, but more the typical brand of them, and I've always been apprehensive of the bullet hell type because they just seemed so difficult. Not so with Dodonpachi, and I really understand now how different a bullet hell shooter is and the different type of gameplay it brings to shmups.

And this brings me to what I really appreciate about Dodonpachi Resurrection, you don't have to play it any particular way. Yes, you can endlessly scrape bullets and build huge multipliers, then strategically destroy many enemies in search of massive scores and coveted leaderboard spots. Or you can play it much like a normal shooter, using the bombs and special weapons to destroy the many enemies and bosses in spectacular fashion as you progress through the levels to the end. Heck, I beat the game twice before I even fully understood the scoring system, and had a total blast doing it. This is one of the first games of this kind where I've felt like any type of gamer can get a lot out of the experience.

There's a lot more to Dodonpachi too, like the absolute spot-on relative control system, the excellent brand new music for the iPhone mode, many OpenFeint achievements to unlock, multiple options and difficulty levels, hidden modes, and more. But the bottom line is that if you're a fan of shooters in any way, you'll want to pick up Dodonpachi Resurrection. There's not currently a lite of the game (there's one on the way), but the introductory price of $4.99 will be going for the next few days before jumping to the regular price of $8.99. Also worth noting is that you'll need a 3rd generation device or higher, or an iPad, to run the game due to the insane amount of sprites it pushes at any given time. A veritable love-fest is going on with players in our forums who are enjoying the game as much as I am, and as far as shooters go on the iPhone it doesn't get much better than Dodonpachi Resurrection.