MyPhoneRiches

3G iPhone Downloads

Glu Mobile Announces ‘1000 Find Em All’. Real World GPS-Based Adventure for iPhone

Blog, Find Gifts, First Looks, Real World, adventure, glu mobile, gps

Screen shot 2010-01-26 at 16.42.14

Okay, so you have an iPhone .. and although nice, you’re getting pretty tied of playing the same old style RPGs and puzzle games. How about something a little more left field, like Glu Mobile’s new project called 1000 Find Em All. Explained in detail by Chris White, head of the studio, the game’s concept is simple. Your goal is to find and build a collection up consisting of 1000 highly weird and wonderful ‘things’. You start off in a grey, dark and lifeless world but as you guide your character around this world it will gradually bring colour and life to the objects and places around you.

Now for the fun part. Glu Mobile dropped 1000 virtual objects both in the real world and in-game, so it probably won’t be surprising to hear that you can actually play ‘1000 Find Em All’ without the need for GPS. There are three ways you can join in on the fun – the first being over GPS! Activating GPS in-game will instantly show you a map of your current surroundings and gifts available for pickup. To pick-up a gift you simply walk over it. Gifts you pick up are then stored in your virtual library within the game.

Some iPod touch users though may not have GPS, and therefore Glu have built the game to work in two other modes too. The first is in-game. Even when you’re not connected to GPS, 1000 Find Em All provides a huge virtual world for you to explore and navigate, in an attempt to find these 1000 objects.

The last mode in the game is one which surprised me. Not by it being there, but how it will work. In Wi-Fi mode the game will pick up all the Wi-Fi hotspots around you and turn them into game characters. These are called ‘Gifters’ and become sources to collect gifts. With no release date or price mentioned by Glu, 1000 Find Em All looks to be a cool take on usual bog-standard gaming experience targeting the iPhone and iPod touch .. one I personally can’t wait to play!

Iphone Media
3G iPhone Downloads!


Sherlock Holmes Mysteries

Games, Reviews, Warner Bros., adventure, game, mystery, sherlock homes
Developer: Warner Bros.
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 2.8 out of 5 stars

Movie-licensed games have a bad reputation, and, let’s face it, it’s well deserved. Sherlock Holmes Mysteries probably won’t change anyone’s mind about that, but it is a decent effort. It combines some interesting ideas and respectable production values with an assortment of lame mini-games and unpolished mechanics. The result is truly a mixed bag that is intriguing at times, despite its many rough spots. The game is a decent value for adventure seekers at $0.99, just be prepared for a few blemishes along the way.

IMG_0151Sherlock Holmes Mysteries gives you 2 cases to tackle, and their rather unoriginal titles are Missing Momento and The Case of the Innocent Man. Missing Momento is more or less a quick 10 minute tutorial, whereas Innocent Man can take roughly 3-4 hours to complete. The core gameplay has you hopping to an eventual total of 11 locations, where you can talk to suspects and investigate the backdrops. Each location is a static 3D representation that you can pan around by sliding your finger.

Conversations are a simple affair, where you just pick who you want to talk to and then click on your side of the scripted text to advance the dialogue. Inspecting a found object is slightly more involved, and is performed through a hidden object type mini-game where you use Holmes’ insight. You are presented with a close-up image of the scene, and then have to move a magnifying glass all over the screen looking for light bubbles to appear that you can tap. There is a time limit, but the discovery process isn’t nearly challenging enough to really matter.

As you speak to characters and inspect hot-spots, various logic clues and hard evidence is collected. This is where the most interesting part of the game takes place. Your inventory of items and story leads are represented as square icons. When you click on Sherlock’s Mind located in the bottom corner, you are able to choose from a list of mysteries or tasks that need to be completed, and they will each have a certain number of slots that need to be filled. You can then place clue icons into those slots that you believe will help solve that particular question, and correct choices will be displayed as glowing lights in Holmes’ brain. Once you’ve lit everything accordingly, you can click the solve button to reveal Holmes’ deduction. Although you can pretty much trial and error your selections, and you can’t simply drag your selections back and forth, this system is a novel way of coordinating your adventure and is pretty compelling.

IMG_0137There are a few other mini-games in Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, but none of them are nearly as interesting. From time-to-time you’ll be required to fight someone either to detain them or raise some money. This is done via a first-person view, and icons pop up that you must quickly tap to either defend or attack. There is an occasional swipe attack that can cause more damage if performed correctly, and you can also build up Holmes’ intuition, which then gives you opportunities to land more punches. This particular mini-game makes repeat performances, with opponents that are supposedly increasingly difficult to beat, but the whole thing is rather boring and rudimentary. I never came close to losing a fight throughout the game.

The two remaining mini-games are lock picking and foot chase, and they are surprisingly pretty much exactly the same. You are presented with a grid of tiles that look like straight or elbow-shaped pipes of varying orientation, and you need to swap pieces until a continuous route is drawn from A to B. It seems like ever since Bioshock was released on the consoles, pipe-building has become the default mini-game when nothing better can be found. The choice to use it here, and skinned as two different objectives, feels rather uninspiring.

IMG_0144While solving the case will take you a while and feels pretty satisfying, the overall story comes to a rather obvious conclusion when it comes to guessing the culprit. What’s not always clear throughout the game is where you need to go next, or where to find something. There is a little bit too much pixel-hunting of sorts involved, as well as some obscure placement of objects. The instructions for some of the mini-games are pretty lacking as well, as it’s not initially clear how to do certain things such as advance the dialogue or handle the tumbler when picking a lock. The interface is often clunky as a result, and the load time between actions can be unclear and stilted.

Sherlock Holmes Mysteries has its share of intriguing elements, notably the representation of Sherlock’s mind, but the game is considerably rough around the edges. For every idea that does work, there is one that falls flat. When you combine that with some non-intuitive tasks and interface quirks, you get a game that is more mediocre than great. Sherlock Holmes Mysteries definitely shows promise and is a respectable value, so hopefully more cases will be available in the future along with some improvements to the underlying engine.

Iphone Media
3G iPhone Downloads!


Mystery Mania

Games, Reviews, adventure, ea, electronic arts, mystery mania, puzzle, robot
Developer: Electronic Arts
Price: $3.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.28 out of 5 stars

Mystery Mania is a *spooky* puzzle adventure where you have to guide a robot, F8, through a ‘bizarre’ mansion to solve a mystery.

IMG_4009Now …EA games are the hard hitters, the big boys, the clever folks who brought us so many hits that there isn’t even time to list them all (Sims 3, FIFA Soccer, Star Trek…)! This means I am expecting slick graphics, fabulous game play, and hopefully some sort of addicting gameplay.

The complete game consists of 27 spooky rooms full of “crazy conundrums, perilous traps, and intriguing secrets”. I can appreciate what they have tried to do here with the puzzles and solving the mystery, but it just was far too lackluster for me. All the puzzles seem to be at level 1, and when you progress from room to room, they don’t seem to get any harder. Most are so obvious and easily solved that you can, at times, feel like you are just going through the motions.

Mystery Mania does have a few things going for it. For one, the controls are easy enough to use, you just click and if something in the game is used for a purpose than there is a little cog symbol in the bottom left hand corner to indicate you can do some kind of action with it. The little robot is cute and when you click on him he does some kind of jump or spin which gives him some character. Also, the overall aesthetics of the game are very well done. It’s all monochrome with the exceptions of bright colour for certain elements of the game… the items you will need to use in it to complete the level.

The best thing about this game is it’s penalty free! This means, if you get electrocuted (and therefore rust) you just rust, you do not die and have to start back at the beginning. That is probably the best feature and I wish more games would have that implemented! There is no risk of death or losing levels, and that’s great for gameplay, but it does mean you may finish the game a bit faster overall.

Throughout game play though, I kept thinking that I’m not sure I would have put this game into EA’s repertoire. I can appreciate they want to get a Hallowe’en app out there before the others or to have one in the app store to promote, but I’m not sure how great this is for the price. It’s all a bit slow, which for me borders on frustrating. I like my games to jump into action for me and I just didn’t think this game had that. It seems almost like the robot will move when he can be bothered to. IMG_4010

Overall, if I’m spending almost 4 bucks on a game, it certainly wouldn’t be this one. It’s just not interesting, fast or clever enough to make me want to come back for more, plus once the puzzles are completed, you really don’t need to come back for more. The graphics are fun and F8 is cute. But that’s about all.

Iphone Media
3G iPhone Downloads!




Search

You are currently browsing the archives for the adventure category.

Pages

Categories

Archives

iPhoneFan
Wordpress Theme

Designed by Bacteriano based on iPhone PSD file designed by Manicho.