Only power-ups scattered around the screen and your ability to dodge the dots can keep you alive. Points are earned only by killing as many of the dots as possible, and if a dot touches you, you die. iLounge Rating: B+.ĭevelopers looking for proof that an utterly simple game concept can work amazingly well on the iPhone with a significant dose of polish need only take a peek at One Man Left’s new game Tilt to Live ($2), which makes so much of its single-screen game concept and tilt controls that Apple should use it as a demonstration of the iPhone and iPod touch hardware. Given that Puzzloop still sells for an almost ridiculous $8, Zuma remains unavailable for the iPhone, and MumboJumbo’s similar clone Luxor has nice production values but is a little less impressive in the gameplay department, Sparkle’s a very good buy for the $3 asking price only its lack of originality may turn off some players. Amusingly, one of the amulets is unlocked if you send an e-mail to a friend to make them aware of the game. As with 10tons’ other titles, you unlock additional special powers as the game goes on, then get to select from them, in some cases making levels easier or more difficult by virtue of the amulet you select to alter your abilities. It’s those rewards that give the game its biggest advantage over its rivals.
#PLAY TILT TO LIVE MOVIE#
But the soundtrack here is strong, orchestral music that could nearly have come from the movie The Untouchables, stages start and end with smoke and glimmering effects that make nice use of the iPhone’s and iPod touch’s screens, and there are lots of levels-multiple paths are offered through Crowberry Woods, with rewards offered every few levels as you continue to play. One small gameplay twist-the ability to swap between three or more balls in a queue from your cannon-is a little tricky to actually accomplish given the fast pace of the oncoming balls. Power-ups appear just as they do in the other games, slowing the line, making multi-colored matches possible, and dissolving multiple balls at once through various other means. As with the other titles, virtually all of the game consists of just pointing your centralized cannon towards the oncoming line of balls, firing off shots, and making matches before the balls reach the pit. Since the core concept behind Sparkle was already polished considerably from Mitchell’s Puzzloop by PopCap in Zuma, there was little left for 10tons to do with this title besides add its three strongest assets: sparkle and smoke special effects, a rich score, and a deep post-game user interface. They’re mostly dumb, modestly dangerous guns, with little of the animation or flourish found in Rez enemies, but their numbers make up for their lack of individual challenge, and a simple lock-on system lets you swipe to shoot more than one at a time. As with Rez, you needn’t actually do so in order to clear each level-you’re just trying to stay alive long enough to beat each level’s boss character-but there are point bonuses for clearing out more of the enemies. On the easiest levels-the first level in each of five different worlds-tapping on enemies is fairly easy, but on the medium and harder levels, they ramp up significantly in number such that tapping everything on the screen is a major challenge. You control a Gundam-like robot who flies straight through 15 levels filled with polygonal shapes, using a bottom-left directional pad to steer, taps on flying enemies to shoot, and a swipe along the right side of the screen to fire off one of your limited number of smart bombs.
But even though it doesn’t nail the three key ingredients that Rez evolved past its predecessors, specifically a rich lock-on system for shooting, the integration of music into its gameplay, and the use of evolutionary audio, characters, and even background artwork as themes, it stands on its own as a cool little shooter that may well suffice until a version of Rez becomes available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Unless you’ve never seen Sega’s widely admired Rez-a brilliant, deliberately trippy 3-D shooter with far more depth and excitement than one could ever guess from its screenshots- Denizen ($2) by Sprimp will be instantly familiar-it borrows everything from Rez’s matrixy computer theme to its special effects, mix of wireframe and filled polygon objects, and boss concepts.
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