iPhone App Reviews

  

The iPhone receives another winna and it’s called 2079 from Eric Tong.  This fast-paced game will make you realize you no longer have that 17 dex you once took for granted (c’mon who really had a natural 18).  The goal here is to stay alive and shoot everything that moves while obtaining as high a score as possible.  You do this by piloting your spaceship with the accelerometer and shooting in any direction with an onscreen D-pad.  This is a very nifty control scheme and gives me daydreams about the possibility of Robotron or Space Dungeon (for the true old-skoolers) on the iPhone.  Getting back to the review, unidentified powerups appear randomly and you have to shoot them several times to see what they are then cruise over them to activate.  A limited quota of ‘blasts’ will clear the screen of enemies with a shake, perfect for rushing out to grab powerups.   The longer you stay alive the harder it gets until you’re eventually obliterated in a cloud of fail and can then see how you rank on the global scoreboard.

 

This excellent shooter does a whole lotta things right, let’s see:

Gripes and suggestions…hmm thinking…not much as this game is quite complete.  Shooting was a bit of a problem as I often died in a frustrating fury while madly trying to get my ship to shoot in the right direction.   You have to be fairly accurate in pressing a narrow ‘ring’ of activation within the d-pad to fire in the expected direction as presses just outside or inside this sweet spot yield unpredictable results.  Perhaps this could be tweaked a little for large fingers.  I did eventually change my style of play to focus more on watching my finger on the D-pad to compensate and this improved my scores greatly at the expense of a bit of immersion.  Even so, venturing away from the sides of the screen Rambo-style was always instant death for me so best to stay along the edges and just dart out for the powerups.  Oh here’s a suggestion, please save our name so we don’t have to re-type it for every score we want to submit.  That’s about it gripe-wise as this arcade shooter delivers sights, sounds and action by the truckload, oozes professional polish and is hella fun!  Perhaps best of all you will want to keep this game on your iPhone, a fairly rare quality on the app store these days!

The author promises a new game mode and option for left-handers (like me!) in a future update so clearly there is devoted support of this app which is a win for users.  Other touches showing the author is passionate about this game that did not go unnoticed: the animated starfield on the title and game screens, the way the credits button caroms around when you tilt and the ’babyv on board’ sign that swings along with tilt in the credits.  Good stuff.

  

Version reviewed 1.0.2

iTunes music supported – yes