The recent movie Avatar has been a huge box office success. Normally, hit movies make fantastic games (such as the James Bond series, but how can James Band be bad) or they have made absolute stinkers, games such as Terminator Salvation. Avatar was one of these stinkers, being the first game to prove that amazing graphics doesn’t always lead to success. But, as you may well know, a game being rubbish on consoles might be good on iPhone, and vice versa (How Gameloft manages to stuff up Driver is beyond me). Avatar on the iPhone is a pretty good game. Typical to the Avatar series, the graphics are great, and most of the storyline involves the Na’vi,, the strangely attractive blue people that inhabit Pandora. The game is set 20 years before the film but it dishes out the same tricks as the movie. If you have seen the movie, then the storyline will be instantly familiar. The gunplay in the game may be too simple for some but I really liked it, with it being simple and responsive. The game itself does has a few bugs in it and it lacks online multiplayer, theoretically ruling it out for blockbuster status. However, with the flying segments and the amazing environments, I wouldn’t count Avatar out. At 8.99 it is on the expensive side but it is well worth it if you are into sci fi games. Overall, I would give it a score of 7.5, although the score may change when the bugs are ironed out.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
GT Racing: Motor Academy Review
The latest blockbuster game on the App Store, GT Racing Motor Academy, is an attempt to bring Gran Turismo to the iPhone. It has a great arcade mode and a really deep career mode, complete with license test, challenges and racing leagues and all of the other trimmings you could think of. The graphics are really polished, even on my iPhone 3G with its overly packed hard drive. With 100 different cars, from the ford model T to the latest supercars and many many different types of races, including rally races, it will take a fair while to get bored with this game. There is great multiplayer that has great potential but it is a bit under filled at the moment so only time will tell if it will be a success. Overall, I would give it a mark of 9/10, with the only weak points being the landscapes, especially city landscapes, where building only appear when you get close to them. This is a real bummer on the Sydney City level, with all of the great landscapes being only seen for a second or two.