Game: Urban Trial Freestyle
Console: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Strangelands Ltd.
Release Date: 27th June 2013
Essentially a 3D version of those BMX flash games from years ago, Urban Trial Freestyle allows players to freestyle their way through obstacle courses by motorbike, controlling both the speed and balance of the rider. Of course there's some radical jumps and opportunities to do tricks on your way through the courses, and set records for the highest jumps. Players can choose to play in Time Trial or Stunt mode, the latter of which is judged on stunt score as well as the time taken to complete the level.
To control the bikes, players use the A button to accelerate, the B button to brake and the Y button to reverse. The rider's balance can be tilted with the control pad, which works very well, when compared to the rudimentary arrow key controls of the aforementioned flash games. While its still possible to get stuck or have a little difficulty with some of the courses, the progression of difficulty and gameplay overall is good.
Graphically the game looks pretty good on the whole; the backgrounds and locations have some nice themeing and detail, but a closer look at the rider, especially in the menus shows that the textures used are fairly low quality. Musically the game features a kind of pseudo rock/drum and bass soundtrack that fails to be anything other than background noise, especially with the engine sounds added into the mix.
Overall Urban Trial Freestyle is the type of eShop game that recycles an old concept, slaps on some presentable graphics and a couple of game modes and then asks players to buy it, rather than playing the slightly simpler versions available online for free. While it's probably worth the £1.69 sale price for an hour or two of fun, it's hardly a substantial addition to the eShop library.
Rating: 51/100
Grade: D
Game: Space Lift Danger Panic!
Console: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Springloaded
Release Date: 15th January 2015
From the developers of Heart Beaten comes another retro styled minigame based title, available for just 69p on the eShop. With that kind of price tag, it's hard to know what to expect; Heart Beaten was around the £2 mark and only featured a few minigames based around breaking hearts. There are 40 missions in total in mission mode, in addition to a survival mode which allows for endless play as long as no lives are lost.
The concept of the game, and indeed the only real gameplay featured involves saving falling citizens by creating portals which stop them from falling onto spikes. The number of citizens falling varies from level to level, as does the pattern in which they fall, but on the whole very little changes between any two missions. Players tap the screen to create portals below falling citizens and save them, once all of the citizens for that level have been saved, the game moves on. There's a written plot snippet to read before each level, but it's not particularly interesting on engaging and so is best skipped.
Graphically the game is simple and fairly stylish; the backgrounds change between levels and the pixel based characters and coins stand out well. 3D is an unnecessary feature for this game, but is still included just in case. Musically there's some fun electronic tunes that accompany the menus and gameplay, but it's not enough to improve the complete game experience.
Overall Space Lift Danger Panic! suffers from the fact that it's basically a minigame style game with a single minigame that gets harder. If there had been other Space themed games included in a similar style to Heart Beaten's minigames, then perhaps there'd be more replayability and interest to the game as a whole. As it is, once you've played 5 or 10 levels of this, there's really no need to complete all 40. It may well have been trying to emulate the style of Atari 2600 games with its digital packaging (available to see in the menu), but it also has all the variety of one.
Rating: 38/100
Grade: E
There's definitely some good games up for download on the eShop, however it may seem. They just take a little longer to review, so expect some actual recommendations soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment