Mobile game reviews

TECHLIFE’S TEAM REVIEWS THE LATEST GAMES FOR ANDROID & iOS SMARTPHONES & TABLETS.

Dragon Project F2P MONSTER SLAYIN’ Free with IAP

WITH THE RECENT overwhelming success of Monster Hunter World, a monster battling action RPG that allows you to hunt and take down a wide range of various beasties, enterprising developers have started replicating versions of this once niche game genre into the mainstream. The series had begun its life on Nintendo handhelds, so it wasn’t going to be long before smashing giant hammers into dinosaur-esque behemoths hit mobile screens.

Dragon Project is effectively a shrunk down version of MHW, albeit without much of its flair and content, but it still manages to look and feel just like its full sized brother. Much of the gameplay involves grinding out lower level quests in order to gain access to areas and “summons” that host the more difficult beasts. At the same time, you’ll be crafting new gear from your opponents’ bloody remnants and mastering five different weapon types.

Hunting monsters is a team sport, but you can choose whether the game matches you with other players or if you prefer to invite your friends. There’s real-time co-op play, leader boards, events and all the good stuff that keeps that content cog turning. Unlike other games of this type, there isn’t a huge incentive to spend any money at all – most of the game requires you to actively play to get ahead, and “auto” movements are locked to a certain amount of time per day.

The game itself also looks clean and modern, with lots of colour, and decent graphics that combine with a solid framerate. The controls are easy to use and involve various taps, swipes and gestures to complete attack combos and active certain powers. There’s a lot of variation in both behemoth type and ability sets, as well as a fun albeit shallow crafting system. That said, be prepared for some long loading times, wonky servers and very high-level players dropping into your battles to spoil your fun.

Thankfully, most of these issues can and seem to be fixed in patches, with upgrades and bug fixes seemingly improving the game even over my short review period. Few mobile games come close to this sort of in-depth tribute.

Mighty Quest for Epic Loot IS GREY BETTER THAN GOLD? Free with IAP

THE ORIGINAL MIGHTY Quest for Epic Loot found itself embroiled in controversy very early in its life as its developer, Ubisoft, attempted to game its innovative “create/ defend your castle” system with a bunch of pay-to-win tricks. This effectively killed the game in its tracks and it slowly disappeared from the general consciousness, until now. MQFEL is back... on mobile.

The mobile conversion has been heavily sliced down from its original PC system – where once you explored other player made castles, now you simply explore and loot the developer’s pre-designed stages. From the first few screens it’s clearly obvious this is one of the better looking games on mobile – the art style is wonderful, graphics are clean and crisp, and the sound is fantastic. The game clips along at a wonderfully quick pace (backed up by timers) and the controls are simple yet effective.

As its name suggests, the idea is to hack and slash through a plethora of different enemies, racking up new loot to dress yourself in and level up with to take on bigger and brutal bad guys as per the role-playing trope. The problem is that there isn’t enough loot – most of what you pick up is garbage and the system of recycling it into usable gear is convoluted and painful.

AFK Arena ADVENTURING WHILE IDLE Free with IAP

IDLE GAMES ARE notorious for straddling a very simple gameplay loop – wait long enough and you’ll amass enough of a fortune to make playing the game at all completely pointless. But AFK Arena, a play on a common phrase for people who abandon multiplayer games, takes the idle ide and implements it in a clever way.

Most mobile action/RPGs involve an intense amount of grinding – replaying the same missions, or fighting the same monsters, repeatedly. AFK Arena takes a lot of this generic grinding out by, well, doing it for you while the game is closed. When you log back in after 12 hours or so, the game provides you with the spoils of your computer avatar adventurer’s work, which you can use to upgrade their abilities and fight the more interesting battles.

There are still relatively basic player-run missions, but most of the more interesting ones require you to build certain teams of heroes that complement each other or target various weak points in an enemy defence.

If anything, AFK Arena understands the medium it exists on. In this case, you can drop in and out whenever you please, and the game will work with, rather than against you, in order to make you feel like you’ve still accomplished something.

Darts of Fury FROM A DINGY PUB TO YOUR PHONE Free with IAP

I MUST HAND it to mobile developers – no matter how often I assume a style of virtual sport wouldn’t likely work on my smartphone, they go and completely smash my misconceptions. Darts of Fury is one of the purest games I’ve ever played. It hails back to the early days of simple swipe and flick mechanics, where accuracy was based on the speed and the direction of your taps and swipes, and the difficulty was based around your reflexes and basic dexterity.

As you would expect, DoF is about throwing (flicking?) virtual darts at a virtual board in order to out score your opponent. But what’s different about this game is that you are looking to beat your player to zero, which requires significantly more skill then you would expect. Not every dart is the same however, with different tails, weights and whatnot changing up the difficulty and adding to the variety of the competition.

Super Drop Land PUZZLING MADE IN AUSTRALIA Free with IAP

THIS BEING AN Australian magazine, I am more than keen to seek out new and exciting games produced by enterprising developers within our wide brown land. So it was with delight that I happened to find the first title by the brilliantly named Lamington Games, Super Drop Land, featured on the App Store. On the surface, SDL is a relatively simple concept – you’re a cube that can roll left or right, and you’re tasked with collapsing down an infinite fall colonised by ghosts, rabbits and err.. puppies?

As you fall, the idea is to pickup as many coins as possible, while collecting puppies and avoiding ghosts. Once a ghost has been touched, it will follow your ominously and quickly until you roll into a Rabbit, which instantly vanquishes the ghosts, or you finish the level. There are plenty of levels to play through, monetisation is lax, and there are little twists, themes and addons to try out. One of the more interesting components are the multiplayer races where you compete against other players to speed run your way through the levels. Most levels only take a few minutes to complete, which is perfect for a quick jaunt in between stations, and there are a bunch of specially crafted puzzles to figure out on top of the main game too. Support your local developers and give this game a go, it won’t disappoint.