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[iOS] Infinity Blade, from Epic/Chair: The Punch-Out/Demon's Souls action-RPG hybrid
Lunker
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(US$5.99 / Universal app: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 3 and 4, iPad / out now or soon, depending on region)
Infinity Blade is, if you don't really follow the iPhone game scene, the one iPhone game you might have heard of, even though it's got a painfully generic name. Epic made a splash in the otherwise iDevice-agnostic gaming press earlier this year when they released [vidurl=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ncmwgJzqw]the tech demo Epic Citadel,[/vidurl] which was running a gorgeous version of Unreal Engine 3 on, well, an iPhone.Infinity Blade is the first actual game to be released on the platform running UE3. Imagine Punch-Out!! as an action-RPG, with maybe a twinge of Demon's Souls' increasingly compounding masochism and a bit of good ol' Diablo-style lootwhoring. Though it might be more precise to say that it's the lovechild of Dragon Quest Swords and, uh, Fruit Ninja.
And dawg, the graffix are crazy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4MTaQ8KkUM
The basic hook of the game is immensely basic: Something about the evil God King killing your father in a duel, so you're a warrior storming his castle for vengeance, are you a bad enough dude? blah blah blah. It's all just a framework to hang some gameplay on -- this is Chair we're talking about here, and as awesome as Shadow Complex was the story boiled down to "Nathan Drake goes camping, Cobra Commander kidnaps his girlfriend, so he becomes Ironman." (I can't take credit for this paraphrasing.)
IGN has been running a series of previews on IB that talks about the touchscreen combat and the RPG mechanics with lots of details, but in a nutshell: The game consists of a series of one-on-one battles with warriors, demons and other assorted baddies. These real-time fights are carried out in true Punch-Out!! fashion and have you swiping across the screen (no virtual D-pad here!) to attack, block, parry, dodge and murder fools over and over. The RPG part comes into play with your stats and all of the loot you acquire in your short journey; you can earn new skills and perks by draining out XP from your gear, so using a weaker sword with stronger skills might be worth your while in the long-term.
The game is only about 30 minutes long by most accounts and reviews that have been trickling out so far. "EPIC SUX!" you might write. But that's all assuming that you can manage to kill the God King. You probably won't; God King is a pretty tough-sounding dude. But when you die, and the God King drains your energy, the game begins anew:
IGN preview wrote:So where does the addictive quality come into play? Each time you are slain by the God King, you return at the start of the castle, roughly 20 years later, with all the experience and equipment of the hero who came before. Only now the enemies are tougher. The tougher they are, the more crafty you must be in combat and the more crucial it is that you master items and increase your levels. How else will you make it to the God King? And what happens if you don't die at the hands of the God King? I can only say that the cycle does continue, with the God King growing infinitely stronger.
You know how Demon's Souls kills you, says "Fuck you" and then just makes things tougher to kill you again? It's kind of like that. Your bloodline is still running through the same castle, but the enemies are newer and their attack patterns tougher -- but you've already been killed once, so what's a few more times, especially if you can get tougher, faster, wiser, and better equipped every single time?
Chair also has a huge laundry list of things they're planning on adding to the game, and since most high-profile iPhone projects end up with massive stockpiles of DLC (though no free or paid plans have been announced for Infinity Blade), this makes tons of sense. Chair is promising "New Areas to conquer! Multiplayer! New Swords, Shields, Helmets, Magic Rings, and Enemies!" with lots of exclamation points, which sounds pretty convincing to me! (!!!)
Infinity Blade is trickling out across various regions' App Stores now. I'll be picking it up tonight or tomorrow to give some personal impressions, but I'm really stoked at the game's premise, control scheme and cool blend of pick-up-and-play combat with long-tail RPG mechanics and difficulty escalation. So come on: Let's do this thing.
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Good fun combat, simple stuff with wonderful graphics for the device. Really looking forward to the multiplayer update that is apparently coming soon.
EDIT: Ooh directional parry is fun
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
That said, just started getting into some of the elemental damage. First enemy of my next bloodline has a toxic sword. He lands a single hit, and then watch "-1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1" stream out of my health bar faster than I can count, and all of the sudden I'm out a quarter of my health. Holy balls.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
And there's a good deal of lootwhoring here; the experience system reminds me a bit of FF9, in that you essentially suck XP out of each piece of gear (weapon, armor, helmet, magic ring and shield); once you've mastered a piece of kit, I think it gets a bit of a performance boost, but the tradeoff is that you no longer can get XP from it, so your output at the end of each battle is lower. You can pick up gold and treasures hidden in the environment, but you'll naturally get gold at the end of each fight.
This is most definitely not Epic Citadel; no freeroaming or exploration, though it does look like there are either branching paths through the castle or (more likely) optional side-tracks you can pursue that give you more fights and treasure chests, and I don't think you can go back if you miss them when they pop up. It's linear in that you reach an environment "stopping point," and you can pan the camera around to look for hidden pickups, trigger the next fight or tap another hotspot to explore a different branch if one is available. Very much like Dragon Quest Swords.
And the Punch-Out comparison is pretty apt so far; fights are typically reading the opponent's attack sequence, blocking/dodging/parrying and then countering when a window presents itself. Parrying gives the largest counter window for you to wail on the guy, but they're also the most stringent with timing and angle of parry (you swipe in the opposite direction of the enemy's attack). There's a small combo system, but I'm not sure if they're just canned combos (left-right-left is a 3-hit) or if they depend on how the enemy has their shield angled or what.
And the graffix are, indeed, crazy! Stunning game, everything's really smooth (I'm on an iPhone 4, will try it on my iPad later this week). I'm not a huge graphics gearhead, but it looks like everything is in-engine, as the transition from mid-battle cutscene to the actual start of a battle is seamless -- you just see the letterboxing fade out, and I was taken aback that it was all in-game.
Game also supports Game Center and fast-app switching; leaderboards I think are just for number of battles won, but haven't really explored too much. The "Coming Soon" tab in the menu is promising new gear, new enemies, Game Center-enabled multiplayer (!), and a new "Dread Dungeons" area with hints of a new, more difficult end boss and high-end equipment.
I think this is easily worth $6 if you like gawking at cool tech, but so far the game is completely awesome as well. I don't know how long it'll take to beat the God King (or if he's the final boss or what), but looking at the achievements the game is clearly intended to be played a ton of times; there's one for completing 20 bloodlines, some for blocking/dodging/etc. attacks thousands of times, and there's a lot of gear to buy/find and then suck all of the XP out of. I love the concept and execution, but I'm also a high-score-chasing kind of guy that likes replaying small segments of game to refine how I do. Not to beat the comparison into the ground, but it's like running through the circuits of Punch-Out repeatedly, only with stat progression, equipment, and increasingly difficult opponents who get new attacks and patterns each time. (And it's rad as hell so far!)
Looks like I'm buying a card tonight to download some new game(s). *sigh*
By the by, I played through the end of bloodline 2 today, and if you're not playing with headphones, do so right away: It makes a world of difference, as the sound effects are really, really good. Lots of sword clashing and meaty thunks. The music is kind of sparse and ambient -- nothing that sticks out, but it's nice enough to evoke the mood. Interestingly, if you get killed by someone who's not the God King, you have a choice between restarting at the last checkpoint (right before the fight) or a save-and-restart that feels a lot like Dead Rising.
I got romped again by the God King, though I made it to the first mid-battle pause, and it was interesting to be presented with a choice in the middle. The difficulty really ramped up in bloodline 2, so I'm curious to see how it escalates from here: It felt a lot faster and a good deal tougher to me, though I was also trying to be fancy and parry more, and I kept messing up the timing and/or direction.
It is great to POOP with! Oh ho ho ho!
"Daddy, I wanna be big and strong, just like you!"
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a baker?"
"Bakers are lame! I wanna be a warrior!"
"Well, I guess I'll teach you, but I want you to spend at least an hour every day helping Ted at the bake shop. You might learn to like it."
10 years pass.
"There, I have nothing left to teach you. Now, how is your baking going, Ted says you've been a huge help.."
"Yeah, but it isn't as cool as fighting, though I do make a mean doughnut.. Hey, can I hold this sword? This is the one you almost killed the Godking with, right?"
"Sure, but before you do, I need to tell you someth.."
Kid grabs sword, dad falls over dead, ominous booming laughter heard from a distance.
"Nooooooooo! Daaaaaaaaaaaad! You shall be avenged!"
Anyone having more trouble with the Assassins than any other class of enemy?
Edit: Beat him on Bloodline 5... The end is fun. And unexpected.
This is my PSN ID— Radthanael
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Right. And the Godking is actually just a super nice guy who packs up all your equipment and gold and sends it back to your family. Maybe he sends along one of his huge golems to make sure bandits don't steal it on the way. Also he includes the address of a great knight for the son to apprentice under for 20 years. =P
Actually I'm just joking around, as I said above, I really like what's hinted about the story. It tugs at my imagination.
I'm still trying to figure this out too—my theory is that there aren't any canned 4- or 5-hit combos, but you can do any slashes so long as you end with a back and forth left-right-left (or whatever). So "left up left right left", or "down down down up down." This is the part the game doesn't really tell you—also, is there a stab move? I saw something in the achievements about it, but I don't ever remember being told how to do it.
I'm at the beginning of bloodline 3, and the game is definitely still engaging for me. Going for parries is the way to go!
If you parry break you will sometimes get a blue circle (like when moving around the map) on the enemy that you can tap.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
They don't tell you how to do it. Happens most frequently with parry breaks for me, but occasionally I've seen it with dodge breaks, or when they do the super big wind-up jump attacks. It'll flash one of those blue "you can click here" circles at you, and if you hit it, you'll stab for quite a bit of damage. It's like the context-sensitive attack, if you will..
Yeah.
I think they did the whole item XP thing backwards. The bar fills, when it should be emptying. Draining xp from items is key to fast progression. Yes, you get a bonus when using a mastered item, but you're not gaining as much xp as you could if you were using a non-mastered item.
Basically, I'm trying to play this as smart as possible. I know that every Bloodline increases the difficulty. So I'm working my way up from the weakest items, to the strongest even if I have or can afford better equipment. That way when I get to the higher bloodlines, I don't suddenly find myself having to go back and use weak equipment just so I can level up because I've already tapped out all the best gear.
Honestly, I would call this game an RPG. It's as much an RPG as FFXIII (or any other linear JRPG) is anyway. The only thing it lacks is the exploration element. It's linear, but the fights are very engaging, flashy and fun. The levelling system is super addicting. By far the best iPhone purchase I've made yet. I love this game.
PS3 Trophies
There's lots of little details about this game that are going to take some time to figure out, that's for sure.
I'd really like to figure out how to do 5 hit combos consistently. I did a bunch of them in my first fight, but rarely since.
Yeah runs fine on my 3gs, may notice some slowdown when gamecenter is doing stuff though.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Two things I've noticed, here:
The magic stat seems to affect damage, period. So a higher magic stat has nothing to do with the quickness of the charge. However, I've found that, like you, certain fights fill it quicker. I am willing to bet the type of magic you have selected is related to how fast it charges against certain bosses, like lightning vs the one mechanical boss. Just a hunch, but there may be something there.
For a five-combo, you have to start not doing a combo; what I mean is, do something like two-consecutive down attacks, then a left-right-left. As long as you're quick enough and you don't pull your finger from the interface, it appears to register. edit: or, try down-up-left-right-left; trick is to be super quick and not take your finger from the interface.
Yeah, the achievements popping have cause me some slowdown, even on a 4
I've noticed that's a general iOS issue. Anything that does a quick call to the 'net can cause slowdown. I have seen it in other games that access leaderboards and gamecenter.
Hmm... thanks for explaining the combo system.
I think the reason why I got a lot of 5 hits early on, then fewer later is because early on I was going nuts on my screen because I didn't understand the system. Then, when I full grasped the concept, I slowed down my pacing.
The upward slash is badass as fuck. Just had to say that. Ending a fight with it is epic.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
There were several times, particularly in the fourth bloodline, when I was only getting, what... 3/5 of the experience? when two of my items were mastered and I couldn't afford upgrades. When I play through from the beginning again, I'll buy (or equip picked up versions of) every piece of kit.
I have it on both the iPhone 4 and iPad, but I played it more on the iPad because I found combat a lot easier on the larger screen - definitely lower quality textures on the models, though, noticeably so.
Also, the heal spell saved my butt with the God King the last time through. I used it probably 4 times.
This is my PSN ID— Radthanael
Note: Heal is a must for that fight. Unsure what the shield spell does, however...
i think it restores your number of blocks backs to its maximum