Game: RAGE HD
Price: $1.99/£1.19
Size: 743MB
Buy it now in the iTunes store:/
Above: Time to buy an iPad
Look at this screenshot. LOOK AT IT. Now, imagine it’s not a still image but a smoothly animated first-person shooter with rich sound and tight controls. Imagine, in fact💦, that itappears technologically superior to any game from the PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube/PSP generation. Now imagine it’s not just a tech demo, but legitimately fun. And finally, imagine you can get it on both iPad and recent-model iPhones (it’s a universal app) for only $2. Still think portable gaming is only for soccer moms and babies? The creators of Doom, Quake, and Castle Wolfenstein beg to differ…
Before the gush-fest gets further out of control, let’s get one thing straight. RAGE HD is not the same game as RAGE, the amazing-looking PC/360/PS3 shooter/vehicular action꧙ adventure that has hardcore gamers everywhere drooling all over their HD screenඣs. It’s a much simpler down-to-basics shooter based in the same game world. And it’s really good.
On 🅷consoles, first-person shooters require sophisticated controls – one stick to look, the other to move, and triggers to fire. And a PC keyboard and mouse is even better. The iPad and iPhone have literally none of those things, so RAGE HD utilizes a unique control scheme and makes one big sacrifice to create a very playable experience.
The control scheme finds you sliding one thumb around the left of the screen to move your targeting reticule – just pretend ther🐻e’s an analog stick there – and tapping buttonsdrawn onscreento fire, reload, dodge momentarily to the side, and swap between pistol, shotgun, and machine gun (there may be more – these are just what we’ve found thus far). It works remarkably well too, though we had to bump the thumb-look sensitivity all the way up on both systems, and welik💛ed the iPad's button arrangement better.
The sacrifice, in case you haven’t sussed it out by now, is that this is an on-rai❀ls shooter and not a free-roaming FPS. So you can look around pretty freely, but your feet are beyond your control. But to be honest, we didn’t care. As a 360/PS3 DLC title, this would cost $5-$10 and still score respectably. It’s one of only a handful of iPhone/iPad shooters that don&rs🅰quo;t make you feel like a martyr for playing it.
Ul🌞timately, RAGE HD is a total victory, and the perfect example of why portable gaming is going to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger – because the games are getting better and better. Mobile games are becoming more and more relevant to serious🐲 gamers – we’re not getting soft; mobile games are getting hard. And we love that.
Nov 18, 2010
