iShoot Review

About 13 years ago, the world was introduced to an amazing game called "Worms" for the PC. Originally developed by Team17, Worms was a tremendous amount of fun with numerous sequels created thereafter. The new iPhone/iPod game, iShoot, developed by Naughty Bits Software, borrows many gameplay elements from the Worms series. That's not to say that iShoot is a clone of Worms, just that its core gameplay of having multiple tanks shooting at one another with a destructible 2D environment is very similar to Worms. With that said, iShoot's sales pitch in the App Store sounded very good so I had high expectations before beginning my review of this $2.99 game.

What will appeal to many gamers is that iShoot has a very simple menu. Either you opt for the tutorial or you start playing the game. There are no other options. The instructions provided are sufficient to understand how the game works. A maximum of four tanks are available for manual control. All remaining tanks are controlled by AI. The AI player is not very tough to beat. Only the Extreme level AI is almost impossible to beat because of its accuracy. Otherwise, even the hard AI can be beaten in this game without breaking a sweat. This is a good thing as we all love beating the AI no matter how dumb it is.

The gameplay is turn based and each player has been given the control of a tank to take out the opponents. When playing this game, your objective is to destroy the other tank using all means possible. You have a lot of weapons at your disposal. The impact of the weapon is felt not just on the tank but also on the terrain. Higher your inaccuracy, harder will it be to aim accurately as the terrain would no longer be very smooth. This feature often leads to piquant situation where all it takes to destroy or be destroyed is a single hit which neither tank is able to achieve.

One of the most important characteristic of this game is its weapons. Had the weapons been boring, this game would have been a disaster. Thankfully, that is not the case. Each player is allocated a fixed amount of funds to buy weapons before each round. There is a lot of choice available for the players. You can opt for nuclear bombs or machine guns or even the extremely expensive Shiva Bomb. The choice of weapons is an important tactical decision that must be made with foresight. Should you use the nuclear bomb to dump your opponent into a crater or should you preserve it for your killing blow? The developers have incorporated terrain modifying weapon as well. You can often add mounds and walls to the map using these weapons. This can be used to restrict the tank to a specific sector so that it can be destroyed at leisure. The variety of weapons and the difference in its impact adds value to the game.

iShoot offers a wide variety of unique maps from relatively simple hill maps to more complex ones such as fighting on top of Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, the developers didn't include a way to select a map which means that you'll just have to fight on whatever the game randomly assigns you. This becomes a little frustrating as the more you play the game, the more you'll develop a preference for one or two styles of maps. Yet, because of the non-inclusion of a simple map selector, you can't fight on your favorite maps.

As far as graphics of this game is concerned, the presence of a periodic frame rate slowdown is inexcusable for a game that is rendered in 2D. This does not affect actual performance as the game is not dependent on a good frame rate. However, this error is indicative of poor programming on the part of the developers. Apart from this issue, the graphics are par for the course. The tanks are not designed in detail but the environment has been rendered very well. The frame rate issue needs to be sorted out before the next version is released.

The sound is also lacking on iShoot. There is no background music - simply the sounds made during the firing of and explosions by the various weapons in the game. If this game was only a dollar, then this point would seem less poignant, but for a three dollar app, the inclusion of some sort of a background track is a no brainer.

All things considered, iShoot is truly a fun game - mark my words. However, it also seems a little overpriced given it's functionality. It's only got one mode and the core gameplay couldn't have been too hard to program. A lot of work went into making the multitude of weapons and maps, I'm sure, but that seems offset by the lack of music and lack of real menu design. Given its price, iShoot feels pretty average, thus earning it a final score of 7.5 out of 10. It's fun and will definitely provide any gamer with a lot of entertainment. Even at $2.99, it's certainly a solid inclusion in any iPhone/iPod gamer's library.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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