Heroki Review

Developer: Sega
Price: $7.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

It’s the visuals of Heroki that will first catch your attention - it’s really quite gorgeous. Its palette is as attractive as many of Sega’s past console hits, immediately capturing the imagination. Fortunately, Heroki isn’t all looks either, being a fairly entertaining action adventure game. While the control methods are never quite perfect, no matter what you settle on, it’s still endearing stuff.

Your aim is to save the world from the dastardly Dr N. Forchin. It’s the kind of story that’s been around as long as gaming, so I wouldn’t dwell on it too much. While owing much to platformers in terms of design, Heroki is more about flying than anything.

This flying is conducted either via dragging your finger around, or using the virtual d-pad. The former looks cooler but often the latter works out more effective. Besides flying around, you can also duke it out with enemies by throwing crates at them with a kind of Angry Birds style dragging mechanism, plus there are opportunities to drop to the ground and walk. You learn new abilities too, such as being able to free fall around the levels, or dash and bash obstacles. Wind soon becomes the focus of many puzzles, requiring a mixture of skill and careful thought. It’s reasonably varied stuff and Heroki backs all that up with a near ridiculous number of collectibles.

Heroki soon ends up being worth the asking price, given its plentiful amount of content. At first it seems more like a family friendly title, but it soon ramps up the difficulty and leaves you challenged yet satisfied. It very nearly harkens back to the days of the golden era of Sega games always being high quality. It’s only when you grudgingly accept that no control method is perfect and that sometimes the camera zooms too close that the promise of Heroki is held slightly back. Despite that, you'll still enjoy what's here.