:: KEYTAR CONCERTOForever Entertainment is resurrecting their presumably-fictional Frederic Chopin with Frederic - Evil Strikes Back. This sequel to 2012's Best App Ever nominee in the Music Game category, Frederic - Resurrection of Music, has players tapping out tunes on Frederic's powerful keytar in order to defeat the forces of evil who want to commercialize music. Also, he has a sports car now.
Frederic - Evil Strikes Back releases on May 8 exclusively on the App Store, with other platforms coming later. Check out the teaser trailer.
:: CHARMING PUZZLER FOR KIDS
:: BUMMER
Action RPGs, particularly dungeon crawlers, can sometimes get away with being a little generic. Their premises and worlds can be little more than excuses for players to hack, slash, and grind to their heart’s content. Iesabel gets that part right, the most important part. But even still, it’s hard to ignore what it does wrong.
As told in an impressively animated and voice-acted opening cutscene, Iesabel tells the story of a group of heroes brought together by a powerful shaman to fight the approaching, ill-defined, southern darkness. It’s a standard fantasy world full of drab brown woods, caves and deserts that tend to blend together. On a technical level though, it’s hard to deny just how dense and detailed the 3D environments and characters are.
After choosing a class like the close-range Barbarian or long-range witch, up to 8 players can join together to travel the landscape accepting quests, equipping loot and battling monsters with polished swords and colorful spells. Solo players may find combat repetitive and occasionally overly difficult. However, co-op multiplayer allows for larger strategies and easier crowd control. No matter how they choose to play though, warriors of Iesabel will be hard-pressed to find anything they haven’t seen in a million other dungeon crawlers. Instead, they’ll be saddled with stuttering controls, long load times, weird sound hiccups, general mild instability and a Barbarian that sounds like someone’s impression of someone else’s impression of a silly, gruff Batman voice.
Iesabel doesn’t have one big, insurmountable issue just a series of little, unfortunate ones. That means anyone interested in the core Diablo-style gameplay should probably be able to overlook most, if maybe not all, of the problems. That core part, the most important part, is a well-crafted experience with around 8 hours of content or more for those who choose to have multiple characters. More chapters are also on the way and hopefully they’ll bring more technical fixes along with them. As it is now though, Iesabel won’t convert anyone to the dungeon crawler cause, but it does a decent job of preaching to the choir.
When stripped back, Sparkle 2: EVO is a game based on collection. Each new area contains a number of nutrients that need to be collected, and once that happens the player can progress. However, there are a number of interesting twists to keep the game feeling fresh.
The big draw is just how eerily beautiful the game looks. The organism itself is well detailed, but it's the environment that steals the show, managing to look both ominous and inviting at the same time. It's one of those games that draw in other people, as they simply have to see what the game is. The downside is there are periods of noticeable slowdown when several things are happening on-screen at the same time. It's not frequent enough to ruin the game, but it is there.
On the surface the control scheme is extremely simple, but it will actually take some getting used to. To move the organism the player has to trace their finger across the screen, at which point it will follow along. However, as this is underwater there is a floaty feel to it, so actions such as stopping aren't instantaneous. The organism also can't turn on the spot, needing a bit of room to double back on itself, so this needs to be taken into account when lining up a run of nutrients to eat.
Sparkle 2: EVO feels like a much more complete version of the PlayStation Network title, Flow. Some of the levels go on for too long, but the combination of relaxed gameplay, top-notch graphics, smooth control scheme and Game Center integration means the player will come back time and again.
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