Silent Scope

Developer: Konami Digital Entertainment
Price: $5.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0

Concept Rating [2/5]
Graphics / Sound [rating:2.5/5]
Gameplay [rating:2/5]
Fun [rating:1/5]
Lasting Appeal [rating:1/5]

Overall Rating:

In disbelief, I handed my iPhone to my friend Brendan, who picked up the game at the beginning of level two. I told him the controls real quick (they aren't complicated) and let him at it. My guess was three minutes. Waiting in anticipation, I hear him say, "What the hell is this? You've got to be kidding me... I'm supposed to kill a helicopter with a sniper rifle? How come that helicopter has a machine gun and mine has my idiot character with a sniper rifle?". 2 minutes pass. "How much did you pay for this game? This is awful!" He played for a few more minutes (shockingly) and then gave me back the iPhone. During his stint of 6 minutes, he broke my house record for longest continuous gameplay. No, the game isn't all that hard, it's just unplayable.

Concept Rating
I'm a sniper that is tasked out to shoot everything. You know, I didn't think about this too much at the arcade when I used to play this game because I got to hold the big sniper rifle. I would've shot at ants if the game had asked me to, I just wanted to hold the big gun. Whoever thought that big gun translates well onto the iPhone screen was sorely mistaken. Without getting into details, here is a description of level three. You fly over a football stadium where the evil boss is trying to escape with a bunch of football players hostage. You're supposed to fly by in this plane and shoot the bad guy. Never mind the terrible frame rates and sloppy controls, there is no reason on this Earth that the bad guy should be running around with a bunch of football players. Agghh. Let's say that I put the game down after this. I was 3:22 in... that's in minutes and seconds.

Graphics / Sound
The opening scene, the one that is supposed to suck you in to the rest of the game, is a disaster. It The story mode starts in Chicago, putting you on top of a building shooting at snipers on other buildings. Sounds awesome right? So the first 4 seconds of the game shows you in first person mode walking to the edge of the building while presumably setting up your rifle. The problem with this is that this walk should really only take 2 seconds... you are just waiting 2 more seconds through horrible lag. Once you get in rifle mode, you have to deal with shooting people who look like bad pixel drawings made pre-1995. The buildings are lifeless, the terrain is lifeless, everything is pixelated, and everything, and I mean everything is laggy. The sound on the other had is pretty decent, and I could see how it could actually be good if I enjoyed the game at all. Basically you get a pretty ok tune that is the background music, overlayed by what I would assume to be a guy talking to you by radio. He says things like, "Calm down!" when you miss shots and "you're losing it" when you miss a ton. Since I've completely given up on aiming in Sniper Scope, I get these comments quite often.

Gameplay
Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay... where to start. Ok. I'll preface this by saying that there are 4 different gameplay modes that you get to choose from when you play. Story mode, which is the one I dislike the least, takes you through a story that starts with the president being captured by an evil group who's boss looks like the final bad guy in Duke Nukem 3D. Then there is the Target Practice Mode... playing it too long may lead to blindness and stroke. Time trial mode, the third mode available, is a personal hell of mine, forcing you to shoot, in all it's bad frame rate glory, things as fast as you can. The last option is training mode... don't even bother.

The actual gameplay in Silent Scope is quite simple... move the screen around with a finger, double tap to use your scope, and tap again to fire. If it weren't for the bad frame rates making aiming quite impossible, the gameplay might actually be good. What's sad is that Konami must've know the frame rates were terrible, because the enemy AI hardly ever moves, giving you ample time to clumsily aim and shoot. I'll aim at a guy for 20 seconds, right on his chest, and wait. He'll do some ridiculous maneuver, like 5 seconds in the open, and five seconds behind something, in an attempt to not die. Is he actually trying to do shoot anything? Why is he on the roof if he's not shooting? The real question is why, when he comes back from his hiding spot, does he move back to the same exact location with the same exact stance? Bad quality animation is the answer. The worst part of the game, which I've mentioned earlier, is fly over sniping. Fly over sniping in Silent Scope is a righteous blend of bad frame rates and poor graphics, all melting together into a large cauldron of bad.

Fun
Life isn't fun Chris. Why should your game be? There is no joy in Silent Scope... only pain.

Lasting Appeal
Here is my challenge to all of the readers. Send me a video (or a link to youtube) of you playing Silent Scope for 30 minutes straight. If you can accomplish this epic feat, I will send out a mass twitter message proclaiming you as my gaming hero. Not only will I not be playing this game next month, I will not even be playing this game tomorrow

Overall
The graphics are bad, the frame rates are bad, the gameplay is bad, the sound gets annoying because the graphics and the gameplay are so bad, and the story is hokey. You could have all this for just $5.99. Are you kidding me? $5.99? This game, and I am sad to say it, is an insult to the gift card that I bought it on. If I were put in a room and given a choice between one Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Silent Scope, I would choose the sandwich... even if I was already full. What's sad is that I wanted this game to be so good. I love seeing all the heavy hitters come out to make iPhone games, but this mess is sad... just sad. Do not, unless you just want me to call you my gaming hero, buy this game under any circumstance.

Quick, 24 hours of Barney or 24 hours of Silent Scope. I'll take the purple dinosaur.