Retro Game Friday: Infinity Blade

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering one of the first games for the iPhone! It’s Infinity Blade!

Plot Synopsis: The game follows a cyclical narrative structure in which the player-character and his descendants individually explore a castle in a quest to battle the primary antagonist, the immortal God King. In the game’s introduction, the player-character has just finished this quest, but is slain by the God King. The player then assumes the role of the dead character’s descendant as he starts his own journey at the beginning of the castle.

Plot: The plot isn’t amazing, in fact it’s pretty much a gameplay device, but hey at least it has a plot! Sort of.

Gameplay: As a touchscreen game I don’t really enjoy the game all that much, but it was a lot easier to control than most touch screen games. However the difficulty in progressing after failing multiple times was daunting and it definitely wasn’t conducive to new gamers. That being said people who enjoyed Dark Souls like games will enjoy the difficulty scaling. One bad thing however is that this was definitely made during the days of Pay to Win being a business model, and you could spend tons of dollars getting godly equipment to break the game.

Art: The art is okay, but it’s definitely aged.

Music: Don’t remember much, as I played it on the bus on my way home from college so I rarely if ever had the music on.

Overall: If you’ve never played the game, feel free to give it a download if you have an iPhone, but it’s not necessary unless you’re a bit of a masochist.

For those who like: Punishing Difficulty, Pay to Win, Cyclical Plots.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

Video Game Tuesday: Fads in Gaming

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering what I really hate about the gaming industry sometimes. It’s all about Fads in Gaming!

What do I mean Fads in Gaming?: Touch Controls, Motion Controls and just plain weird Controllers are just some of the things that come to mind and those are the main topics for today.

Touch Controls: Other than for mobile (smartphone) games, a topic for another day, I despise touch controls. Especially with a stylus. It’s a control method that I hate personally because it doesn’t allow for people with a minor physical disability or poor gross motor functions to play games. Many people struggle with these things and touch controls only limit customer bases for a developer, not expand them. Thankfully this fad has died down for the most part, with the exception of mobile “gaming” which like I said before is a topic for another day.

Motion Controls: Again Motion Controls are a limitation for people with minor physical disabilities or poor gross motor functions. Why people jumped so fast onto this particular fad I don’t understand. In addition it was way too easy to use control schemes in ways other than the developer thought. The Wiimote in particular was highly inaccurate and was a terrible controller. The fact that it required a strap for the wrist is laughable design wise because it’d fly out of peoples hands and into things like TVs, Windows, or other people’s heads. If you need to take the controller slipping out of ones hands and becoming a projectile into consideration you are designing them wrong.

Weird Controllers: Remember the Nintendo 64 Controller? No one used the functionality of the D-Pad on that thing, so having the three prongs on it was just weird design wise. A good controller is something like the Xbox 360 Controller, not that oddly shaped piece of crud we used for the Nintendo 64.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! What are some of your despised fads? Leave a comment below!