Dec 28, 2009

Iron Sight

Iron Sight from Polarbit (makers of Raging Thunder) is among a cluster of games released about a week ago from high quality, professional game development houses. The premise behind the game is a one on one duel between bots armed with various weapons much like a 3 dimensional version of Scorched Earth or Worms. It is turned based so you are allotted time to make your move which consists of positioning your bot for a nice, clean shot, choosing the elevation of your weapon, and then choosing how much energy with which you fire (more energy makes your shot go further).

The game weighs in at 17 MB which is huge by Android standards (and required me to clear out some old, unused games to make room for this new one), is pretty with its 3D graphics, and has a nice audio track which can optionally be muted. And while it does have some minor graphical glitches such as on the after match statistic screen on my Droid it's nothing that makes the game unplayable. The on screen controls work find given the turn based nature of the game. As for options, the game has 3 skill levels for computer opponents and allows you to play either a campaign or a single match. You can play against another person via hot seat plat or on the Internet, although my visit to their servers revealed no available players at the time.

The difference in AI between the skill levels was significant as it ranged from "I'm going to try avoid hitting you at any cost despite this being my 3rd shot" to first round hits. I don't know that as I think it's good to have a confidence builder mode provided that the other levels offer significant challenge. One thing that amused me about the scenery was if I fired a shot and had a tree in my way the shot would be blocked by the tree and hurt me. Those must be some thick branches.

I'm not a big fan of Scorched Earth or Worms. I can play them a bit, enjoy them, but don't tend to have a desire to keep coming back for more. And that's exactly how I feel about Iron Sight. It's more of a "show off" title for my Droid to put on display for all the doubters that think the Droid can't do games, but as to whether you'll actually play this title probably depends on your fan level of the aforementioned 2D titles. I only wish a demo version was available to make test driving easier [Update: a lite (demo) version is now available]. As for the game itself, it's certainly well done and does a solid job of what it sets out to do which is raise the bar on Android gaming. Thanks, Polarbit... we're certainly happy to have you as a supporter and I look forward to trying your other games.

2 comments:

  1. lite version has been released already.

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  2. Thanks for the heads up. I see they also updated the game today as well, although it didn't fix any graphics glitches and required a reboot of my phone to work properly.

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