ToonWarz

I've been wanting to review this game for about a month now. First Person Shooters have been among the most popular genres on the PC and several exist for the iPhone, but the Android has basically been left out of the party. Sure, Doom and such were ported (and removed) from the Android Market. I tried Doom out when I first got my Droid and setup was a pain and it just didn't work well. So mix First Person Shooter with Polarbit and naturally you're going to get a quality game.

Now, I have to admit that I have not played ToonWarz extensively. In fact I've barely scratched the surface of the first mission. That's because the controls on these games when moved to a mobile platform stink. On screen joysticks just don't cut it... I NEED my tactile feedback in order to do all of the things (move, look around, control a gun, jump and duck, ...etc) I'm required to do in these games. ToonWarz offers two control schemes and lets you use the accelerometer to aim or move. I used it for aiming and found it to be far less sensitive than I needed it to be even when I cranked sensitivity to the max.

The game itself is Polarbit quality every step of the way. In the first mission you land and have to find the supplies (armor and sniper rifle) that were dropped with you and went astray. The game holds your hand nicely and even I wasn't able to botch the easy task of finding them. Your sniper rifle is equipped with 5 shots and as soon as you turn the corner there's an enemy soldier firing at you. I suspect that the mission is of primary importance... i.e. don't waste time trying to pick off every enemy you see as I initially did, but instead focus on the task at hand and that's finding the keys.

So I head east and cross the river and now there's an endless stream of samurai dudes running at me slicing me to bits with knives. The graphics are great, but not detailed enough to know for sure... maybe they're clubbing me to death? This is as far as I made it into the game because being unprepared I use my equipped sniper rifle on these point blank targets and I had played for close to an hour at this point.

The game features lots of extras... as stated I'm only on mission one of four and then there's online multiplayer. Talk about packing a lot of punch in a little package. I wish... oh, how I wish... the game had better controls as it is very well done. And, once again, I'm not knocking Polarbit. Droid's don't come with dual, analog joypads. I have to be honest, though and that's that I think I'd rather play other games on my Droid and leave the first person shooters to my Xbox 360 or PC as a mouse seems to be an ideal controller for such games. I'm sure I'll keep playing a bit more just to see if I can build some degree of comfort with the controls. Fortunately there is a lite version for you to try before you buy so you can determine if you feel the same way. As for me this is a five star game ruined by poor controls despite the best efforts of the developers. I'm glad we have a solid FPS on the Android now to fill the void, but I can't honestly say that it'll be heavily played by me.