iPhone and iPod Touch Games Round-up 5

Eliminate Pro

Developer: Ngmoco
Price (as reviewed): Free / Free from the AppStore

Prior to Eliminate Pro’s release there was a surprising amount of hype building up around it, with iPhone owners everywhere excited to see how how the platform's first fully-3D and multiplayer only FPS might pan out. Expectations were high that Eliminate Pro could be the iPhone’s version of Unreal Tournament.

And that makes it all the more depressing when you see how the final game turned out; an incredibly generic sci-fi shooter that will nickel and dime users to death before they can even hope of getting anywhere.

You see, while the game itself is free to download and play, the in-game store provides substantial bonuses and extra resources to those who want to shell out for microtransactions. Thus, the playing field is anything but level and victories are made either incredibly shallow or unattainable for the most part.


The game itself isn’t all that decent anyway, which is the crushing final blow that utterly finishes Eliminate Pro off. The characters and level designs are pseudo-science generiscisms at their absolute worst and while the action does invoke some technical kudos for running so fluidly on the iPhone, it’s hard to say the game is actually attractive.

We’ll say one thing for Eliminate Pro though and that’s that the backend is there at least, with online leaderboards and stat tracking available through the Plus+ network which Eliminate Pro is tied into. At the end of the day though, the game just isn’t all that enjoyable to play and the only thing the ‘innovate pricing structure’ summoned in us was a feeling of joyless exploitation.

Verdict: The fact that Eliminate Pro supports multiplayer FPS action over 3G and Wi-Fi is impressive, but the game itself is actually tremendously underwhelming. JM

Transylvania Adventure

Developer: RetroVenture
Price (as reviewed): 59p / 99c from the AppStore

Apparently a port of a 1982 Apple II adventure game we’ve never heard of, Transylvania is a fairly punishing and retro-feeling title which blurs text adventure and point and click interfaces to intriguing effect.

The plot is a familiar and tired schtick, with you cast as the hero who must rescue Princess Sabrina from the castle where she is being held imprisoned by monsters and fiends. To liberate her you’ll need to comb the countryside for weapons and clues, fighting or fleeing from the werewolves, vampires and goblins who prowl through the darkness.

Transylvania stands out mostly for the way it mixes interface conventions, allowing players to input text responses via the parser, which is complemented by a selection of shotcuts for the most used commands. The environment can also be explored through a point and click system too, with players tapping directions and items to interact with them.

Giving players this much freedom over how they control the game sounds like a good thing at first, but unfortunately it’s all a little bit confused and it’s far too easy to click the wrong thing mistake or go in the wrong direction. That can be a big problem considering the time limit that’s placed on the adventure (“Sabrina dies at dawn!” declares an intro text) and how brutally punishing Transylvania is.

In the end, Transylvania is an interesting look back to how Apple games used to be, but we prefer them as they are now.

Verdict: Transylvania may be a good port of a supposed classic, but it’ll be awkward and unapproachable for the vast majority of gamers, we reckon. JM