iDamaged Review

It look’s like we’re not the only ones who thinks being badass red robots are the latest fashion!

It look’s like we’re not the only ones who thinks being badass red robots are the latest fashion! The Red Thing debuted with it’s first indie/retro game on the App Store, well, today! It came out on 12/15/2011 at 12:00AM, along with other new games, including Grand Theft Auto III and Trenches II . I was pretty excited about iDamaged though, because it combines two of my favorite things: retro and fresh.

What does it mean to be retro and fresh. What I mean is that it’s a classic game, nothing too advanced, cool graphics and styles. The game is also nice and fresh, it has nearby updates with new content and it’s a game that’s just unique in it’s own way. The game’s gameplay is simple: blow up everything! The music and sound effects were cool, and I definitely liked how they had multiple weapons. The game has at least 15+ weapons and powerups to pick up. Each powerup and weapon bonus can be upgraded three times, using collected money from powerups or completing some goals. The weapons were cool, like the dual lazers, heat-seeking missiles, a ray beam from the sky, air strikes, etc.

iDamaged is a great game that combines these two aspects, but there are major flaws.The controls of the game is simply horrendous. It’s hard to control and it takes a while to get used too. Even once you get used to the style, it hinders the gameplay because you cannot aim and shoot at the same time. Also, the robot isn’t always on the right side of the screen, and because you can’t shoot backwards, you get caught in enemy fire. When they add dual-sticks to the list of controls, no doubt the game would be much more fun.

Another thing I had a problem was the lack of content/levels. The game just released today, but giving only three levels feels like a major rip off. While there definitely be new levels to come in the future, it seems like they should have already made at least 10 levels before releasing the game. Hopefully, the future updates and levels will be free and not based on IAPs.

The graphics of the game weren’t too sharp. It was like playing a non-retina supported game on the iPhone, but on the iPad. The graphics weren’t the kind to be 8-bit so the graphics being quite pixelated isn’t a good thing. The buttons were sharp, but the robot and the enemies were fuzzy. While it wasn’t as bad as enlarging an iPhone game to the iPad, it could have done better.

Overall, this is a cool game and I can’t wait for the future updates. I only wished they had some testing or opinions before the official release. Kind of disappointed from the lack content but I’ll continue to support this developer to fix these problems. Overlooking a few of the problems, the game is really fun and entertaining and deserves to be in the App Store Top 100.

Reviewed Device: iPad 2

[review pros=”Cool, retro graphics, good idea” cons=”Short, barely any levels, bad controls” score=70]