I know I swear up and down that I will never play another crappy Gameloft game again, but N.O.V.A. 3 had me interested due to the excellent graphics. Gameloft may have crappy games, but they can really make games look good on mobile devices. Once I started playing I realized that the visuals are all that was improved in this Halo style rip-off FPS series. The story is forgettable as is any Gameloft game. You’re trying to find some sort of ancient artifact to destroy an evil alien race and save humanity. Like we haven’t heard that story before.


I was impressed with the first level of the game because there are some cinematic scripted events thrown in here that made me think that Gameloft finally got their act together and did something right. I also noticed how less it looks like Halo and more like Crysis 2. The outfits look almost the same, and even some of the guns look the same. That’s OK because Gameloft is master copycats, remember? After I started shooting up some bad guys I realized how much better the guns shoot, but there’s still no life in them. There’s almost no recoil, and the controls are glitchy with random spin-around and not to mention the HUD is cramped. I highly recommend playing this on as large of a screen as possible to avoid any further frustrations.


Once I got past the first level I realized the game is feeling the same as the last two. The game has cookie-cutter enemies that just stand there and shoot you with a couple of vehicle sections thrown in. The game has no life or soul and just feels like a generic shooter from way back in 2003. The levels are more varied, but the art style is just dull and there’s not much to really look at. Sure the graphics look good technically, but artistically compared, Call of Duty looks like Okami. I just gave up about four levels in because I realized it was the same dull boring crap. I never had enough ammo which is weird. Why max out my ammo where I can only take down a few bad guys before switching to another gun. I felt like the ammo sparsity was something for a survival horror, not a one-man-army FPS.


Let’s not forget multiplayer. The maps are really large with only a few players in it so it feels like you’re always playing hide-and-go-seek rather than Team Deathmatch. The glitchy controls and lifeless weapons don’t help either, so just skip the multiplayer altogether. If you really don’t care about quality than the N.O.V.A. series is probably right up your ally along with most Gameloft games. The game looks great but other than that you will just find a hollow and soulless shooter that looks, feels, and plays monotonously.