If there's one thing gamers hate (other than loot boxes), it's mobile titles. Every time a new one gets announced comment sections across the internet are set ablaze with vitriol and repulsion. One could hardly blame them for their cynicism however, as even in the days before microtransactions were a thing the technological limitations of cellphones from back then meant that what they were getting was rarely anything to write home about. Believe it or not though, there was a period in the currently ongoing lifespans of the Android and iPhone where it looked like that device you text on could have been a legitimately viable platform for gaming on the go with some great exclusives. When you could buy gems like Spider-Man: Total Mayhem and this for just $6.99. There's a parallel universe out there where the industry continued down that path, you can play Elden Ring on the bus between selfies because it's always in your pocket, Game of Thrones had a good ending, and I have regular threesomes with actress Meagan Tandy and UFC fighter Mackenzie Dern. A perfect world, if you will!
The team at IronMonkey Studios, which has since been merged by EA with Firemint to create Firemonkeys, were a bunch of wizards. They set out to deliver a home console caliber Dead Space adventure that you could take wherever you went, and goshdarnit they succeeded! Let's start with the presentation. Graphically this is still on par with a lot of the best looking modern releases, perfectly capturing the franchise's signature industrial sci-fi look and macabre sights. I was particularly blown away by the voice acting which is on the same level as a triple-A production; a fact that really bolsters the storytelling. The plot itself, which is actually an original tale complete with its own entirely new protagonist that serves as a prequel to the second game, is a tad predictable. I was able to accurately guess things like a side-character's betrayal and the truth behind the lead "Vandal's" (who would totally kick Isaac's butt BTW, especially the new one's) identity long before they were revealed despite having not yet played the entry it's leading into for example, but I found it to be a memorable and well-told narrative nonetheless.
Yet, while all of its auditory and visual splendor is certainly worth celebrating, they would ultimately mean nothing if the gameplay wasn't good. Luckily, OHMYFREAKINGGOSH did they NAIL IT!!! I think everyone knows by now that the property's claim to horror isn't cerebral frights or even the grisly imagery. It's nail-biting action sequences where you have to carefully plan each dismembering shot while juggling multiple different threats coming at you from several directions at once in often cramped spaces and managing a small ammo supply. Those show up here in spades. Shooting with touchscreen controls has never felt better. Everything from dragging your finger to aim or quickly tilting your device to change your weapon's fire mode is smooth, accurate, and reliable. There is some minor input clutter due to how many actions are tied to tapping the screen, leading to moments where you'll accidentally pull your weapon up to aim when trying to activate a panel or pick up an object with kinesis, but these instances are merely slight annoyances at worst. Intense combat isn't the only method the devs use to get your heart racing either. Regular hallucination segments occur that are typically punctuated by surprisingly effective jump scares. A few of them can even get quite mind-bending in design, which is only all the more impressive given the platform.
After reading all the praise I'm heaping on this you're probably thinking right now "dang, I better go check it out for myself!" Weeeell, unfortunately you'll run into a bit of a problem there. You see, the sad nature of mobile gaming is that the vast majority of these experiences are here today and gone tomorrow, as they're regularly removed from digital storefronts thanks to the rapid evolution of the hardware making them obsolete in an instant and development studios understandably not finding it profitable enough to stay on top of putting out the constant stream of updates necessary to keep them listed. What you're reading about at the moment is one such casualty. The only way to play it these days is by downloading it off of some shady .apk site and ignoring the warning pop-ups from Play Protect about the potential risks like I did. A method that works strictly for Androids. iPhone users on the other hand must use a third-party program after locating the right .iso file to install it for them, and must also have an appropriately older model for it to even run at all. It's an altogether more tedious, demanding process that serves as another example (alongside the variety of emulators that are available on the Play Store) of why Apple's aforementioned competitor is by far the better option for hardcore gamers.
Whatever brand you roll with though, it is absolutely worth the effort of jumping through the various hoops required to play this. It's a staggering achievement that shows the true gaming capabilities of these little boxes we spend so much of our lives staring at like no other title. The sole complaint you could have is that it's pretty short at about 2-4 hours for a first playthrough, but features such as new game+ and multiple difficulty levels paired with its timeless mechanics make it worth returning to again and again until you fully upgrade all your guns and armor. Here we are 12 years later and it might still be the best mobile game ever created. It's Dead Space on your phone, man. What more could you ask for?
10/10
The team at IronMonkey Studios, which has since been merged by EA with Firemint to create Firemonkeys, were a bunch of wizards. They set out to deliver a home console caliber Dead Space adventure that you could take wherever you went, and goshdarnit they succeeded! Let's start with the presentation. Graphically this is still on par with a lot of the best looking modern releases, perfectly capturing the franchise's signature industrial sci-fi look and macabre sights. I was particularly blown away by the voice acting which is on the same level as a triple-A production; a fact that really bolsters the storytelling. The plot itself, which is actually an original tale complete with its own entirely new protagonist that serves as a prequel to the second game, is a tad predictable. I was able to accurately guess things like a side-character's betrayal and the truth behind the lead "Vandal's" (who would totally kick Isaac's butt BTW, especially the new one's) identity long before they were revealed despite having not yet played the entry it's leading into for example, but I found it to be a memorable and well-told narrative nonetheless.
Yet, while all of its auditory and visual splendor is certainly worth celebrating, they would ultimately mean nothing if the gameplay wasn't good. Luckily, OHMYFREAKINGGOSH did they NAIL IT!!! I think everyone knows by now that the property's claim to horror isn't cerebral frights or even the grisly imagery. It's nail-biting action sequences where you have to carefully plan each dismembering shot while juggling multiple different threats coming at you from several directions at once in often cramped spaces and managing a small ammo supply. Those show up here in spades. Shooting with touchscreen controls has never felt better. Everything from dragging your finger to aim or quickly tilting your device to change your weapon's fire mode is smooth, accurate, and reliable. There is some minor input clutter due to how many actions are tied to tapping the screen, leading to moments where you'll accidentally pull your weapon up to aim when trying to activate a panel or pick up an object with kinesis, but these instances are merely slight annoyances at worst. Intense combat isn't the only method the devs use to get your heart racing either. Regular hallucination segments occur that are typically punctuated by surprisingly effective jump scares. A few of them can even get quite mind-bending in design, which is only all the more impressive given the platform.
After reading all the praise I'm heaping on this you're probably thinking right now "dang, I better go check it out for myself!" Weeeell, unfortunately you'll run into a bit of a problem there. You see, the sad nature of mobile gaming is that the vast majority of these experiences are here today and gone tomorrow, as they're regularly removed from digital storefronts thanks to the rapid evolution of the hardware making them obsolete in an instant and development studios understandably not finding it profitable enough to stay on top of putting out the constant stream of updates necessary to keep them listed. What you're reading about at the moment is one such casualty. The only way to play it these days is by downloading it off of some shady .apk site and ignoring the warning pop-ups from Play Protect about the potential risks like I did. A method that works strictly for Androids. iPhone users on the other hand must use a third-party program after locating the right .iso file to install it for them, and must also have an appropriately older model for it to even run at all. It's an altogether more tedious, demanding process that serves as another example (alongside the variety of emulators that are available on the Play Store) of why Apple's aforementioned competitor is by far the better option for hardcore gamers.
Whatever brand you roll with though, it is absolutely worth the effort of jumping through the various hoops required to play this. It's a staggering achievement that shows the true gaming capabilities of these little boxes we spend so much of our lives staring at like no other title. The sole complaint you could have is that it's pretty short at about 2-4 hours for a first playthrough, but features such as new game+ and multiple difficulty levels paired with its timeless mechanics make it worth returning to again and again until you fully upgrade all your guns and armor. Here we are 12 years later and it might still be the best mobile game ever created. It's Dead Space on your phone, man. What more could you ask for?
10/10
10 Comments
Believe it or not I actually used to really hate touchscreen controls too. ESPECIALLY for shooters. Aiming just felt too loose and unwieldy in most of the titles I tried back in the day (i.e Dead Trigger). Idk if I’ve just gotten accustomed to them over the years or if genuinely significant improvements have been made though, but in games like this, CoD Mobile, and PUBG Mobile I’ve found I actually prefer them over a traditional controller because they weirdly feel more precise to me now. Maybe I’m just turning into a gen z lol.
lol! Maybe you are!
My experience is limited to be fair. This was one of the few mobile games I gave a chance to due to the IP. I think I was playing on an iPhone 3gs? I imagine screen tech has advanced a lot since then. I was super impressed with the visuals at the time though.
My experience is limited to be fair. This was one of the few mobile games I gave a chance to due to the IP. I think I was playing on an iPhone 3gs? I imagine screen tech has advanced a lot since then. I was super impressed with the visuals at the time though.
I admittedly don’t have as much experience with smartphones as most, but screens have seemed to respond more accurately whenever I’ve upgraded. Plus, they’ve gotten larger. Devs have also done a better job over the years of placing stuff in a way so that your thumbs don’t get in the way quite as much anymore. I think they used to make games with tablets and pads in mind first and didn’t always take the time to optimize them properly for phones as a result.
One mobile game from a similar time period I often find myself thinking about is the Batman: The Dark Knight Rises movie tie in game, because they actually did something really interesting with it rather than just downscaling an Arkham game, in that it plays and feels like a sequel to the Batman Begins tie in from almost a decade earlier.
Best of all from what I remember its actually not to bad, although that could be child-brain speaking, as I would've been 8-9 years old last time I played it around 2012.
Best of all from what I remember its actually not to bad, although that could be child-brain speaking, as I would've been 8-9 years old last time I played it around 2012.
I see it was from Gameloft too who were on fire with these type of games back in the day. I’m definitely going to make it a point to play that at some point. I’m a HUGE fan of the Batman Begins game so it sounds right up my alley.
Started playing it today. I gotta say, while I wouldn't give it a 10/10, I am very impressed by it. Really digging the hallucination scenes, and I feel like the atmosphere is stronger than in the original game. I'm not sure why exactly, but I suspect it's because it has this eerie silence with some industrial ambience in the background, and loud step noises. Two things I found very lacking though (at least so far, perhaps they will appear later) are the lack of the inventory and the upgrades. One of my favorite aspects of the original was inventory and resource management, the skillful handling of which would allow you to upgrade faster.
I'm playing on PS Vita btw, which has both the touchscreen and the button controls. God bless the homebrew scene, they are truly miracleworkers. I really hope they port more mobile games that tackled major IPs. Because, like FallenGrace, I also skipped a lot of them back in the day precisely because of the controls. But I also do agree with you that the touchscreen controls can be more precise for aiming. My problem with them is that they can confuse different actions with each other (e.g. moving and aiming), or not register your touch well because you might've moved it slightly differently from the way you should've. The latter happens to me when I try to swipe up or down for a melee attack or a stomp. But, honestly, having both sets of controls at the same time is kinda amazing. This was one of the best things about Vita. Such an underutilized and underrated device.
I'm playing on PS Vita btw, which has both the touchscreen and the button controls. God bless the homebrew scene, they are truly miracleworkers. I really hope they port more mobile games that tackled major IPs. Because, like FallenGrace, I also skipped a lot of them back in the day precisely because of the controls. But I also do agree with you that the touchscreen controls can be more precise for aiming. My problem with them is that they can confuse different actions with each other (e.g. moving and aiming), or not register your touch well because you might've moved it slightly differently from the way you should've. The latter happens to me when I try to swipe up or down for a melee attack or a stomp. But, honestly, having both sets of controls at the same time is kinda amazing. This was one of the best things about Vita. Such an underutilized and underrated device.
Btw, I think the Vita version is a port from Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. Because it often mentions Sony's trademark buttons, like "tap here or press square to reload". I think this was already a version with button controls. If there was a way to emulate Xperia Play, I imagine we could get our hands on a huge library of mobile games that could be played with regular controllers.
Oh man, I could sing the Vita's praises all day. Absolutely ADORE that handheld! Probably one of my proudest gaming purchases even if it didn't have the lifespan it deserved. Really need to get into the homebrew scene for it, particularly for old phone games. I saw that's how you played Mass Effect: Infiltrator and I've just been having a time trying to get that to run on my old Android because it requires supplementary data you can't download anymore because naturally the servers for that have been shut down. I've found a few sources that look like they include said data in a .zip file, buuuuut as someone basically completely new to this process it's not something I've completely worked out how to use yet, lol. Definitely going to need to look up a video or something.
Yeah, and that 10/10 is more of a "by mobile game standards" type of thing.
Yeah, and that 10/10 is more of a "by mobile game standards" type of thing.
Yeah, Vita is amazing. I bought mine in 2012 and it's still as good as new. No signs of deterioration whatsoever. This is easily the longest-lasting electronic device I've ever had.
You should definitely get into the homebrew scene, there's plenty of tutorials out there. I think you're gonna enjoy Mass Effect: Infiltrator more than I did. It's not nearly as good as Dead Space, but I admit I'm a little harsher on mobile games in general.
But yeah, I also meant "by mobile game standards". I guess I just expect more from mobile games? I remember having a blast with several java games back in the early 2000s. Not quite feeling Dead Space as much as those games, but it's still very solid. I'm expecting to rate it about 4 stars, but will see how it goes.
You should definitely get into the homebrew scene, there's plenty of tutorials out there. I think you're gonna enjoy Mass Effect: Infiltrator more than I did. It's not nearly as good as Dead Space, but I admit I'm a little harsher on mobile games in general.
But yeah, I also meant "by mobile game standards". I guess I just expect more from mobile games? I remember having a blast with several java games back in the early 2000s. Not quite feeling Dead Space as much as those games, but it's still very solid. I'm expecting to rate it about 4 stars, but will see how it goes.
FallenGrace
1 year ago