Amiga Nostalgia Weekend part 1
As alert viewers will have noticed, it's been iPod Week here on WoSblog.
So in an effort to post something at least slightly more interesting to those of you who inexplicably haven't got an iPod yet (despite them being available for just £6 to WoS Subscribers), and in honour of the appearance of Pinball Dreams for free a couple of days ago, this weekend we're going to look at a couple of Amiga classics that have just made the jump to the 21st century.
While it's very fondly recalled by many Amiga users, I never really got Deluxe Galaga. I didn't recall anyone ever playing Galaga and saying "You know what this really needs? RPG elements and a pair-matching memory-test subgame every other level".
I always found DG slow and far too easy, it was infested with some of the godawful noodly sub-techno music that European coders bafflingly clung to in the 1990s, and it still thought that powerups that reversed your controls were a great bit of gameplay design. Hngh.
Still, enough people liked it for it to be updated and brought to the PC when the Amiga died, in the form of Warblade – a version with very similar design but slicker, smoother, zippier and more enjoyable, and which still had control-reversing powerups. Gnuk.
Now Warblade has finally completed the long journey into the present, and this week showed up on the App Store. Available at the time of writing for a very reasonable introductory price of 59p, it's a faithful and well-executed port of the PC game, which means it's still got control-reversing powerups. Sigh.
First, some good news for anyone who played the pretty respectable Lite version that's been out for a couple of weeks, or who just watched the official trailer which raised the hideous spectre of manual firing. The final game has a full set of control options, including tilt and digital d-pad, but most significantly a very iPod-friendly system where you simply slide your finger along the FIRE bar to move and your guns autofire as long as you're touching the screen. It makes playing the game very pleasant, though I couldn't work out how to fire the rocket weapon. (In fact, judging by the screenshots above, that may be because I never managed to collect one.)
You get two gameplay modes – the standard 100-level Mission mode (which loops seemingly endlessly on completion), and a three-minute Time Trial where you're already kitted out with the powerful Plasma weapon and have to maximise your score without losing your three lives, against some of the game's tougher enemy squadrons. You can't change your weapon in Time Trial mode, but don't worry – there's still a control-reversing powerup. Kzzkt.
Time Trial mode is important, because the main Mission game is, in accordance with its bloodline, far too easy. Despite the narrower iPod screen making things a bit more intense, on my second attempt I saved up a bit of cash early on, bought the most powerful weapon, and then fought through to Level 297 and a score of 386 million without losing a single life. I eventually gave up through boredom and battery expiration (the game had gone on for over two hours) rather than any increased difficulty brought about by reaching what seems to be the highest normally-achievable rank – Warblade Grandmaster with three gold stars.
The biggest hazard became avoiding the numerous power-down icons, especially the ones dropped by aliens shot at point-blank range, but I had so much money and armour that even with crappy guns I only had to survive a wave or two at most before I could just buy the super-plasma again. But basically I'm pretty sure I could have kept playing until I'd achieved any score I wanted.
You get online leaderboards and lots of OpenFeint achievements and detailed stats, so at least there's something to aim for beyond a simple high score, but the game really needs a one-life endurance mode to provide some sort of challenge for those of us with reactions pitched somewhere above "drunk sloth". At 59p you're certainly not being ripped off, and those of you with poorer co-ordination and motor skills may well find it one of the more enjoyable shmups in the App Store. But this is a pretty game just waiting for a spine.
Agreed. I've enjoyed Warblade over the years, first as Deluxe Galaga, then paying the shareware fee for the PC version. I just paid the 59p for the Ipod version, and on my first go, I've had to pause the game and recharge the battery. I'm on level 131 and I can see this game lasting for ever. The same issue bugged the PC version also, but the Ipod portrait layout seems to make the game easier as well. The biggest issue with this game is that it's quite easy to get into a position where you have a good weapon, lots of bullets and an armour pick up. From that point, you can just store up the cash, getting the occasional "xC" pickup that doubles your money. This means that in the event you do get hit, you only lose your armour, and in the later levels the game dishes out armour pickups so frequently that it's not unusual to have 2 at once. In the unlikely event that you lose both armours, you can always buy them again in the shop, which is always within 5 levels. This means that you rack up the abundant extra lives, but rarely need to use them because you only lose your armour when you get hit.
When you play the really hard levels, there are so many aliens that you get loads of powerups dropped, so you are very likely to hit a memory station or meteor storm that means you don't even need to complete the level.
As stated in your review, the biggest gripe is when the game drops crap power ups. If you happen to pick up a rubbish weapon on a later stage, then you are in real trouble, and you need to work your arse off to get to a shop to buy something decent. But once you complete level 100, your weapons are massively overpowered and you breeze through the next 50 levels at least without any effort. It's a real shame because this game is a labour of love for the author, and it's always been a game I really enjoy playing, I just find that all the improvements I can think of (don't drop crap weapons on later stages, get rid of memory station etc) all serve to make this game even easier, which is the last thing it needs.
However, it's well worth 59p!