Game Review: Dungeon Hunter (iPhone)
Gameloft has impressed me in the past with derivative titles like Blades of Fury and Hero of Sparta that cram a lot of mindless fun into a tiny chassis - and with Dungeon Hunter, I feel like I'm playing a game from a different team with its own strengths and weaknesses. Only this time, everyone else loves the game too. So let's break it down without all the jargon, and with a little more introspection, as usual.
The basic structure of this game is called "Action-RPG" or "Diablo clone", which means you control a character who is tasked with killing hordes of bad guys to defeat an ancient evil, taking their loot, and steadily acquiring new skills and experience. The latter is depicted in an extremely crowded handful of inventory screens, where you are constantly comparing a Green Runic Circlet versus a Gold Kingly Helm, and feeling victorious as your 90 seconds of juggling results in +70 to water damage as you enter the hellish realm of the Lava King. Outside of this, you'll be spending most of the game in a top-down perspective, ordering your tiny character to hack away at monsters with a couple taps of one thumb and watching the fireworks.
The narrative is not earth-shattering, but was clearly written by someone who really enjoyed his job. In an inversion of the "save the princess and defeat the vizier" trope, you play the deposed King, laying siege to his own castle to depose your wife, now the Evil Queen. Most of the dialogue is from the various fairies you collect, who are constantly bickering and invisible to everyone else, creating a fun dynamic where the human NPCs wonder if you are going insane, and you can go on quests alone but still hear conversations all the time. The dialogue is very helpful at urging you to keep playing - "We must be getting close to the end of our quest!" is invaluable when the game stubbornly refuses to give you any sort of progress indicator.
The core gameplay, stolen wholesale from many similar games, translates quite well to the iPhone. Click on an enemy to wail away at them with a variety of weapons, click on a colorful icon to unleash a special skill at the closest enemy, walk forward to pick up their shiny treasures and fight the next enemy. This creates an addictive feedback loop that is often derided as the hamster wheel of gaming - perfect for a phone which you'll probably need to put back in your pocket soon. Resource management is simplified by having your health and mana slowly regenerate between fights, and allowing you to cash in your worthless junk for small amounts of gold at any time, so you never feel like you have to leave an area and go back to town. Only in the final areas, where enemy soldiers are resistant to your elemental powers, did the process feel like a chore as I switched between five different sets of equipment to counteract them.
Graphics and sound are very reasonable; if you've never seen a Gameloft game before, it's about the fidelity level of the Nintendo 64, i.e. you can see what everything is very clearly but you're never thinking, "Wow! This looks so REAL!" The fairies are dressed in ridiculous skimpy outfits during dialogue sequences, but are merely a tiny helpful glow in game. Load times are quite long even on my 3GS, but the loading is very infrequent - you can generally play for 15 or 20 minutes before seeing another loading screen. Although the visual effects for fairies, magic spells, etc. are impressive, you will be using them very frequently, and even the most impressive fireball gets old after 200 viewings. New players will be frustrated with the Wizard, who relies on illusion spells and familiars that clutter up the screen with special effects and require you to press the buttons in the correct order.
The programming was clearly not done by the "A" team, as pathfinding for your character is rather wonky. Our hero's movement is frustrating, especially when trying to navigate tight spaces, and the enemies are similarly obtuse. A 100% dodge rating does not translate into dodging every shot. Your progress is only partially saved, as you will appear at the last checkpoint without losing your experience. But these are minor quibbles, assuming you are savvy enough to tweak the options menu to the point where you are happy.
In short, this game will not excite you on any level but that of a TV sitcom: it's just dumb fun. It is, however, surprisingly difficult to put down, and 9 hours of dumb fun is a steal for $1. The state of iPhone gaming is so lawless that it's a treat to find a game without a glaring fundamental flaw, and Dungeon Hunter is just such a game.
The basic structure of this game is called "Action-RPG" or "Diablo clone", which means you control a character who is tasked with killing hordes of bad guys to defeat an ancient evil, taking their loot, and steadily acquiring new skills and experience. The latter is depicted in an extremely crowded handful of inventory screens, where you are constantly comparing a Green Runic Circlet versus a Gold Kingly Helm, and feeling victorious as your 90 seconds of juggling results in +70 to water damage as you enter the hellish realm of the Lava King. Outside of this, you'll be spending most of the game in a top-down perspective, ordering your tiny character to hack away at monsters with a couple taps of one thumb and watching the fireworks.
The narrative is not earth-shattering, but was clearly written by someone who really enjoyed his job. In an inversion of the "save the princess and defeat the vizier" trope, you play the deposed King, laying siege to his own castle to depose your wife, now the Evil Queen. Most of the dialogue is from the various fairies you collect, who are constantly bickering and invisible to everyone else, creating a fun dynamic where the human NPCs wonder if you are going insane, and you can go on quests alone but still hear conversations all the time. The dialogue is very helpful at urging you to keep playing - "We must be getting close to the end of our quest!" is invaluable when the game stubbornly refuses to give you any sort of progress indicator.
The core gameplay, stolen wholesale from many similar games, translates quite well to the iPhone. Click on an enemy to wail away at them with a variety of weapons, click on a colorful icon to unleash a special skill at the closest enemy, walk forward to pick up their shiny treasures and fight the next enemy. This creates an addictive feedback loop that is often derided as the hamster wheel of gaming - perfect for a phone which you'll probably need to put back in your pocket soon. Resource management is simplified by having your health and mana slowly regenerate between fights, and allowing you to cash in your worthless junk for small amounts of gold at any time, so you never feel like you have to leave an area and go back to town. Only in the final areas, where enemy soldiers are resistant to your elemental powers, did the process feel like a chore as I switched between five different sets of equipment to counteract them.
Graphics and sound are very reasonable; if you've never seen a Gameloft game before, it's about the fidelity level of the Nintendo 64, i.e. you can see what everything is very clearly but you're never thinking, "Wow! This looks so REAL!" The fairies are dressed in ridiculous skimpy outfits during dialogue sequences, but are merely a tiny helpful glow in game. Load times are quite long even on my 3GS, but the loading is very infrequent - you can generally play for 15 or 20 minutes before seeing another loading screen. Although the visual effects for fairies, magic spells, etc. are impressive, you will be using them very frequently, and even the most impressive fireball gets old after 200 viewings. New players will be frustrated with the Wizard, who relies on illusion spells and familiars that clutter up the screen with special effects and require you to press the buttons in the correct order.
The programming was clearly not done by the "A" team, as pathfinding for your character is rather wonky. Our hero's movement is frustrating, especially when trying to navigate tight spaces, and the enemies are similarly obtuse. A 100% dodge rating does not translate into dodging every shot. Your progress is only partially saved, as you will appear at the last checkpoint without losing your experience. But these are minor quibbles, assuming you are savvy enough to tweak the options menu to the point where you are happy.
In short, this game will not excite you on any level but that of a TV sitcom: it's just dumb fun. It is, however, surprisingly difficult to put down, and 9 hours of dumb fun is a steal for $1. The state of iPhone gaming is so lawless that it's a treat to find a game without a glaring fundamental flaw, and Dungeon Hunter is just such a game.