Search

Categories

Opera

Archives

Recent Entries

Iridion 3D Review

I got Iridion 3D from amazon.com the other day for $5.29, and thought I’d post a little review of it.

In short for the skimmers, I’m having more fun writing this review than I did playing the game.

The story of the game goes something like this:

• Show picture of city
• Show picture of battleship
• Show 1, no… 2, no…. 3!! blips on a radar screen
• Show distressed guy in control room
• Show city again
• Show UFO over city!
• Show 3 evil space ships shooting city!
• Show two buildings of the city on fire!!

Yes, that is literally how the introduction cinematic plays out, scene by scene. But before you see that, you watch 20 seconds of logos by the companies that made the game (they are non-skippable of course).

After that you are given a menu with a couple of options:

• Start
• Options
• Password

Yes, that’s right, the game has no memory at all. It doesn’t save your options settings, and it doesn’t save your progress in the levels. When you complete a level you are given a 9 digit code to write down in order to start the game from that level in the future. Amazingly, when you turn the game off and on again, that code still works, so it is obviously hard-coded into the game. But who is going to carry around a pad of paper with them so they can “save” and “load” their game? This may have been acceptable back in the days of the NES when you sat at home and could actually write down numbers, but the GBA is a portable game machine.

So after you press start or enter your password to start where you left off, you enter a level. The level names are quite creative… here are a few of them:

• Dogfight above the Ocean
• Air Combat above the Clouds
• Escape through the Disposal tunnel

Yes, those are the real names of the levels. I think they fit in nicely with the storyline, don’t you?

Upon entering a level, you begin moving forwards through the tunnel or over the ocean or above the clouds. You hold down the A button to start shooting, then you move up, down, left and right randomly. Repeat until you finish the game.

By holding the A button down, you reach the maximum firing rate of your ship. You don’t even have to tap the shoot button really fast to shoot faster. Just holding down the A button is as fast as you can get. Then you move around, trying not to get shot by the other ships. The only problem with this is, your ship is so big and the angle so wrong, you can’t even see the bullets that are coming at you half the time. In order to shoot an enemy ship, you have to position your own ship directly in front of them because of the perspective of the game, but in doing this, you completely block the enemy ship out of view and can’t tell if you are hitting him or not, or if he is shooting at you. After 30 seconds of this, you quickly realize that it isn’t worth it to try and shoot the other ships, so you just start hiding in a corner of the screen so you can actually see the bullets before they hit you.

However, this raises another problem. The field of depth in the game is completely wrong, and it is quite nearly impossible to tell when a bullet is about to hit you. When a bullet looks it is 300 “game feet” away from you, it is actually about 2 feet in front of your ship, and is about to hit you. Plus because your ship is so big, you don’t even see half the bullets before they hit you.

Needless to say, this all makes the game terribly unfun to play, because you really have no way of avoiding a bullet that you can’t see, or that looks like it should not hit you for another 2 seconds.

The boss battles are a little more varied, but still revolve around you trying to dodge their bullets while strafing back and forth enough to hit them until they die. But at least they are different, and allow you to see a few more visual tricks and treats.

The game is actually pretty easy once you realize that you should just focus on dodging bullets rather than trying to shoot at anything. I got to the 4th level out of 7 in less than 10 minutes. Sadly I don’t think I will beat the game, because it is simply too boring to waste time on.

The one good thing I can comment on about the game is the graphics. They really are quite amazing for a GBA game, especially considering it was a launch title. The framerates are extremely smooth, and the graphics, though they are all 2D bitmaps, really give an excellent illusion of being 3D. Each level is unique, and matches the level description perfectly (Air combat above the clouds, for example).

Overall this is easily the worst GBA game I have played, and I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had payed any more than the $5 I paid for it, I would consider suing the company that designed it to get my 10 minutes back.