Qualcomm’s BREW 2008 conference is currnetly underway in San Diego. It’s a three-day event where Qualcomm and its partners strive to “show their stuff," giving the industy a glimpse of what’s coming in the world of wireless. As such, it’s not surprising to see some exciting iPhone announcements coming out of this event.
Pocket Gamer is attending the event and had the opportunity to spend some hands-on game time with Re-Volt, a new accelerometer and touchscreen controlled first person shooter for the iPhone and iPod touch from Canadian developer IUGO Mobile Entertainment.
I got hands on with it tonight at the show. You tilt the iPhone back and forward to move your character forward, and left and right to strafe. Shooting is automatic, although you can tap the screen to auto-aim at an enemy.
It took me a couple of seconds to acclimatise, but once I did, the game was smooth to play – the controls felt intuitive pretty quickly. It could be an iPhone hit, for sure.
As can be seen from the YouTube video, the graphics are sharp, the gameplay is smooth and the accelerometer control definitely adds a new dimension (+5 points for not using “tilt") to a genre that, frankly, has offered up few surprises lately. We’re excited to see the iPhone’s processing power and unique control characteristics bring a breath of fresh air into the types of games that we all know and love.
IUGO CEO Hong-Yee Wong seems to share our excitement.
“The touch and the accelerometer really opens up a lot of opportunities for innovative gaming. We’ve been really impressed with the iPhone. The tilt is really sensitive, and you can get precise movement using it."
IUGO has not yet decided whether it will release Re-Volt through the upcoming iTunes App Store or follow a different distribution route with an established publisher. We will provide further information surrounding this promising title as we receive it.
Well, there goes any interest I had in the game (for my iPhone, that is).
Yeah, a little disappointing. At the very least they should come out with Spore Creatures which is what is being released for the Nintendo DS (it allows your characters to be above ground, but still limited to what the full spore is going to be.)
Perhaps the demo is misleading us and they will add some better features to the actual release. Here's hoping!
I get the impression that the reviewers were thinking of the entire Spore game while playing this, when they really should have been focusing on how it as a stand-alone game. This is like reviewing Pac-Man when you really want to play World of Warcraft.
From what I've seen, Origins is more like a customizable pac-man game. You construct a little critter the way you want then swim around eating things smaller than you while avoiding things bigger than you. This in itself could be a very fun game. When Touch Arcade reviews this game, I hope they focus on it being a stand-alone game rather than constantly comparing it to the full version of Spore.
I'll probabaly buy it regardless. When they showed it in March it looked good enough just being that. I mean how much more would you want from the game. It's just a small bite sized game not an epic, large scale game with a huge budget. They make it sound like it's bad that it's apparently a short game. Oh well, can't wait until it comes out.
Can't help but i feel like this was a big opportunity wasted
Hey, don't be disappointed -- that's exactly what they had demoed in March.
sounds like it's a lot like Flow on the PS3 then - that's a massively addictive game even though the concept is really very very simple
as palapalooza says above - this should be considered it's own game - not a sub-game of Spore