Away from the heart. You have to bounce the ninjas—no, punch them—away from the heart, not toward it. Indiscriminate punching isn’t good enough. “Defend Heart!" they said. You had one job, and you failed by scoring on your own goal, punching some guy right into your own vulnerable heart. There might be a metaphor there.
In Jared Bailey’s Fist Face Fight ($0.99), you’re a disembodied fist. A disembodied fist with feet, that is, fighting face ninjas with feet of their own. They aren’t particularly malicious ninjas. They’re probably just going about their days. But your heart is right there, exposed, helpless. So you punch, because that’s the only way to keep it safe.
You begin as any child starting karate class might, with a white belt. In the distance is your goal, the coveted black belt. Between you and it are quite a few ninjas and no shortage of punches. Each belt is functionally a level. White is easy – the ninjas will hardly have a chance as you tap them in their expressionless faces. Each time you earn enough coins to unlock a new belt the ninjas you have to fight get more dangerous. They’ll take two hits, three, nine. They slip in and out of reality. Things start to get chancy.
Sometimes the ninjas will drop coins when you fight them. Coins are good; you need them to unlock the next belt. Sometimes they’ll drop bombs. Bombs are bad because, well, they’re bombs. Stick with me here – this part is self explanatory.
You’ll learn to appreciate coins around the same time you learn to curse Jared Bailey. It takes a while to earn enough coins to progress at the higher belts. It took me a while even after buying the coin doubler, and then that coin doubler became useless as I unlocked everything. It’s not a very long while, just an hour or two total, but some of that time is terribly boring. Perhaps the grind would be a bit better if there were something more to aim for in the meantime.
Each level has three goals, you see. One is to survive until the end, be that 20 seconds, 45 or longer. Another is to defeat a certain number of ninjas. Killing that number is almost (or actually?) impossible without surviving the timer. The opposite also seems to be true.
That leaves the third goal of each level, and with it a slightly broader problem with repeating levels for grinding purposes. This goal is to hit a certain high score, one that probably happens to coincide with fighting most or all of the ninjas without breaking your multiplier with a missed tap. If you pull that off, the only way to increase your score further is through picking up coin drops. That’d be luck at work there, and high scores that only rely in luck are not worth much in my books.
All that comes down to a spot of bother: grinding isn’t much fun when you’re doing it for its own sake. If you’ve already completed all the missions, you’ve more or less proven yourself. You’re ready, young one. It’s time to move on. Except you can’t. Eventually you might plateau, however, and then the extra practice will be good.
For me, the first plateau was at Red Belt. The new enemy wasn’t too troublesome, but bombs and flying obstacles developed a habit of always being in the places I wanted to punch. So I’d fail, and my heart would be left unguarded, and I’d swear to do better on the next try. Then I’d fail again.
Eventually that repetition earned me enough to unlock my Brown Belt despite my failings, and then the Black. That’s when things like coins stop mattering entirely and things like high scores are suddenly valuable. The Black Belt isn’t timed. You’ve proven you are an adequate guardian of the heart; now you’re free to go out and achieve the very best you can achieve. Good job, you.
The balance at work in Fist Face Fight is one between challenge and length. It’s further confused by an IAP system that doesn’t take into account the lack of consumable uses. If you can set that aside, however, and rise to the challenge, there is a great lot of fun to be had. Hearts will be broken, ninjas will be punched, and in the end you might knock me right out of the top twenty-five. Be careful. I have a black belt, you see.
Cool, lets encourage piracy with idiotic price points. Watch jailbreaking increase and small indies suffer while iAP grows as a result. Nice work guys.
Jailbreaking /= piracy. However, I see your point.
Valid point but you can't live in fear of piracy. Pirates are gonna pirate rather it's .99 or $500.
I find it refreshing to see a company sticking to a premium price. I can't count how many times I have read people say "I would gladly pay a full premium price for the whole game"
It's still $5 less than a new PS3 game.
If Super Mario galaxy or Mario Kart showed up on the app store people would pay 49.99 all day long.
While the pop star game isnt my thing, it's clearly a 59.99 console game to a lot of people.
It's not a premium price point for a full game. It's an old PSP release split up into three pieces and when combined prices at something in the range of 200% the cost of the average Japanese PS3 import at launch (around $80). This is pricing exploitation of a niche franchise audience, pure and simple.
Would I pay $50 for a full Mario Kart game on my iPad. Maybe. Definitely at $30. Would I pay $50 for 1/3 of the racers and tracks? Absolutely not, and it would greatly diminish my opinion of Nintendo on future purchases, as SquareEnix has already done with their DLC "game" nonsense lately.
Edit: Someone below is saying there were 3 PSP games. I was not aware of that, but it's still very expensive for an old game, and the fact that the apps are all titled with the same pre-fix title doesn't help the confusion.
That's 8 pizzas. Hmm, tough choice.
That's 15.5 pizza's from costco if you add in the tax!
So this is essentially a revamped, years-old PSP game that's had a big chunk of its gameplay removed and has been split into three apps that, together, cost triple what the PSP game costed? Or am I reading this wrong?
This doesn't seem to be the title that will help "legitimize" full/retail priced games on the store, if you ask me. $55 for a third of a game?
This was 3 full price PSP games to begin with. They came out in October. The article is just full of errors.
This has to be a mistake right? Like someone at NamBan accidentally hit two keys when trying to type $4.99.
Surely this has to be a pricing error?
Surely u have more to learn of human nature... :-/
Yeah. The actual price on the JP store is 4800 yen.
How was it one of the Joker's companions in the Dark Knight put it (just before getting shot)?
"That's a lot of money"
Aw, it's not available in the UK. Otherwise I totally would have forked out £100 and sacrificed 9gb of space for this!
A third of this or battle academy with all campaigns? Tough choice ;)
I don't get how a $40 PSP game brand new = 3 $55 IOS games...Seriously what are those guys thinking?!. Yeah its optimized for IOS, Yeah it looks pretty cool, but $55 a piece is idiotic lol
It's NOT based off the PSP games from a few years ago, but instead last years Shiny Festa games, which were exclusively rhythm games with no management.
Feel 'free' to check out iDolm@ster....
Since when has free been $50? Oh yeah, in 2010 with the rise of freemium!
thats one hell of price tag right there $54.99 what a joke.
The PSP game WAS divided into three 55 $ versions. So you're basically getting the same deal with iAP to come. I got one game. It's UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.
Wha? Huh? Er. You sure?
wow, I've always stood up for squares prices on the appstore (for the most part) but now I can say this is WAY TOO PRICEY for an iphone game. $30 is the max, but $54? And then that's times 3? Wow, this is new to me o__O;; the game's graphics look good tho :-)
This wouldn't be on my list of things to download, even if it was free. So no worries.
My first thought on seeing the price was "WTF?!? Are they on crack??". But that doesn't make for a very constructive forum comment. So let me just say that there's no way in a very hot place I'd ever consider paying anywhere near that amount for an iOS game. At least, not now. Maybe in the future when the games are holographic and brainwave controlled. I'd say $9.99 for an app is the absolute most I'd ever pay, and I'd have to know ahead of time that the game was extremely good.
Sheesh and here I was thinking 59.99 was too much for a PC or console title. Hopefully sales for these three are abysmal. I'd hate to see other developers start thinking they can charge AAA price for a game you play with your fingers and finish in 45 minutes.
I can fully respect the idea of full price models on our app store... but not for games that are 5+ year old ports heh.
Wow.. And i though dlc was a rip off..
To quote someone from the forums:
"$55 for a tambourine simulator?"
You guys are hilarious!!! Keep them coming hahaha awesome and yes 55$ price tag is a joke or late april fools joke from japan!!
Suck on mah chocolate salted balllssss
#nothanksatthatpricechumps
I'll pass.
What a joke!
Honestly I think there a little crazy, be cuz that is
$55 (that's allllllllllot!)
I purchased Melodic Disc and its well worth $55 for the quality of game it is. I have Shiny on PSP so I won't repurchase it. Ill wait and see if there is a sale on the last one in the next month or two. If not, ill probably buy it for iOS since I have it with me more than my PSP.
Trust me guys, it seems steep but its worth it. I played it for 2 hours straight and my phone died! Lol. Ill probably take a sick day tomorrow to master it like I did Shiny a while back. You can master it in a day is you're good and have precious experience.
I can think of so many games from Namco that sold port amazingly well to ios and deserve a very premium pricetag if they are ports and just have optimized controls and graphics. There are so many games that I want to see but won't get to unless they make it to iOS because I am not buying a portable gaming system ever again, my iPhone fills that role now.
Also the iPhone and other portable systems are showing they have the processing power of about the Xbox 360 and ps3 according to some benchmarks on so let's get some ports of some quality games on these phones and not bitch about the prices.
The world ends with you is a great example of a game far better than almost every ios game and it deserved the "high" pricetag it was priced at. These games being true ports of psp games, very likely with improved graphics and improved controls, should cost the same as they do on that system because otherwise it eats their own sales.
While this game is not remotely my cup of tea it is still an incredibly popular AAA series that sells millions in Japan, so either iOS users need to decide if they want to pay full price for real games or very little for very little gameplay(final fantasy the brave and the bold). I would gladly take direct psp ports with control modifications or ps3 ports or 360 or even PC and pay a high amount for a console quality experience, something that even the best indie games are barely getting close to in all aspects simultaneously.
Might want to fix the title of the article.
Many Japanese titles are sold for a high price in the AppStore. FF series comes to mind, or the bullet-hell genre.
They simply ignore the "0.89 market" and charge the same prices in all platforms. Could be they cannot afford to cut sales on other platforms.
The problem is that all other handheld platforms allow you to re-sell your game or buy it 2nd hand. IMO you cannot charge full prize for DRMed digital downloads, unless the market will gladly pay for it (PC/Steam and AAA titles comes to mind)
$10 says Square is just going to start releasing games for $60 on the App Store now. Thanks Bandai. You f*cking a**holes HAHAHAAH.
Hmm shitty Price for an iOS game
Why? It is the same price as the psp one and the same game as the psp one. It's not like they are gouging anyone with IAP or an EA style "port" where it's just a franchise name on some shell of the real game.
What makes an iOS game deserve to be cheaper than the same game on a different platform?
IMO I want the best games they can get this hardware to run and if it means $50 games then I will buy 2-3 a year assuming they are real 10+hr games.
I'm gettin all three...said no one ever XD
This is not a "Sony PSP release from several years back", the PSP version was released 2012-10-25 in Japan. They splitted it up to 3 versions on PSP as well.
It's just a NBGI game, just a over priced game for those "I'll buy whatever you have" FANS (even for the console release).This is not a "premium price full game" at all.
Besides, PSP version could share savedata and have a exclusive DLC "The world is all one", better button control.
It's not a "how much a iOS game should be" problem, it's NBGI's problem, remember Ridge Racer on PS Vita?
If Japanese developers want to destory themselves, don't stop them, just don't buy, have fun and watch.
I suspect they feel that they are not going to sell much to North American audience regardless of price point. This title seems to be priced for Japan where the demand is very high and people are likly to spend top dollar.
either it will work or we will see a price drop over the next few weeks.
First I thought they miss priced it at so unsaved it until the price dropped to consider a purchase. Second since the game file(s) are so large I can see splitting it into multiple downloadable parts as a user wants to use different bands. But one price for all three makes the most sense especially if all three were included in the PSP version or any other version. Definitely charging the same price for three parts that were all included in one price for PSP or any other version is a BAD idea and not cool.
The PSP game was also in 3 parts. Basically, it's a little bit like pokemon. You get red, blue and green. The three are the exact same game, with some differences. In the case of Idolm@ster, it is the Idols that you manage and also the songs that are different. That's it. So the PSP version didn't get split into three different part, it was always like that.
Can someone tell me why the hell these stupid JPN music games are so freaking expensive? Like I don't get it. Why price so much, I mean like doesn't Apple have a limit on how much something can be?
And Namco is pulling it on March 15. $55 x3 with a middle finger to their customers.