Everyone has a genre they couldn’t live without. For some youngsters, it’s survival games, which can extend to Minecraft. For others, it’s sports games, and the thrill of drafting out a new fantasy team with incoming college players thrown into the fray. For me, my choice ebbs and flows depending on the year, but the most consistent one I’m always falling back on is platformers. Whether it’s those of the mascot variety with strict adherence to 3D standards and wonky cameras, or the tried and true 2D approach, you can put pretty much any one of them in front of me and I’ll at least give it a go. Tons of Bullets ($1.99) caught my eye in name alone, but it ended up being about more than just blasting things.
In a setup very similar to the wall-clinging platformer Meat Boy, Kenji is a ninja that’s on an adventure to save his love interest from Dr. Mad. Naturally, ninjas have a little more at their disposal than the average protagonist, and in addition to his agility, Kenji also has access to a few tricks like the aforementioned wall jumps. If you’re fed up with touch controls it offers MFi controller support, which works wonderfully for the precision double jumps you’re going to need to get by. This is just as much about mastering the controls as it is hammering out twitch responses, so don’t be afraid if you’re more about exploration than action.
I’m conflicted on the look the development trio ended up going with ultimately for Tons of Bullets though, despite their victories with the fundamentals. While it’s functional to the point where most of the jumps you’re going to make won’t be confusing in any way (the same goes for figuring out what is and isn’t an acceptable stealth state), it could be a lot more impressive than a basic pixelated presentation. Looking at the announcement art it follows a voxel-like style that’s like a brighter, more cartoony Minecraft, and that’s really what the teams at play should have went with. Games have done this before without going too flashy, and a follow-up with a more pronounced look would go a long way.
Like the League of Evil series, which ended up being just that — a series — there’s a lot of potential here to build on this premise and keep rolling with it. Kenji isn’t exactly what I’d call a memorable character but he’s recognizable, and even though just by looking at a selection of screenshots you probably won’t walk away all that impressed, after actually playing it, it’s something I could pick up out of a lineup. Bosses could stand to be more unique, but the enemies, layouts, and themes are great.
But while it doesn’t really do anything new, the good news is that it packs in pretty much everything you’d expect from a Metroidvania platformer. There’s a number of different action and platforming concepts, delivered every 20 minutes or so. That’s pretty much the perfect pace too, because just as you’re learning something and start to pick it up for future runs, something new comes along. The entire system of jumping is so complex that it allows for some great, open levels, and although the idea of kitting out a ninja with guns is silly, actually works in its favor in tandem with that openness.
As a bonus (which is kind of a rarity these days) you’re buying the full game here, with no IAP involved. It’ll last you roughly an afternoon, but that’s if you’re playing nonstop. And while I enjoyed my first playthrough, I wouldn’t really consider springing for a new one for some time, until the layouts are mostly removed from my memory. There were enough secret areas or zones off the beaten critical path for it to be worth replaying it so soon.
As long as you go in with your expectations in check forTons of Bullets — as it has literally no surprises for you in store — you probably won’t walk away disappointed. You’ll stumble into re-used ideas like teleporter pads, straight-forward boss fights, and vehicles, but you’ll have fun doing it. Hopefully the idea well hasn’t run dry, and the teams responsible can pick up right where they left off for a sequel.
Thanks for the review. I think you didn't really need to spoil that plot twist to bring your point across. You warned about the spoilers - that's not my point. It's about the fact that i had to make a choice: Read how you came to your rating or don't read any spoilers. Would be great if you guys could try to avoid that in the future.
I thought a lot about how to go about reviewing this game in terms of spoilers, but the twist is what makes the game more interesting than I expected. It would have been a very short review if I didn't mention that part and its effect on my enjoyment of the episode.
But in general yes, if I can avoid talking about major plot twists, I do so.
Yup: the game is awful. I find it useless to try and separate the hundreds of technical problems from the game, given that the problems ARE the game, and they condition the way it plays. Minutes-long loading times, frame rates that continuously drop to 5-10, and the more ao as the scenes get packed and players should TIME actions carefully.
Needless to say, the game rapidly becomes unplayable.
I would advise anyone against buying the game, and I find reviews like these awfully biased. It's not like you are reviewing the game in a void: and reviewers should be more respectful of readers who need to put at least €4.99 into a critically flawed product.
How do you find this review biased? Curious, especially since I spend the first two paragraphs of the review talking about the game's many technical issues.
Unplayable on iPad air 2
Barely playable on iPad Pro 12.9
One legit issue with the technical problems besides graphics and loading is that I found it sometimes hurt gameplay. The direction swipes during combat would often not register due to the lag. Thankfully Batman has something of a health meter, whereas in most other Telltale games a missed swipe is often a death on the spot.
Since people will often buy games simply for the rating, I think that a game that is unplayable on 90% of the target platforms should never be awarded such a high score. It would have been better to revisit its review and potentially awarding such a high score if-and-when the issues are fixed, or at some point in the future where anything below an iPhone 7 is considered obsolete.
Giving this 4.5 stars is like giving the galaxy note 7 such a high rating after it was proven to explode.
Based on your review.... HOW IN THE HELL DID YOU GIVE THIS GSME 4.5/5?!?!?!??!?!!??
Are you being paid off too?
Based on what I read in your review… How in the absolute hell did you give this game 4.5 stars out of five......?!?!?!?!?!?
What, are they paying you off like they do most everyone else?
Tell tale has a bad habit of not making their games accessible to their audience unless they have a PC, or a console.... and that needs to stop… And you are hurting that caused by giving a game that has ridiculous problems, more credit than it deserves.... ass....
You do realize the score is only for the third episode, right?
Are the technical issues that bad? Why didn't this occur on their other games? Is a fix coming?
It's better than it was initially, though still not perfect, especially on weaker phones. Apparently they are trying to hire an iOS engineer, so hopefully future games will be better.
I initially thought I would not reply and avoid to feed the troll, but this is really upsetting. How can you reply to somebody legitimately asking for information on whether updates are *improving* things by saying they do? I haven't found a single player in a single forum to say anything similar. For me, after three consecutive updates, things certainly haven't changed a bit, and I have tried it with hope every-single-time. If anything, it appears that the updates are instrumentally coming up to hide previous negative reviews on the App Store.
This is not to suggest that Telltale developers are not trying to fix the game. It's just an acknowledgment that so far, two months after the game has been launched on iOS, things have not improved for most (if not every) player on any device.
And as comments pile up to address the biased nature of rating a game out of its *potential* rather than its *actual* experience, the obtuse way in which you pander on, rating every single chapter with top score after top score, is to me a testament to narrow mindedness bordering to immaturity. Hopefully Telltale will find a fix, and then - but only then - will your scores make any sense.
Let's see if you can understand this or whether my obtuse way of writing gets in the way of your comprehension: I'm rating a game on how it plays on my device, not on its potential. I don't happen to have a weaker device to test it out, so I can't know how it plays for others. For me, the first episode was pretty bad, the second quite a bit better, and the third episode played pretty much flawlessly. I'm reviewing based on my experience; I can't review based on what players in the forums experience.
Can you actually see the difference between what I just explained and what you're saying?
This is getting hilarious.
In your previous reply, YOU stated: "It's better than it was initially, though still not perfect, especially on weaker phones". ESPECIALLY ON WEAKER PHONES. Now, after I called you out, you reply to me by stating: "I don't happen to have a weaker device to test it out".
First, I seldom see a person implicitly admitting to lying in the post just previous to his last.
Second, in my previous reply to you I could not know (and neither could the person originally asking the question) that you DID NOT test the game out on weaker phones, because in the post I replied to, you HAD JUST IMPLICITLY SAID that you DID test it out on weaker phones.
Third, not only you inferred that you had tested it out ON WEAKER PHONES, but used an incredibly light euphemism ("still not perfect"). Third huge fail in a row, because trust me, on an iPad mini 4 (not exactly a weaker phone), despite CONSECUTIVE RESOLUTION DOWNGRADES by Telltale which are hugely degrading graphics quality, the game still takes about TWO MINUTES to load, and frame rates stay at about FIVE per second.
That's it. If you just had avoided lying in your first post, you would have spared yourself the embarrassment of a further flame in which you, sadly, are dead wrong, and gamers who paid full price like me will continue to call you out on outright falsities.
Go away.
Really wanted to play this game but on iPad Pro there's a blanket of black that hides most of the screen as if the shadows broke and 80% of the screen is engulfed in darkness. Ironically suitable for batman but not for a game.
I absolutely love everything about Batman, however I've experienced enough from Telltale to know the technical complaints are likely based upon very real issues. I'm staying away until this developer rectifies its problems and stops relying purely on the strength of the IP they're using.
Batman: TTS was one the worst TT game I've played (haven't played Walking Dead: Michone, Minecraft Story mode)
I really didn't like the story and the performance was terrible. I played it on PS4 and it had lots of problems with frame consistency. I could only imagine what it was like on iPad Air and last gen consoles.
Ironically the last episode was the best for me, in terms of performance. The only bug was in the asylum, one person's face was just eyes and mouth.
I'm happy I bought it in Black Friday sale and not full price. Will do the same for next Batman: TTS if I ever decide to get it which I probably will because of Joker and more Catwoman. I just hope they can optimize their game engine more.
I played this on the Xbox One and there were frame rate issues on there too.
Let's say even PS4 and Xbox One don't have enough power to run the game smoothly ( which they totally do), it performs terribly on high end PCs as well. I watched the first episode on PewDiePie and I know he has a great system, and it still had frame rate issues.