First look impressions and screenshots inside!

Earlier today I had the opportunity to sit down with Brain Akaka from Freeverse to check out a couple, (well really a few, but I can only talk about two), games they are bringing to iPhone in “the not too distant future.”

The first game they showed off was Top Gun, which is a very polished on rails airplane game for the iPhone. Even with the relatively early build we played, the game looked very solid. It also controlled very well. As you might guess, steering your plane is all done with moving the phone around. On the bottom left and right of the screen you have your fire button for your machine gun and you missiles respectively.

For those unfamiliar with what “on rails” is, it basically means that you do not have to determine the path to your destination, you can move around on the screen, but where your plane goes in determined by the game. All you have to do is shoot stuff and avoid enemy fire, the game will handle the rest.

So, as you have more then likely already figured out, the idea here is not get shot down, and shoot down other planes. Pretty straight forward stuff, but the thing that makes it a little bit different is the “danger zone.” It almost adds a kind of puzzle element to the game. Allow me to explain just how the danger zone works. When dog fighting with an enemy, if they get behind you and fire a missile, a part of the screen will pop up with the text “danger zone” and you want to stay out of that area or you will get shot the down. In the early parts of the game you may see one segment of the screen, (there are 9 segments in total) with a danger zone, but since I’m not that smart I decided to jump right in to the 10th and final level, and wow, there were points in there when only one segment of the screen wasn’t a danger zone. If you listen to out latest GDC Podcast, we had all had differing opinions on this mechanic. Personally, I loved it. I think it’s a very fresh take on dog fighting in planes.

One other thing to note is that this a side story to Top Gun, so it doesn’t run in line with movie directly, instead Maverick and Ice-Man are your teachers, showing you the ropes of what it’s like to be a Top Gun. Unfortunately, the voice actors were not licensed to be in the game, however, the Top Gun theme song is in there, and it’s as inspirational as ever.

The game is coming along nicely, and I look forward to getting a review copy in my hands to really see if I have the right stuff. (More importantly, to see if the game has the right stuff.)

The second game on the list was Flick NBA Basketball. If Freeverse has their way, this will be the first licensed NBA game to hit the iPhone. It’s super, super early so I don’t want to say too much about it. I will give you a little taste though, after all I can’t bring it up and leave you all high and dry.It’s similar to a lot of the arcade type basketball games on the iPhone, except with real NBA players, one per NBA team to be exact, on a real basket ball court instead of an arcade machine.

There are a bunch of different modes, including H.O.R.S.E, a three point shot challenge mode, a long distance shot mode, even the arcade mode that is in so many games and a couple others.

The game controls by swiping the screen to determine how much power is on the shot, but at the early stage I saw it in, it’s way to hard for me to speak on the quality of the controls. The same goes for visuals and sound, it’s just too early in the development cycle to state any kind of opinion on the game, other then that it seems fun, and it might be one to watch for. As we hear and see more from it, we will keep you guys posted.

Stay tuned later on for all the madness of tomorrows GDC events.

Time for screens:

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

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