![]() In this environment the idea of 3D gaming and wearing the funky glasses at home seems like a lot of fun rather than being strange. These games are aimed more at families and groups as a fun activity to do together. But opening up the home 3D market to gaming makes a world of sense.Īpple’s target market for Apple TV games is obviously not diehard console gamers. Putting on 3D glasses at home seems weird, and you really can’t watch a 3D movie with more than a couple people, because in order to get the 3D effect you need to be front and center. There is no 3D home television set that I’ve seen that can come close to being as immersive as the big screen in a theater. iLounge Rating: B-.When you sit down to watch a movie on your couch it’s a whole different experience than being at the theater. In its current form, we’d call this worthy of only our limited recommendation, but as one of the most impressive titles ever to receive our B- rating, Bugdom 2 could easily merit a re-evaluation if its underlying control and save issues are fixed by the developer. On the other hand, by $3 game standards, there’s a lot to see and do here, and some players will be willing to slog through the game despite the controls. On one hand, the title’s controls are really off-enough to make the game less playable than it easily could be with a joypad-and the save system needs work. Blame this on Apple or Pangea, but it goes without saying that users shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of warnings and issues similarly, saving the game at any time rather than at the end of a long level should be a no-brainer on this platform.īugdom 2’s $3 asking price is interesting. ![]() ![]() The “user, fix it yourself” approach actually begins with the game’s introduction, which lets you know in a dialog box that big iPhone OS apps such as this one really benefit from a complete iPhone reboot. Even with this button, we found the character a pain to control, and objectives way more difficult to accomplish than they would have been with a joypad and a better-automated camera. The game requires you to use the accelerometer for movement, and apparently understanding that this isn’t a brilliant idea, places a “re-orient the device” button in the bottom left corner so that you can constantly try and adjust the controls to the angle you’re playing from. Once again, however, poor controls drag down what otherwise might be a fun experience. Clearly, the iPhone OS is capable of handling games comparable to the awesome Super Mario 64 in scope. Even if some of the characters, including yours, are on the ugly side-a fairly consistent issue with Pangea’s games, despite their strong 3-D engines-the sense of scale and the smoothness of the graphics here are great there’s also a real soundtrack, which is a little grating but gets points for ambitiousness. Small butterflies are accompanied by huge, roughly screen-height gnomes and woodland creatures, placing your character in perspective as an insect, and definitely differentiating Bugdom 2 from typical 3-D platform titles. You’ll feel like the levels are massive-perhaps a bit too massive and not landmarked enough, as it’s often hard to know where to go next-but the real surprise is in seeing differences in ground elevation, such as hills, valleys, walls and buildings, as well as variable character sizes. The sheer scope of Bugdom 2 is impressive by iPhone game standards. This could have been an ideal game for kids. Explore an area enough, for instance, and you’ll realize that you need a key to open a gate to move along to get the key, you’ll need to fetch a shell for a snail or something of the sort. He can jump, hover in the air with his wings, and pick up items, which he’s often called upon to do by creatures he meets in the levels-quests to keep the game progressing. Your character, a grasshopper, wanders throughout massive natural landscapes filled with plants, castle walls, and moving enemies. By comparison, Pangea Software’s new Bugdom 2 is a stunning example of what the iPhone OS hardware can offer aesthetically to 3-D action-platforming developers, and an equally disappointing example of how the device’s controls can utterly wreck an otherwise pleasant 3-D gaming experience.
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