A Gaming Diary
Posts tagged minigore
Minigore (iPhone)
Aug 3rd
Expert is the only way to play. It’s still not really fast enough, though. I long for a game mode that gets you into the thick of things even faster.
My high score is still one I got when I was playing Normal mode, but I’ve got reasonably close to it a few times and Expert is just more fun. This is a lovely little game that has stayed surprisingly fresh, given its simplicity, but I do hope the developer keeps adding new features.
Minigore (iPhone)
Jul 31st
After being positive, but maybe slightly lukewarm about this in yesterday’s post I went and surprised myself by playing it a lot. Sure, there’s not much to it, but as I’ve said elsewhere, this is not necessarily a bad thing. A small, simple game can be just what you need and Minigore’s one of the best games of that type that I’ve played on the iPhone.
It’s also a lot better now I’ve turned Expert mode on. It doesn’t change any game mechanics to make things harder, it simply gets the game going more quickly. No longer do you spend the first couple of minutes hunting out small enemies – it gives you more enemies to shoot at the beginning of the game and introduces new enemy types faster. It’s not overwhelming, it’s not some sort of hardcore mode for the twitch-gods of gaming, it just gets you to the good stuff faster. Try it.
Minigore (iPhone)
Jul 30th
The Touch Arcade forums are not my favourite place on the web. I’ve not found anywhere else with so much chat about iPhone games and there are some good posters, but there’s an awful lot of static in between the good stuff. Recently, an awful lot of that static has been about Minigore, with the anticipation thread especially being nothing more than a churning mass of adolescent hype. A lot of it’s been at least semi-ironic, but there’s no doubt that a lot of people have been hyped up to the eyeballs for the release of this game.
Which, of course, has made me very curious about it. That’s the thing about hype – it works. Oh, in the long term it can backfire, but for getting sales on the day of release there’s nothing like it. Even people, like me, who weren’t caught up in storm have at least heard the thunder claps a few miles down the road.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I bought Minigore because of the hype. And because it was only 59p. And because it’s absolutely bloody gorgeous. Take a look.
It’s not much of an action shot, because there’s no time to take a picture when stuff’s happening, but you should at least be able to tell that it’s a good-looking little game. It’s a simple twin-stick shooter, with a small level and a few different sizes of enemy, with the bigger ones splitting into smaller ones when you shoot them. There’s not very much to it, but what you get it is polished, fast and fun. Think Zombies & Me for a similar amount of game and polish.
It also uses the OpenFeint system for leaderboards. This is good, because it means there actually are leaderboards, but it’s got the usual problem of not showing your position on them. (It’s possible I’ve missed something every time I’ve looked at a Feint-based leaderboard, but I have my doubts.)
The developer is promising many updates in the future, including a co-op mode – though unfortunately that won’t be online. For now, we’ve just got one small level, two guns and a great power-up that turns you into a beast and lets you kill everything you touch for a few satisfying seconds.
So, it’s not the best iPhone game ever, but it is well worth checking out as long as you’re only expecting an unpretentious little shooter. It has to be said, though, that Isotope is the same price and is a much better twin-stick shooter with a lot more going on.
