Dropship

Dropship Posted in Simulation on 10 Dec 2008

Reviewed by Steve Litchfield

User’s rating: (9 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)  Loading ...

Editor’s rating:

Dropship raises an interesting question. Does a knockdown-gorgeous and intensely addictive game deserve a lower star rating because it’s too hard? Does the fact that 90% of players will be put off by the skill level needed mean that Dropship is any the less of a game? Veering between three and five stars, I’ve gone for a compromise rating of four for this rather splendid action game set in space.

The premise is that you have to rescue humans and energy pods (by flying up to them) on an alien geometric landscape, all the while avoiding energy bolts and guided missiles from the bad guys. You’ve got a force field (’Energy’) but once that runs out then you die. All pretty standard action fare and there’s both a free play and a campaign mode to get stuck into, but where Dropship differs from the norm is in its interface.

Making the most of the iPhone’s multi-touch screen, you direct your ship’s movement by dragging and rotating with your left thumb and you control the direction of your own energy weapons with the right thumb. As you might imagine, trying to coordinate both thumbs in doing different things takes a bit of practice, but persevere and you’ll soon be advancing through the 18 levels and scoring bonus points. Incidentally, there’s a level download system as well, so that the developers can extend gameplay with extra levels in the future.

So all well and good then, but in addition to the thumb coordination thing, you’ve got to remember that the movement control is affecting acceleration, not absolute position, and thus you’ve got to take into account momentum and semi-realistic 2D mechanics. Which makes things decidedly tricky – and it’s made harder by level design that’s downright fiendish in places – you’ll have to fly perfect levels in order to progress and not die a horrible flaming death.

One extra practical problem, that also affects Wolfenstein 3D, which shares a similar control system, is that because both your thumbs are on the glass capacitive touchscreen more or less all the time, they quickly get sweaty and sticky and this affects the precision of your movements. Dropship isn’t painful to play, but you’ll want to take a break between levels to let your thumbs dry out!

Not for casual gamers then, but Dropship will delight those who have got the time and patience to really put in some flying practice.