NovaRift: Arena (iPhone) Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

Blast everything around you

Another blast em up but this time you can play against people online. I didn't play the original version and also haven't had a chance to try this out online. But apparently that's the selling point. Which is good, as for me anyway, the offline arcade mode wasn't really my cup of tea.

The controls were a little fiddly with a flight control circle in the bottom left of the screen. Up and down accelerate and brake, and left and right roate your ship. The more you go around the control circle on the edges, the faster you rotate. If that sounds confusing I'm sure you get what I mean.

Offline arcade mode just has waves of enemies coming at you. You have shields (shown by the green bar) and a primary and secondary weapon. The firing rate and recharge requirements of your primary weapon is shown by the green bar (beneath the red one). You can collect power ups as the game progresses.

This is really about it with offline mode. There are also asteroids floating about out there which you should try to avoid as hitting them depletes your energy. I think the online mode will be pretty cool, and like most online games, you can send messages to your opponents or even invite friends through OpenFeint.

The graphics are fairly small, but reasonable. There's a nice FMV intro to the game and the sound is a bit funky.

Overall if you like online shooters you should check this out. The offline arcade mode isn't enough to get excited about.