- Format: iPhone (version reviewed), iPad
- Unleashed: Out Now
- Publisher: Epic Games
- Developer: ChAIR
- Players: 1
- Site: http://www.epicgames.com/infinityblade/
Infinity Blade has seen substantial success since its release just over a week ago, selling a reported 1.7 million in just four days. This was probably helped by the hype created by the free tech demo Epic Citadel released a month or two ago. They set the stage for what iPhones/Pads were capable of, giving the player a beautiful castle powered by Unreal Engine 3 to freely explore. Does Infinity Blade live up to what was promised?
The story is a little thin on the ground when you first start up. For whatever reason, your character has decided he wants to defeat the God King. Sadly, he dies fighting the God King’s bodyguard and then the story skips ahead 20 years to your character’s son looking for revenge. This then begins an endless cycle. Whether you achieve revenge or not you will always go to the next bloodline and face the God King again, with enemies getting stronger to match your increasing level and equipment.
To get the obvious out of the way: Infinity Blade is a very good looking game. It’s the best visuals on the iPhone/Pad for sure and runs smooth for the most part. In some ways it looks even better than Epic Citadel did, though it uses far more visual trickery. For one; you can’t free roam and must click certain sections of the screen to move into another area, and can only pan the camera around each area to search for hidden items.
The crux of Infinity Blade is in the sword fighting gameplay. There are a few side paths you can explore, but getting to the God King takes under 20 minutes. Clearly ChAIR were aiming to cut out the filler and just offer up sword duels in easy to handle chunks.
Using your trusty finger you can attack, parry, or press highlighted buttons on the screen to defend and dodge. The idea is to parry, block or dodge enough to get your opponent into a break state where you can then slash away without them being able to block.
The sword fighting is as intricate as you can get considering you are using a finger. To parry you can’t just slash at the time your opponent does – it needs to be in the direction that makes sense. You also can’t rely on blocking too much as your shield has a limited number of points that are reduced by each successful block within the battle. Thrown into the fighting mix are magic spells which require tracing of symbols on the screen, and a special move which basically gives you a free stun.
Were we to find fault in anything it would be small nit-picks. The buttons for dodging (at least on a phone screen) are very small and must be pressed exactly – if you slide onto or over them by mistake you will trigger a slash rather than a dodge and get smacked in the face.
The asking price for Infinity Blade is £3.59, which is fairly fair. A single playthrough will not take long, but it’s built in a way that encourages going back through, getting stronger each time. An update for it adding multiplayer, more enemies and areas to explore is in production (whether this is a free update is yet to be confirmed). If you fancy yourself as a finger fencer and like stunning portable graphics, you won’t go wrong with Infinity Blade.
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