One of the biggest things that have become a regular part of life over here at Pop-Culture Spectrum is mobile gaming. I’m grabbing my iPhone and playing things like Robot Unicorn, Whale Trail, Punch Quest, Middle Manager of Justice, Eyelord and even Angry Birds. What we haven’t done though is discuss these games and that stops NOW with the following.
The Game Bakers have made three awesome, intriguing, cute and fun games. These three games are not without their flaws, but as mobile games trying to give the feel of what mobile and touch is truly capable of they have surpassed their goals each time. With their first two games SQUIDS and SQUIDS: Wild West they combined RPG with pull physics to create something very unto itself and yet infinitely playable with a quest, bosses, story and lovable characters.
In their latest they seemed to go a new path, gameplay was the main focus here, although story and character still shine. The new game is COMBO CREW. Inspired by 80’s arcade games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage in which the longer you can hit without getting hit the higher your combo score goes up and the better points you they’ve delivered something just as fun as those games and yet equally as frustrating.
One of my biggest issues and problems with those old arcade smash em-ups was being fast enough to hit the counter while in the middle of a combo. The same issue exists in COMBO CREW. As my chosen character is unleashing a combo on an enemy I get warned that another enemy is about to attack but I’m either not fast enough OR the game is not fast enough to recognize my tap to stop the attack. Not always, but when it happens I get tempted to throw my phone across the room. I would never do that, because… it’s just a game. A good game that when you die and get a game over make you go “ARGHHH!” but just a game. No worries about this argh happening in public either. I’d almost be scared to play it in public with the furious finger swiping it takes.
The game has a co-op but being a solo gamer means I’ll never experience that, but the idea of it is pretty good.
In terms of replayability it has it in spades, as you’ll automatically get better with time, you’ll score higher and unlock more combos and additional characters.
There’s two modes as well, a “story” mode and an endless mode. Once unlocked endless can help you in story to get stronger, faster, better to get to the top of the tower.
In terms of developing something that really was made for the idea of touch, Game Bakers has succeeded again immensely and this is one of those games that if you have an iPhone, iPad and yes, even an Android. Of course if you don’t have one of those and only have a PC you’re out of luck!
Yet, you can still experience some Game Bakers with a PC version of SQUIDS.