Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes lands on iOS
When it comes to RPG titles, Might & Magic, with its first title hitting consoles in 1986, is one of those mainstays that helped define the genre in video games. The most recent title in the series â€" 2009's Clash of Heroes by Capybara Games (which you might know from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP) turned the title into a turn-based puzzle game, with strategic colour matching.It's a style of gameplay that works particularly well on touch-based devices.Story-wise, it's about what you might expect from a fantasy RPG. There is evil threatening the world, and it's up to your band of intrepid heroes to lay the demon smackdown. As demons start to take over the world, they start popping up on the map; when you move to a position inhabited by demons, it's battle on.The battlefield is divided into a grid; your forces on the bottom half and enemy forces on the top. To attack, you have to line up at least three troops of the same colour vertically; to damage your enemy, your attack has to hit the back wall, so it pays to line them up where there are gaps in your enemy's troops. Other strategies involve lining up troops horizontally to create a wall, or skipping moves in order to build up to a stronger attack.It makes for an engrossing turn-based battle system supplemented by some lush, cartoon-style graphics. One caveat is that the screen size of the iPhone and iPod Touch is a little small for the battlefield, so it's hard to accurately tap your units. A pinch-zoom feature applies a fix, but then you can't see the entire field and will have to zoom back out again to access all your control buttons. It is, however, a minor irritation.As you move through the world, with regions inhabited by various races â€" elves, humans, wizards and necromancers â€" you build on your armies, level up and progress through the storylines, which are quite dramatic and engrossing, a nice supplement to the gameplay. However, if the story is getting in your way, there is a battle mode that allows you to skip the talking and get right to the fighting.And for the iOS version, a few new great features have been added: online multiplayer, where you can test your skills against other players; and cloud backup, so you never have to lose your game, even when switching devices.Capybara and Ubisoft have done a very capable job of the port, and it's a worthwhile addition to your RPG stable.Might & Magic Clash of Heroes is out now on the iTunes app store (AU$5.49).
Are you suffering from smartphone fatigue- (Poll)
Are you suffering from smartphone fatigue? (Poll)
There are days when it's so challenging to be a technology writer, I can only imagine what it's like to be a technology consumer.For example, and I'm just ballparking here, there are some 37,000 smartphones you can buy today. Whoops, hang on, just got a press release from HTC; make that 37,001. Oh, and here comes Android 4.3 -- wonder when I'll be able to load that on my S3. Hey, Best Buy took $50 off the iPhone last weekend. Must mean Apple's announcing a new model at next month's WWDC, right? Certainly we'll be getting iOS 7 before long. Of course, Samsung's new Galaxy S4 has the better camera anyway, so Apple better step it up.Exhausting, right? It can be a full-time job keeping up on all this stuff, though obviously we in the tech-journalism field are employed to do exactly that. Still, I can't help wondering if the average smartphone user feels similarly overwhelmed by all the options and updates and choices -- many of which seem to change almost daily.Truly, living the smartphone life can be daunting. 3G, 4G, LTE, GSM, HSPA+. NFC, GPS, PPI. Dual-core, quad-core. Five megapixels, eight megapixels. Android 4.1, Android 4.2. iOS 6, iOS 7. Q10, Z10. Google Play, iTunes, iCloud. Windows Phone 8 (or is it Windows 8 Phone?). BlackBerry (they're back!). iPhone 5, iPhone 5S. Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4. HTC One. Nexus 4.Smartphone fatigueDo you eat, sleep, and breathe smartphones, or is your head swimming from the onslaught of options?And I didn't even mention carriers. I'm with AT&T right now, but my two-year contract ends soon. Because I'm a cheapskate (not to mention The Cheapskate), there's no way I'm going to continue paying $80 monthly to keep using my iPhone 4S.That means I'm in the market for an MNVO, a mobile network virtual operator that will sell me service at a much lower rate -- and without a contract. But where do I take it? Walmart's Straight Talk? I've heard iffy things about their terms of service. There's Solavei, which offers a flat rate of $49 per month -- but its T-Mobile-powered 4G coverage doesn't yet reach my slice of suburbia.I could also sell my 4S on Ebay to cover a good chunk of the costs of a prepaid iPhone 5, which is now available from no-contract carriers including Boost Mobile, Cricket, Virgin Mobile, and, most recently, T-Mobile. Ah, but do they really afford the same level of coverage as AT&T?If I'm willing to switch to Android, I can save even more money by going to an upstart carrier like Republic Wireless, Ting, or Zact Mobile. But I won't be able to get the latest and greatest handsets, and I might miss out on some OS updates.Like I said: exhausting. Make no mistake, I love all this stuff. But sometimes the relentless onslaught of smartphone news and options fries my brain. Do you ever feel the same way?
There are days when it's so challenging to be a technology writer, I can only imagine what it's like to be a technology consumer.For example, and I'm just ballparking here, there are some 37,000 smartphones you can buy today. Whoops, hang on, just got a press release from HTC; make that 37,001. Oh, and here comes Android 4.3 -- wonder when I'll be able to load that on my S3. Hey, Best Buy took $50 off the iPhone last weekend. Must mean Apple's announcing a new model at next month's WWDC, right? Certainly we'll be getting iOS 7 before long. Of course, Samsung's new Galaxy S4 has the better camera anyway, so Apple better step it up.Exhausting, right? It can be a full-time job keeping up on all this stuff, though obviously we in the tech-journalism field are employed to do exactly that. Still, I can't help wondering if the average smartphone user feels similarly overwhelmed by all the options and updates and choices -- many of which seem to change almost daily.Truly, living the smartphone life can be daunting. 3G, 4G, LTE, GSM, HSPA+. NFC, GPS, PPI. Dual-core, quad-core. Five megapixels, eight megapixels. Android 4.1, Android 4.2. iOS 6, iOS 7. Q10, Z10. Google Play, iTunes, iCloud. Windows Phone 8 (or is it Windows 8 Phone?). BlackBerry (they're back!). iPhone 5, iPhone 5S. Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4. HTC One. Nexus 4.Smartphone fatigueDo you eat, sleep, and breathe smartphones, or is your head swimming from the onslaught of options?And I didn't even mention carriers. I'm with AT&T right now, but my two-year contract ends soon. Because I'm a cheapskate (not to mention The Cheapskate), there's no way I'm going to continue paying $80 monthly to keep using my iPhone 4S.That means I'm in the market for an MNVO, a mobile network virtual operator that will sell me service at a much lower rate -- and without a contract. But where do I take it? Walmart's Straight Talk? I've heard iffy things about their terms of service. There's Solavei, which offers a flat rate of $49 per month -- but its T-Mobile-powered 4G coverage doesn't yet reach my slice of suburbia.I could also sell my 4S on Ebay to cover a good chunk of the costs of a prepaid iPhone 5, which is now available from no-contract carriers including Boost Mobile, Cricket, Virgin Mobile, and, most recently, T-Mobile. Ah, but do they really afford the same level of coverage as AT&T?If I'm willing to switch to Android, I can save even more money by going to an upstart carrier like Republic Wireless, Ting, or Zact Mobile. But I won't be able to get the latest and greatest handsets, and I might miss out on some OS updates.Like I said: exhausting. Make no mistake, I love all this stuff. But sometimes the relentless onslaught of smartphone news and options fries my brain. Do you ever feel the same way?
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