The lazy can buy credits using expensive in-app purchases, but the game design should be commended for making this an optional short cut rather than practical necessity. Credits, in turn, unlock and upgrade more features - better guns, stronger armour and the like. Chaining kills together and mixing up your weapons and abilities earns more credits than a run of duck-and-cover headshots. Thanks to the simplistic nature of the action, success is measured not only by survival but by style. Platform: iPad and iPhone (3GS and later, 3rd generation iPod Touch and later).As a polished shooting gallery built on the most basic inputs, it manages to tick both hardcore and casual boxes. Thankfully, each battle is a self-contained checkpoint, so replays aren't too onerous. If you have to start dealing with threats from all sides, it falls apart somewhat. As long as the action is in front of you, the system is great. That's provided you don't get too far ahead or let enemies flank you. It's simple but surprisingly effective, and the beefy presentation gives it a muscular kick. Biotic powers and your arsenal are assigned to pull-down menus at the top left and right corners of the screen. You then guide his shots with your right thumb. Enemies in weapon range can be tapped to target them, making Ezno pop out and start firing. Now, swiping left, right and forwards make him automatically roll to fresh cover, and it's through this mechanic that you move onward. Stand next to cover and he ducks into it. Virtual sticks control Ezno and the camera as he walks around, but when the action kicks off, things tighten up. What IronMonkey does so well is take the basics of a hardcore shooter and then boil them down to simple inputs that will work on a mobile, dressing them up with the sort of fancy pants graphics that gamers expect from a console release. Not long into the game, he realises this isn't a very nice way to make a living, and turns on his paymasters. You're playing as Randall Ezno, a Cerberus operative who captures aliens and brings them in for grisly experiments. They're the ones who brought Dead Space and Mirror's Edge to iOS devices, and now they've done the same for Mass Effect. One of the few developers to crack the hardcore touch-screen nut is Australia's IronMonkey Studio. They usually fail dismally, their square pegs jammed awkwardly halfway into a round hole, which in turn leads the aforementioned naysayers to nod sagely and pull 'told you so' faces. This in turn leads to a lot of wasted time and energy as developers try to cater to this audience by making 'proper games' for touch-screen devices. Everything over there can't possibly be a proper game, because proper games have complex controls you can press and feel, not just simple taps and swipes. "No buttons! No sticks! What devilry be this?" they cry, in Vincent Price voices. For a certain section of the gaming community, touch-screen games are a confusing and alarming thing.
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