Time Recoil (iOS) Review

The plot can be followed easily because it's offered in bite sizes in the form of monologues from the director of the protagonist's company, and these don't drag on. However, just the tedium of going into a time portal to play a level that's visually identical to a previous one, only to return and talk to the director again...then doing it all over again, well, it's enough to make the least patient gamers stop playing within half an hour or so. The patient ones might give in after an hour or so.

When it comes to many mobile games, controls often add to the frustration, and it's no different here. While the mobile phone of yours truly certainly isn't the most powerful one on the market, it should be able to play this game quite well. Regardless, this is quite laggy. In what direction the player character looks is decided by what direction the virtual stick is pushed in, but the problem is that the stick also controls movement, so, there is no way to look in any direction without automatically walking around, which can alert the enemies quite easily in the small, confined areas.

This generally forces players to run around like headless chickens, which would be okay if this title was more forgiving when it comes to how quickly death ensues, and how absurdly accurate foes are. It's likely that no matter how fluidly you keep moving, the enemy will find a way to blast your face unless a time-slowing ability has already been acquired. Lastly, there is a tiny delay between thumb movements and the movement of the character's pointer or laser, which is just aggravating enough to ruin the more hectic levels.

Tactical thinking does indeed appear to be rewarded in the sense that it's good to find out where enemies are first, and what objects can be shot to serve as deadly shrapnel. On the other hand, enemies are often non visible, and will always move in the direction of the main character as soon as she's spotted. The only way to avoid this is to hide behind corners-then the enemies might leave you well enough alone. This problem is compounded by the fact that Time Recoil revolves around killing enemies quickly in sequence in order to rack up points to use on special abilities, and make no mistake, those abilities are sorely needed to spice up the otherwise unremarkable gameplay.

This concept here is simply "shoot the enemy,"and each of those can be killed in one shot. Then again, so is the player character. What's terrible about this isn't just that ammo is rather scarce and that not all enemies can be vanquished just by using the gun. No, it gets worse: the special abilities are really focused on fast-paced, hectic combo-ing. As has been said, it doesn't usually work with the level layouts,and the sheer amount of exploding and other dangerous content within the levels.What's sickening is that there are actually levels that force certain play styles, even going so far as saying "kill six enemies to use this ability and progress."

Even if it were only done as a tutorial for how to use a certain ability, it would still be obnoxious.Thus extends to the puzzles - a few of them require specific abilities to be used, but abilities can't be chosen, and, instead, a specific number of kills is rewarded with a specific ability. This means that if not enough enemies were killed in a combo, there's a good chance that a puzzle can't be resolved or avoided because the wrong ability is equipped.

Keep in mind that that's assuming the special ability hasn't already been used and the combo meter needs to be filled again. The consequence tends to be that the level needs to be restarted. It makes everything previously achieved feel like a hollow victory. A more positive aspect is that a special ability like running through walls can also trigger exploding objects close by. That usually doesn't harm the player character and does aid the big focus on combos.

As for the audio-visual bit, the OST is quite nice, but it does become grating fast due to its lack of variety within the tracks. They often just drone on, and while it might be intended to provide a way for the player to "get into the zone" , most tunes aren't exactly inspiring or catchy enough. In terms of looks, this is fine. There's plenty of contrast and colour, though the thick style of it occasionally makes enemies melt into the background. Perhaps the particle effects are also a bit overdone as well, as lag is an issue.