Format: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: The Game Bakers
I have always been a fighting game fan. Be it side scrolling beat em up or one on one fighter. So when a new game that has things from these genres is released I am already very interested. But when the developer actually makes a point to mention that they are inspired by three of my all time favourite games in Streets of Rage, Street Fighter and Final Fight. Then I am really excited about the game.
This is a great looking game and out of the three games I mentioned before I would say that from an art style this game to me is more like Final Fight than it is Street Fighter or Streets of Rage. And I am not saying that as a bad thing, but if I had to pick a classic game that the art style reminded me of then it would have to be Final Fight. The game has a great selection of levels and the really cool thing is that each level has its very own style which I thought was really cool and did stop things from always looking the same.
The best thing about this game for me is the game play. Now before I played this I had heard that The Game Bakers had reinvented the scrolling beat em up genre and gone was the on screen joystick. I will admit that I was a little concerned when I heard that, but I must admit that this game plays so well.
All of your attacks are done through swipes on the screen. There is no need to walk on over to the guy you want to put a beating on. Just swipe over him and your guy will make his move. What makes this so amazing is that depending on how you swipe depends on what you do. A swipe does your basic attack where if you swipe and keep your finger on the screen you do a charge attack. The real depth though comes from the two finger swipes. You can do these in four direction and unleash all kinds of hell on the bad guys.
You see as the name suggests this is a game that is all about getting high combos. And all of the attacks are designed to keep your combo meter getting higher and higher. Seriously I thought that the God of War games allowed for insane high combo’s, but that is nothing compared to what Combo Crew has in store. Things never get old either as you are always wanting to unlock new moves of which there are around 80!
The main aspect of the game is its single player. And this is real single player as well there is no hassling you to add friends from Facebook or anything like that. This is a good old school style game that is all about you vs the enemy. You need to fight your way through each of the seven levels each of which is made up of multiple levels in themselves. You fight your way through until you face a boss at the end of each one. This mode was really fun and quite the challenge, but there is also some great replay value and I have found myself playing through it on a few occasions now.
As well as this there is an endless battle type mode. This sees you just go on and on against wave after wave of enemies to see how far you can get. There is a social part to the game here in that a buddy of yours can come in if you die and revive you which in a way is cool. But for me a mode like this should just be one life all or nothing.
This is the best out of all the new wave side scrolling beat em ups on the iOS. While at heart I will always prefer a joystick and buttons. So far this is the only game that has made me not hate forced swipe controls. This is a great old school style game with a fantastic modern twist and honestly at just a couple of bucks this is an absolute steal.