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New game - Radius - review?

genshi

genshi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
668
81
Land of Enchantment by way of Los Angeles
I posted this over at TouchArcade.com but no responses yet (not really that many people over there yet.)
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It's getting hard (and expensive) to keep up with all the new releases. Has anyone tried out Radius yet?

Here's a video from the developer:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=srCj4kQ91k4

I normally would just go ahead and get it, but I am trying to practice some self-control (since I've already spent $200 on apps these past couple of weeks and am going broke!)
 
Anyone get it?

Anyone tried it?

It looks to me like you spin the ball and tap on the targets. What happens if you miss a target or don't get one in time?
 
Surely said:
Anyone get it?

Anyone tried it?

It looks to me like you spin the ball and tap on the targets. What happens if you miss a target or don't get one in time?
Click to expand...

I couldn't resist, I bought it based on the review at TouchArcade.com. I'm actually really liking it. At first it seems simple but then it gets frenzied! If you don't tap on the enemies in time, your "sphere" will explode and it's game over! The more you destroy enemies the more points you get, so the goal is to rack up as many points. But there are all sorts of interesting hidden things that pop up as bonuses that I'm still trying to figure out (like an icon that spawns which, when tapped, freezes all enemies onscreen temporarily so you can get them quicker.)

It is a little glitchy (though not as bad for me as for others) and the developers have already submitted an update that is still pending. My one pet peeve is that there is no music (but they do have some cool sound effects) and for me, not just because I'm a composer, but music really enhances the emotion of a game, even if it is minimal music. That's why I just can't get into games like Cube Runner that has no music or effects at all, it just feels unfinished.

Luckily, I contacted Radius' developers with links to my stuff and they immediately wrote back saying they loved it... so there may be a collaboration in the works! ;) (nothing official yet)

All in all, a fun and definitely an original game that is very much an "iPhone" game. I predicted, in another thread a few months ago where people were complaining that the iPhone can't be a viable gaming platform without buttons and a pad, that this will push developers to develop new types of games (and even genres) that will redefine gaming in general, all thanks to the iPhone. And so far, with titles like Radius, Dizzy Bee and De Blob, that is exactly what is happening! :)
 
In-game music isn't always that big a deal for me. I generally like to listen to the music installed on my Touch while I play.
 
chrisb3 said:
In-game music isn't always that big a deal for me. I generally like to listen to the music installed on my Touch while I play.
Click to expand...

And that is true for a lot of people, but not for everyone. There's a reason they hire composers.

I have a friend who, when he plays World Of Warcraft, turns the sound off and puts on his favorite band at that moment, whether it's Tool, Nine Inch Nails, whatever, and as much as I like those bands I could never play the game like that. I love the music and sound that went into Warcraft, it sets the tone and the mood of what's happening on screen. Just like a movie, you wouldn't go to see The Dark Knight or something while listening to Daft Punk on your headphones. just takes away from all the work the Director and Composer put into creating the atmosphere of the film.

Same with games, I agree with Genshi. Games that don't have music or sound effects are just lazy development. They should have those things in place along with the option to turn it off if someone chooses to listen to their own music.

Hey Genshi, Hope you are able to do something with them. I just got the game and it's pretty cool, but it could do with some dark ambient, impending doom type of music or something. or something futuristic and electronic like the WipeOut series of games.

Man, now that I mention it, I wish WipeOut would come to the iPhone, but that won't happen unfortunately.
 
SlapMonkey said:
And that is true for a lot of people, but not for everyone. There's a reason they hire composers.

I have a friend who, when he plays World Of Warcraft, turns the sound off and puts on his favorite band at that moment, whether it's Tool, Nine Inch Nails, whatever, and as much as I like those bands I could never play the game like that. I love the music and sound that went into Warcraft, it sets the tone and the mood of what's happening on screen. Just like a movie, you wouldn't go to see The Dark Knight or something while listening to Daft Punk on your headphones. just takes away from all the work the Director and Composer put into creating the atmosphere of the film.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you to an extent, there are also some games where I think playing your own music of choice adds to the experience. For example, when playing Gears of War on my Xbox 360, there's no in-game music. So I sometimes like to stream music from my computer to the Xbox. Just some upbeat music that gets you into killing mode



In regards to the game in question here... judging by that youtube video, it looks horrible to me... I would be bored with it after a minute or 2 of playing. It's games like this that makes me really wish they would offer trials of the apps. While it may look cool from screenshots, the actual gameplay shows how horrible it actually is, and once you've bought it, that's money thrown away
 
elbirth said:
While I agree with you to an extent, there are also some games where I think playing your own music of choice adds to the experience. For example, when playing Gears of War on my Xbox 360, there's no in-game music. So I sometimes like to stream music from my computer to the Xbox. Just some upbeat music that gets you into killing mode
Click to expand...

That's why there should always be an option to turn off in-game music, if there is any, for those that want to play their own music. I have to admit, the one game I used to play with my own choice of music was Unreal Tournament way back when. I would put on Ministry or something.


elbirth said:
In regards to the game in question here... judging by that youtube video, it looks horrible to me... I would be bored with it after a minute or 2 of playing. It's games like this that makes me really wish they would offer trials of the apps. While it may look cool from screenshots, the actual gameplay shows how horrible it actually is, and once you've bought it, that's money thrown away
Click to expand...

That's what I thought at first when I saw the video too, but radius is one of those games that is much more fun once you get your hands on it. It seems really simple but when you hear the sound of the enemies spawning you start to panic and start spinning the globe around trying to get at them. At first it's only one or two that come up then all of a sudden on the other side of the globe theres like 7 or 10 of them expanding and about to explode! It does get intense.

And once they fix the smoothness of the game play it will be a whole lot better.
 
elbirth said:
In regards to the game in question here... judging by that youtube video, it looks horrible to me... I would be bored with it after a minute or 2 of playing. It's games like this that makes me really wish they would offer trials of the apps. While it may look cool from screenshots, the actual gameplay shows how horrible it actually is, and once you've bought it, that's money thrown away
Click to expand...

Yeah, there really should be trial versions of the apps. I've been very tentative to buy a number of apps because I'm just not 100% sure about them. Even if it's something like a 10-20 minute trial, that would be enough to figure out if it's a go or not.
 
Surely said:
Yeah, there really should be trial versions of the apps.
Click to expand...

Some developers are releasing "lite" versions of their apps which seem to be their way of releasing demos. Take DIzzyBeeFree, for example. That game comes with only 4 levels, but it gives you a chance to take it for a test drive before spending money on the full version.

As for Radius, I bought it and it's pretty fun. It doesn't seem like much at first, but it's easy to quickly jump into a game and it doesn't take too long to get through one, either. Perfect way to kill a few minutes.

There's a full review here: http://www.appstoreinfo.com/?p=315
 
jah921123 said:
Some developers are releasing "lite" versions of their apps which seem to be their way of releasing demos. Take DIzzyBeeFree, for example. That game comes with only 4 levels, but it gives you a chance to take it for a test drive before spending money on the full version.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but the comment you're responding to is over a week old, and lite versions of Apps such as DizzyBeeFree weren't out yet.

At this point, even a week after my OP, there still aren't very many lite versions of apps out there yet.
 
Surely said:
Thanks, but the comment you're responding to is over a week old, and lite versions of Apps such as DizzyBeeFree weren't out yet.

At this point, even a week after my OP, there still aren't very many lite versions of apps out there yet.
Click to expand...

Actually, there was a story posted on my site (http://www.appstoreinfo.com/?p=91) on July 22nd about lite apps starting to be released and functioning as demos. I just happened to notice your post yesterday and, though I realized the original post was about a week ago, still wanted to offer some insight. I apologize if that's bad forum etiquette.
 
I'm glad more people are picking up this game now. Hopefully there will be an update soon... with my music in the game! I composed a couple of tracks for the Radius developers but I might need to do a couple more before they actually update the game and put it up into the store (hopefully the developers will also put in an option to turn off the music in case you guys don't like what I have done...)

The goal was to create music that doesn't get in the way of the game, but heightens the mood and feel of what's going on; kind of atmospheric-electronic-bladerunnerish with modern glitchy beats. I guess we'll see how it goes together with the game play once it gets updated...

By the way, anyone keeping track of their scores? The lead developer emailed me the other day with his current high score of 9,294,530! Mine is like 5000. :(
 
After having Radius for not even 24 hours, I've decided that they should change the game's name.

They should call it Crashius.

I've only been able to open it once since the first time I played it. Maybe that's why it's on sale. I hope they make it more stable......
 
razorianfly said:
Crashes are frequent, but at £0.59, you can't really argue.

My review is now up. :cool:

R-Fly
Click to expand...

Nice review!

The latest Radius update (1.02 I believe) fixed the major crashes in the game. But if iPhone's latest firmware update 2.0.1 is causing the game to crash, that's a whole other thing. In my case I haven't experienced any crashes in Radius sicne their 1.02 update (and yes, I do have the 2.0.1 iPhone update as well.)

So those of you experiencing crashes may have a resource problem (i.e., just closing down a resource intensive app like Flipbook that took up lots of memory then opening up Radius and a crash occurred?) In these cases a restart of the iPhone fixes this problem; though we shouldn't have to do that each time before playing a new game. Apple (or the developers?) needs a better way of cleaning out the cache on close of an app.
 
Surely said:
After having Radius for not even 24 hours, I've decided that they should change the game's name.

They should call it Crashius.

I've only been able to open it once since the first time I played it. Maybe that's why it's on sale. I hope they make it more stable......
Click to expand...

Agreed. Two out of three times I try to open the game, it hangs at the startup screen, causing me to have to restart my phone. The game's got a lot of potential, it just has to get a bit more stable.
 
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