Developed by Mobirate and published by Clickgamer, Gears of Gravity puts you in charge of Gravity in this “dynamic physics simulated maze” game.
The premise of the game is thus, control gravity by changing the orientation of the maze in an attempt to guide the ball safely to the teleport in order to proceed. But this is no walk in the park; you must avoid electrical currents, spikes and collect all the plasma orbs in order to win.
Obviously, any game that relies on the manipulation of the playing area is going to require precision controls if it wants to stand any chance of being well received by the gaming community. Fortunately, Gears of Gravity scores well here providing you ignore the accelerometer control option and stick with the button controls. It’s not that the accelerometer controls are particularly bad, I just never got the same sense of control with them and at times precision is the key to successfully completing a level.
Whilst we talk constantly about games having great graphics, this tends to be because the iDevice is showing us that “mobile” games don’t have to be clunky ugly looking things. And Gears of Gravity once again shows us what a beautiful app should look like. Oozing style from launch you know that once again the developers have paid a lot of attention to detail when making this, from the levels themselves to the animations between menus everything looks smooth and has a look that these images do not give justice too.
The sound effects are nice and fit the style of the game perfectly but, the in-game music was so quiet on my iPhone that I didn’t even know it had any until I saw the option to turn them off in the options menu. Now, this may not be the same on every device and may just be linked to my old iPhone 2G. But if the in the in-game music doesn’t appeal to you, it has the now familiar option of selecting your own playlist (providing you have os 3.0 or higher of course).
With 48 levels set over three difficulty settings (i.e. 16 levels in Easy, normal and Hard) there’s plenty of game time to be had, especially when you add in on-line leader boards to check your times against. A nice touch, which I would have missed if I’d not gone back to completed levels to get some screenshots, is that when replaying a level, you can race against your own time, with the old time showing and your new time changing colour from green to red if you get close to and pass your old time. In addition to this, when you pause the game, it zooms out allowing you to see the entire playing field.
If I had to find fault with this game it would purely be one of personal ability, I found some the supposedly “easy” levels surprisingly trying, but this is probably down to my ability as opposed to any real issue with the game. But, it’s the fact that you can’t skip a level if you get really stuck that stops this being Highly Recommended. For the more casual gamer this may certainly put them off if they did happen to come across a level that they couldn’t crack.
But beyond that, this is a great game, if you want something a little different than the usual maze game, be sure to check this out. Oh, and there’s a lite version too if you’re still not sure.
Current Status: Reommended
Reviewed at: v1.2
Reviewed on Firmware: 3.0.1
Download size: 4.2MB
Released on: 18 August 2009
Retails for: £0.59 / $0.99
Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G / iPhone 3GS (requires OS 2.2 or higher)
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