Hot on the heels of the critically acclaimed Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, Gameloft are at it again with their latest offering; Modern Combat: Sandstorm.<\/p>\n
Unlike Gangstar, this is a hardcore First Person Shooter along the veins of Call of Duty and the like. Now, I feel that I need to stress at this point that I do not tend to play these types of game (mainly because I am not very good at them). I tend to prefer my shooters in the third person, and with less sneaking about. But, that said, let\u2019s take a look and see whats what.<\/p>\n
Like all Gameloft games upon loading you\u2019re greeted with a graphically amazing opening sequence, which unfortunately cannot be turned off, but this is a minor niggle worthy of no further comment. In this case you see your squad arriving at an undisclosed location in the middle east, at which a point a grenade lands right in front of you and everything fades to white. Now it\u2019s time to play, with three difficulty settings and a variety of control options (though the default should serve your needs perfectly) this should appeal to newcomers and veterans alike. Myself, Easy mode was the only way forward.<\/p>\n
The first mission is the traditional training level to get you used to the game controls. One nice touch which is quickly noticed is how the start of each mission comes with a mission briefing, complete with voiceover, and whilst this plays out the actual level is loading in the background, making it feel as if the game has almost no loading time, even on my old 2G iPhone.<\/p>\n
Upon starting the training level you\u2019ll quickly realise that those amazing graphics from the intro movie are almost matched during the actual gameplay, from my time playing I saw beautifully rendered environments and a fluid framerate which didn\u2019t stutter or freeze once. This once again goes to show how much attention Gameloft are putting into each new title.<\/p>\n
Once the training is complete and you move into the actual missions, you\u2019ll find that the polish given to this game isn\u2019t just about fancy graphics, with intelligent AI that responds to your actions, taking cover and advancing when you take cover and good voice over acting throughout. Even with the auto aim when you\u2019re close to a target (which, incidentally, can be turned off) you\u2019ll quickly realise that this isn\u2019t just a point and click killing spree, you really will need to think about strategy if you want to advance in this game. Like a lot of these first person shooters there is no health bar to speak off, if you get hurt (shown by a red haze around the screen) you simply need to take cover to regain your health. <\/p>\n
At present, Sandstorm comes with 10 levels. The length of time it takes to complete each level will inevitable vary depending on your proficiency in this game genre. Each level offers various checkpoints along the way so if you die (and I did, lots) you don\u2019t lose too much progress. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span>The game also offers a variety of weapons from assault rifles, sub machine guns, flash grenades and even a heavy mounted machine gun on a 4×4. Gameloft say that the unique levelling system will gradually unlock these weapons, along with the ability to use munitions dropped by the enemy.<\/p>\n Gameloft have promised a future, free, update that will bring online multiplayer. Exactly how this will play out I do not know, but if it gets even half of the online gameplay offered by some fps games on the home consoles, this could certainly become the leader in this genre.<\/p>\n If I had to find fault with this game (and indeed other games by Gameloft) it is that the springboard icon seems to be lacking the graphical quality of the game itself (something that Gangstar also suffered from). Whilst this is not a massive fault, it is something that I feel Gameloft should bear in mind, why adorn such a beautiful game with such a mediocre springboard icon?<\/p>\n But the icon aside, overall, Sandstorm is an amazing technical accomplishment and an highly enjoyable game to play. Once again Gameloft have showed the way forward, not only in how first person shooters should perform, but how well all games should \/ could look graphically. Even myself, who, as previously stated is not a big fan of this type of game, cannot help but be amazed with this, and if you are even slightly interested in first person shooter games, you can\u2019t afford to have this missing from your iDevice.<\/p>\n Current Status:<\/strong> Highly Recommended<\/strong><\/span> Hot on the heels of the critically acclaimed Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, Gameloft are at it again with their latest offering; Modern Combat: Sandstorm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16,17],"tags":[1871,284,3501,346,1870,1869],"class_list":["post-12034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-app-store","category-iphone","category-ipod","tag-first-person-shooter","tag-gameloft","tag-iphone","tag-ipod-touch","tag-modern-combat","tag-modern-combat-operation-sandstorm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12034"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12063,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034\/revisions\/12063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nReviewed at:<\/strong> v1.0.7
\nReviewed on Firmware:<\/strong> 3.0.1<\/em>
\nDownload size:<\/strong> 185MB
\nReleased on:<\/strong> 27 August 2009
\nRetails for:<\/strong> \u00c2\u00a33.99 \/ $6.99
\nCompatible with:<\/strong> iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 \/ iPhone Classic \/ iPhone 3G \/ iPhone 3GS (Requires OS 2.2.1 or later)
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"