iPhone App of the Week: Infinity Blade 1.0

More new apps are being released every day for the iphone. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Epic Games made a huge splash in the iPhone world when they released Infinity Blade earlier this month. This role-playing adventure game has the most advanced 3-D graphics ever seen on a mobile device and was highly anticipated by gamers. Upon release, it immediately became the Top Grossing app in the App Store and held that position for about two weeks.

The technology behind this game is the Unreal Engine that was introduced 12 years ago. At the time it led the gaming industry with unprecedented levels of realism through advanced lighting effects, finely detailed textures, and realistic physics.

The Unreal Engine has been refined and used in dozens of games through the years and now Epic Games brings this technology to the iPhone.

As stunning as the visuals are in Infinity Blade, the gameplay itself is rather simple. Many gamers were disappointed to discover that you cannot move your character about freely. You can only touch certain areas of the game to indicate where you want to go and the game moves your character for you, albeit in a very cinematic and engaging way. Despite this limitation, the action in the game is quite engaging.

Your goal in this game is to penetrate the Dark Citadel and kill the tyrannical God King. To reach him you must defeat all of his champions and Titans. Once you engage an enemy in battle, your movements are no longer scripted. You can hack and slash freely with your sword by swiping with your finger on the screen. Your character will faithfully perform the sword attack just as you indicate with your finger. This freedom of movement is very intuitive and draws you into the illusion of being in the game.

Body movements are limited to dodging left and right, performed by touching arrow icons. You can further defend yourself by performing a block by touching the shield icon. Lastly, you can parry by slashing in the opposite direction from which your opponent attacks. These defensive moves take some time to master and have to be timed just right or you will take some devastating hits from your opponent.

Once you figure out the unique fighting patterns of each opponent, the game begins to be repetitive, especially because it’s so easy to die and you have to start over from the beginning after you are killed. For the average player this process of mastery would take many hours, if not days.

Even with such limitations in gameplay, Infinity Blade is still very enjoyable because of its rich graphics and satisfying controls. In its current state there is not much depth to the game, but Epic Games has very ambitious plans for improvements and new features such as multiplayer action, new weapons, new enemies, and more areas to explore.

Infinity Blade requires an iPhone 3GS or better and costs $5.99.

[etRating value=“ 4.5”]