Sports Games

Dark tunnels, incessant beeping, slobbering aliens coming out from the walls, a flamethrower as the only lifeline. It would seem a sequence of Aliens - The Final, or one of the many nightmare situations of Alien vs. Predator (Sierra shooter, not the movie by Paul WAS Anderson), but in hindsight are all peeking in NEX, one of the first team-based shooter available for iPhone and iPod touch that goes back to settings, iconography and storytelling in its horror and science fiction masterpiece by James Cameron.

In fact, we control a team of NEX typical space marine who have the thankless task of wiping out a colony of aliens repulsive from a space station, there is no real plot as well as our alter egos (rose to command a maximum of three) are people without a history and a past.

The sense of claustrophobia is everything and the same goes for the feeling of encirclement and imminent danger, because the aliens are much faster than us and groped a flight in front of their attacks is almost impossible. Star Byte has perfectly nailed short boundary elements that every shooter should have horror fiction (and that were missed in part in Doom Resurrection), although after a few minutes of play we see how the development team has not put the same attention in the control system.

NEX offers two approaches to movement, the first partially or totally centered accelerometer (you must activate the menu options), the second given to the traditional directional arrows placed at the bottom left of the display. The first option, lacking a control for the sensitivity of the accelerometer, it is very uncomfortable and every movement of our device (even involuntary) is more likely to change direction even if we do not want to do it.

The best approach remains one of the arrows, but the directions are so close together that the only way to effectively control our seas is at the center with your thumb touching and slightly move the tip in the desired direction. After a while, 'and you get used to being constantly "trapped" in the tunnels and corridors greatly helps in the movement, but in accuracy this system leaves much to be desired, and despite a target driven almost would have preferred by far a classic virtual analog stick or even two, as in the case of Prey Invasion.

The icon to fire is not the most comfortable (too small and too far to the right), while the wheel "zoom in" to access the options or to exit the game did not have a problem. Luckily the little map in the upper left, where the red dots indicate the position of the moving aliens, can be maximized by multi-touch as we would a page in Safari, with the entire team to be controlled; this choice has proven to nothing short of essential.

At the end of the most intriguing and curious to NEX is his concept to the team, in the sense that from a certain point (just from the fourth level) we operate a few mates and we can switch between them simply by touching the 'icon. Everything is dealt with in a very simple and basic but not inconsiderable, of course, the fact that our comrades are identical to us and that there are different classes with which no small alternating limits the variety of conflicts, not to mention that their behavior once received orders (follow, patrolling, advance) leaves a little 'intelligence and readiness to be desired, but for a title that tries for the first time such a cooperative approach on the iPhone could not expect something similar to the far more realistic and complete similar shooter for PC and consoles. In any case the presence of companions enter the tactical game play a substrate to be reckoned with, without which NEX might really become a shooter and have seen very repetitive. The enemy aliens are almost always the same, the location is too similar to each other and the first hour of the game runs rather slowly and with no big surprises, at least until the arrival of companions to manage.

If nothing else the difficulty even at the level less give quite a hard time challenging even for experienced players, the med kit are few, alien attacks follow one another continuously and the above-mentioned differences between our and their speed does not allow for defensive tactics. The result is an increasingly frenetic game play (although a little 'one-way), where, however, almost essential elements are missing in the genre as a system of character growth, upgrade weapons and bonuses to collect and "spend" between one level and more. Sorry also do not find an option for multiplayer via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and graphically better than we have seen, especially in design and attention to detail of the aliens. NEX is not a short title of the foreground may have seemed like the launch of the first trailer, but it remains an important step in the genre and the concept of team is, however, revealed interesting.