Overview
Kroll is a side-scrolling beat-em-up game that drops players into a world where magic is all but gone. You control a human warrior whose goal is to reach and kill the last source of magic, an imprisoned mage-lord named Kroll. To do this, your character must traverse an island packed with bad guys and somehow make it through alive. The game delivers on much of what is promised in the app store description, but there were plenty of areas I felt could have benefited from a lot more attention.
Features
Hands down, Kroll features some of the best 3D graphics I’ve seen on the iPhone to date. Combined with the game’s well-executed art direction, this makes for a visual experience that’s tough to match.
- Responsive Touch Controls
Kroll’s protagonist is controlled through six on-screen icons. I was worried that I’d end up having my fingers in the way of the action, but thanks to the placement (three on each side) this wasn’t an issue.
Even playing on the lowest difficulty, Normal, I died a few times and had to rethink my strategy. There are two difficulties above that - Hard and Insane - so players in the mood for a punishing are covered.
- Shake-to-Activate Special Moves
Though games that rely too much on “waggle” get a lot of flak from game critics, this mechanic worked fine for me. As you kill bad guys, a meter fills up. Once a third of the meter is full, just give the iPhone a shake and your character stomps the ground, clearing out enemies to either side.
Breakdown
The Good:
I cannot say enough good things about the graphics. Kroll’s developers are proclaiming loud and clear that good-looking 3D graphics are possible on the iPhone, and I am very excited to see future games coming out with visuals as good as these or better. The game’s three areas - a beach, a volcano, and a floating prison - are all rendered beautifully.
I was also impressed by the game’s bosses. Not necessarily the design of the boss itself, but the encounters themselves were fairly epic and cinematic in terms of the action and camera angles. These fights were handled through the use of quick-time events (QTE), which are sequences that use fast-paced button cues to test the player’s reflexes. In Kroll’s case, these are icons that flash on screen, requiring the player to tap them quick enough to move the action forward.
The Bad:
I had really high hopes for this game. In some ways, I was satisfied - the graphics and controls really were of high quality. That said, there were many problems I ran into during a half-hour playthrough that made me sigh out loud or remark “really?”
First off, there is no save feature for this game. None. You must reach the end of one of the three chapters before the game will remember any progress you’ve made. I was interrupted by phone calls no less than four times during the game, and each time I had to start over from the beginning of whatever chapter I was on. This was incredibly frustrating. On a multi-utility platform like the iPhone, smooth integration with the platform’s other features is a must.
Kroll tries to have an epic story line - the central conflict is outlined in a storybook mechanic in the first menu. However, the poor English with which it’s written detracts from the impact. Also, the story is not advanced at all through the players actions. All you get is the introduction in the beginning. Even when you beat the game, no closure is offered. In fact, it is not even acknowledged that you won! It seems like the story could have been a greater and more effective component had they hired someone who writes well in English to give the text a once-over.
There was also a distinct lack of variety in the gameplay itself. There are only three enemy types throughout the entire game (four including the boss character). These are re-skinned a few times to offer a different visual flavor, but they lack different moves or behaviors (see the images below: Beachy Scorpions vs. Volcano-ey Scorpions). In terms of what the character can do, there are two types of main attacks - weak and strong. The game doesn’t offer the ability to fuse these attacks into any sort of combo, which felt like it would have spiced things up a little. The action boils down to button mashing, moving forward, and repeating, which got fairly mindless after a while.
Finally, there are some moderate frame rate issues with the game. These are short-lived and don’t happen too often, but it was enough for me to notice and be annoyed. I am a strong supporter of the “release it when it’s done” mentality, and a game with frame rate issues still has some work to be done as far as I’m concerned.
Verdict
Kroll was fun. The core gameplay - one-dimensional hack’n’slash through some gorgeous 3D environments - was solid and kept me interested at least long enough to finish it. Unfortunately, Kroll was also very thin. I feel like with not too much more time and effort, the developers could have included a lot more variety within the enemy design and the fighting mechanics. It seems absurd to have not included a save mechanic. It seems wrong for a game with so much emphasis on awesome visuals to allow that to be sullied by frame rate problems. I hope the developers choose to update Kroll eventually and give it some more depth and usability.
