Review: X-Fire
by Mchase
May 14, 2009
Overview:
Crossfire! You'll get caught up in the CROSSFIRE! Early 90's awesomeness has finally come to the iPhone and iPod Touch. What's better than shooting little metal BB's at plastic shapes and trying to get them to the other side before your opponent does? The answer: Not having to... use... real BB's...?? No, that's not true. But, at least you won't shoot your eye out.
Features:
The updated version of this game, X-Fire, is, in many ways, better than the original. I say that because with the digital version, you have four, count 'em, FOUR game modes - two single player and two multi. You can play Classic Mode in both single and multiplayer. The second multiplayer game is called Assault Mode, in which you try to shoot your opponents BB's before they get in your base (which is harder than it sounds). And finally, there is a challenge mode with 20 levels. Good luck getting past 14...
The Good:
By far, the best thing about this game is that you can play with a friend on a single device. When I saw that, I immediately ran out to my roommate to ask if he wanted to play - to which he said no. But, I decided to play both sides myself and it was still fun.
Shooting the BB's is easy and difficult at the same time. All you have to do is touch the screen, but being accurate is a whole other story. The devs have helped out out by marking gridlines on the board, but it's still difficult to get it exactly where you want it - which becomes a problem when you're playing the computer on it's highest difficulty level.
The Bad:
The music. There is basically only one track. No, scratch that. There are four bars of music that repeat over and over and over and over and over...you get it. Granted, they make slight changes to that one track in each of the four game modes, but still, they could have at least created an entire song that repeats. I mean, even "It's A Small World" has more than four bars...
The Verdict
All in all, this game was pretty good. For the price, which is at this moment $.99 (but will soon go up to $1.99), it's a pretty good game - an easy one to take out during just a minute of free time. So, that said, it's a good one to check out. It represents one of my favorite childhood games pretty well, and I thank the dev very much for keeping that memory alive with the greatness that is the iPhone.
