Review: Max Adventure - Is It True To Its Name?
by Staff Writer
December 15, 2010
Overview
When aliens invade the Earth, and all parents are taken, who you gonna call, Max the little neighborhood kid. Armed with a colander on his head, and a ray gun an alien left behind Max is ready to save the world one neighborhood at a time. The newest dual stuck shooter to enter that App Store is loaded with aliens that come at you from pods that attack you in maze like levels.
Features
The heart of the game is the story mode where you need to save other kids, and get them back to our treehouse. A survival mode is also included for endless action, and there is an upgrade store to improve your abilities and weaponry after earning coins in game. Game Center is included for online high scores and achievements plus the game is universal for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad as well as retina display.The Good
Max Adventure lives up to it's name giving you the maximum adventure experience thus far in the App Store. The game is unique which is odd to say as it's another dual stick shooter, but it's completely different than anything else for iOS. The major difference is the storyline which offers hours of fun, and it's a true adventure game that just happens to use dual stick controls rather than a simple game shoehorning a story in to basically a survival shooter.
The entire theme and style will have you hooked from the very beginning with an engaging and humorous story that will appeal to all ages. The game really makes the dual stick shooter have more mass appeal with the cartoonish graphics compared to the blood and gore of many others. The level design is phenomenal offering relatively expansive environments that are like mazes to travel through.
There isn't one direct path through a level, and in most you'll traverse the entire area picking up kids and collecting keys along the way. There are blocked off portions, and you need to find the key before advancing with slight puzzle elements in the midst of the action. Every single level in the story offers a different design, and there are various objectives as well including collecting kids, guiding kids, battling big alien pods, and boss battles.
You will travel from the neighborhood to the farm, and back between them a couple times until moving on to the mother ship to finally beat back the alien horde. As you're moving along there is almost a constant stream of new pods to battle. The pods are quite a different challenge as the aliens will keep feeding out of them until you destroy the pod.
The pacing of the game is outstanding with the speed of you, the enemies, and the shooting offering a great balance of fun and challenge. There is a well made difficulty curve as well so there are more and tougher enemies, but you’re accurately prepared because of your previous play. The included soundtrack is phenomenal to listen to which fits the action so well with some variability between locations.
There is great retina quality cartoon artwork in the game that is packed with charm. In every level there are multiple destructible elements including cars, signs, and fire hydrants with some leaving power-ups. The power-ups include new radar, more firepower, shrink ray, freeze ray, and more plus you can upgrade your abilities with the money you earn in game.
If the multiple hour long story wasn't enough there is also a survival mode which is tons of fun. The survival mode plays very similarly to Minigore based on the size of the level, and the speed of the game.
