Turning The Tides, The Minions Are Trying To Overthrow Their Leader
September 2, 2011
From the creators of Archetype comes a capricious first-person shooter that nearly everyone can enjoy. Appropriately titled, Minions is a game surrounding the story of loyal followers who decide to become the leaders.
Even though Archetype is a successful title with over 1.5 million online players, Villain, the game developer, feels their latest FPS will grab the attention of a broader crowd by having a less complex, more comical, and only single player gameplay. While the concept is simple, it can be just as intensely fun, challenging, and addicting as other FPS titles, but in a less serious manner.
Taking the role of a mad scientist creating unique inventions, you hope to climb to unbelievable influence and power. The plot seems sound until your mass army of minions, which you think will assist in this plan of global domination, make a strong attempt to mutiny and control the world without you. To make the situation worse, the minions have figured out how to quickly create more of themselves.
As things go awry, your focus must now be to eliminate the minions and take back the technology. Armed with an electro gun, you move about the maze-like environments to kill the adorable, disobedient creatures before they can kill you. Your former followers are equipped with sound wave and bird launching rifles, plus heavy duty hammers. Thankfully, you have the opportunity to acquire these weapons for your own use.
Controls are setup in a traditional dual-stick scheme, one for moving your character around and the other for aiming weapons. Tapping either virtual joystick will activate the weapon, but the automatic fire on target is enabled by default. In addition to your handheld weaponry, there is a stun grenade that can be activated with the top-left button. In the top-right is the weapon select button, if you've picked up something beyond the electro gun.
To properly complete a level, kill all of the minions and destroy every spawning station without perishing. Your health is auto-regenerative and the status is easily viewable across the top portion of the screen. As you earn medals, you get rewarded with ability points. These points can be assigned to increase speed, destructive power, and stamina between selecting levels.
The game consists of eight levels, which can be played on three different difficulty stages. The four weapons have varying degrees of strength, where the bird launcher and hammer are the most effective on both enemies and equipment. Available within the settings area, aim speed sensitivity can be adjusted, aim pitch can be inverted, automatic fire can be disabled, music can be disabled, vibrate can be disabled, and the continuous display of the joysticks can be disabled.
Minions is designed for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or later, and available in the App Store for $.99. Game Center achievements and leaderboards are available in iOS 4.1 or later.