Apps Weekly: Spirit + Chaos Ring

Vector graphics are usually a great fit for the iPhone, and the success of geoDefense and geoSwarm can attest to that. This game is no different.

Spirit
Marco Mazzoli
$0.99
Requires iPhone 3.0 or later

There's nothing terribly original about games today, and this one is not really an exception.

But who cares about originality when a game is just fun to play? In the App Store, there are a lot of games that are similar to each other, and while the first thing that I can remember as of now is Dr. Awesome, Spirit is pretty much that without the accelerometer control and the Address Book utilization.

Basically, you have to form a circle around these symbols to eliminate them, and with each elimination you get points. Yep, that about explains everything.

As you go through different waves, the enemies become varied and you'll see different kinds of behaviors for each symbol. There'll be a few that'll only require a circle around the head to disappear, there'll be symbols that'll follow you around, and there'll be symbols that'll stop and shoot laser beams across the screen. The game gets challenging, and frankly, I'm kinda crappy at it. When you don't have enough lives, you naturally get a Game Over screen.

You'll be asked to type in your name for the High Scores screen, but the problem is, there are no online leaderboards. Not to worry though, a future update will bring these leaderboards and OpenFeint integration.

Three lives isn't all the game has to offer though. Occasionally, there will be symbols that'll have a "life" dangled to it. If you manage to form a circle around it and make it disappear without harming the "life", you can get the life and extend your game.

There'll also be a few bonus stages that'll give you bonus points, but they're not all random circles; you'll have to be wary of symbols that'll decrease or increase your points.

For a buck, the game ain't bad. There's a bit of variety, and the sheer variety of symbols you'll have to face is pretty welcome. The background music isn't particularly memorable, but the vector graphics look nice, and the game has an effective "save state" mechanism which saves your game automatically when, for example, you get a call.

Rating: 7/10

Square Enix, creators of the Final Fantasy series, are to release an iPhone exclusive RPG called Chaos Ring. The specifics like story or gameplay are still left to speculation, but the sure thing is that Media Vision, the developers of the original PS Wild Arms RPG, is developing, and Square Enix will be publishing.

What can be immediately gathered is that it'll likely have several classes, but it may possibly have a love story as well. Who knows at this point, though?

The release window is also quite vague, stating only "2010". OK, so that'll probably implicate summer, or fall. Who knows?