Going 10 Rounds with Eliminate Pro
For the uninitiated Eliminate Pro is a new free to play iPhone FPS from the makes of Topple and Rolando. The game is a revolution of sorts by letting players fight it out in online arenas for free for a certain period of time before before having to recharge your “energy cells” thanks to the itunes store. This pay-to-play idea is pretty unparalleled on the iPhone but if there is one genre that it lends itself well to, its the FPS. The past few days i put Eliminate Pro to the test seeing if the iPhone was possible of matching the thrills of console shooters like Call Of Duty, Halo or older titles like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.
The first thing you should know about ngmoco, the creators of Eliminate Pro is that they are not new to the iPhone gaming scene and their previous two titles have been revered as some of the best gaming the platform has to offer. However Rolando and Topple were relatively tame titles by comparison, hardly pushing the hardware to its fullest. But where these games really excelled was in being fun portable time wasters. Eliminate Pro works in a similar way by offering up 3 minute deathmatch scenarios that are perfectly suited to iPhone using situations.
My first experience of the game asked me to log in to the Plus+ network (essesntially an gamertag for ngmoco and other iPhone games). This where my different achievements will be tracked such as kill counts and first place finishes. The intro movie showed a clear move away from previous titles into more hardcore territories. The subtle humour and nice art style grabbed my attention and helped me learn the controls fairly quickly. After a quick tutorial on how credits workand the possibility for customisation I headed for the game lobby. However there were zero players online at the time so I went for the free practice mode to get my thumbs in gear. Eliminate Pro works on the oft-used dual analogue style of play favoured on control pads. I have always found the transition to touchscreen pretty bad and I am sad to say Eliminate Pro is no exception. After a few rounds offline I took it back online and got matched up with some annonymous pranksters who were intent on not letting me get a kill. After a hugely dissapointing first round I managed to get 2nd place in the second round by managing to achieve a whopping 3 kills. 2 rounds later and my energy was dead…
Eliminate Pro is deifinately a game to get excited by. It has its flaws (the controls being almost unusable) but for what it lacks it makes up for in addictive free gameplay and a variety of levels. The visuals and audio are crisp and clear and you feel more like you are playing a PSP than an iPhone. I believe the pay-to-play scheme that ngmoco have developed here will pay off as it is just so darn addictive and hopefully Apple releases some sort of gaming attatchment for the iPhone and this game will be much more playable until then have fun trying to wrap your thumbs arounds this one.
