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Talk about a game in my proverbial wheelhouse. This thing scrolls from the left to the right,
it’s based entirely on jumping and it has a caped protagonist evidently named by Dr.
Wily. Are you kidding me? Sign me up for Aeroman.
But as they say, the devil is in the details...or in this case, the controls.
Why won’t you jump, Aeroman? Jump! Are you too good to jump?
Released to the App Store last month, Aeroman is basically about speed runs. It’s a kind
of on-rails platformer in which a superhero named Aeroman sets off to eliminate a worldwide
infestation of green blobs. I don’t even know what you’d call that...the Green Plague,
I guess. One thing you certainly wouldn’t call it is an easy game to play.
The Green Pain in the ****.
The kid runs on his own like a big boy, so the only thing you have to do is make Aeroman
jump. You do that, unfortunately, by swiping your finger across the screen, which is every
bit as accurate and reliable as controlling a game without any visible gauge or physical
feedback sounds.
The distance of Aeroman’s jumps are determined...by the angle and speed of your swipes. The biggest
problem with that is that you don’t have anything to gauge...the angle and speed of
your swipes. There’s no onscreen feedback or information on your touches, so you’re
essentially swiping blind.
When it comes to how you should move your finger, you just have to know.
And maybe that would be fine if the levels weren’t such pains in the ****. They’re
a constant string of spikes, pits, explosives and countless other impediments, and one mistake
means you get to start over again. For example, this is me dying...a lot.
In the **** tutorial.
Normally, I’d call that awesome, old-school, torturous level design. But when the controls
aren’t precise enough to meet the demands of the levels in which they’re applied,
that’s not old-school. That’s just ridiculous.
The objective is to get to the end of level in time to grab the blob. So again, this is
basically just speed running—get through the level as fast as possible. And I like
the concept a lot. In fact, I wanted to love this game. But after a few dozen deaths in
the tutorial stage, my desire to love was doused by the cold waters of disappointment.
Disappointment with myself, disappointment with my finger and disappointment with Aeroman
for the iPhone.