Sniper Strike for iPhone Had So Much Potential
By: Hillel Fuld
It does not happen very often that a mobile app manages to annoy me. Let me clarify that by saying that that is true at least about iPhone apps. Lord knows, there have been enough Android and Symbian apps that raised my blood pressure. Sniper Strike seemed like a pretty oool game to download. I mean, what kinda guy doesn’t like shooting, killing, and blood, right? How could you go wrong with such a game? That is what I thought until I tried it.
Let me start off with the good, then we will get to the fact that I was literally angry after trying to use this app for 20 minutes without success. The good news is the graphics are really amazing. The point of the game is to shoot and kill targets. There is a “Massacre” stage, a “Protect the Flag” stage and an “Arcade” stage, each one with their own type of target and goal. There is a basic tutorial in the app that is supposed to teach you how to use the app, but even that did not do its job properly.
Let’s talk about the tutorial a bit. It is made up of five screens, each with instructions on how to operate the app. The fonts of the tutorial are supposed to look like something out of 24 I guess, but they are extremely hard to read, which is an unnecessary annoyance if you ask me. Don’t worry, I am just getting started. Each screen in the tutorial says something along the lines of “Press THIS screen to…” What the heck is THIS screen? After trying to figure it out for a few minutes, I realized the “This” is one of the screens highlighted in a slightly more neon blue than the rest of them. I had to put on glasses to see the difference, and I do not wear glasses. I am not sure, but I think if you need to put effort into trying to understand an app’s tutorial, the developer did something wrong.
Once I thought I understood the tutorial, I attempted to play the game. Now, here is the thing, I am sure if I spent more time trying to decipher how this thing works, I would eventually figure it out. However, seeing as iPhone games are supposed to be fun and entertaining, I am pretty sure most people do not want to spend a half an hour trying to figure out how to use a game. Here is the problem. I tried the “Massacre” level, in which the goal is to kill everyone before the timer runs out (yes, I know, very educational). The thing is, even after reading the tutorial, I could not for the life of me figure out how to aim my gun. I kept doing what the tutorial said, and expected to see a square target around the people I was pointing at, but no such target ever appeared. I kept shooting at who I thought I was pointed at, and to no avail, my top score in this game remains 0.
The “Arcade” level did seem to work when it came to displaying that target, but even with that target, it’s as if the app was ignoring the direction in which I was shooting. The “Protect the Flag” level was the same story, no target displayed. Now, here is the thing, I am sure I am missing something, and I am also sure it would not take too long to figure it out, but should a user really have to spend that time figuring out how to use an app?
Here is what I did. I searched YouTube for a video on this app, and when I found it, the person displaying the app could not kill the targets either, although they eventually succeeded somehow. Here is the icing on the cake. I wanted to give the developers a chance to provide support and answer my questions, so I searched for the app in iTunes, and clicked the link the developer’s site, but the URL gave me a serious error. Both iTunes links were bad.
Sniper Strike is an app with a lot of potential. It has great graphics, and even greater sound effects. The thing is, right after I complete this review, I will be deleting this app from my iPod, since it did nothing but annoy me from the second I opened it.
I have to add that on many occasions, people have told me that I always blog about the best products, that the apps or products I review are always “the best”. To those people, I say, here is an example of a review of “the worst”. Sniper Strike with all its potential, is the worst app I have ever tried on the iPhone platform. I will give it one point for its graphics and another for its sound effects, but that is only because I was in a good mood this morning. Bottom line? Stay away!
Our Rating: 2/5
Developer: Donoma Games
