This iPhone app is about navigating a rocket through 83 screens of outer space by launching it slingshot style at an angle that allows it to a reach a blue teleport that transports the ship to the next level. Affecting your rocket’s flight is an increasingly challenging scattering of planets with varying gravitational pulls, lasers, asteroid belts, bumpers and other stuff scientists keep trying to insist they haven’t seen through the Hubble Space Telescope.
If you think you’re in for some Angry Birds-style fun just because they’re both puzzlers involving slingshots, think again. This game is much, much harder, and considerably less fun unless you’re a physics or engineering grad student. This is the opinion someone who loves Bridge Construction Set, so I’m not downgrading Rocketeer just because I suck at it.
The game opens with some nice hand-holding during opening levels that are easily navigated. The first obstacles encountered are planets, which like traffic light colors have increasingly strong abilities to stop you. Small green planets don’t have much pull and present little risk of fatal collisions, while large red spheres are appropriately Jupiterish in pull. After a dozen waves multiple planets start appearing with level titles like “The Warp Around” and “Spin To Win,” which is also when the problems begin.
Completing your daredevil slings sometimes requires extreme precision with the touch screen, but far too often I had my launch position shift when I lifted my finger from the touch screen. I can possibly rack this up as the unsteady hand of a novice, but I’ve also played enough games with seamless interfaces that this is one of the differences between a game that keeps me trying and one that doesn’t.
The next problem is perhaps the most serious for players of all skills. The game simply has you launching an infinite number of rockets until one reaches the target. You can launch as many as you want at once, so it’s possible just to tap madly everywhere on the touch screen seeking that magic pixel that will get you out of a seemingly impossible challenge.
It’s also unfortunate it takes so many levels to get to some of the really cool stuff like bumpers and teleporters that send your rocket to another port and have it exit in the opposite direction.
This definitely isn’t the worst video game to carry the Rocketeer title (that’d be the NES platform game based on the comic, which received Electronic Gaming Monthly’s Worst Movie-to-Game award in 1992), but there’s too many cheap or free physics App games to make this a keeper. I have no idea if the name association is inadvertent or intentional, but I’m guessing there’s a good chance it’ll get pulled and released under a new name when the lawyers at IDW Publishing find out, since the company is giving Cliff a revival. Call it a safe bet in a world where IHOP is suing a church and every business in New Orleans using “Who Dat” is getting cease-and-desist letters (maybe the programmer can take sanctuary in the mountains of Nepal, where McMomos and a rogue 7-Eleven are doing just fine).
By Mark Sabbatini
Rocketeer by Wired Developments
$0.99
Platform Reviewed: iPhone/iPod/iPad (Requires iPhone OS 3.2 or later)
Category: Puzzle
Languages Supported: English
Rating: 4+
File Size: 16.2 MB
