UPDATE: May 19th, 2011
Eight months in the teasing, Infinity Blade's multiplayer update is finally here. But it didn't arrive alone: along with it comes a survival mode and a slew of new gear.
The most important update here is multiplayer mode, in which you can challenge a Game Center friend or a random online opponent to seven rounds of one-on-one sparring. When you start a match, you're randomly assigned to be either the knight or the titan. The knight is the hero from the single-player campaign, so if you've played the game before, you know how he controls.
Controlling a titan, on the other hand, is new. As a titan, you can do a series of fast, medium, or slow attacks, but the number of attacks you can do in a row is limited by your stamina gauge. If you find yourself being slashed to shreds by the knight, skulls fly out of the middle of the screen, and you need to tap them to regain your strength.
Whether you're a knight or a titan, you both start out fairly weak. Between rounds, you can upgrade your character using a streamlined version of the in-game store. Knights can equip different gear, and titans can turn themselves into different kinds of titans. This gives players a much appreciated feeling of progression.
The other new mode, Survival mode, is fun but fairly basic. Here, you get a single health meter to fight through as many computer-controlled titans as you can. Again, no stats from your single-player character are carried over, but you can upgrade your gear between rounds.
Taken together, these impressive new modes add loads of value to an already incredible game. If you haven't picked it up yet, do so quickly, because they've also discounted the game to $2.99 for a limited time.
UPDATE: March 7th, 2011
Infinity Blade recently received a massive update called "The Deathless Kings", and for any hoarders out there, a lot of new gear has been added to the game. Most of it falls on the costly end of the spectrum, but the items' stats are high enough to make them worthwhile purchases. Also, a NewGame+ mode has been added once you reach the game's new ending. This mode unlocks even more items in the game's store, plus lets you re-master any item you've already mastered.
The new ending involves finding a new underground location, the Dungeon, and reaching it with the Infinity Blade in your inventory. You'll then open up three doorways with imposing mini-bosses, the Deathless, before facing a new top boss. As with the God King, if you lose in this last encounter, you'll have to restart from the beginning of the castle.
The new ending doesn't make a whole lot of sense story-wise, but it does offer some more plot for those who finished Infinity Blade's main storyline months ago. The new bosses are huge and satisfying to destroy, and they drop some epic loot.
We should also note that we've experienced some minor app instability since downloading the update. However, whenever re re-load the game after a crash, it brings us back where we left off.
Infinity Blade continues to be one of the best-looking and most replayable action games on the App Store. This new content pack is especially designed to lengthen the high-end gameplay, so be sure to check it out if you want even more great sword battles.
Infinity Blade is not a role-playing game. Role-playing games generally have deep storylines, large casts of characters, and game worlds you can explore at your leisure. Infinity Blade has none of those things. Instead, it has some of the most visceral action we've experience on the platform, a well-tuned equipment system, and a gorgeous and immersive atmosphere. There's nothing else quite like it on the App Store.
Your hero in Infinity Blade is part of a bloodline that has sworn to take down the God King, a powerful, near-immortal creature that despises humankind. Your job is to make your way through his castle, sword-fighting his minions one by one on your way to the throne room. The enemies come in all shapes and sizes, from human swordsmen to colossal mechanical giants. As you take these enemies down, you attain better equipment and gain levels, all in preparation for your fight with the God King.
When you arrive in the throne room and challenge the overlord, you'll find him to be much quicker and more powerful than any of his cohort. When he kills you-- and he will kill you-- the game flashes forward several years and starts over, only this time you play as your hero's son. The son retains all of the experience and equipment that you earned as his father, but the monsters keep pace, leveling up and using new attacks as you progress. This cycle continues until one generation of your hero’s bloodline finally defeats the God King.
A big enemy calls for a big sword.
It would be better to call Infinity Blade an action game with RPG elements. But it's not a traditional action game, either, because you can only walk to certain spots in the game world. These spots are indicated by glowing blue circles, and they lead you on a mostly linear path to the throne room. When you tap a circle, you see a cut scene of your character walking to that location. Once you reach it, you can move the camera to look around, but your feet are rooted to that spot until you tap another blue circle to move on. Admittedly, this sounds like it would sap the fun right out of the game; but it doesn't, largely because the sword fights provide all the action you could ever want.
There's no way to avoid fighting the God King's minions: They block your path and won't budge until one of you slaughters the other. When you engage in a fight, the camera swoops in cinematically and finds a view that both looks great and gives you a perfect angle on the action. Because of many of the monsters' sheer size, we were often reminded during the fights of PlayStation 2's Shadow of the Colossus.
Another game it's like is Punch-Out. Generally when facing off against an opponent, you wait for him to attack, then dodge, parry, or block it, and look for an opening in his defenses. When you see one, you swipe at the screen and your hero slashes accordingly. Swipe up, for instance, and your character slashes upward. You can also execute combos, but since there's no combo list it's hard to tell when you've done one.
Yeah, my dad gave me this armor.
At your disposal you also have special attacks and magic spells. A special attack simply lowers your opponent's defenses, letting you hack away at him for a brief period of time-- something that comes in very handy when you’re running out of health. The magic spells available include fire, ice, shock, poison, heal, and shield boost. To cast a spell, you tap the magic button and then draw a shape on the screen that corresponds to the spell you want to use. It's simple and intuitive.
Much about the fights depends on what items you have equipped. You can get new items by finding them in treasure chests, picking up loot drops, or purchasing them from the store. What's interesting is that every item has an experience meter, and when you kill an enemy you’ll receive experience points through your equipped items. All of these points count toward your character leveling up, but when an item's experience meter fills up, you no longer receive points through it. This encourages you to keep trying new equipment as you play. Also cool is that your hero's look changes drastically depending on what items you have equipped.
Although the fighting and equipment systems are completely separate, they feel like alternate sides of a single coin. The experience points you get from winning battles feeds into your equipped items and bolsters your stats, which in turn makes you a stronger fighter. When you max out your equipment, you equip new items that grant you different fighting abilities, which encourages you to adjust your fighting style. The way it all falls together is brilliant and highly addictive. It makes the gameplay feel fresh despite that you’re going through the same castle over and over again.
Well this doesn't seem fair...
And while we had a blast playing through Infinity Blade, we couldn’t help but wish for more. The castle is surprisingly small, so it doesn't take long to see every nook and cranny of it. Once you beat the God King, there’s not much reason to keep playing as the next hero in the bloodline, or to start a new character from scratch. Also, one save file is all you get, so you can't have two bloodlines going at once.
Those issues aside, we had a blast with Infinity Blade. Every inch of the game is drop-dead gorgeous: You've never seen character models with this level of detail move so realistically on the iPhone or iPad. And the music is sparse, creating the perfect melancholy atmosphere for your lonely hero. The silence also makes way for the sounds of battle: The clashing of swords and the grunts of the fighters makes for a realistic and intimate audio backdrop.
Infinity Blade represents a milestone for how good games can look on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Although the gameplay is limited, Infinity Blade is extremely fun and masterfully assembled. Any serious iOS gamer should grab this one up.
36 Comments
This might be one game that I don't even wait for a sale on. Looks epic. Definitely worth $5.99.
Performance on 3GS?
Unstable on iPad...crashes on me again and again...unplayable...
Reboot your iPad before you play Infinity Blade!
You need to jailbreak your device or reboot every once in a while to avoid things like this.
Yea, join the club. I want my 5.99 back this is ridiculous!!!
It really doesn't work on iphone 3g?
lol
is it me or is it in spanish or something?
It is not in Spanish (I speak Spanish). I guess it is spoken in a fictional language (just like "The Sims").
It already jumped to #3 on the charts!
It's in Spanish for me, but I'm spanish myself so ... no clue for the rest of the world hehe
It's visually stunning but not worth the money. I'd rather watch a walktrough in youtube....
#1 within 24 hours
Yes, this may possibly be the highest opening day gross of any iPhone game. It's well deserving of it, too.
3GS performace is good
I don't get why not being able to walk around is an issue. This game could've easily have been menu driven like every other fighting game. I don't ever recall anyone complaining that one of mortal kombat's downfalls was that you couldn't walk around and smell the roses between fights. I see this game as more of a relative to punch out than final fantasy. It's gorgeous, and doesn't need to be 30 hours long to be enjoyable.
Because every other fighting game was NOT touted to be a RPG, they were just fighting games, and on top of that no-one ever released a tech demo that would make you think you could walk around and check out all the beautiful secenery out, then release the game and you cant do any thing you could in the demo.
To be honest I thiunk all these grewat reviews were paid for by EPIC.
Best I-Phone game ever????
Game of the Year???
REALY? It lasts 30 mins first play thru, no-one will be playing it in a week UNLESS multiplayer is released.
This is a remake of Punch Out, yes it is good looking but it has nothing else going for it.
Forgive me misspellings, it was vodka night!!
Don't listen to me, just ranting, i feel very jaded.
This could have been game of the year, but not like this.
It should be VERY evident that I DO NOT like button mashers, those that do however, enjoy, it is beautiful and very inexpensive when compared to consol games at $60.00 each.
I shall go away now.
I agree, this game could have been a lot cooler/more expansive if it had been the open world RPG that I personally figured it would be. That being said, it's a great game and well worth the six bucks.
If this game didn't turn out the way you imagined, look up Aralon: Sword and Shadow - comes out this coming week and looks REALLY nice; like a mobile Oblivion.
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That is good to hear, I look forward to your game of the year decision!
Question: What happens if you accept the God King's offer to join him?
The credits roll and then you begin again at the throne to fight the god king
You mean you RESTART THE FREAKING GAME?!?
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Oh. So, like, does he say something along the lines of "Foolish mortal, you thought you could join me?" and kill you?
He thanks you for joining him, and then the game fades out. When it fades back in, you are at the beginning of the fight with him. It's only worth doing once, because it unlocks the alternate ending achievement.
Do not hesitate! It's worth every penny!
Hi I own an iPhone 3GS and I love infinity blade I didn't know if I would like it or not but it is a must buy and I love the fast graphics and the killing enemies
Jack
Not buying unless it's on sale. It's basically fruit ninja but better graphics and people not fruit.
Hahahahaha I know!!! That's why I didn't buy it!!!
Funny revieww
http://allofmybasearebelongtoyou.wordpress.com/
great game!!!
thanks for nice review...i like this game...
The best graphics to ever grace an iphone, ipad or ipod can wait for my .99 cents, when it goes on sale. I got the CHUPACABRA game, for FREE ha!
Hey, i got infinity blade, i tried powering off then on and it worked for a little while then started crashing again, if you know any ways to fix it please comment on this message
I can't stand games that aren't free roaming...
Keeps on crashing on my iPad 1, works for a week then started crashing. Geez.
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