Spirit HD review
Spirit HD is the iPad version of Sprit, and is really an extension of the iPhone and iPod Touch game. You should really view this review as an extension of the one done for Spirit, which you can find here.
Swirling your fingers around a ten inch screen is easier than on the iPhone’s 3.5inch (diagonal) display. So avoiding your enemies should be easier. And it is…for around a minute.
The problems however are still the same. If you have your finger on the gameplay area, and the objective of the game is to avoid objects whilst moving said finger around the screen, you are still going to obscure your view in your frantic efforts of enemy avoidance.
The graphics are razor sharp and the atmosphere is compounded with the muted beats as per the iPhone version, but the spell is still broken when you get caught hitting an enemy that was hidden by your pinkie a second earlier. It’s doubly frustrating as you know you are to blame, not because your chosen path was necessarily the incorrect one but because your own fat fingers got in the way.
Spirit HD like it’s sibling Spirit suffers from a broken gameplay mechanic that nothing can fix. It’s a nice idea but should stay as that, and until a solution to the control system is addressed, this Geometry Wars clone will only appeal to the ultra dextrous with superb hand to eye coordination. Or masochists.
