Developer: Brisk Mobile, Inc.
Genre: Sci-Fi Action Shooter
Price: $3.99 (sale price of $0.99 as of publication)
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: A very enjoyable mech shooter. Definitely worth the cost.
Pros: Fun gameplay, good use of multi-touch capabilities, interesting movement controls.
Cons: Upgrades are a little expensive.

Mech games come and mech games go. That is the cycle of life. Some mech games are ultra realistic with super slow mechs trudging across sweeping landscapes, while other are arcade shooters with mechs flying around and running at extreme speeds. Battle for Cydonia, from Brisk Mobile, Inc., is closer to the former, but not quite as slow paced. The premise is simple – you’re the mech driver for a rebellion on Mars. The story, which is told in snippets as mission briefings, is not grand on any scale, but it at least gives you a reason to care about each level.

Battle for Cydonia only takes two gestures to play. In order to move your mech, you simple start with your finger on it and then sweep it in the direction you would like to go. Your finger gesture draws a literal path that your mech follows, and it will keep going until you draw another path. To shoot, you just click in a direction and the mech opens up. Battle for Cydonia makes great use of the iPhone’s multi-touch feature by allowing you to control each gun separately. Suppose you are surrounded on all sides by enemies. The first click will train all guns in that direction, the second click will take one gun and move it to the new direction, a third click will then move your first gun from the initial direction to the new direction. It is extremely well done and very smooth.

Missions range from escort missions to protect the base missions. In some missions the best strategy is to stay put somewhere and allow the enemies to find you, while in others you’ll be all over the map collecting parts and hunting down specific enemy types. Furthermore, as you progress in levels, the enemy types upgrade. At the beginning you just face small spider bots, but later you’re faced with war birds, tanks, missile launchers, and the like.

Upgrades are key in Battle for Cydonia. You purchase upgrade parts from a shop (or sometimes find them) and install them in the garage. Upgrades include weapon upgrades, engine upgrades, rotation upgrades, armor upgrades, and even cargo capacity. You earn money through fighting (I assume salvage) and money caches throughout the stages. As mentioned, upgrades are key; without them, you will die quickly.

Battle for Cydonia is played in a top-down perspective, which I felt was perfect for this type of game on the iPhone platform. The graphics are beautiful, especially some of the backdrops we catch of the planet. The music and sound effects are good as well. The music is a heavy rock mix that fits the hectic action on the screen, while the sound effects are appropriate to the sources.

As of the time of this writing, Brisk Mobile was offering Battle of Cydonia at 75% off for a sale – $0.99. I do not know how long that will last, but the game is definitely worth picking up. For the genre, I do not really have anything bad to say about Battle for Cydonia. There are always the general statements – it could use a more in depth story, etc. – but that is not what this game was purposed for. My only real complaint is that upgrades seem a little expensive in comparison to the amount of money you earn, but it also seems to make sense that a small rebel faction would not have a ton of money coming their way. Battle for Cydonia is a ton of fun and it gets quite challenging as you progress. Moreover, with the addition of a survival mode and OpenFeint support, you will now get a lot more out of your game than the version I have been playing for the past week.