Those of us who have watched Bloodsport should all remember the scene of Frank Dux kicking the snot out of Ray Jackson at a game of Karate Champ. Gamers who have long wished they could play that same game anywhere they go have had their prayers answered. Karate Champ XL is finally here on the iPad. Is this a full point game, or was this game blocked for only half a point?

Karate Champ XL sticks true to its Arcade Cabinet gaming roots by retaining the dual arcade stick fighting game. The joystick on the left controls your movement. The stick on the right controls your karate move awesomeness. It might sound simple, but you will spend a fair amount of time in the tutorial of this game. Just because there are not 20 buttons for combos doesn’t mean this game won’t test your fighting skills.

The game brings on three levels of difficulty for the single player experience. Those who want to prove just how much better their Wushu is against friends have options as well. Two players can play via a side-by-side split screen mode on the same iPad. There is also the option of beating each other to an 8-bit pulp via Bluetooth.

Karate Champ XL brings the classic arcade fighting goodness right to your iPad. 8-bit graphics, muddled speech, stiff controls, and even two joysticks for your fighting pleasure are all here. Revolutionary Concepts even went so far as to include faux scan lines for that truly authentic arcade cabinet game feel. Those old school gamers who want a good trip down nostalgia lane? This one is right up your alley.

What would really make this game cooler than Van Damme would be a sensitivity setting for the controls. We have come a long way since the stiff controls of the 80s. While this might change the gameplay a bit, gamers have come to expect spot on control systems of the current crop of gaming control systems, so a way to set this to personal gamer preference would go a long way.

While you might not be Frank Dux, you can relive those 80s memories by getting your Karate Champ on. Despite the stiff controls, this is a game worth your inevitable purchase. Your kung fu might be weak, but your gaming collection doesn’t have to be as well. Buy it now so you can practice before the weekend. Those of you with iPhones/iPods can rock this game in the smaller half pint size as well.

Developer/Publisher: Little Guy Games
Genre: Action/Fighting
Price: $2.99
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: A neat attempt to make the fighting genre work on the iPhone, marred by inaccurate controls
Pros: Unique fighting game idea; defensive and parrying focus is welcome in a largely offensive genre; single-device multiplayer
Cons: Controls, especially firing, require too much precision on a finger-controlled touch screen interface in a fast-paced gaming environment.

Dear iPhone developers: please stop with the attempts at bringing one-on-one fighters to the iPhone. I get it, it’s a genre that hasn’t seen many entries on the App Store. But here’s the problem – the genre has been defined for the last 2 decades by the Street Fighters, Mortal Kombats, Tekkens, and Guilty Gears of the world. It’s a genre based on precision and technique. The iPhone just isn’t the platform to do these types of games in the way that you should because of its interface. There are so many other genres that work well on the iPhone, can’t we just cut our losses with the one-on-one fighting genre and move on? Battle Blasters is here, doing a lot of new things, but it suffers from many of the mentioned issues that plague fighting games that dare fly too close to the sun by attempting something completely new.

Battle Blasters works by putting you and your opponent on opposite sides of the arena, with the goal being to fire projectiles at your opponents to hurt them (well, hurt them physically; if you wanted to hurt them emotionally you could just say nothing to them for a long time and not tell them why. See how they feel!) to the point of death. You have fast & weak shots and slow & powerful shots to launch at your opponent – the fast shots are obviously fast but don’t do much damage and get canceled out by the slow shots. The slow shots however are easy to defend by either launching another slow shot at them to cancel it out, or by reflecting it back at your opponent. This game is very much a defense-oriented game, as getting shots to connect is the challenge.

Well, it’s the challenge along with the controls. Everything is done with basically one finger on the touch screen – you tap left and right of your character to move them left and right, swipe down on the character to reflect projectiles, tap your character to launch their special ability (one character launches a knife projectile, for example, and another gets the ability to absorb shots that they store as energy with which to launch more shots at a time), and swipe up and at an angle to launch a shot. Here’s where the challenge comes in – you have to swipe slow to launch the slow shot, and quickly to launch the fast shot. Battle Blasters can’t be accused of doing things in an obvious manner, that’s for sure. Now, in the heat of battle, trying to launch a specific shot is, well, not easy. It’s such a subtle difference in control for a game that’s built around precision and intensity. Launching the wrong shot could mean the difference between taking damage or not; victory or defeat; life or death!

Disclaimer: We at The Portable Gamer do not recommend placing life or death bets on games of Battle Blasters. Or any iPhone game, for that matter.

This Grumpy Gus will be the only character you can play as right off the bad. Cheer up, chap.

So we have a fighting game with control issues. Red flag. A fighting game with control issues is one that needs to be approached with caution. Battle Blasters also has a serious lack of immediately available content – you start off with one character unlocked. Just one. In a fighting game, the differences between characters and finding the one who matches your playing style is so key, Battle Blasters making you unlock each character individually is nigh-inexcusable. Just one? Really? Even just one other character unlocked from the start would’ve made things seem less empty than they are initially. There isn’t really much of an excuse for this.

Battle Blasters is not the worst abomination of a game to hit the App Store ever, no. Its defense-oriented gameplay is unique, if improperly executed due to the imperfect controls. It’s just that the one-on-one fighter genre doesn’t really need to be mixed up. The tenets and principles of the genre have largely been defined and refined over the years, and while it’s nice to see developers try to mix it up, you absolutely have to make the controls perfect to reach my expectations. Battle Blasters has control problems. If you feel you can manage the controls, there’s plenty to enjoy here, it’s just flawed.

Developer: Appy Entertainment
Genre: Fighting
Price: $0.99 / Free
Verdict: A notch above godawful.
Pros: The presentation isn’t too sloppy.
Cons: It has absolutely no depth whatsoever.

Face Fighter is Appy Entertainment’s foray into the world of iPod Touch and iPhone gaming along with  Zombie Pizza and Appy News. So here’s Face Fighter, a game which, from the  title alone, sums up the entire game’s premise of quite literally, fighting faces.

There can be little denying that Face Fighter delivers a rather appealing and slick interface which is both clear and easy to navigate, this coupled with the almost non-existent loading times are a really pleasant surprise. Upon starting the game you are urged to create a profile to use throughout the game. This saves time by completing it right away, instead of adding all these details later on or after every game. Whilst it seems like something obvious to me, there are a lot of games that still continue to not offer this simple feature.

From the title screen you have four available options to choose from: Fight, Make Foe, Scores and Profile. Fight is your standard fighting game where the real meat of the game lies. Here, you are greeted the the gurning mugs of the four characters included in the game, as well as the four available difficulties, your standard gaming triumvirate of Easy, Medium, and Hard, as well as a witty ‘Appy Slappy’ mode where you fight without AI competition. Sadly, there is no real depth to this mode outside of a story outline at the very start, and once you start fighting you never hear from the story again.

Make Foe mode is perhaps the most novel part of the game, and almost certainly this game’s universal selling point. In this mode you have the option to make characters from the pictures of anyone you like, which you can then fight. If you have an iPhone you have even more possibilities open to you, but files in your picture library will work just as well, but it’s clearly more accessible to use the iPhone camera, take a quick snap, then beat the ever-loving bejeesus out of them. The creation is very basic, but surprisingly, gives rather impressive results, so if you ever fancy beating on yourself or your friends then this mode is what you’ve been waiting for.
Scores is a menu that tracks the scores that you gain from fight, and Profile is your options menu where you can disable sounds, music and vibration. What may surprise many is the lack of Facebook Connect or any other kind of online high score network, and as a result the scores table becomes a little pointless. Adding this support would have allowed for score comparisons with friends and without that the game becomes that little bit more shallow, which is a shame.

The fighting itself is very clumsy, utilizing a 4 button approach, each of which relate to a different maneuver. The attacks available are a quick & light punch, a slow & harder punch, a kick, and a block button. The buttons are well spaced and clear in the interface, but whilst the attacks work, they are far from responsive and blocking can become very tricky due to the almost perfect timing required to successfully parry your opponents attack. The result  is that the game becomes nothing more than trying to spam attacks quicker than your opponent can reply. As your attacks increase and more damage is dealt, a small, round meter at the very bottom of the screen fills, and when full, gives the ability to unleash a flurry of comedic attacks, consisting of things like hammers, fly swatters, and just slapping your opponent about the face. Each fight requires a total of three knockouts to successfully win the fight, at which point a series of icons flash on the screen. Hit these icons in the correct order and you will unleash Face Fighter’s version of a Mortal Kombat fatality (although without the extreme violence) called an ‘Immortal Judgement’. Face Fighter does offer a two player mode which requires you to create your own character and fight over Bluetooth which adds a little extra to the game, with the gameplay remaining the same.

My main complaint around this game is the lack of story. Even a small story, or some compelling reason to complete the game would improve it immensely. It’s clear the game is attempting to appease those gamers looking for a quick pick up and play game or those looking for humor, however, even in the low price category there are so many superior options. Throughout the game you find yourself just wanting something a little more, be it characters to fight (even with the character creator), a reason for fighting, friend leaderboards or even just a less clumsy fight model. The game could be more enjoyable for iPhone owners than it is for iPod touch owners, where where snapshots of your friends, family and pets, or even better, exes and former loved ones, can be easily and quickly turned into foes for a quick punch up. If a game could be judged by its cover, then there is little doubt Face Fighter would make for a truly enjoyable gaming experience, but outside of the flash exterior lays a game with a paper thin concept that is poorly implemented and little that made me want to revisit it time and time again, even with its pick up and play style.

Publisher/Developer: Gameloft
Genre: Fighting
Price: $6.99
Verdict: The closest you will get to Soul Calibur on the iPhone until Namco releases Soul Calibur on the iPhone.
Pros: Quality graphics and effects, 2 control types, multi-player
Cons: Voice acting is laughably bad, intro movie is upside down

I was originally disappointed to learn that this game wasn’t a sequel to Blades of Steel (still the best hockey game ever), but was pleasantly surprised to find a Soul Calibur tribute instead.

Voldo vs.. err.. I mean Machiavel vs. Elwin

I say tribute because this game finally settles the “what’s more powerful: PSP or iPhone?” debate.  Soul Calibur Broken Destiny on the PSP is far and away a better looking and playing title, but that game retails for $39.99.  Here you get the basics of that game with a less than expected drop in quality for $33.00 less.  This homage is NOT Soul Calibur, and honestly, without a real gamepad it is impossible to recreate that gameplay experience.  I have been vocal about my distaste for transparent joysticks glued over the game screen, and this game here is no different, but by including a swipe to play mechanic, you get a totally different experience.  It doesn’t work very well when the joystick overlay and enemy combatant are on top of each other, but with some tweaking by Gameloft this may become the preferred way to play.  That being said, if you don’t like virtual joystick games, this one won’t win you over, but as implementations go, there are far worse.  Because everything else is so well done, ultimately your enjoyment will come down to whether or not you like the controls, and since they are customizable, Gameloft has made it possible for almost everyone to find a scheme that works for them.

There can be only one.

If you have never played Namco’s ‘Soul’ series then here are the basics:  Different warriors from different regions with unique weapons battle inside of a ring with all the typical trappings of a 3D fighter.  The game is known for it’s varied modes, characters, and depth of fighting mechanics.  This homage doesn’t skimp on the extras either.  You begin the game with 6 fighters but there are 10 in total once you unlock them all.  You get 4 modes: Story, Arcade, Survival and Practice.  Story involves a weak narrative to tie the series of bouts together, Arcade eschews that mechanic, Survival pits you against a gauntlet of enemies until you are beaten, and Practice is exactly that.  If that isn’t enough, ‘Blades’ supports multiplayer via bluetooth and wi-fi, but sadly no internet play.  The game also lets you flip the screen for lefties, use auto-block, custom-tailor bout options, play your own music, and is localized for 6 languages.  Not bad for 7 bucks.

Can't complain about this lineup

But wait, there’s more. If you have been wondering just how powerful that Power VR  chip inside your iPhone is, then get this game; it is a showcase to what the device can do.  Gameloft has done an admirable job of showcasing the power of the chip with lighting and particle effects you would expect in a weapon-based fighting game without any slowdown on my 3GS.  “Blades” sports 10 levels, all beautifully rendered with varying local and moving elements. One level takes place on the back of a dragon with the wings flapping in the background while you battle, this is a nice touch.  The animations are pretty smooth, but some motions seems to lack a few frames like ducking.  The clash of the weapons has heft to it and the sound effects are very well done.The same cannot be said of the voice acting.  It is terrible and repetitive: ‘Enimia’ has the lamest voice and name ever, and whoever plays Elwyn sounds drunk: “I fight for my fambly – an pfeople!” Whatever, honey.

The game even saves replays.

The difficulty levels are tuned right with enough variation to ensure enjoyment without frustration for the various players’ skill levels.  And like most games, you can store your scores and rankings.  My hope is that this game sells well in the 7 dollar range so that the App Store economy can start to stabilize and more games that really showcase design, graphics and content don’t have to be .99 cents.  If you are even remotely a fan of this genre, you owe it to yourself and your gaming future to download this app (unless you are already playing Broken Destiny on your PSP).

Its a big time for fans of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy XIII is setting to hit the next generation systems next year, along with a second Final Fantasy MMO in the form of Final Fantasy XIV. Adding fuel to the fire is one of the biggest RPGs of all time, Final Fantasy VII, which has been on the top of the selling charts on PSN for ages.

In an age where high end graphics and high speed action have dominated the gaming landscape, turn based RPGs have struggled. Amazingly, Final Fantasy has managed to soldier on and still remains one of the top properties in all of video games.

Just because its an RPG powerhouse, however, doesn’t mean that Square Enix wouldn’t like to diversify its portfolio. What is the opposite of an in-depth, story-driven, turn-based RPG? Square Enix is trying their hand at the mindless fighter with its latest game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which coming to the PSP this week.

Dissidia takes all of your favorite characters from the first 10 Final Fantasy games and lets them duke it out, in true fighter form. While fans of more, dare we say,”accomplished” fighters, may not find the game technically appealing, this should be more than enough fighter for an RPG fan base. In a strange but appropriate twist, the games story does not appear to be the game’s strong point. Even so, the game features a near endless supply of unlockable content and the ability to battle your friends should keep you interested.

This strange fighting/RPG hybrid has a lot to offer fans of both genres, but it won’t completely satisfy fans of either. A weak story and camera that gets flaky in tight corners, prevent this game from being all that it could be.  That said, it should present many hours of fun to gamers who can put put up the peculiarities. Dissidia is probably going to appeal more to the core Final Fantasy fan base then anyone else, but it is still a game that should be looked into.

Released: April 1st, 2009
Developer/Publisher: realtech VR
Verdict: Do not buy this game.
Pros: Nice graphics and sound.
Cons: Unresponsive controls, buggy, frequent crashes.

When I found out there was a boxing game for the iPhone/iPod Touch, I got very excited. Unfortunately, this title was a huge letdown. Iron Fist Boxing is currently selling for $3.99 in the iTunes App Store, and it’s not even worth $0.99 from what I’ve experienced.

The title has a lot of potential. Boxing is something that should translate very well to a touch screen. The controls are done fairly well, but they just don’t respond very fast at all.

The other huge problem with this game is that it is extremely glitchy. I never made it through a single fight, other than the tutorial. Every time the fight would crash and dump me out to my iPod dash (usually before I even got to begin). So my review is only based on what I got to experience in the tutorial.

As the game starts, you get a selection of several different boxers with different fighting skills. Some are even kick boxers. The graphics for these fighters are pretty good, and remind me of PS1 or PS2 quality. After you choose one, the screen flies over the boxer and you now look over their shoulders. This is where the tutorial begins. The tutorial teaches you all the basic moves to get the game moving. Touch the top left or right to attack high and to that side. Touch the middle left or right to attack low and to those sides. Tilt the device to the side and attack the same one to hit harder (but slower). Hold your thumbs in the red circles to block attacks (by the time you see the circles, it’s too late to block because of the slow response time). Then it shows you how to slow time with your special meter and how to do a special attack (by tracing circles and triangles quickly). With all the attacks, they won’t register unless you hold your finger on the screen briefly; you can’t tap and get anything out of it. For a game that is based off speed, like this one is, this makes it close to unplayable. That said, if you really wanted to, I’m sure you could get used to this in time– Hell, I loved the original Mortal Kombat on the GameBoy when I was little ;)

I delayed my review on this game hoping that an update would be released addressing at least the crashing issues. Unfortunately, even after the two or three weeks I’ve been waiting, nothing has been posted. Until it’s updated, I can’t recommend this title for anyone. Afterwards, we’ll have to see. This is a game that would really benefit from a Lite version (which it doesn’t have).