Empty Flask Games’ Infinite Warrior (Out Now, $2.99) is a new iOS release that combines the idea of an endless runner with high quality 3D graphics and brutal slow motion kills a la the film 300. It seems like a great concept for a game, making a medieval combat themed endless runner for a more mature audience, but somewhere along the line something went horribly wrong. I am just going to get this out of the way right now, you should under no circumstances purchase this until Empty Flask Games does something about fixing the beyond brutal timing issues inherent in Infinite Warrior’s controls.
At the beginning of Infinite Warrior you will be tasked with running endlessly to the right and slaying each and every of the exiled king’s forces that come running your way by slashing either up, left, down, or right (as indicated by an arrow on the enemy’s shield). Perform the action correctly and you will be treated to a brutal slow motion execution sequence, fail just once and you instantly go back to Infinite Warrior’s game over screen to try the level again. This seems like an easy enough task for starters, with the game promising that more necessary action types would be added as you reach later stages, but after an hour of struggling with the game I had only once made it further than 10 seconds into the first stage.
The game’s anemic tutorial doesn’t explain this at all, but the slashing motion you have to perform must also go through the fast moving target as well or the action does not count. This means that any slash that has to go either left or right across the screen is ridiculously easy to complete, where as any action that has to go up or down – and it does not want your slash to be diagonal – is brutally difficult to complete. The end result of all this is that the odds of you ever lasting long enough to finish the first stage is not particularly good looking, and – assuming someone did bring their Triple-S game performance and narrowly power through the first stage – it’s probably only going to get even more difficult in the later stages.
iFanzine Verdict: The game is good looking, or at least the first 10 seconds of the game were very good looking, so the game might one day be a true heavy weight contender in the endless runner genre if the controls get tweaked. However, right now the only brutal combat to be found in Infinite Warrior is the frustrated fighting you will engage in with the game’s ridiculously unforgiving control scheme that makes swipes of different directions extremely unequal in difficulty.