by It’s a clever idea, using physical figures or toys to interact with the iPad’s touchscreen, but much of the time it simply proves a novelty: a short-lived diversion that deflates once you realize you’d rather be playing a great, standalone tablet game — or with better toys, for that matter.
That’s certainly the case with the HeroClix TabApp and the recently released sets of compatible Marvel Comics figurines, which span the X-Men (Wolverine, Cyclops, and Iceman) and The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor).
Each tiny superhero is an actual HeroClix piece that can be used with the beloved tabletop game, but these are specially outfitted with little sensor pads on the bottom. Touch one to an iPad 2 or new iPad screen, and within a moment or two, you’ll see that same character in digital form with a trio of available missions featuring comic book story panels.
Much as that part of the experience functions properly, it’s also precisely where the TabApp stops being remotely interesting. Regardless of character, the missions you’ll play are nearly identical — and they’re all atrocious. With your digital character fixed in place at the top of the screen, you’ll simply tap enemies that hover into view to either toss projectiles or perform an up-close attack, depending on proximity, occasionally swiping across enemies or tapping a button to trigger a special attack or defensive maneuver. It’s the same core experience lightly reskinned for different characters and replicated across missions, but it proves a mind-numbing endeavor throughout.
There’s no strategy or depth to the action, which owes little to its HeroClix origins beyond the visual cues of health and defense dials (plus the useless grid markers). And the end-stage boss battles can turn nightmarish as villains often take the space directly in front of you, crowding your view and making it impossible to attack the goons blasting you from afar. Worst yet, we experienced incredible slowdown during boss fights on a new iPad, with our attacks taking seconds to register as the game struggled to display its dull, rudimentary visuals. And the figures themselves prove useless for this experience once registered. You can keep them on the screen for fun, but they’ll likely topple over amidst the frantic tapping and swiping.
No doubt, the HeroClix TabApp is targeted at a younger audience than the usual entrenched tabletop player, but the $14.99 figurine three-packs are much pricier than the average HeroClix booster pack, and this set does nothing to teach the tabletop experience. There’s surely an appeal in getting both figures and a playable video game with one purchase, but parents who do so are hedging their bets; if your kid wants HeroClix figures, buy a proper starter kit. And if he or she wants iPad games, you can get a whole lot of great stuff for your $15.
The bottom line. Awful, laggy, and repetitive gameplay kills this attempted physical-meets-digital pairing, as the HeroClix TabApp experience in no way justifies its pricey figurines.
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