Author: Steve Watts

As a clear effort to emulate big-budget console shooters like Panzer Dragoon or Star Fox, Star Horizon is perhaps most notable for how true it stays to its vision. It’s a game that takes very little influence from the usual iOS design trends, thankfully eschewing common devices like virtual sticks, tilt steering, or in-app purchases. As a result, it’s a mostly successful homage that shines particularly in its presentation.

Star Horizon serves as a showpiece for the iOS platform, with impressive graphics and cinematic angles as your starfighter weaves and bobs through obstacles. Flight feels smooth and responsive with only slight touches, and it’s easy to get accustomed to steering with precision and flicking to barrel roll. The firing commands boil down to three simple virtual buttons, which feel perfectly positioned and spaced to fire off rapidly when needed, but never accidentally. And the handful of ship upgrades are noticeably more powerful, so earning them feels like an apt reward for past accomplishments. Aiming is given an assist that can feel overgenerous, and with the action being on rails, it can sometimes be difficult to predict your flight path and steer away from obstacles—but overall, the controls feel fine-tuned to near-perfection.

Those expertly engineered controls are unfortunately in service of a bland, forgettable space drama. You’re a hotshot pilot with a healthy disrespect for authority, working for a space federation embroiled in a lengthy battle against—stop us if you’ve heard this one—a plucky band of rebels. It certainly doesn’t help matters that the voice acting is almost universally awful, and the frequent attempts at humor fall flat.

In a clever twist, though, it uses the paint-by-numbers plot to give you meaningful choices. At several points in the story, you’ll be asked to make a decision—and given only five seconds to decide. These have a meaningful impact on both the narrative progression and the stages, since a scenario or your mission could change completely. And to its credit, being able to choose between factions in the conflict proves the old wisdom that neither side has its hands entirely clean.

The stages with dueling scenarios offer up a little more longevity, which is welcome as a straight run of the campaign can be completed fairly quickly. But as a short, sweet throwback to the action-packed shooters that clearly inspired it, Star Horizon is a success.

The bottom line. Star Horizon is a tightly responsive, beautiful action shooter throwback with only a few issues—namely the bland story and short playtime—holding it back from being a mobile classic.

It’s no surprise that a cartoon like Adventure Time would branch out into video games to attract its young (and alternately, geeky adult) audience. What is slightly more startling is how well the latest effort from Cartoon Network stands on its own merits. While certainly effective as a tie-in to the cartoon, its card-battling mechanics are so strong that Card Wars could have done without the license and proven just as sophisticated and inventive.

Named after the popular episode of the same name, Card Wars sees the residents of Ooo challenging each other in a series of one-on-one card bouts. A match starts by laying down four tracts of land, which face against an opponent’s four tracts to form lanes. Those lanes usually define the face-offs between cards, and buildings act as modifiers to the creature cards in play. Each creature can be “flooped” (or tapped) for a special ability, as well. Your goal is to wipe out enemy creatures so that damage inflicted can instead afflict your opponent for the win, progressing through different opponents across the lengthy campaign.

The mechanics are easy to grasp, but with cards that do everything from weaken attack traits to possess enemies, it proves a remarkably deep experience. Each character can also be leveled up for increased HP and MP, and all of the playable characters have special abilities that complement their respective play styles. For example, Jake is best for use with corn-heavy fields — a clear reference to the episode — while Princess Bubblegum is a strong healer. The card collection aspect is rich as well. You gain cards for defeating opponents, but you can also sell cards for coins, or combine them into stronger cards once you receive special recipes. And all of this is delivered with Adventure Time’s signature zany style (complete with plenty of voice acting), so fans will definitely appreciate the humor.

Despite all of these smartly balanced play mechanics, however, an unwarranted energy mechanic rears its head. The energy was supplied generously enough that we didn’t often hit the wall while playing, but it certainly seems more at home in a free-to-play app than a premium one. Purchasable gems are also used to save yourself from a loss or buy premium chests, but they can be earned in-game for finishing challenges. Luckily, the underlying mechanics are so refined and fantastically fun that the energy-based annoyances are easy to ignore, and they’re thankfully not too onerous.

The bottom line. Adventure Time: Card Wars is an impeccably designed card-battler with the show’s signature humor generously slathered over it. Don’t be turned off by the energy mechanics — this is one game that makes that minor annoyance worth tolerating.

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