Infinity Blade

Prior to downloading Infinity Blade for my iPhone I didn't really know much about it. So it was with a fresh mind I gazed upon Chair Entertainment's graphical marvel. And while it's easy to feast on the visual delights, and enjoy the simple yet effective and surprisingly tactical combat somewhere in the back of my mind I'm disappointed to find there really isn't more to the game than a 25 minute walk through a castle that you repeat in order to build yourself up enough to finish off the God-King at the end. Like the name suggests we're caught in a loop, and our job is to try and break out of it.

Some may call this a glorified tech demo, but to be fair the game sports a rather intriguing levelling up system, items and weapons to explore and master and some variation in paths and secrets as well as enemies and their differing sets of behaviour. Your walk through the castle sees you combat about ten enemies of various types and levels each time. Each playthrough is called a bloodline and your aim is to defeat the God-King in order to "avenge your father" (i.e the guy you failed with the last time around) - you keep your level, items and gold so you could say you're just repeating a level to gain enough experience to be able to defeat the end boss. Simply put it's a grind.

But the grind can be fun, and Infinity Blade is just that. A fun grind. Learning the patterns of the various enemies in order to dodge, parry or block their attacks is reminiscent of playing Punch-Out. And the magic system and combos provide depth to the offensive part of the battles. You parry an oncoming attack by mimicking the enemy attack with a swipe, you can dodge an attack by hitting one of the arrows in the bottom of the screen and you block by pressing the shield icon in the middle.

Blocks are effective most of the time, but you have a limited supply of them. Dodges are effective against certain attacks while parries are great when you pull them off. If you avoid a number of attacks in the combo you receive a "block break", "parry break" or "dodge break" and you can unleash your own offensive arsenal. Super attacks and magic spells can be unleashed at any time, but once you've used one they need to be recharged. All in all it's a well thought out combat system that you will quickly get into, but that provides challenges throughout the game.

Colleagues here at the office compare it to Punch-Out and I can see the similarity, but of course the enemies aren't the hilarious characters you find in Nintendo's boxing classic. There really isn't a lot of character or story in the game at all and I don't really feel like there is much else to the world than the eternal grind, from father to son, as you go about trying to defeat the God-King over and over again.

In between combat you can look around the environments for potions (replenishes life) and sacks of gold as well as treasure chests. You also get a bit of gold from defeating enemies. A bit like a point-and-click adventure, but sadly there isn't much else to interact with. There are a couple of forks in the road you can go through in order to fight an extra enemy or take an alternate route into the castle.

I enjoyed the levelling up system that adds a layer of complexity as you also level your gear up. Once you've mastered an item it will grant you an extra skill point the next time you level up. It's a system I would have loved to have seen in a more fleshed out adventure that involved a bit more role playing and exploration.

I can see myself venturing back and forth to face off with the God-King a few more times, and there is a multiplayer mode on the way as well as more environments. Infinity Blade is a great effort and a magnificent achievement, but it lacks a bit of character and it could have done with a bit more variation. It's still worth getting if you enjoy a bit of grinding, hack n' slash and gorgeous graphics. There are worse things than being caught in a loop as good as this one.