iPad Meteor Blitz by Alley Labs (v1.6 - Retina Display)

most ppl dont have to "spend their life continuously redoing the same level" because they beat it i found it it to be one my best dual shooter games, by far the best dual controls ive come across. maybe u just need to practice more

 

I tried it for another half hour. 18,000 and that's it. Still can't get past level 3. Would be nice if they at least let you keep the upgrades for the weapons you buy and then try it over. I really don't understand why they have to make the game so difficult. This kind of thing I'd expect near the end of a game but not the beginning. I like the controls, but I don't have the time or desire to waste a full day trying to get past the whopping level 3 of planet one. What is this? Made for hardcore geeks with no lives? It's not like I don't have hand eye coordination or just picked up my first video game yesterday. This was the same problem I had with 'bang'. Great game, but when you get going, it always throws you back to the beginning, forcing you to plod through the same slog you just finished.

 

Hey Shatner, great points. One of the hardest problems we had during development was making the game challenging enough, but not too challenging. It's especially difficult because we all get pretty good at the game as we're making it. And even with beta testers, it's hard to guess how much of the final audience they represent.

For the most part, I'm happy with the difficulty level, but I do admit that it is on the hard side. We initially made the game easier, but that version was just kinda boring.

I agree with you that the game should save progress after every stage, and not every world. We're trying to find a fair and intuitive way to do that now.

Would love to hear any comments you have!

 

ive come to the conclusion that u epically fail at Meteor Blitz

 

The game is very challenging, but at the same time a lot of fun!
If it was easy - it would be boring. The fact that people have got 1,000,000 scores means that it can be done with a bit of practice. I am stuck on world 4 now. I got to the final stage a few times, but got killed. I don't blame the game, I blame my inferior skills. Game is fine as is. If you look at Isotope, Nanofighter, geoFighter,Occuro you'll find that those are all challenging games and you need to practice quite a bit to master them.
Saving every stage rather than every world may be an excellent idea. It would address some of the frustration of having to start from the beginning of the world.

 

The guys with 6 million in arcade and over 300k in survival are "hardcore geeks with no life." If you score up to 5 million in the first and 250k in the latter, then you're a hardcore geek with half a life. The rest of you get to be the ones with full lives, and be half-geeks I don't know what to call someone who scores only 18,000 in arcade mode. There must be an inoffensive label that applies....


lukeb

 

I am sure most of us on this forum play enough total hours of iphone games that if this one was our favorite, we gave it 90% of our iphone time for a while, and we had their skills, we might get over 300k. As for 18k, I think its fine to be honest and say that person either hasnt played much or is a below-average gamer. Not correlated to success in life so its not an insult . . . if it bothers them to be called below average they shouldnt post their scores and complain about difficulty.

 

Also, sometimes a given game just isn't compatible with a person's temperament or sense of accommodation to the visual representation, even if the game is otherwise compelling or aesthetically pleasing. I wanted to like this game called Kryzer Prologue, but couldn't get even 1% of the max scores posted the week Kryzer was released, so I gave up and felt as I imagine a person scoring only 18k in Meteor Blitz would - dissatisfied.

CS One gave me a similar experience, and I didn't want to invest so much time in getting the controls down pat. In reality, some of the people who mastered the controls may have invested very little time, while others probably played CS One to death. No way to conclude such things from scores alone, given the diverse gaming experience that players bring to bear on each new game they play.

You're right about gaming success not correlating with success in life, which is part of what makes bragging about scores not seem so egregious, as long as it's done respectfully; players can always fall back on that rationale every time they fall short.

 

The label is called 'Someone who would rather spend the time doing something more meaningful with his time, like play guitar.' I think I'm just a casual gamer who likes to feel some progress in time invested in 'games', and this game is not casual. I understand that there are those who are motivated to be twitch fiends and beat times, scores, etc, but that's not me. I also bought hook champ last week and deleted it today after falling a few times into a lava pit and having to start over. Even while sitting on the toilet, I think there are better things to do with my time, like read the newspaper. It's just incredibly boring and repetitive and frustrating. I don't like to be angered by games. That's not why I play them. It's more for fun, stress relief, not 'increasing stress'. If I know the game will take 20 hours, that's fine, as long as I progress towards an ending, where I can also save my progress in increments along the way.

 

I'd rather just stare into blank space than play a game that let's me save any time I want, with no penalties or set-backs whatsoever, but that's just me. Everyone's different, and I respect your attitude towards games. I can't think of any classic arcade games that don't frustrate at all (even Mario et al piss me off), but again, everyone's different. I'm guessing you would find some games easy that would frustrate others.

 

I'd love that option. Get the game done, delete it and move on to the other 20 I haven't played yet. There are such extremes with games. On one hand, I play 'blade of the samurai' or whatever it was called, and finish the game easily in a half hour of play time. 7 levels of hack and slash where you are supposed to use combos and you end up just swiping the screen in every direction. 'Is that it?" I said after getting through it in almost one sitting. Way too easy and barely worth a dollar. And then on the other hand, you have these "Ha ha! Ve Vill torture you with repetition and death and escalation of difficulty within the first five minutes of zis game until you vant to scream out 'Fook this!' in public and become even more socially ostracized than you already are."

Where's the happy medium? I'll tell you where. In games like 'The Void', where it has challenge, but eventually you get over the slowly escalating hump, and, still challenged, get through the game within a sane amount of play time.

Zenonia. Same thing. Puzzle Quest. Same thing. Always some progression with little 'repetition' of the 'same level'. It's a freakin game. If I want to be really challenged with something that will suck hours of my life away, I'll study French with my Rosetta Stone software. This is why I never understood 'leader boards' and their increasing popularity. Seems every game now needs to have this. So you get a high score? Who exactly is impressed by this kind of thing? Me? You? My wife? My friends? Personally, I can't think of any semblance of an encounter with a human being in real life where I would even mention such a thing as "Hey, I'm number 3 on the global scoreboard of ......!!" to them without fear of being branded a complete freak.

Look at facebook as an example. If I see any 'high score' notification from anyone show up on my profile, I promptly block that person, and have a diluted opinion of them. Who exactly would want anyone else to know that you are doing nothing but playing games and posting your 'high scores' as if that was some kind of 'news'?

 

1.2 update is out

What's new
- Crash bug fixes!
- Smoother gameplay (framerate optimizations)
- Improved the wording of the "Reset" text

 

Going for highscores is entirely a personal endeavor. No facebook, no actual identity - nothing I could possibly gain from remaining on a top 10 or 25 list for x amount time, except the occasional sense of having been given a brain with which someone in their right mind might have been able to something - anything. The only reason I occasionally mention scores here on TA is that, once in a while I imagine being able to break into the game industry on some level - not now, but maybe someday. The gaming industry is bigger than the movie industry, and growing every day. Who knows what opportunities could be in store? You never know... Gaming could be a complete waste of time apart from the fun it brings, or it could for example prevent Alzheimer's via the establishment of ever denser networks. Already there is evidence that linguistic development confers such protection, so why not activities involving coordination, perception, quick reaction, and self-control?