UPDATE: April 28th, 2010
Cave LTD, the developers behind Espgaluda II, announced yesterday that their popular shoot-em-up is now compatible with 3rd gen iPod touch devices. This was made possible via an update that is free to download for everyone who purchased the game.
If you are still confused about whether Espgaluda II will work on your device, you can download Espgaluda II LITE for free, which was also made available yesterday.
Espgaluda 2 is a top-down scrolling shooter with a frantic style shared by many other games from Japan. It's also not a game pronounced or spelled very easily. Nevertheless, Espgaluda 2 offers explosive gameplay, intensely rendering many enemies onscreen at one time and forcing you to act quickly.
We should note right off the bat that Espgaluda 2 is designed strictly for the iPhone 3GS (though it also runs on an iPad). That means if you have an earlier iPhone, or any kind of iPod Touch, this game will not currently install for you. A patch is coming soon to play Espgaluda 2 on an iPod Touch 3rd Generation, but you can also perform a simple fix yourself by reading instructions located at the bottom of this page.
Visually, Espgaluda forces the iPhone hardware to handle hundreds of moving parts onscreen at one time, without slowing down in the slightest. In our time with the game, we never ran into one frame rate hitch or complete gameplay freeze.
And you thought the subway was busy.
While particles, enemies, and bullets are flying all over the screen, it's your job to dodge your way around them, taking the least amount of damage possible. This is done quite easily following some basic gameplay principles.
First off, by killing various enemies, their bullets will turn into gems that power up your character. This is important to know, because you'll want to focus your firepower on the baddies shooting the most bullets to make it easier on yourself. If you want a high score, you can try to keep as many bullets onscreen as you can handle.
Second, you'll want to use your powerups at opportune times to defeat the enemy. Examples of these powerups are shields and a wave that disintegrates all bullets onscreen, among others.
Giving as good as you get.
Due to the fact that you have unlimited lives and continues, Espgaluda can be very easy. Sometimes you are faced with literally a wall of bullets and no way to get around them, but if you die, you simply hit continue and keep going. No harm, no foul. While this can depreciate your sense of accomplishment when you reach the end of the level after 67 consecutive deaths, the real satisfaction is in earning a high score to share on OpenFeint.
If you aren't going for a high score, Espgaluda 2 is not about being restrained. You're able to use your never-ending ammo to kill seemingly endless swarms of enemies without fear of losing lives. While a number of people will enjoy the challenge of obtaining a high score and staying alive as long as possible, for others the focus can simply be about blowing things up.
This review originally stated that only 3/4 of the screen is used, but you can change the view mode in the options menu. We have included a link to a website that tells you how to install the game on an iPod Touch 3rd Generation. This review also incorrectly stated that different difficulty levels have different health meters, which we have removed, and that the focus of the game is not on obtaining a high score, which we now agree is one possible goal of the game. STP regrets the errors.
17 Comments
"This is strictly because of the amount of horsepower required to run Espgaluda as fast and smoothly as it does"
I don't understand the point of this argument.
Isn't an ipod touch 3rd gen. the same as an iphone 3gs...?
It is, and the developer has said they are planning to make the game iPod Touch 3rd Gen compatible soon. But currently, it's 3GS and iPad only.
Did u actully play it or just type up a review for the sake of it?, go into options and set screen to large, it's not quite full screen but close enough you won't notice.
And as for 3gs only, for a iPhone gaming site not knowing about the touch update is amazing as the debs have said it's coming since day 1.
Thanks for the tip, we will check out the full screen option and update the review if necessary. Also, the developer promising an update isn't the same as having released it.
The game works just fine on my 64gb touch. I had to jump through some hoops, but It works perfectly, no slowdown or anything.
How did you do it?
I'm going to assume he's jailbroken and messed with a file inside the .ipa. Its been done before with games that weren't iPod Touch compatible.
Nah it doesn't require jailbreaking, i read how it's done on another iPhone site (TA).
No real challenge?????
You guys are joking right?
Stop playing on easy ;)
This game is mind-blowing and by far the best and most challenging (if you wanna score) shooting experience on the iPhone.
He just credit fed through it, never noticed the score system, and made up what changes on each difficulty.
Quality review.
This is not intended to come across as a flame, but I have to step in and object to the 'no real challenge' fallacy listed as a con. I think it's unintentionally misleading and misses the point of the game (and the genre!).
The game is designed around the challenge of obtaining the best score you can and competing with others, not simply playing through to the end by dying and continuing repeatedly. If you are dying often then how can the game be said to be easy? The truth is that every time you use a continue your score resets and so you are in fact failing the challenge. It's disapointing to find that the review does not talk at all about the depth involved in the complex risk-reward based scoring system that is so instrumental to this game. In whole it gives the impression of a reviewer who doesn't actually have much interest in the shmup genre, which is understandable but I believe does an unfortunate disservice to the beautiful work that Cave have done with this fantastic game.
This is exactly what I wanted to say.
First of all, some stuff to correct: the game does run on an iPod Touch 3G (64 GB)
I do not know if the OP thought the game was not challenging because of the infinite numbers of continues, but this game is not just about blowing things up. It is about the highscore and the unique scoring technique. When you destroy an enemy while awakened, their bullets will become gold that will greatly influence your final score. However, enemies destroyed while awakened do not give you green gems. So you need to balance the green and gold gem income, which is often hard to do. Then there is the guard (which should be done with manual controls because auto-guard makes the game kinda easy) which becomes a large portion of strategy. Yes, you can use continues infinite number of times, but once you lose and continue, your score will start back from 0.
This brings a heavy challenge: Strategically use your awakening to collect as much gold gems as possible, and don't die until you finish all of the missions.
I just want to point out that openfeint is there for a reason, and these types of bullet hell games are like those you will see in arcades- your goal should be to be part of the top 100 scorers.
And that's not even getting into using both gold and gems for Absolute Awakened mode; holding down the Awakened button and chain spawning suicide bullets and then cancelling them for massive scores.
Not to mention the two Awakened Over modes that can also be vital for highscore success.
Arcade games were too easy to complete. If you got killed you just put another coin in. Just had to make sure you changed up a few notes beforehand. I'm so glad those days of games without challenge are behind us. Or, so I thought...damn this looks easy! :(
This review is a virtuoso display of utter fail.
Firstly, the game IS designed to work on latest-gen iPod Touches, but doesn't sync due to a bug which Cave have acknowledged and are working to address. In the meantime, you CAN run it on a 3rd-gen Touch with a simple 30-second fix which does NOT require a jailbroken machine. It has been published in many places, the simplest explanation I've seen is at the end of this review:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/04/12/the-end-of-the-argument/
The gameplay is NOT "frantic". It's the exact opposite of frantic. To play it properly requires extreme concentration and narrow, unblinking focus on a tiny area of the screen, making extremely small and careful movements.
"taking the least amount of damage possible... all with their own advantages and disadvantages based on the amount of health"
These words are completely meaningless. You don't have a life bar. You either get hit and die, or don't get hit and stay alive.
"because you'll want to focus your firepower on the baddies shooting the most bullets to make it easier on yourself"
Again, you'll actually want to do the exact opposite of this. Bullets are the main source of points in the game, you want as many onscreen as you can handle. Total failure to understand even the simplest elements of the (admittedly complex) scoring system is a pretty big flaw in a review of a game in this genre.
"Each difficulty levels causes the bullets to be faster, the enemies to be stronger, and your character to be weaker"
This is rubbish. Your character is NOT weaker in any sense as you increase the difficulty levels. Nor do enemies require any more hits to kill. The main difference is the NUMBER of enemy bullets.
"Instead, you are forced to use your never-ending ammo to kill never-ending enemies"
Have you ever encountered a shmup with limited ammo? And your enemies are NOT "never-ending". They are entirely finite in quantity - the same number appear every time you play, at the same times and from the same places.
"but if you die, you simply hit continue and keep going. No harm, no foul... Instead of worrying about high scores and lives, the focus is on what makes us all so happy: blowing things up"
Good lord. The focus is COMPLETELY about high scores and lives. Games like Espgaluda are totally about getting high scores, and by far the biggest scores are amassed by losing the fewest possible lives. If you continue you lose all your points, and if you reach the end you get a huge bonus for every life you have left.
The reviewer has essentially played the game in what amounts to cheat mode, then said it's easy. I'm not in favour of reviews written for only the most dedicated obsessives in a genre, but they really shouldn't be written by people THIS ignorant of the field they're covering.
This review in its original version did not live up to our standards and that is my fault as EiC as much as it is our reviewer. There were numerous incorrect statements and a broad misinterpretation of the goal of the game, which for us is something we always try to avoid.
So we've gone back through the review, using these comments as a guide, and we've fixed much of what was wrong with the review. A lengthy list of our fixes has been added to the end as well.
You should know that we listen to our audience. We read all these comments and take your honest feedback to heart. When changes need to be made, we make them. Thank you, readers, for your comments.
To comment on the negative side of things: If you don't own an iPhone 3GS after the iPhone HD hits that is ridiculous. The iPhone HD is going for force the 3GS into the $99 slot (if you upgrade). Anyone that does not own a 3GS at this time is more than likely ready for an upgrade. All you have to do is sell your current iPhone/Touch on eBay and use the profit to buy the 3GS or HD.
IMO - 2G/3G should be almost completely gone after the next hardware release. There just isn't a good reason not to upgrade. And no, the reason isn't money. I actually made money on my upgrade from 2G to 3GS.
tim
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