Game Reviews

Half-Inch Heist

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Half-Inch Heist
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| Half-Inch Heist

If you boiled down the bullet-hell genre, stripping away all of the periphery mechanics as you did so, you'd be left with something similar to Half-Inch Heist.

This is a game that's all dodge, with giant hails of rockets, bullets, lasers, and bad guys inundating you from the second you start.

While it's a twitchy test of reactions, and pretty good-looking to boot, in the end is hamstrung by its own simplicity.

You're nicked

You control the game with a single finger. A diamond appears at the bottom of the screen, you push down on it, and the game starts. If you lift your finger for even a split-second then you lose and have to start again from the beginning.

The key to survival is weaving your way through the shower of munitions flying in your general direction. Last for long enough and you have to take on a boss. Here you need to hover over an exposed weak spot, all the while dodging and weaving through the boss's minions.

At first it feels like a great idea. It's a burst of arcade action that requires concentration, but it isn't hampered by the lack of physical controls the iPhone offers. But after a few tries the problems behind the game's simple premise start to become evident.

For starters, no matter how you play you're going to be obscuring a good chunk of the screen. In a game where split second darts out of the way are the norm, not being able to see a rocket blasting in your direction is a major problem.

Pilfering

Then there's the difficulty level. Half-Inch Heist is uncompromisingly tough. Within the first hour of play you'll have died countless times and not made it past the first boss. Endless runners offer the same death-to-play ratio, but with more variety.

Here you're fighting against the same obstacles over and over, and it starts to become a little wearisome - especially when you keep dying at the same spot time and time again.

With a floating stick control and randomly generated levels, these problems could have been avoided. As it is, Half-Inch Heist feels like a good idea that hasn't quite been thought through.

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Half-Inch Heist

While it has an interesting central idea, Half-Inch Heist is more about frustration than it is fun
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.