Game Reviews

Caster

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Caster
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A hammer is only as good as the nail you're throwing it at. These are words for Caster’s developers, Elecorn, to live and die by. Why? Because Caster’s shortcomings are everything to do with its host platform and very little to do with the game itself.

You play a young caster called Ethan helping in the struggle to defeat an infestation of insectoids called the Flanx. It's a merry insecticidal adventure that makes good use of Ethan's superhuman jumping ability and projectile casting powers. By conjuring different projectile weapons, you're able to defeat the swarming hordes of overgrown beasties.

Despite featuring one of the best control schemes the iPhone has yet seen for navigating complex 3D space, Caster’s touchscreen set-up is still only effective two thirds of the time.

Placing a thumb on any part of the left side of the screen initiates an invisible D-pad for moving Ethan around. The really clever bit is the way the camera is controlled. Moving your thumb left or right on any part of the right side of the screen spins the camera in the corresponding direction.

Moving your thumb up and down pans the camera in and out on an invisible arc. It starts high above Ethan for a bird's eye shot of the action and finishes right next to his head for a ground level view. It’s a masterstroke that eradicates a huge number of useless viewing angles.

During battle, you often find yourself fending off attacks from all angles with no obvious vantage point from which to mount a covered offensive.

This has two effects. The first is that it makes combat unpredictable, exciting, and challenging. The second is that it forces you to continuously move both Ethan and the camera in order to stay alive and get a clear shot on your foe. It’s here that the initially elegant controls start to creak and groan under the weight of ambition.

Thumbs repeatedly obscure what you’re trying to see as you scramble to stay on top of the onslaught. This might have been avoided had an auto-aim function been included, but that would have compromised the intense, frenetic battles that are the core of Caster.

Doubling the right portion of the screen as the fire input and the camera interface also makes using both at once occasionally tricky. It’s hard to imagine, however, a way in which this could be improved upon without undoing the game's excellent camera system.

As you work through the map’s many locations, collecting energy orbs and defeating any local pests as you go, you earn credits to spend on new powers and leveling up your current abilities between missions. This is where new casting powers (i.e. projectile weapons) can be acquired and your choices affect how you play significantly.

Caster is visually astonishing, with weapons that morph terrain in real time, impressive draw distances, zero slowdown and bold, tastefully chosen textures that blanket the undulating open plains.

The prudent balancing of the visual design ensures no single element obviously eclipses another, and Caster’s ravaged, austere atmosphere communicates sophistication, as opposed to the iPhone’s inability to handle expansive, complex vistas.

Ultimately, Caster makes the best of the iPhone’s buttonless interface for a genre that often proves to be too much for touchscreens. Despite only succeeding most of the time, it sets a control template for future games of the same mould to follow, while simultaneously delivering an extremely polished and exciting adventure.

Caster

Caster summons bags of excitement and gorgeous visuals to boot, though it needs to conjure improvements to its controls
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