Blam! Down goes another tiny peasant. That’s the smite-happy attitude epitomised by Fury of Gods, a new tower-defence title for iOS from Chillingo. Eschewing standard tower placement for something a little more active, it’s a refreshing take on a sapped-dry design for tap-happy mobile players – if a little repetitive in the long-run.
• Developer: Spectral Games
• Publisher: Chillingo
• Reviewed on: iOS
• Release Date: Available Now
Based on Greek mythology, Fury is a strange meld of real-time strategy, tower defence and The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Playing as Zeus, Poseidon and Hades during the course of the game, you’re tasked with protecting your temple atop a very tall and windy hill from a variety of subjects who have had quite enough of your vengeful wrath and feel like taking you down.
Protecting your temple involves a combination of proactive tower-type defences and rabid pounding of your iOS device’s screen, the latter of which squishes less loyal subjects beneath your mighty digit. Mastering each level, and keeping your temple in tip-top nick, requires deploying enough passive “towers” – fearsome beasts such as the cyclops and Medusa – and repelling forces with your own attacks.
As the stages inevitably increase in complexity and introduce faster, stronger enemies, Fury offers up new attacks and upgrades as you go along. A variety of narrow-to-wide area special attacks such as meteor showers and earthquakes are on offer, and some of them transfer between each set of levels. However, saving up for every upgrade requires a lot of grinding or, cheekily, an investment of real money for an IAP – a bit naughty when the game already costs you 69p, even if it is a low entry point.
Despite the variety of attacks and upgrades on offer, Fury of the Gods manages to make being an all-powerful Greek god one of the dullest experiences of all time. Merging tower-defence and brute force is a nice idea, and the Unreal engine means it all looks very pretty, but the gameplay in each of the levels is an endless tap-tap-tap on your screen until all the little podgy men and horses are dead. And that’s it.
Compulsive tappers happy to settle for dull “games” such as Tapped Out will be very happy with Fury of the Gods – it’s like Citizen Kane to Spy Kids 3. The rest of us that know better have already bought Ridiculous Fishing instead.
