iGuerilla: Taking out cardboard cutouts, one headshot at a time.

There are some iPhone games that are going for a retro feel, and there are others that just have crude graphics. iGuerilla is one of the latter, but that really doesn’t keep it from being a whole lot of fun.

Last month we reviewed Metal Gear Solid Touch, and let’s just say that Mr. Pence was less than enthused with the game. His biggest beef was that the game was little more than a point and shoot game while the original series was full of sneaking, puzzle solving etc. This game is kind of a lite version of that one with worse graphics and fewer options. Why, then, does Metal Gear get panned while this one gets a pass?

In a word, price. While Metal Gear is a whopping $7.99, this one is a cool $.99 with a light version you can get for free. At that price, it’s totally worth it.

The game is instantly familiar. It’s a simple first-person shooter military game. You stand in the middle of an intricate backdrop, and camouflaged “bad guys” leap out, guns aimed, and try to shoot you. But you have to shoot them first.

In addition, you have to shoot first aid kits to heal yourself and ammo to help reload your gun (which is done with a shake of the wrist).

There are nine locations and four tiers of difficulty, allowing for a total of 36 unique levels…not too shabby for less than a dollar.

The game does get a little redundant–I mean, all you’re doing is clearing areas while shooting people. iGuerilla never bothers with a plot; it’s about points. You get more points for shooting faster, for shooting smaller targets, for getting headshots, and by accomplishing a list of achievements.

Depending on where you shoot your enemy, it might take one shot (in the head), two shots (the torso area), or four shots (the extremities). You learn to get good at head shots pretty fast.

Also, this isn’t a simple “tap the bad guy” game. Instead, you are given a scope that you must slide across the screen and position on the bad guys. This adds much more difficulty as it takes significantly more time to position your scope than it would to simply tap every time you see a bad guy.

The game does have two very big flaws. The first is the aforementioned graphics. This really looks like a flash game, with all the enemies looking like cardboard cutouts. They slide onto the screen laterally and don’t move at all, standing there until either you shoot them or your screen goes red, indicating that they’ve shot you. The backgrounds, too, are just simple images with no movement or interaction. I’d really expect more…

Of course the tradeoff is that the load time for the game is almost instantaneous, making this a good one to pull out and play for just a couple of minutes while you wait for your Chinese takeout order. In the end, though, I’d take better graphics, I think. There has to be a better middle ground.

Also, the game is, truth be told, too easy. I’ve played through three of the four levels of difficulty and haven’t been killed once–or even felt in danger of being killed. The bullets come regularly, the first aid kits are abundant, and the bad guys are nice enough to take turns popping out, never really giving you that “oh crap” moment of having to take out three guys at once. Maybe in the updates the developers could amp this one up a bit on the difficulty meter.

Still, the game is fun and enjoyable. If it cost any more than $.99, I’d warn everyone away, but this is a really good dollar game. There are a ton of these kinds of apps out there, though, so do your research. Which one you pick is dependent on how much of a gamer you are, how much you value graphics, and how much you want to spend. This one is for the casual gamer just trying to kill a few minutes.