Has grown more active in pursuing movie licenses for its mobile games, such as last year's hit King Kong and War of the Worlds. This summer, the French mobile maker returns with another Tom Cruise vehicle, Mission: Impossible 3. The actor does not appear in the game - he refuses to let his likeness or voice be used in a video game for some inexplicable reason (the rest of Hollywood cannot seem to get enough of dabbling in the vid game industry) - but on the smallest screen, Cruise is hardly missed. What matters is that the game is faithful to the source material and delivers some highly kinetic action.I based yesterday's preview on an hour or so of hands-on time. Well, guess what?
Mission Impossible Game For Pc
There's not much more beyond an hour-and-a-half of play here, as I wrapped up the final about fifteen minutes after I picked up the game again. M:I3 is admittedly short, and I expect that revelation to turn off more than few potential fans - after all, one of the favorite things mobile game rivals pointed out about Gameloft's King Kong last year was that it was over in about the same amount of time.
The problem with this criticism, and any leveled at M:I3's length, is that it fails to take quality into consideration. King Kong was a great game, and let's face it, how long did you really want to stare at the big ape and Jack Driscoll on the small screen?
M:I3 isn't a puzzler, it's an action game. I'm not a huge proponent for epic action games on whatever platform, I'd rather get in, have a good time, and get out before the action and scenery gets dull. And that's definitely the case with Gameloft's take on M:I3 - it's short, but, man, you are never bored. The game is balls-out action from the first mission to the last.
It eases you into the controls and concepts with the first few missions, telling you the commands before you actually need to use them. And some, well, it lets you find out on your own. Pressing the OK key shoots your gun, but depending on the situation, also unleashes some acrobatic moves that are hard not to enjoy. Ethan Hunt will do some hardcore kicks that look like neck-snappers, he'll grab a guard by his neck and then shoot him in the gut, and smash heads into barricades. Hunt has access to a variety of weapons, like a basic assault rifle and a shotgun, but soon you graduate to heavier firepower, such as a grenade launcher.
There are supply boxes everywhere to refill ammo or health, but on harder difficulties, these helpful deposits grow more infrequent. Hunt also has a special move he can activate when his adrenaline meter is full, a blitz that wipes the smile off every mug on the screen.
As you take control of other IMF agents, such as Luther, you get new weapons and moves. Luther doesn't use guns like Hunt. He uses a high-voltage taser to zap enemies, break their shields, and incapacitate them so he can steal their faces. I mentioned this in my preview yesterday, but Luther has a great sequence in the Vatican (yes, the Vatican) where he bats a floating robo-sentry back and forth with a guard until it explodes - hopefully closer to the guard than Luther. From time to time, you encounter some hard-edged action scenes, and for these sequences, the game tries to replicate letterboxing by closing in the top and bottom of the screen.
When this happens, it's an alert to you that helicopters are about to drop in several bad guys, or the nearby doors will soon fly open and release a torrent of terrorists. In addition to side-scrolling action sequences, M:I3 offers a handful of top-down helicopter shooting missions.
These aren't as fun as the side-scroller kick-and-shoot scenes, but they're still a good time. And strangely better than many dedicated shoot-'em-ups on mobile. The pace of the missions speed up and slow down, you have useful special weapons like missiles and mega-bombs, and the developer knows how to handle auto-fire. Your bullets come out in bursts instead of a constant stream, but the screen doesn't fill up with more enemies than you can reasonably handle. M:I3 also employs a handful of mini-games that are from a similar vein as I-play's 24. You have to use a PDA to break into control panels or replicate the faces of incapacitated guards. These are good additions and play into the gadget aspect of the IMF.
I played M:I3 on an LG VX8000. Depending on your phone model, the game will look differently (and I have included some screens from lower-end handsets with this review).
However, on a good handset, M:I3 looks amazing. The sprites are large and detailed, the backdrops varied, and the use of color is impeccable. However, what will truly amaze you is the animation. Each character's actions are fluid and composed of many, many frames. This is one of the best-looking 2D mobile game I've ever seen. VerdictMission: Impossible 3 is a very, very cool action game - arguably one of the best I've played in a long time, combining fast, easy-to-control action sequences with bravura graphics and animation.
Some will slag it for being short, but I imagine true fans will play through it twice on different difficulty levels to see some of the best scenes over again. Slick moves, excellent production values, and a winning license - Gameloft scores again. And so do mobile gamers. Download it while waiting in line for the flick this weekend.