Pangea ‘s latest iPhone title is another port from their set of Mac games. You play as Skip, a grasshopper whose backpack is stolen by a bee on the way to visit his famil-ee. He decides not to take this insult lying down and chases after the bee throughout the game ‘s 10 levels. The makeup reminds me a lot of Pangea’s most recent game, Billy Frontier, in which you play a cowboy throughout a number of different and loosely related mini games. Bugdom 2 certainly looks a lot more polished and put-together at first glance, but hit the jump to see how well their 3D adventure translates from a keyboard and mouse to an accelerometer and touch-screen.
Gameplay — basics
It isn’t easy chasing a bee around, through tick, flea, and vacuum cleaner infested enemy territory, so you’re going to encounter a couple if different gameplay styles as you make your way through the game’s ten levels (save points at the end of each level). Most levels take between five and ten minutes to complete, although due to the very sensitive nature of the controls on certain levels, you’ll want to be sitting somewhere nice and comfy when you play.
On Foot
You follow your character’s movements from an over-the-shoulder POV. You control the camera and your movement by tilting the iPhone/iPod Touch. Tilting in a direction causes you to move in that direction, although left and right tilts also re-orient the camera in that direction. There’s also a very handy little button on the bottom-left to stop your character in place and allows you to re-center the accelerometer at whatever angle you want. The major difficulty I had here was that I never quite got used to the whole control scheme. You can use that little brake button to re-orient yourself, but after over an hour and a half of play I still found myself jumping past and accidentally walking around things I was trying to pick up. I’d prefer more vehicular controls (left/right tilt to turn, forward/back to accelerate/reverse), but maybe other players had an easier time with this than I did. One other thing I noticed was the camera doesn’t tilt with turns anymore like Cro-Mag Rally does, so the game can be a bit dizzying after a while.
J
Jumping is activated by tapping the screen, and a double tap will actually activate your wings and allows you to glide over long sections of terrain provided you jumped from a high enough point. Flying uses up one blueberry, which you can see on the Leafs-Up-Display on the top-left corner of the screen. You can also pick things up by swiping down on the screen, and you use this to pick up acorns for in-game quests as well as for freeing trapped allies (you’ll see when you play). Swiping up on the screen stuns enemies with a kick, but I ‘d often end up jumping instead of kicking, so I refrained from this action.
The levels are always a treat to explore for the first time, and they’re all executed with a lot of imagination. The closet level’s walls are shoe boxes, the garden level has gnomes to fight, and the creepiest level has you fighting ticks and fleas in a furrest on a dog’s back. But enemies aren’t the only elements on each stage. You can acquire useful power-ups by jumping into the butterflies that just fly around the area. A butterfly can drop strawberries (health), blueberries (enables flight), and buddy bugs (tap the bee-like icon to shoot them at enemies and incapacitate them). There’s also a temporary energy shield you can pick up (from a butterfly of all things!), although I spent most of my time running well out of harm’s way, so my shields never really saw much action.
Each of the on-foot sections has a certain set of objectives to complete, and they’re always explained at the start of the level. There is also usually a progress bar of sorts on the sides of the screen to show how many more x out of y things you need to accomplish. I think this is a good idea, although the progress was a little hard to distinguish from the screen, so I could only ever see how much I’d accomplished, but not how much more I had to go until I finished a level.
Surfing
Two sections of the game involve Skip surfing down pipes or gutters, and I enjoyed these a lot more than the on-foot sections. You tilt the iPhone left and right to steer yourself past obstacles, and the gameplay is fast and slimy. I really welcomed the change of pace and would have liked to see more gameplay go in this direction. The ability to jump over obstacles would also have been welcomed. Tilting left and right seem to be the only way to control movement in this case. There aren’t any enemies or power-ups to worry about outside of the occasional strawberry you find. I wouldn’t eat a strawberry that I found while surfing down a gutter, but I guess things are different when you’re a grasshopper.
Air Combat
One of the final sections of the game actually puts you in a small airplane and the camera switches to a top-down perspective. The controls also change in a way you wouldn’t expect: tilting left and right turn the plane left and right, so the controls are similar to a car’s. The thing is, when viewed from the top-down perspective, this scheme is a lot less precise than the over-the-shoulder view of the surfing and on-foot sections. I’m not sure if this is much better, but maybe tilting in a direction to start flying that way might have been a bit easier.
Regardless, the airplane section is also a lot of fun. You swipe down on the screen to drop bombs and you tap on the screen to fire bullets (?). The dogfights can get pretty intense, but the satisfaction of seeing and hearing your bombs hit home is well worth playing through the level.
Graphics/Sound
The graphics are some of the most ambitious that I’ve seen on the iPhone to date. They’re quite fluid for the most part, but the on-foot sections can take a toll on the iPhone since the environments can be so detailed. The draw distance is also pretty impressive for a handheld game, and you can see quite a ways ahead (which is quite helpful, especially on the flea stage where their red eyes make them stand out from the background).
One thing I have to mention in this section is the transition between levels. Each of the ten levels is introduced by a beautifully rendered and stylish cutscene, the quality of which hasn’t been matched by any other iPhone game I’ve seen. We’re talking some really great production values here.
In terms of sound: there isn’t much voice acting to speak of, but it’s cool to actually hear some of your allies speak to you in-game. There are also sounds for jumping and flying and each enemy has its own unique sound so you can tell when they’re coming at you. The funny thing is, Skip is pretty much quiet for the whole game. Skip is a bug of few words, but the fact that he doesn’t make a sound when he gets hit or dies strikes me as strange. I guess he just doesn’t like to complain. If I were the protagonist I’d be yelling and screaming if a vacuum cleaner or a snake picked me up and included me in its lunch plans.
Conclusion
Pangea ‘s latest 3D action/adventure title is a very different experience from the usual App Store offering. It’s quite an ambitious game, and its scope alone is praise-worthy. I feel the gameplay and controls could still use some tweaking, but it’s interesting to see a typical console gameplay approach come to fruition on the iPhone. Ultimately, I’d recommend Bugdom 2 to the player who is looking for something more than just a basic game premise (like Tetris or Bejeweled). What Bugdom 2 ‘s gameplay lacks in polish it makes up for with quality presentation and attention to detail that sets the bar higher for a more cohesive iPhone gaming experience.
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