Last week I started playing AR Monster on iPhone. It's a dead-simple RPG by our old pals at Hudson Soft. It's currently free, which is why I got it.
The gimmick is that the game uses the GPS and camera to make the monsters appear all around you.
As you move the camera around, the monsters flit around, kind of half-assedly tracking along with the view. So if a monster is generally located north of you, it will float in that zone even as you pan the camera. I've seen monsters suddenly shoot across the floor, but I'm never sure if that's an intentional "animation" or if it's just a result of the camera tracking skitzing out.
Once you tap a monster to begin a fight, the camera freezes the image and zooms in on the creature. You have multiple upgradeable weapons, and you can choose to direct your attack on specific body parts. Like, green slimes are weak against arrow attacks to the eye. But who isn't.
Clark has been enjoying it. The buttons are easy enough to grasp without reading skills. And for a lot of the low-level monsters, you can kill them with just about any weapon, so Clark is free to select whatever he likes.
He also likes pretending he can see the monsters outside of the camera, as in when I tell him "There's one right above you!"
The game purports to hand you different monsters depending on where you are, based on the GPS. I'm not sure that's the case. I think it primarily delivers new monster types according to your skill level. We saw the same five monsters from levels 1 through 6, then suddenly another ten new types starting popping up no matter where we were.
Found a level 9 boss monster one night (IN MY LIVING ROOM!!11!!), which was the first time I ever felt like the battle was tough. Most of the time, it's been mainly a collecting experience where I'm just looking for new creatures to add to my Pokedex. The boss battle actually required me to heal up mid-way through.
You can find better weapons... either in random treasure chests or as dropped loot. There is an in-app storefront for buying items in bulk (hey, I think I just figured out why they're giving the app away for free!), but as yet I have felt no need to actually buy anything.
Pretty fun stuff. It certainly leverages several key iPhone advantages - IE camera, GPS, social networking, constant availability. There's been some stabs at augmented reality games on the DSi, but at the moment, the iPhone rules this experience. Right now, the tech is limited, to be sure, but someday the kind of nonsense is going to be really sweet.
That's what the AR stands for, by the way. Augmented Reality. AUGMENTED REALITY. It's a current gaming buzzword at least as awesome as "jetpack."
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