G is for Gratifying- G Reviewed

Most gameplay concepts fall in to two categories, “has already been done right” and “has yet to be done at all”. It’s rare to see a gameplay concept exist for a long time, be replicated and still not be “done right” to some extent. One example of this rarity is an artillery game set in space. I’ve written about artillery games before, but the ever-important gravity factor was changed dramatically the first time an artillery game was set in space. I discovered this concept quite a while back but I’ve yet to see it be done well in a polished package. That is, until I found G for iPhone/Touch.

G is a single-player artillery/puzzle game and its story is quite confusing and vague, set in a steampunk-like universe where “The Flood”, the remnants of a huge interplanetary disaster since past, begin to creep into the vicinity of Earth. Your goal is to set out into The Flood in a ship called the Ptolemy and fire “sounding rockets” to ping locations throughout The Flood. The fewer rockets you use, the better. In each level you must first set up your rockets fuel and initial angle. After firing, the rocket will fly and loop around the various masses in space. You must try to time your pinging appropriately as it (hopefully) passes various set waypoints. After a few levels, you gain the ability to add extra stages to the rockets, allowing for much more complex maneuvers while still using only one rocket.

There’s no enemies or combat to speak of. The only conflicting factor is gravity itself, as nearby celestial bodies will pull your ever-expensive rockets into said bodies. It’s impossible to lose the game as you seem to have an infinite amount of rockets and time. Still, there’s a complex scoring system and it could take a very long time to finish the game using the minimum amount of required rockets. In this way, G is an odd game. It’s quite easy to complete all 50 levels with a terrible score but seemingly impossible to complete with a near perfect score. Therefor, the only real challenge is set by yourself. This isn’t a bad thing, as the core gameplay is interesting, unique and challenging enough to warrant extended play.

G is a fairly polished game with beautifully painted graphics, atmospheric (though repetitive) music, excellent voice acting and a compelling story. The gameplay provides a good amount of fun, though it could use more variety. The game also needs much better documentation with clearer indications of the various effects that celestial masses have on rockets. My main two problems are the interface and vague story. The interface looks nice but is somewhat sluggish and poorly designed. I often wasn’t sure if the game was loading or if I just wasn’t tapping or swiping in the right way. Beware, if you accidentally tap to start a new campaign on the main menu (very easy to do with the sluggish menus), your current campaign will be lost. The game also uses motion controls for adjusting a rocket’s angle mid-flight or self-destructing a rocket but these are slow and, on occasion, unresponsive. I would have preferred on-screen icons for these functions. My motto for motion controls is “do it perfectly or not at all”.

The story in G starts off fascinating but stays vague for a long time. It seems to come to a dramatic conclusion near the end but I have no idea what happened. An interesting discovery was made about The Flood, I completed one final mission that was strange and different than the rest, but in the end I had no real understanding as to what was really going on. Perhaps the worst part is the final few seconds of voice acting at the end had no captioning, unlike the rest of the voice acting, and I missed it. I’ve spoken with G‘s developers and they’ve told me that updates are on the way to add features like online scores and more levels as well as fix some of the game’s problems. Apple took a very long time approving the first update so it’s hard to say when the next updates will come.