Saturday, November 6, 2010
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Terminal 5 Review
★★★☆☆
A little blue robot wakes up in an underground maze full of spikes, lasers, and locked doors. You job is to upload a sequence of commands, cross your fingers, and hope he makes it to the exit in one piece!
Title: Terminal5 | Developer: +1 Labs | Genre: Brain & Puzzle |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.3 | Size: 2.7MB | Price: €1.99
Click QRC image (from phone) or scan with a barcode reader.
Terminal 5 is the name of an obscure dungeon-like maze, most likely nestled somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, where the US army tests robot AI using tax-payer dollars. I kid. But it really is the name of the maze your little blue robot has found himself stuck inside, and (unlike AI) he cannot escape on his own. Send the 'bot a sequence of up to eight move-commands, and hit "play" to see if he makes it... or more likely, runs repeatedly into a wall.
Your goal in this interesting little puzzler is to navigate your robot successfully to a little green plus-sign (the exit) while avoiding things that might bring him to an early demise, such as spikes and lasers. Each level in the set of twenty-four brings increasingly more difficult and complex maps (and headaches). In my time playing, I uncovered the secrets of various tiles as well as traps. The most common floor-feature are tiles called "conveyors". When stepped on-to, a conveyor will spit you out the other side. Certain conveyors will also rotate your 'bot 90 degrees, either left or right. You'll need to learn how these conveyors work in order to master this game! I'll give you a hint: you don't need to face the direction of the conveyor in order to move the way it points, and you will stop at the next conveyor if moved there from a previous one. In other words, if a straight-line conveyor dumps you on another straight-line conveyor tile, you won't continue to auto-move. Tricky. In addition to conveyor tiles, doors will bar your path. Doors can be toggled open and closed via switches located on the map, and all work in unison.
You begin each map with a fixed number of move-orders (straight, left, right, and turn-around), action sets (number of times you can submit a sequence of moves), and lives. A life will be lost by stepping on a spike tile, including turning-around on the same tile if you're already there, as well as being blasted by the laser. Sometimes, however, taking a hit is inevitable in order to make it out of the level.
Take a bit of time at the beginning of each level to plan-out your route, and submit the max number of move-orders in a sequence so as to minimize the number of action sets you use. If you play your cards right and get your 'bot to the exit in the least amount of time, using the least amount of actions, you'll get a nifty medal! Schwing.
Controls
The controls in Terminal 5, in my opinion, are what seriously ding its rating. Tapping to select move-orders works fine, unless you tap slightly too-fast; then your orders won't make it into the queue. Try not to make any mistakes in the eight-order string as well, because there's no way to undo your last order, or any other single order in the sequence. If you mess-up, your only option is to wipe the whole sequence out and start over! Hopefully, you remembered everything you'd just planned. The "go" button is a tiny little arrow located at the top of the sequence bar - I think it should be a bit bigger, if not more obvious as well. The map can be dragged-around for positioning, but strangely you can drag the map even if tap-hold-dragging over the command area of the screen. You can rotate the map using another tiny, un-obvious rotate button, and (on my Evo) you can double-tap to zoom in and out. Unfortunately, there's no pinch-support for scaling. I would love to see a scaling-zoom function. Finally, there's no option within a level to restart it; you have to instead back-out to the menu, and then restart the level. Annoying.
Graphics
Terminal5 sports rendered polygon graphics, something you don't usually see in Android games. The map spins-around at the beginning of a new level, and looks all nifty and 3D'ish. Sadly, the textures are rather bland. For example, the walls are a solid grey. The game could definitely use a little polish in the visual department.
Sound
This game has no background music, so don't freak-out and try to raise your phone's volume over and over again. The sound effects during the game are good enough for government work. You'll hear the "bzzt" sound of your 'bot milling about, switches being toggled, etc. but it's a fairly quiet game. Again, a little polish could be used in the sound department as well to give this game a bit more atmospheric depth.
Options
You can switch the language to German, if you'd like - an interesting feature - as well as toggle sound-effects, change the game speed, and reset your campaign. There is also a very helpful tutorial that does a great job of explaining most of the game mechanics, so be sure to check that out.
Verdict
For all you right-brained, over-analyzers out there who love to plan and strategize, this game may just tickle your fancy. At first, I found it rather challenging and it repeatedly lost my interest - you are, after all, just moving a robot around - but once I got the hang of the conveyors, I started to enjoy myself more. All of the control/interface quirks, lack of background music, and general lack of polish, kept it from getting a 4-star rating; all of these things could easily be fixed in an update. Is it worth $2.80? Not yet, but definitely will be once these annoyances are patched. Still, the mechanics and gameplay are solid for this type of game.
Get Terminal 5 on AppBrain!
Title: Terminal5 | Developer: +1 Labs | Genre: Brain & Puzzle |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.3 | Size: 2.7MB | Price: €1.99
Terminal 5 is the name of an obscure dungeon-like maze, most likely nestled somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, where the US army tests robot AI using tax-payer dollars. I kid. But it really is the name of the maze your little blue robot has found himself stuck inside, and (unlike AI) he cannot escape on his own. Send the 'bot a sequence of up to eight move-commands, and hit "play" to see if he makes it... or more likely, runs repeatedly into a wall.
Your goal in this interesting little puzzler is to navigate your robot successfully to a little green plus-sign (the exit) while avoiding things that might bring him to an early demise, such as spikes and lasers. Each level in the set of twenty-four brings increasingly more difficult and complex maps (and headaches). In my time playing, I uncovered the secrets of various tiles as well as traps. The most common floor-feature are tiles called "conveyors". When stepped on-to, a conveyor will spit you out the other side. Certain conveyors will also rotate your 'bot 90 degrees, either left or right. You'll need to learn how these conveyors work in order to master this game! I'll give you a hint: you don't need to face the direction of the conveyor in order to move the way it points, and you will stop at the next conveyor if moved there from a previous one. In other words, if a straight-line conveyor dumps you on another straight-line conveyor tile, you won't continue to auto-move. Tricky. In addition to conveyor tiles, doors will bar your path. Doors can be toggled open and closed via switches located on the map, and all work in unison.
You begin each map with a fixed number of move-orders (straight, left, right, and turn-around), action sets (number of times you can submit a sequence of moves), and lives. A life will be lost by stepping on a spike tile, including turning-around on the same tile if you're already there, as well as being blasted by the laser. Sometimes, however, taking a hit is inevitable in order to make it out of the level.
Take a bit of time at the beginning of each level to plan-out your route, and submit the max number of move-orders in a sequence so as to minimize the number of action sets you use. If you play your cards right and get your 'bot to the exit in the least amount of time, using the least amount of actions, you'll get a nifty medal! Schwing.
Controls
The controls in Terminal 5, in my opinion, are what seriously ding its rating. Tapping to select move-orders works fine, unless you tap slightly too-fast; then your orders won't make it into the queue. Try not to make any mistakes in the eight-order string as well, because there's no way to undo your last order, or any other single order in the sequence. If you mess-up, your only option is to wipe the whole sequence out and start over! Hopefully, you remembered everything you'd just planned. The "go" button is a tiny little arrow located at the top of the sequence bar - I think it should be a bit bigger, if not more obvious as well. The map can be dragged-around for positioning, but strangely you can drag the map even if tap-hold-dragging over the command area of the screen. You can rotate the map using another tiny, un-obvious rotate button, and (on my Evo) you can double-tap to zoom in and out. Unfortunately, there's no pinch-support for scaling. I would love to see a scaling-zoom function. Finally, there's no option within a level to restart it; you have to instead back-out to the menu, and then restart the level. Annoying.
Graphics
Terminal5 sports rendered polygon graphics, something you don't usually see in Android games. The map spins-around at the beginning of a new level, and looks all nifty and 3D'ish. Sadly, the textures are rather bland. For example, the walls are a solid grey. The game could definitely use a little polish in the visual department.
Sound
This game has no background music, so don't freak-out and try to raise your phone's volume over and over again. The sound effects during the game are good enough for government work. You'll hear the "bzzt" sound of your 'bot milling about, switches being toggled, etc. but it's a fairly quiet game. Again, a little polish could be used in the sound department as well to give this game a bit more atmospheric depth.
Options
You can switch the language to German, if you'd like - an interesting feature - as well as toggle sound-effects, change the game speed, and reset your campaign. There is also a very helpful tutorial that does a great job of explaining most of the game mechanics, so be sure to check that out.
Verdict
For all you right-brained, over-analyzers out there who love to plan and strategize, this game may just tickle your fancy. At first, I found it rather challenging and it repeatedly lost my interest - you are, after all, just moving a robot around - but once I got the hang of the conveyors, I started to enjoy myself more. All of the control/interface quirks, lack of background music, and general lack of polish, kept it from getting a 4-star rating; all of these things could easily be fixed in an update. Is it worth $2.80? Not yet, but definitely will be once these annoyances are patched. Still, the mechanics and gameplay are solid for this type of game.
Get Terminal 5 on AppBrain!
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