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    • Ash hands-on

    Written By: Nacho Andrade
    November 15, 2010

    A new RPG has hit the AppStore. Despite its alluring charms though, we can’t recommend it… yet.

    Today you will no doubt see glowing reviews for Ash on a bunch of other sites. However, on our site you will not see a review just yet. Why you may ask, as the gameplay looks pretty awesome right?

    Yes, it does look awesome, and those other sites are giving it some pretty good reviews, but you know what? I can’t stand to get past the first 10 minutes of the game. It may have a million hours of gameplay, multiplayer, and a hidden “Sac-Scratching” feature but if you can’t keep me playing for more than a few minutes something is seriously wrong. Because I love RPGs!

    The problem is in the ill conceived controls. Instead of a D-Pad, or analog nub, or even tilt controls, this game makes you touch and hold the edge of the screen. This control scheme makes Ash a Mother F&*$%^@ to play. This isn’t like Inotia where you touch where you want to go. With Ash,  you have to to hold your finger on either the top, left, right, or bottom edge of the screen to move in that direction making the entire screen one giant D-pad. WTF? In most positions your blocking the screen!!

    RPG’s are the type of game where you spend a lot of time traveling around, talking to people, buying items, your main method of interaction requires you to move around the screen. I can’t bring myself to do it for more than a few minutes with these horrible controls.

    RPG fans out there may wish to take a punt. However, I can’t bring myself to review or recommended this game to anyone with it’s extremely weak control scheme.

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    • squarezero

      Well, a new control scheme should be available in the next week or so.

      Still, it takes a petty, petty man to be so put off by the controls as they stand. Most rational human beings will have little trouble with them, which is why other sites like TouchArcade have already posted their reviews. Frankly, TouchGen always struck me as more professional than this.

    • http://twitter.com/nachorevolution Nacho Andrade, USA

      I think you have it wrong. When a game’s controls cease to make it fun I don’t know how you can expect to give it a favorable review. If it’s difficult to play how much fun do you think you will have? I think we are the only honest site out there willing to tell you how it is.

    • DjBigbyrd

      The controls are an atrocity I agree with the writer here. As the controls are now I can’t recommend this game, they desperately need to release a patch.

    • http://www.srrngames.com Aujang Abadi

      Nacho:

      Thank you for your feedback. We’re working on incorporating a DPad as we speak–the critical consensus on whether our control scheme or dpad controls are better is literally 50/50, so we’re working very hard to get them incorporated into the game.

      I hope you’ll take another look then!

    • http://www.srrngames.com Chris Hooe

      Nacho:

      Thanks again for your comments. I just want to clarify something about the existing control scheme, in case we didn’t communicate it well in the game’s opening tutorial.

      To move the player character in the world map state, one touches any point on the screen in a cardinal direction relative to the character’s current position. For example, if you want to move north, you touch the screen at a point that is north of the player’s current position on the screen.

      As Aujang mentioned, we seem to have hit a hot-button issue with our control scheme, as the reaction to it has been very split. Given that, we will in fact be patching a simulated directional pad into the game as an optional means of control.

      I hope that this encourages you to give our game a more thorough playthrough, be it with a clarification on the existing controls or using the alternate control scheme once the patched-in directional pad drops.

      Thanks!

    • mike

      LOL good job i saw u guys released and update the day of the hands on article and are planning to release the d-pad in your notes…Good to see developers that care, i’m sure your hard work will pay off

    • JacobRonin

      Thank you for being the Devil’s Advocate, Nacho! I look forward to reading the review after the patch.

    • AnotherTim

      You give up too easily Nacho! Are you a Mexican or a Mexican’t?

    • james

      mexican or mexican’t? roflmfao!

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