Mobigames’s next title melts several different genres into some great stealth-platforming fun.
It’s been a long time since’s Mobigame’s legal battle over naming their award-winning puzzle-platformer, EDGE (they won). It appears that the small independent developer studio, lead by David Papazian, has been quite busy. I was sent an early build of their latest game, Perfect Cell for the iOS (iPhone retina and iPad), and am about half-way through as we speak. While I can’t post any screenshots or video, as the release date of the game has yet to be determined, I was informed that I can write about the game to my heart’s content, so that’s what I’m going to do!
I’ll start out by saying that Perfect Cell is absolutely nothing like Mobigame’s previous titles. In fact, it draws themes from games like Shadow Complex and Metal Gear Solid more than anything else, the latter being an actual influence to the game, according to Papazian. Members of the development team worked on games like Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow Mobile and Alone in the Dark 4, so there’s a good amount of experience in a team that ranged from 3-7 people in different phases of the development process.
The game puts you in the role of the “perfect cell”, an organism that fell to Earth on a meteor and was immediately taken underground to be studied in an endless maze of labs. According to the intro, this cell is extremely violent with other living cells, and multiplies at a high rate. Pretty soon the organism becomes sentient, and this is where the game picks up. You play as a squid-like, purple glowing blob that can float through the air, causing all sorts of havoc on the scientists and soldiers you encounter.
You control the cell by sliding your finger around the screen, or swiping quickly in a direction to “dash”, which causes the room to light up in a glowing streak of purple. Your dash move is your main attack to take out any humans that get in your way, or break through glass or walls to find secret paths or the collectible green gems scattered around. If you remain still for a couple seconds, you will become invisible, which is handy for evading the soldiers that appear to be infiltrating the facility as you progress through the story.
Like Splinter Cell or Shadow Complex, Perfect Cell can be played various ways. Currently, I’m choosing to fly through each level, killing any living thing in my path. However, according to Papazian, you can beat the entire game without killing a soul. I will probably play this way on my second playthrough, but at the moment I’m having too damn much fun smashing through enemies and slicing them to pieces. As with other stealth games, it’s presumingly a lot more difficult to beat the game this way. I am unaware if there is anything to unlock after doing so, but the game is Game Center enabled, so there are achievements to be had.
Either way, you get to slice up fools, which is a blast. About halfway through the game you get an ability that lets you draw a path for the cell to quickly dash through. If there is a person in the way of the path, limbs, heads, and torsos go flying. A couple times I was able to take a soldier’s legs out at the knees while simultaneously decapitating him. It’s awesome. While not wrought with gore, this game certainly loves it’s violence as much as it loves it’s stealth. At the end of each level you get a count of how many humans you killed, and how many are remaining. The kills look fantastic due to an excellent in-house physics engine. Chop off a guys legs from the knees down, and there will be that glorious brief second of him standing before crumbling to the ground. Dash into a 3 soldiers at once to watch them all go flying into a nearby wall. The kills in this game are extremely satisfying, meaning that it’s going to be tough for me to play through it peacefully!
Unfortunately, the enemies in Perfect Cell are dead-set on taking you out, and pretty smart to boot. Soldiers will try shooting at you, and won’t stop until they lose track of your location. If you hide, they will come and search your general area. You can take a fair beating, and gain more health as you merge with other cells, but take too much damage and you’ll explode, forcing you to restart the level. There are also environmental hazards, such as laser beams, that hurt if you touch them. None of these are an instant kill though, so usually you should be able to find a place to hide and regenerate your health before it’s too late. When your health gets extremely low, you lose some control over your movement, and it’s impossible to hover in the air. This is frustrating, but is essentially the game telling you to stop sucking.
Have I mentioned how gorgeous the lighting is in this game is yet? In fact, the entire game, built on an in-house engine, looks a lot like Shadow Complex (which looked fantastic) in that you move side to side in your current layer while 3D backgrounds behind you show rooms, machines, people, and other objects that you can’t interact with. It’s an aesthetic that works really well for Perfect Cell, and the dark shadows and rooms look awesome when you dash and light up the walls. The retina display support makes the game’s visuals really pop on the iPhone.
I’m looking forward to completing all the available levels as they unlock, and I’m stoked about the different abilities you gain as you progress and grow during the game. In fact, the game really starts to pickup once you get the ability to “super dash” by drawing a path on the screen. Before that, you gain the ability to split into two different cells, which allows them to be moved independently as long as they are both on the screen at the same time. There is supposed to be around 5 hours of gameplay in Perfect Cell, but I can easily see that number being doubled if you want to beat the game killing everyone, not killing anyone, or collecting all the secret gems.
Perfect Cell will most likely be out early next year, but does not have a set release date at the moment. As I mentioned, this game is not easily appreciated in text form, or even in screenshots. As soon as we get the OK to post a video, we’ll do so on our YouTube channel, and mention it here. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Here is the teaser if you haven’t seen it yet.
