Reviews

  • Recent Articles

    • Quantum Legacy HD review

    Written By: Torbjorn Kamblad
    September 10, 2012

    In space no one can hear you scream, but you can rant after your death?

    Quantum Legacy HD is to the 3D space shooter what Infinity Blade is to the action RPG. It removes any aspect of free roaming, and the endless turning to find the enemy. Basically it is an on rails shooter narrowed down to one to one dogfighting. Just like in Infinity Blade you have to find openings, attack and then block incoming attacks. With a sword, or axe you have a lot of options on how to both attack, and defend. In a fighter in space you are limited to just your lasers, and shields. This is where Quantum Legacy HD goes from being a neat idea to something that should have had a second thought.

    Playing Quantum Legacy HD goes something like this: attack an opponent, shield against incoming fire, attack again. Repeat until the enemy is dead. Get a new target, travel there and repeat. Every third wave or so you get to blow up a repair droid boosting your ships hull back to full health. Boss battles are played in much the same way with the exception that you disengage them to take on smaller enemies before continuing the boss battle. The first time this was quite ok, but having had the exact same level design for each boss battle the game starts to feel extremely repetitive.

    The strongest aspect of Quantum Legacy HD is the graphics with a lot of cool explosions, lighting effects and nicely drawn backgrounds. The sound effects, and music are also well produced and suitable to the game. One thing that is extremely odd however is the use of voiced comments from the enemies. They tend to spit out a one-liner at the moment they explode into a ball of flame. For one the voice would not sound that confident in death, and secondly they usually say something that should sound threatening. Had this been in the early stages of a dogfight it would have been great, but now it seems like the sound engineer and game designer didn’t really understand each other.

    The controls are limited to targeting an enemy ship by tapping it, and a fire and shield button. This simple layout combined with a quite easy difficulty setting means that you can breeze through half the game without having to care too much about missing deflecting incoming missiles. Too many repair pods combined with predictable enemy attack patterns makes me yawn when levels drag on.

    Between levels you can choose ship once new ones are unlocked. It would be stupid to choose anything but the best at any given time. There are also choices of missile, and shield properties but the same applies here. The best is always the best choice, and as there are only three weapon upgrade, and three shield upgrade slots always go for the one last unlocked.

    When all is said and done Quantum Legacy HD was a clever idea that in the end worked less well. Combining on rails shooter mechanics with one to one dogfighting never really get exciting. Even with three enemies swarming around me it can’t hide the fact that I am only blocking, and attacking all the time without much finesse or skill. This is in some way even seen in the high score lists that are just about amount of enemy kills, as there aren’t any other properly measurable parameters for skill. Now if this graphics engine could be used to create a new story based space shooter like X-Wing, or Wing Commander instead.

    Final Rating

    passable

    Quantum Legacy HD $4.99 Universal for iPad/iPhone/iPod
    Version: 1.0.0
    Seller: Miles Godspeed

    TwitterFacebookGoogle BookmarksDiggStumbleUponShare
    • Nferno666

      wow. what a horrible and jaded review. it’s clear that
      torbjorn has never really played any of the classic space simulation games even
      though he references them in his review. it is also clear that he has no sense
      of humor because if he did, he would understand the irony of space ships exchanging
      one liners upon death, a feature that was coined and first seen in Wing
      Commander.

      first off, did you even read the game’s description or look closely
      at the Game Center features? this game has 6
      different ladders which track Kills, Difficulty Attained, Missions Completed, 2
      different Endless Gauntlet records and Hours Played. at the time of this review
      i was ranked #1 on all ladders, and i have not seen a single player who was
      even close to my stats. this means that not only did you not complete half of
      the game like you claim in your review, but you were also playing in casual
      easy mode. since the game’s difficulty is dynamic the game clearly thought you
      couldn’t even handle the simple 2 button controls, and so it never presented
      you with a real challenge. if you actually played the game long enough and if
      you were quick enough with the controls you might have understood the rush you
      can feel from the heart thumping and cinematic battles of Quantum Legacy.

      it’s true that the action can get repetitive, but when
      exactly did this game ever claim to be anything more than a Space Shooter? and
      have you played any of the other Space Shooters for that matter? maybe you
      should first try to understand the genre before bashing it.

      lastly i can say with certainty that you have never really
      played X-Wing or Wing Commander, because if you did, you would know of just how
      tedious and repetitive the combat in those games can be. if you ever try to
      defeat a capital ship boss in any of the classic space games you would know the
      new meaning to the term tedium. but Quantum Legacy changes all that and brings
      cinematic excitement to the genre.

      i also love how you didn’t even talk about half of the
      game’s features, probably because you only completed the first 5 levels of the
      game. i saw how you ranted on long loading times in your other reviews, but
      what about mentioning that Quantum Legacy has absolutely no loading time
      between missions? something that is unheard of in a 3D shooter game of this caliber.

      if anyone finds the action in this game boring, maybe you
      should check your pulse because i personally had to put the game down every 15
      minutes and take a breather from it’s awesome intensity. but then again i’m a
      hardcore shooter fan with blistered thumbs so you know that i won’t be caught
      playing on casual easy difficulty.

      loved the gameplay. loved the graphics. loved the voice
      acting with one liners which were a clear homage to the voice work of Wing
      Commander and the old space simulation games.

      and don’t talk to me about X-Wing and Wing Commander,
      because you’re talking to the man who finished every single game in that series
      on my 486 DX with the original Sound Blaster and a Gravis Joystick in DOS4GW.
      but that was before your time kid so you wouldn’t understand. next time don’t reference
      games you didn’t play or genre’s you can’t grasp and go back to the online school
      of review etiquette while you’re at it.

      i give 4 out of 5 stars to Quantum Legacy. a true classic
      with more features then were covered in this poorly crafted review.

    Podcasts

    Comments

    Tweets