Modern Combat: Sandstorm Review

First Person Shooters (or FPS for all my gamers out there) have long been one of my favorite type of games out there. My fascination for this genre of game’s dates all the way back to the original Wolfenstein 3d. I must have played every FPS available until my gaming became almost strictly handheld. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many great FPS games available for handheld gaming until like the PSP came along, and even that took almost two years. So imagine my excitement when I seen Modern Combat: Sandstorm hit the Palm App Catalog. I was absolutely ecstatic! As soon as I read that there was online multiplayer I was sold. Almost instantly I had images of late night frags until I could no longer keep my eyes open. So that is precisely what I did. The first time I fired up this game I signed up for a Gameloft live ID and started playing multiplayer until I literally got so tired I dropped my phone. Only the thought of me dropping my precious Pre forced me to stop playing.

In all honesty, Gameloft is really good at making clones of famous games. Modern Combat being a handheld clone of the famous gaming franchise Modern Warfare. What does this mean on your Pre, you ask? It means a pure fun taking place in the palm (no pun intended) of your hand. So let me break this down for you so you know what your in for.

The graphics and sound department is pretty good here. Gameloft has really worked some magic into our little devices. All the characters and environment are pretty darn detailed. Never once did an object look pixelated or blocky. Even bad guys in the distance can be made out clearly. The explosions, smoke, and lighting are all top notch. I mean is it PS3 quality? Of course its not but I can honestly say its ever bit as good looking as a PSP game! Gameloft gives you a plethora of middle eastern environments to fight the baddies in, all of which are pretty detailed. Sounds are pretty accurate and surprisingly not overly repetitive. The only complaint I can muster up is the game gets a tad choppy when the game has a lot on the screen. As far as the choppy moments that’s on my original Pre I’m not sure if the same can be said for you lucky Pre Plus owners.

Storyline is not a strong point of this game so I really won’t dwell on it for too long. Basically you are part of a group  assigned to Mission Sandstorm. The whole point of the story is to locate and take down a new terrorist organization. So to say the story is cliche would be an understatement. I can honestly say even after beating the game I can only remember one characters name. However I don’t think the lack of a story really takes away from the game at all. I mean if you buy this game chances are you are less concerned with why the bad guys are bad and more concerned with getting that perfect headshot.

Controls in this game I personally found very easy to pick up and I think they suit the game quite well. There is a virtual stick in the lower left of the screen that controls your characters movement forward, back, and side to side. If you would like to rotate your characters line sight just use your right thumb to swipe the screen in the direction you would like the character to face. The game auto aims for you but you got to be pointed in the general vicinity of your target. To shoot simply press the X towards the lower right portion of the screen. To zoom in on a target simply press the cross hair icon in the lower right corner. Throwing a grenade is as simple as taping the grenade icon in the upper right hand portion of the screen. Reloading your gun is also pretty simple as all you have to do is tap the gun icon in the upper right corner. If you would like to swap your weapon (you can only carry two at a time) just double tap the weapon icon. There’s also an icon in the lower left corner of the screen to duck or jump over an obstacle but I can honestly say i rarely had to use it. All of the above may sound like a lot but trust me when I say it feels natural after three minutes of gameplay.

Online play is probably the biggest reason I bought this game. There is not many options out there to get your online play from a phone. I’m happy to say that Gameloft has made us one of the few. You can either link up with 4 of your friends locally or online and shoot each other up till your hearts content. Unfortunately the options are kind of limited. There is only three choices of weapon types and three maps to play on. You can either play team deathmatch or just good old fashioned free for all deathmatch. Like I said, pretty limited in the options department. I would have liked to see at least 6 player deathmatches but I will take what I can get. I also think Gameloft could have brought speech into the mix. It would have been really sweet to use our headsets to talk to my teammate or to talk trash to my opponent. I also have to say that random respawn points would greatly help the online experience. Like in most FPS deathmatche’s people camp out at the respawn points and kill you as soon as you respawn. With all the downfalls of the online play I am still perfectly happy though. Hello people you are playing a FPS deathmatch on your phone! 10 years ago that was a thing purely talked about amongst the geekiest of people and now its becoming common place.

Bringing this to a close, I would highly recommend this game to any Palm Pre owner. Even if you don’t play online the single player mode is still a blast to play through. There are several short comings but the good definitely out weigh the bad. So once again I must tip my hat to Gameloft for giving all of Pre owners the opportunity to do a truly fun thing with our phone. Keep it up guys!