AppReviewToday- AppReviews

It's easy for me to forget, but the App Store–surprisingly–is home to a solid collection of good-to-great rally-based racing games. So, when a new challenger enters the ring, they really ought to bring their best. Unfortunately for Art of Rally, its visual style and relative newness are the only things that are really going for it when weighed against the competition.

Stylish sliding

Art of Rally makes a striking first impression. This low-poly racing game puts its obsession with the sport of rally on full display, both by offering a ton of historical context around the sport from the jump and also opening the game with a giant golden statue rising out of the ground, instructing a rally car to be come a master of the art of the most dangerous version of the sport that exists in the in-game universe.

From there, the world of Art of Rally opens up to you where you can free roam, play a career mode, take on daily or weekly challenges, and more. No matter which mode you are in, the game looks extremely cool due to its minimalistic styling and terrific environment design. I do sort of wish more goofiness carried on past the game intro, though. After the statue first appears, most everything else fails to rise to that level of whimsy.

Plodding performance

As stylish as Art of Rally is, there are also times where this mobile version doesn't let it shine the way it should. I don't want to even pretend to know how games are made or how technically demanding it is to serve up this game's low-poly aesthetic, but Art of Rally certainly seems like the kind of title that should be capable of running smooth and sharp on an iPad Pro, though–for any number of reasons–it simply doesn't.

I have managed to tweak the game's many graphical settings to allow my racing to proceed at a (mostly) smooth 60 frames per second, but it comes at the cost of many visual effects and quality settings being disabled or lowered significantly. Even in this state, there are times where Art of Rally may chug or hang a bit, which is both disappointing but also disruptive to what is meant to be a game about smoothly sliding around all manner of corners and obstacles as quickly as possible.

Mobile misfire

Even when Art of Rally is firing on all cylinders, it just has a hard time keeping up with the competition. Its racing model feels good, but only if you play it with a controller. Its modes and course design are solid, but all of them are better replicated in a much more stable and robust game (with better control options, I might add) called Rush Rally 3.

In being a port, I also don't really see why anyone would want to pick this version up compared to the other platforms you could be playing it on. As far as I can tell, Art of Rally runs better on those, and there isn't anything unique added to this iOS version to make it especially mobile-friendly. It's just a significantly compromised version of what is probably otherwise a fine racing game.

The bottom line

If this mobile version of Art of Rally ran a little smoother and perhaps offered up more than familiar racing with a fresh coat of paint, then it would be worth celebrating. As it stands, this game might be a worthy pickup for a mobile-first rally racing nut who's already played the other offerings to death, but probably not anyone else.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/art-of-rally-review/

This will probably be a short review. There isn't a whole lot to say about a game like, Demeo, after all. It is an extremely straightforward dungeon-crawler game. It looks nice, has some decent variety, and a few interesting mechanics, but it is conceptually about as simple and flat as you can get. As a result, it's a kind of experience that can fall apart pretty quickly once you've played a dungeon or two.

Knights in the round table

Demeo models itself after a sort of classic Dungeon & Dragons dungeon-crawling experience. You build a party of adventurers, enter a location, and kill monsters, gather loot, and try to kill a big boss at the end.

There are some wrinkles to this, like a card system that replaces any sense of leveling up or experience, and a simplifed combat system that relies on standardized damage dealing through dice rolls that simply determine whether you hit, miss, or critical hit what you are aiming at. Demeo otherwise fully embraces the tabletop spirit it's inspired by, going even so far as to make the game environments appear as complicated dioramas built within a table and having all characters and creatures presented as miniature figurines.

Vapid variance

Although Demeo has five different campaigns to choose from, all of them play out basically the same way. The environments may look different, and you can mix and match up to four of the seven available party members, but otherwise your core mission and your methods for completing them are essentially unchanged. You kill stuff until you find a key (or a boss if on the last stage), and then you find an exit (or kill the boss if you're on the last stage).

As you complete campaigns you may fill a meter that unlocks new rewards over time, but this meter fills awfully slowly and the rewards it gives are hardly noticeable. I can imagine there being some novelty from Demeo's multiplayer, but there doesn't seem to be a good or practical way to play it unless you somehow know three other people that own and want to play with you.

Engrossing till it's not

I know I sound pretty sour on Demeo, but I will say I was engrossed in the game on my first couple playthroughs. There is something satisfying about working your party dynamics to make things click such that you can tear through enemies with relative ease. The only problem is that once I figured out how to do that effectively, continuing to play felt a little tedious.

This is a game that also looks quite nice, though I wouldn't say it feels like it's pushing the limits of my iPad outside of how warm my device gets while playing. As for controls, they're fine, but occasionally have some wonky behaviors when trying to select characters and move them to specific spaces, which–unfortunately–can have pretty dire consequences as there is no movement confirm button or undo action you can take.

The bottom line

All in all, Demeo is a decent dungeon-crawler that I doesn't seem to do much to justify its cost given its lack of variety and relative competition on the App Store. Still, if you insist on checking it out, you could get some decent mileage out of it, particularly if you find people to play with.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/demeo-review/