Apple Arcade review #88: ShockRods
This vehicular multiplayer arena shooter is barely playable on the phone. The virtual buttons are small and the camera hyper-sensitive at the default settings. I kept missing the fire-button, either pressing jump instead or moving the camera. The user interface is cramped and the settings and dialogue boxes appear straight out of a PC game. I tried to adjust the camera controls, but I couldn’t find a setting that felt usable to me.
On a bigger screen, with the Xbox controller, things might be better…but I didn’t get a chance to try. ShockRods just plain refuses to install on my AppleTV. It’s the first game so far that I’ve not been able to install…but not the first time the Apple Arcade has had problems with the TV.
Playing Arcade games on the Apple TV is a hit and miss experience. Sometimes the Xbox controller won’t connect, and you have to unpair it before going through the pairing process again. I’ve done this maybe seven or eight times now. Performance on the 4K Apple TV is never great. I don’t know why this is, maybe it’s just trying to push too many pixels. Perhaps the non-4K ATV performs better. And there’s the whole issue of getting screenshots from the TV. In general, things are just a whole lot easier on the phone and iPad.
Back to ShockRods. The game isn’t particularly pretty. It’s a bit like a late 00’s PC game, with muddy textures and effects. On a small screen, it’s hard to read. I’m sure this aesthetic will have its fans. I’m not one of them.
I don’t think this game or even this genre are suited to mobile devices, not without some major control and UI changes. A more radical approach would have been interesting to see. Instead, ShockRods feels like a PC game squeezed onto the phone, and while that’s impressive and speaks to the power of the iPhone, it doesn’t make for a great experience.