After fans sent hot bacon flying Gameloft’s way about the super late Android release, the delay has ended and the wait is over. Gameloft’s latest and greatest attempt to bring Call of Duty tier action is now hot & ready to take advantage of all that better Android hardware. Yeah, Android users got delayed for a while, but a good product takes time. What rings true for yet another case is that while iPhone got it first, Android got it better.
If somehow you’ve managed to find out about this source without ever actually hearing of Modern Combat, this series that’s commonly panned for being a soul-less Call of Duty clone could possibly be the revolution that sparked the very movement towards smartphone gaming becoming more than simply novelties.
Now if you happen to have played any of the previous installments, the first thing you notice that sets this apart is the production quality. Gameloft is keeping all the carbon copy intact, but trying to remove themselves from the rank of “soul-less rip-offs” by providing some very impressive technical craftsmanship.
You know it must be mentioned; voice acting in Gameloft games has consistently been laugh out loud ridiculous to a level that’s near-equivalent to the ever-popular “All your base” Engrish meme. It can’t quite be said that this has been another “rock into diamond” story, but it’s at least been upped to a level in which it’s convincing enough not to ruin a given gamer’s ability to take the game seriously.
Needless to say, Gameloft’s stepped their game up big time and did some serious overhauling to address everything the previous titled hadn’t perfected. Everything from the campaign to the online multiplayer feels substantially more meaningful now… but what we’re all worried about is how it controls on the device that revolutionized gaming inputs on mobile smartphones.
Many who have played Modern Combat 2 (MC2) on Xperia PLAY have been put through the dreaded update – which effectively means anyone with a version of the prequel beyond version 3.3.9 has had their great controls stripped away for a product that’s nigh unplayable.
Glad to inform that this absolutely does NOT follow in that trend of forcing a poorly simulated analog on you, but is rather more akin to Gameloft’s famed Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard (highly regarded as one of the best-controlling FPS on Xperia PLAY) or the un-broken older versions of MC2. Even better though is that they’ve taken it a step further and made the d-pad control some auxiliary functions instead of being a secondary method of of movement.
The controls still don’t quite match the straight up mastery that Dead Space did with Xperia PLAY’s dual-analog touch-pads, but they’re still quite nice, and it’d make our homegirl Kristen Schaal proud to know Xperia PLAY users get all those unfair advantages of responsiveness and tactility to dominate touch screen users.
If the rest of this game maintains the status quo it established early, we can safely assert that Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation brings the funk, the noise, and a higher level of definition than we’ve ever seen in mobile smartphone gaming.
Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation: MARKET LINK
Very Technical 