The epic story of Siris is continued in the epic sequel to the original, Infinity Blade 2. With complex, captivating visuals, deep, meaningful gameplay and excellently written story, Infinity Blade 2 smashed my expectations and provided hours of fun on the quest to defeat the deathless beings. Epic games, the developer of the Infinity Blade series have obviously placed much effort towards making the game what it is, not some second rate effort to rip off their fans, but a well composed and genuine effort to make a good game. This game always mesmerized me and being wrapped in so many layers during the development its hard not to. But with all these graphics, sounds, story developments, concepts and ideas, Infinity blade 2 still pulls in on what’s important, the gameplay, a component that should be at heart of any and all games.
First and foremost, the most important part of Infinity Blade 2 is the gameplay which pure genius in concept and execution, albeit a little repetitive at times. Placing you right in with the swordplay, your swipes can deflect, dodge and block anything your opponent throws at you and if your skilled enough you can chain together powerful combos of attacks to deal huge damage. Your first aim as a player is to improve you dodge and parry reflexes, If you cant stay alive you can’t win right? Different enemy’s have different attack patterns and the key is to learn all of them, recognize the animations and prepare a defence, once you’ve got this down pack you can move onto striking back. Infinity Blades combat works in a ‘sort of’ turn based fight with seamless integration, meaning you have to block as many attacks as you can, than take your turn at dealing some damage. If you attack before your ‘turn’, than only a minute amount of damage is dealt. All these components piece nicely together to create an enjoyable experience. The combat does have a few flaws, with parry swipes missing for no reason and some bad lag at points, but overall the system is fairly clean of glitches and bugs. The one part of the gameplay that really ticks me off is the elemental damage, once you get a little deeper in the game these elemental additions to opponents render a shield virtually useless, forcing you to dodge and parry everything to stay alive. Why have a shield if it can’t block damage? This can be countered with elemental protection gems, but with such a diversity of elements, it is nearly impossible to protect against them all.
Whilst most of the equipment and titan models are just re textured versions of the first games, the layered and absorbing graphics help to draw you into the game and create a great IOS experience. The background is utterly jaw dropping, a fountain flows behind you as you take down a giant monster, ancient structures surround an arena as you take down a huge beast and a massive tower dominates the land, the centrepiece of the whole game. I still don’t understand why so much content was recycled from infinity blade 1, sword, shield and armour models where simply re-textured and given different attributes. With so much time on their hands for amazing graphics, it would have been nice to see some new models from epic games. The graphics are accompanied by some cleverly crafted sound effects, clangs and clashes come from everywhere as you fight it out neck and neck, you can hear the jingling of chain mail, the movement of hinges and the grunts as you lift your huge sword. The entire game can be intensified or calmed with on the dot music, matching the emotions of your character throughout the entire experience
Infinity Blade 2 is a complete game with few flaws drawing away from its awesomeness, with an equilibrium of enjoyable gameplay, graphics, sound and story. The game is surely worth the price and any gamer can expect hours upon hours of fun, this game is certainly not your typical old sidescroller or angry birds clone, its a genre in its own, something never before seen in IOS gaming.