If you know me and games, you know I love a good scrolling shooter.  Vertical… horizontal… it doesn’t matter.  Just give me a ship and lots of things to shoot and I’m happy – at least most of the time.  Unfortunately, my first experience with c2matrix, in the form of their first game Firehawk (review here), didn’t leave me overly satisfied.  After spending some time with Hotfield, I’m not sure that it’s much of an evolution over its predecessor.  The graphics are a bit better, and the levels aren’t quite as bullet-riddled as Firehawk (until you reach the boss, that is), but there’s still nothing to really set this apart from the other shooters that inhabit Apple’s App Store.

As with most shooters, the basic goal behind Hotfield is to shoot everything that’s trying to kill you and make it to the end of each level.  To do that you’ll blast your way through all of the basics like tanks, planes and lots of stationary guns.  There weren’t really any bad guys that stood out as being exceptional, either in the cast of minions or in the bosses.  As you fly through each level you’ll feel a heavy dose of “been there, done that”.  There are three different ships you can choose from, though there doesn’t seem to be much difference in play mechanics regardless of which one you choose.

Blast The Boss

The game employs “bullet time”, which for Matrix fans produces the same effect of causing the enemy’s bullets to slow so you can avoid them more easily.  Once activated, a meter depletes to show how much bullet time you have left.  The meter will fill itself back up over time.  In addition to your main gun you have a powerful laser which is also meter driven, and also powers back up with time after you use it.  Destroying certain enemies gives you either weapon power ups or extra health, and sometimes destroying enemies unleashes stars.  Supposedly after so many stars are collected based on a number at the top of the screen you get an extra life, but for some reason that number seemed to arbitrarily reset from time to time, so I never earned enough stars according to the game to get an extra life.

Hotfield offers 3 different mechanisms for controlling the game: touch, flick and v-keys.  I personally like the touch controls the best, mainly because it allows you to use the whole screen for game play.  When you’re in flick or v-keys mode the game is played horizontally, and there is a frame around the actual playing area.  To the left is your virtual joystick, and to the right are A, B and C buttons.  I think the main difference between flick and v-keys mode is that with flick you can move your fighter whether you’re on the virtual joystick or not.  Either of those modes use the buttons for bullet time and the special lazer.  In touch mode you user your finger to drag the ship around, just like flick mode.  A double tap and hold activates bullet time, and a double touch and hold activates the laser.

The graphics are decent, but they have “standard space shooter” written all over them.  The first boss is somewhat different, but really Hotfield is hard to distinguish visually from most any other scrolling shooter I’ve played on a mobile device.  The sound effects are just as typcial.  The music is good, so at least there’s that.

Just like any other shooter I play on the iPhone, I was hoping Hotfield would be the “next big one”.  Sadly, it’s mostly more of the same.  Bullet Time was a nice effect, but it’s not enough of a gimmick to impress, and everything else was enough to provide solid scrolling shooter fun without breaking out of any comfort zones.  You could certainly do worse on the iPhone than Hotfield (believe me, I have), but there are other offerings on the App Store that provide a more original gaming experience.

Final Verdict: On The Fence
App Store Link
App Store Link – Lite Version
App Shopper Link

[Note: image courtesy of App Shopper]