ADVENTURE OF SHINA 4+

Controls game are stupid at all, you can't play this game

I decided to search for some adventure games when I stumbled across "The Adventure of Shina." I bought this game because I was certain I would enjoy it, but it turns out I was dissapointed. There seem to be more issues than i expected. First off, they don't tell you much about the main character or what the story is about. This is not really as big of a deal as gameplay, probably because they let you come up with a logic yourself while some games are so afraid you'll miss something they will throw you in a 30 min. lecture explaining every single detail.

Gameplay on the other hand is awkward and merely bad. The character moves very slow and can only jump one block making things harder than you would expect. This makes dodging enemies a pain in the neck as you have to time it to successfully dodge it. When trying to dodge them I either jumped to early or to late trying to time it properly and getting killed by it making the jumping ability somewhat redundant. They even use the lives system, which is not always a bad thing, but in this case there is no HP system giving enemies a one-hit kill ability; and if you do get hit you have to start the level over again. Plus, if you lose all your lives, you will have to start the whole game over again since there is no save system, making it very frustrating if you spent most of your lives trying to get past a level and died trying to complete the next.

Also, if you take too long trying to complete the level, a floating eyeball will spawn and seek to kill you; and it WILL kill you because you'll most likely be trying to activate blue tiles to spawn the key to the next level and getting the pack of explosives (which has no specific use i might add because you can't defend yourself with them or use them on anything) when it spawns or falling through tiny gaps you could have sworn you were able to cross, then try to dodge it unsuccessfully and did I mention that it can move faster than your slow protagonist? So you will die; you will die a lot, and you will end up replaying every single level trying to get back to where you were making the game very frustrating.

So overall, the final verdict is I find very little to recommend "The Adventure of Shina." I will admit the art design does look rather nice for an iPod/iPhone game, but that fact dissapears beneath the shadow of the games big flaws. It is a game that may have good art design, but you will have to try very hard to look past the flaws to feel you've gotten your money's worth.