Twin Blades HD iPad Review

 Genre: Side Scroller / Hack N' Slash

Price: $4.99 (as of 6/25/10)

Twin Blades HD is a side scrolling hack and slash game for the iPad and is available at iTunes for $4.99. You play a female nun who makes her way through levels of zombie hordes and the occasional bad ass boss with your trusty scythe and gun.

Your controls are laid out on screen, where you can move left, right and jump. You have two methods of attack which includes your scythe as your melee weapon and various ranged abilities like a gun, flame thrower, ice gun and a holy beam amongst others. You will use these to take down thousands of zombies, collecting their hearts and turning them in for various upgrades to your character and abilities.

The first thing you'll notice with Twin Blades HD is it's vibrant and colorful anime style artwork of characters and backgrounds. As you can see from the screenshots, the imagery is very pleasing to the eyes. The controls are simple and easy to pick up. The controls are responsive but jumping gets a little getting used to. At $4.99, it's also one of the cheaper and high quality games on the iPad.



My main gripe about Twin Blades HD is the repetitiveness in many aspects of the game. The most annoying being the artificial length of the game. As you advance through every 2 or 3 levels, you are forced to go back to the same levels before progressing because "oh no, the towns are being invaded again". I would prefer a shorter and diverse game than this nonsense.

Other than the bosses, you are not going to see much variety in the enemies you face. On average, there are 100 zombies in each level that all share the same model. Some of them are wearing pots and pans as hats and that's about as different as they get. The zombies all have the same attacks like your main character so don't expect variety there either. My tactic for every non boss level is the same, "run at zombie, activate flame thrower while running at zombie, use scythe to finish them off". I saw no reason or advantage to use any other ability or tactic.

So is this game worth your $4.99? If the nice colors can keep you interested then yes. Otherwise, you will be pulling your hair out from the sheer repetitiveness of this game. 

Final Score: 2 / 5