Frontline Commando 2 app review: a great-looking but terribly slow game

Introduction

The graphical power of iOS devices is growing every year; each time a new version comes out. It is to be expected that the graphics of iOS games will also increase drastically. This also has its downsides as you might expect, because with the growing quality of graphics, older devices will not run the newer games, which is a problem that will hit the App Store sooner or later. Glu Games Inc. has just released the sequel to Frontline Commando, called Frontline Commando 2 (as you might have guessed). This game looks absolutely stunning, but suffers from severe issues with performance, due to the lack of power in earlier iOS devices. The app is compatible with both iPad and iPhone.

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Gameplay

The gameplay is fantastically designed and it reminds me of shooting arcades from the nineties, except for the fact that you’re not holding an actual gun and that the game is a third-person shooter. You use your thumb to aim and look around. When you want to pop out of cover (and make yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks) you simply press the cover button and you are free to fire at your enemy. You can also simply press the fire button to pop out of cover when you want to be quick. After a match, when you’ve killed a bunch of bad guys, you return to the menu where you can use the currency you’ve won to upgrade your arsenal. 

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Graphics and performance

As mentioned before, the graphics of the game are not worse than a late-generation Playstation 2 game. The developer really has gone all out with this and I can easily say this game belongs to the best-looking gaming apps on the App Store. There is a massive downside to this. The game, on my iPad 2, doesn’t run very smoothly. On the contrary, the game is nearly unplayable on my device, and most of the time it looks like I’m looking at screenshots of the game. The frame rate drops every time I move or want to look around, making the game unplayable.

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• Beautiful graphics
• Easy to pick up and play
• Free to play

 

Cons

• The performance of the game on older versions of iOS devices make the game unplayable

 

Conclusion

If you own one of the newer devices from Apple, this game should definitely be high on your list. The game is free to play and is absolutely stunning to look at. The biggest downside to the game is the slow frame rate on older devices. The game was simply unplayable on my iPad 2 and I think this will be the case of all devices of that generation or older. The app does also work in iPhones, but I can recommend trying iPad 3 or higher to play this game. The game is just under 100 MB.