He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe

This past week I’ve had a chance to spent some (read: even more than usual) quality time with my iPhone and play He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe by Chillingo Ltd. It’s a fun game with lots of nods and winks to fans of He-Man franchise, but even if you’re not a die-hard He-Fan, this is still a fun game that even the totally uninitiated should be able to enjoy. It’s a classic 2D side-scroller that reminds me of old Super Nintendo games with regard to the graphics, shading, etc. As someone who grew up with the original NES and SNES, the side-scroller occupys a very special place in my heart, so this game is hitting a lot of the right buttons.

A He-Man game is something I would have gone nuts for 25 years ago, and I find that this game hits all the nostalgic notes it should now. The music and the animation immediately recall the cartoon and it’s just plain cool to see these charcters in action again. It’s not all retro, however. The look of the characters have been updated somewhat to look even more top-heavy and muscular than ever, almost to the point of looking like highly stylized, super-deformed versions of the characters. The animation is smooth and fluid, so at times it almost feels like a playable version of the cartoon. All the major characters you’d expect to see are here: He-Man (naturally), Skeletor, Beast Man, Mer-Man, Trap Jaw, Man-at-Arms, etc. Each character serves a unique purpose in the game, and I still feel all giddy each time a new character makes an appearance. Even Orko pops up between games to give you the opportunity to win coins or other goodies in a game of chance.

The gameplay is simple enough: you hold your device (in my case an iPhone 4s) lengthwise, and you use your left thumb to control He-Man’s movement across the screen, and then you use your right thumb to strike. As simple as the controls are, they still take some time to get used to since there are no physical buttons, so, for someone like me who usually saves adventure games for a console, the controls did feel quite awkward at first. Fortunately, as the game progresses, I did finally find my comfort zone and was able to hack and slash my way through tons of Horde Troopers and other assorted baddies.

Speaking of hacking and slashing, that’s essentially what this game is — a hack and slash at least in the beginning. He-Man just takes his sword and mows through as many bad guys he can, like Horde Troopers and Snakemen. There isn’t a whole lot of strategy involved. The main baddies, like Mer-Man and Beast Man, are the bosses of each world He-Man must make his way through on his way to the ultimate face-off with Skeletor at Castle Grayskull. The bosses are a lot of fun to see on the screen and some have proven to be downright hard to beat — it took me many tries to finally beat Mer-Man, for example. And that’s another thing I like about this game — it definitely starts out easy, but the difficulty level increases incrementally as you go. The challenge is exactly the right amount to keep me interested and coming back to the game.

A player has some options in terms of how they choose to play the game, which is nice. I like to just plow through as quickly as I can, but there are coins/jewels to be gathered for points, and there are “lore” icons that can be collected that unlock special features in the game. The coins are a bit of a necessity beyond just points, however, because He-Man will need power-ups that can be purchased from the Sorceress in a shop. The power-ups range from a simple boost to He-Man’s sword, to the ability to call on Man-at-Arms to lend a hand in blowing some bad guys away.

The game can be purchased from iTunes for 99 cents, and for that price, I’d be hard pressed to say this game isn’t worth it. It actually feels like a steal at that price. It’s a fun game that can easily be fun for anyone, and I can see this being a gateway for the younger generation to be introduced to He-Man and Co. Anyone who has ever considered themselves to be a fan of the property will get an instant kick out of this game, so, by the power of Grayskull — download it now!

Purchase the game via iTunes

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Updated: November 6, 2012 — 1:57 pm

The Author

canonball

Canonball enjoys haunted houses, drinking fake egg nog, checking books out from the library and not reading them, and taking part in various types of online nerdery, like contributing to The Fwoosh and The Short Box.

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