Game Reviews

Clear Vision

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Clear Vision
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| Clear Vision

Poo. Bum. Willy. Knickers.

Now we’re all on Clear Vision’s level, let’s begin. It is, as the blurb says, the number one sniper game on the App Store. Are there any other sniper games on the App Store? Maybe, but it’s a fair bet they aren’t quite as puerile as this one.

Not that being puerile is necessarily a bad thing. You just need to adjust your expectations when thundering into Clear Vision’s goofy, gory tale of a frustrated store clerk turned hit man extraordinaire.

First thing you’ll notice is that it looks like a crudely drawn Flash game (because it is) but Clear Vision proves to be a little more interesting than its roughly sculpted façade might suggest.

Watch without mother

The game is a series of animated scenarios where you’re asked to piece together a few simple clues, locate your target, and take him out in deliriously bloodthirsty fashion.

There’s plenty of variety in the scenarios your presented with. Some task you with making a direct kill, while others insist you make it look like an accident. Occasionally, you’re asked to lose your sniper rifle altogether for some memorable scenes involving a remote detonation device and car crusher.

The only element of the game that requires any skill is factoring in distance to target and wind speed. It’s all presented to you up front so, provided you’ve located your correct target, success simply depends on lining up the numbers in your sight.

Around this brainless, if oddly compelling, gun play there’s an arbitrary weapon upgrade system and a sort of hub world where you’ll accept new contracts and chart your infamy in the local paper (if you can get over the impressively haphazard grammar on display).

Stick it to the man

It’s all (pretty ugly) window dressing, admittedly, but it does a pretty good job of making you feel like you’ve strapped on your hit man shoes.

More successful is Clear Vision’s zany narrative, told with charming aplomb through a series of minimalist stick figure cut-scenes. It’s surprisingly hard not to get caught up in its relentless barrage of silliness as the game goes on.

That said, Clear Vision doesn’t so much end on a cliffhanger as stop dead in its tracks. Presumably there’s more content on the way, but it’s hard not to feel a little short-changed when the credits virtually smack you round the face shouting “We know you wanted to see the ending, but this is as far as we got!”

Clear Vision is a crude, simplistic, yet appealingly spirited little non-game that will be better once its developer adds the rest of the narrative arc.

Clear Vision

It’s about a million miles away from being the Citizen Kane of iOS game but whatever the hell Clear Vision is, it’s kind of okay by us
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Matt Wales
Matt Wales
Following a lifetime of adventure on the high seas, swabbing the editorial decks of the good ship IGN and singing freelance shanties across far-flung corners of the gaming press, Matt hung up his pirate hat and turned his surf-seared gaze toward the murky mysteries of the handheld gaming world. He lives to sound the siren on the best mobile games out there, and he can't wait to get kraken.