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'Revolutionary' FPS The Drowning is now available worldwide on the App Store

Don't drown it out

'Revolutionary' FPS The Drowning is now available worldwide on the App Store
|
iOS
| The Drowning

If you go around making bold claims about revolutionising touchscreen FPS control mechanics, you'd better be able to back 'em up.

Otherwise, I'm afraid, a lot of people are going to hit the sad face emoticon in their App Store reviews of your game.

Since February, you see, Scattered Entertainment has been championing the innovative gesture-based controls at the heart of its zombie-slaughtering shooter The Drowning.

Well, this free-to-play blaster is now available on iOS, and we can finally see whether the game lives up to the hype.

You're cast as a gruff-voiced survivor of the zombie apocalypse who takes the fight to the shambling undead by shooting lots and lots of them in the face.

Its certainly a good-looking game - the boat-based intro, for example, is one of the most impressive things I've seen running on my iPad.

The swiping / tapping control system is undeniably interesting, too, but it's going to take a lot of getting used to. In my brief time with the game this morning, the control system felt a little too slow and cumbersome to defeat even the most stumbly of the undead.

This might be a problem that fades away the more you play - and there IS a standard joystick and button option available if you'd prefer - but it is a bit of a concern considering the amount of trumpeting that went on before the game's release.

Then, there's the free-to-play system. Scattered Entertainment has taken an all-encompassing approach to this business model, and this could well dissuade a lot of people from picking up the game.

Still, if you want to have a stab at The Drowning yourself, you can grab it for nothing at all from the App Store right now.

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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.