I go to the range a lot where run a bunch of bullets through my Ruger 10/22. When I’m not at the range I spend a lot of time on my iPod, so naturally I want a target game for when I am away from the range. I want the game to be as realistic as possible. And I want one that is as much fun to play as it is to shoot my rifle for real. Shooting Range is NOT that game.
My grandmother tells me all the time, “if you can’t say something nice about something, don’t say anything. If I followed her advice, this would be a very short review. In a word, Shooting Range for the iPod Touch/iPhone is terrible! The only thing that is good about this game is that it is free. (Okay Grand-Be…I tried.)
The game doesn’t work at all. It is not realistic. Basically you have a target that slides across the scren and a supply of just 10 bullets. To aim, you tilt your iPod, then press a “fire” button to shoot. (It is incredibly stupid and brain-dead that you can’t just press anywhere on the screen to shoot.)
The weird thing is that there’s no way to score. I’ve tried over and over, and made a bunch of direct hits to the targets, but ended up with a score of a big fat ZERO. Just so you don’t think it’s me, I asked my dad to play the game. He’s both a musician and a game designer, so he knows a thing or two about games. He couldn’t find a way to score in the game either, even with direct hits on the targets. I don’t think it’s us.
The graphics in this game are so old school it is scary. I mean cave drawings would be better than this. Primitive doesn’t begin to describe it. Yuck.
While this game is free, I think keeping it on my iPod would be a tragic waste of my 16 gigabytes of memory. If given a choice between paying for a game and relying on this freebie, I would rather pay for a game that actually works.
I’ve seen cardboard boxes that were more interesing than this game. If you go back and read the reviews on the iTunes store, they pretty much all agree with me. iTunes gave it 2 out of 5 stars. (That is extraordinarily generous by my measure.)
So in a nutshell, this game stinks like last week’s garbage sitting out in the summer sun. This is definitely NOT something I would want to keep on my iPod! Shooting Range for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Requires iPhone/iPod Touch OS3 or higher.
Playability: (zero out of five stars)
Usability: (zero out of five stars)
Fun Factor: (zero out of five stars)
Bottom line: Don’t bother. It’s not even worth the time it takes to download it.
