Warner Brothers is starting to get into a bad habit with their iOS licenced movie games. Man of Steel was a simplified Infinity Blade clone, and now there is Pacific Rim to add to the pile. The movie Pacific Rim is about the people who pilot large robots called Jaegers against monsters known as Kaiju that are regularly coming out of a dimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific. In the game there are thirty missions where you control a Jaeger who fights against the kaiju in the movie (there aren't that many). Allow me to repeat myself that this happens for thirty missions! There is nothing to explore or do except stand there and fight the same battles over and over. To mix things up you get to fight more than one Kaiju, but not at the same time. You just need to make your health last long enough.

To fight the kaiju you swipe the screen to attack when they aren't blocking your attacks. You tap the side of the screens to avoid in that direction or swipe in the right direction while the Kaiju is attacking to parry its attack. But in Pacific Rim the parry attacks are rarely recognised and there is absolutely no variety in the attacks, unless you use consumable weaponry. Given the parry is broken defending yourself relies on dodging attacks. The problem with this is that the Kaiju attacks aren't clear on where they're going to hit, or that they're meant to be parried so prepare to get hit a lot.

This game does nothing to try and look like anything but a movie cash-in. After forking over some money for the game (thankfully it's only a dollar), if you want different Jaegers or better weapons and armour you either have to grind a lot or it's in-app purchasing. If it was free to play then it would be no surprise that you have to either put in the time or the money, but when you pay and then still have access to so little, it is pretty disgusting.

Conclusion

Movie tie-in games are having a pretty poor track record recently. It's much easier to rip off a popular game or throw out some cheap poorly-made game on downloadable services. Pacific Rim falls into this category; a clear rip off of Infinity Blade only all the fun and controllability has been stripped out of it. The in-app purchases sour things even further, as most items and Jaegers are very difficult to obtain through earning the currency in game.