App Review: Minigore HD by Chillingo

One of our favorite shooter games for the iPhone has been Minigore by Chillingo so we had to try it out for the iPad. Having played the iPhone version for many hours we were happy to see that the iPad version did not disappoint me. This dual joystick shooter’s translation onto the bigger screen is superb as it suits the platform very well.

The game is very similar to the iPhone counterpart as we would expect. However, the iPad version does include support for the iPads native resolution and offer a few more features not found on the iPhone version. These new features are a new method of controlling Minigore that doesn’t use the dual joysticks (see screenshot). In this mode you simply touch on the screen where you want Minigore to move to. This is also the only mode that supports auto aim and autofire. So all you do is move Minigore.

In the dual joystick mode, which is what most people will be familiar with especially if you have MG for iPhone, has two well placed soft touch joysticks on the screen. One in the lower left that controls his movements and another in the lower right that controls weapon direction and firing. The joysticks are also properly scaled for the larger screen, meaning that in the iPhone they take up quit a bit of screen real-estate because of the smaller screen whereas on the iPad they are not intrusive at all.

When we first got our iPad here at AppChatter one of our first games to try out on it was minigore. One of the first things anyone notices when playing games on the iPad is the massive screen over the iPhone and this same realization is quite apparent with Minigore. The bigger screen and great controls make this game seem right at home on the iPad. We found ourselves enjoying Minigore for hours on this platform.

Aside from these differences the game is, in large part, the same as it’s iPhone counterpart. Now I know there are many that are hoping for some major differences in some of these iPad versions of successful iPhone games however, for this particular game we are quite happy with the bigger screen version. We recommend Minigore HD for iPad to anyone that enjoys shooter, dual joystick games or who are fans of the original. In reality, this game is hard to beat for how much fun it is.

What we liked: better graphics on bigger screen, easier to play.
What we didn’t like: nothing, really.