Knights of the Old Republic recently made a jump over to a new platform, the iPad. The game, known as KotOR, was originally released on the Xbox in July of 2003, then again later on the PC in November of that year, and the Mac version followed in 2004. With BioWare developing the game, it had a talented team of creators and writers who knew how to do the Star Wars name justice in a deep, involving and huge RPG.
The game came out on iPad at the end of May this year and it has been a huge success. Being able to play an immersive RPG with the convenience of the handheld iOS platform has excited the world, especially Star Wars fans. The jump to iOS has meant using touch controls in place of controller or keyboard and mouse; these new controls have been implemented smoothly. Using your finger to look around the environment is easy and you can flick in the direction you wish to move. The touch controls work fantastically within the menu system and scrolling is done with ease. There are some customization options, such as toggling on/off auto run. I have played with this option both on and off, and found that sometimes, the auto run could lead me off in a direction I didn’t desire to be running towards or into a cluster of enemies. Within the options a player can also change difficulty, auto level up, autosave, and alter touch sensitivity. These new changes added specifically for the iPad are versatile and feel completely natural to the game whilst playing.
The graphics look sharp and vibrant on the iPad screen, due to the screen size and resolution the textures really stand out and help immerse the player into the environment and world of Star Wars; architecture, vehicles, indoor areas all look detailed. The menus, placement of icons and gameplay systems are all the same as the original versions, barring of course the aforementioned touch controls, and some combat elements.
The combat allows you to pause if you want to, as seen in the screenshot below, this time can be useful to plan your next move and get your attacks and actions queued up. This auto pause can be turned off or on for various elements of the game, such as enemy sighted, combat, or mine sighted. It is really up to personal preference whether a player would choose to have them on or off. I liked the pause on in combat to be able to plan my next move in the short time available.
As in the original versions of the game, the wonderful music, spectacular sound effects and well written quests are all still in place; multiple choices for the branching dialogue is now chosen through easily accessible numbered buttons down the side of the screen to just tap, instead of having to choose the sentences manually, which would be fiddly on the iPad.
The iOS port has been done skillfully and in such a way that makes the game feel completely at home on the iPad. Old fans of the game, and newcomers alike will love it and can now be engrossed anywhere they please, whether on the sofa or at the park.
You can buy it here on iTunes and a full, detailed KotOR article and review of the whole game itself will be on the way soon!
For more of our gaming reviews, click here.