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The Collectables
Crytek's first mobile game, Fibble: Flick 'n' Roll was a drastic departure for a studio known for its cutting edge graphics and intense gunplay. Its second foray, The Collectables is much more in line with its high-octane roots.
Players take control of a four-man fire team hell bent on liberating a series of islands from a hostile military group. Using touch controls to navigate the group, you move from location to location capturing radio towers, breaking down defenses, and other military style missions. As you guide the soldiers through the environments, they auto-fire on targets in their vicinity. You can also take control of individual soldiers to move them behind cover.
When the firefights get hairy, you can use one of your card-based abilities to turn the tide of battle. The array of options here are vast, ranging from calling in air support or artillery strikes to healing your squad with med packs and unleashing a double agent that momentarily turns an enemy to you cause. Players start with 10 card slots per mission, but can carry more into battle as they level up. Using cards doesn't completely remove it from your collection – it's burned for that mission, but once you move to a new objective it will be available for use again.
Successfully completing missions earns you new cards, gold, and fuel, which can be used to upgrade your characters. You can spend gold (or real cash) on booster packs, which give you a small collection of new action cards and types of soldiers. Cards and soldiers are available in different power tiers – bronze, silver, gold, and legendary.
The story campaign is structured like an '80s television show, with episodes composed of five mini-missions that follow a standalone narrative. Right now Crytek has 40 missions in the campaign, but it also plans to regularly release supplemental live events featuring new content, game modes, levels, heroes, and equipment. Between missions, you can tweak your card deck to make sure your actions align with the mission and type of enemies you'll be facing.
The Collectables is powered by the CryEngine, which had to be tweaked drastically to make sure the game wouldn't immediately drain your battery power. Even with the optimization, the game looks great, with light and shadow effects, destructible foliage, and wind effects that make the island come to life.
Look for The Collectables soon in the App Store if you have an iPad 2/iPhone 4 or newer Apple device. Crytek also plans to release an Android version of The Collectables in the coming months.
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