Mass Effect Infiltrator Revealed

Let's get one thing out of the way right from the start: Mass Effect Infiltrator for iOS is not a roleplaying game. Players don't level up, engage in dialogue trees, or pilot a spaceship. Instead, the team at IronMonkey Studios has created a full-featured and action-oriented cover shooter, with hooks into the core Mass Effect trilogy's storyline.

Gamers play as Randall Ezno, a covert Cerberus agent of few words. As will surely come as no surprise to Mass Effect veterans, Ezno discovers early on that Cerberus is not the benevolent company it might first appear to be. The bulk of the action takes place in a sprawling Cerberus base. Ezno must travel deeper into the facility to uncover intel and put a stop to the company's plans. 

Aside from a few small concerns, Infiltrator's third person action controls well via the iPad's large touch screen. As is standard, players drag the left side of the screen to move Ezno, and the right side to adjust the camera. The principle innovation is the game's aiming system. To target an enemy, players simply tap them when in range. This zooms in the camera onto that individual target, brings up an aiming reticle, and allows players to fire. 

After targeting an enemy, players slide the touch screen to make small adjustments to their aim – great for lining up sniper headshots. This is an important detail – it makes Infiltrator's combat a great combination between iPad "tap to target" ease, and a traditional shooter's aiming skill. 

The game's cover controls don't feel quite as smooth, however. Players can swipe left, right or up to hop between different pieces of cover, but for now these gestures feel a bit unresponsive, and Ezno often doesn't move to the exact spot you were expecting. Worse, sometimes I would swipe left intending to move to a different piece of cover, and instead the game would move my aimleft, leaving me disoriented. Hopefully an Infiltrator update is in the works to iron out some of these issues. 

For on-the-go ease, all of Infiltrator's missions are split up into bite-sized chunks. Every individual combat scenario or group of enemies essentially acts as a separate small level. Upon completion, gamers are scored on the time taken, how "stylish" their kills were and how much health was lost. The quest for perfect scores of course gives Infiltrator high replay value, but high performance serves a more practical purpose. Credits are awarded based on your performance rank, and can be spent to upgrade and unlock new weapons, armor and biotic powers. Impatient players can also purchase credits via In-App Purchase. 

Most of the weapon and armor upgrades are fairly standard - a more powerful assault rifle, a more accurate sniper rifle, increased damage mitigation for armor and so-on. The biotic upgrades are more interesting. The Pull biotic levitates enemies. Leash disables enemies, allowing them to be tossed like a ragdoll. Storm creates a static "sphere of destruction" around any enemy targeted. Finally, Salvo fires what are essentially heat-seeking missiles at one (or more when upgraded) targets. Biotics are on a cooldown, and can be selected by tapping an unobtrusive menu in the upper left. 

Infiltrator's media largely speaks for itself – suffice it to say the game looks absolutely fantastic. It might not quite reach the benchmark set by Infinity Blade II, but it is still one of the most visually impressive games to hit the App Store. On an iPad 2 I didn't experience any severe framerate dips or other technical hitches, even when 5+ enemies were on-screen (a feat IB2 doesn't even attempt). 

For better or worse, depending on your point of view, Infiltrator's hooks into Mass Effect 3 are fairly light. Players will periodically collect pieces of intel during each mission. These intel points can be uploaded to Galaxy at War via Origin to boost a player's ME3 "Galactic Readiness Rating." One nice touch is that iOS gamers that don't care about ME3 can redeem the points for more in-game credits instead. 

While it would be nice to have a more proper roleplaying Mass Effect experience on-the-go, I'm still so far enjoying IronMonkey's action-oriented interpretation of the franchise. IGN's full review of Mass Effect Infiltrator will run when the game launches alongside Mass Effect 3 next week.