Daily iPad App: Fibble is Crytek's entry onto iOS
If you had told me, just a couple of years ago, that Epic and Crytek would both have iOS apps in the store, I'm not sure I would have believed you. The Unreal Engine is one of the most popular graphical engines for major high resolution games, but Crytek is also very popular for its graphical work on Crysis and a few other titles. Epic has had a couple of hits in the App Store already with the Infinity Blade series, and here comes Crytek, working not on a big-time shooter for iOS, but a much cuter physics platformer-style game called Fibble.
Fibble looks great, especially on the newer iOS devices. Crytek has brought its full engine expertise to bear, and so textures look terrific, everything's bright and clear, and the game runs very well. The gameplay is sort of a weird mix of platforming and golf. You move Fibble around by flicking him like a slingshot, and then you can use a series of other controls (like jumping or speeding up) to navigate a course, trying to get to a certain point in as few "flicks" as possible. It's simple, but there's a fair amount of things to do in 30 different levels.
Unfortunately, Crytek's entry into iOS isn't quite as groundbreaking as Infinity Blade. The company aimed a little too close to Angry Birds rather than trying to blaze their own trail as an AAA iOS developer like Epic did. It would have been nice to see Crytek really break out and try something a little more innovative (or with a little more content -- 30 levels isn't small, but compared to some other games like this, it's not huge either). As it is, it's a fair first entry onto iOS, and has some excellent graphical sparkle, but you would be fine with waiting to see if it drops off of the current US$4.99 price for the HD version.
