Block Strike

What happens when someone hybridizes a classic FPS gameplay, visual aesthetics ripped off borrowed from Minecraft and an immature fan community relentless at trolling? That’s right – Block Strike.

Visuals

From the very first minutes, or even seconds (or even milliseconds) after you start playing you can definitely tell that it’s a game shaped, formed and animated in Unity 3D.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with Unity – it’s an outstanding creative tool actually – but it’s notorious for inviting into this world a ton of raw-looking, undercooked games. And this is exactly the case of Block Strike.

The game has 60 locations up to now, and it’s praiseworthy – the bigger number of arenas guarantees a more vivid game experience.

However all of them look alike: crude, primitive, blank and unimaginative. You always feel like you’re trapped inside decorations made of cheap brown cardboard. At least physics and animations save the day – they are done more or less professionally.
The same goes for the sound effects – the only one I liked personally was the assault rifle “tra-ta-ta” sound.

The others, especially the silenced handgun shots do not illustrate a gunfight persuasively. In other words, they sound like a person going through some rough time after eating a huge bowl of beans.

The core of the Block Strike

It is a classic shooter with only a few modes that bring something new and fresh to the genre.
The game offers:

• Team Death Match – kill for your team’s sake.
• Death Run – avoid traps while running.
• Gun Game - just kill everything that moves.
• Hunger Games – find a hidden weapon to survive.
• Zombie survival – avoid zombies or become a zombie yourself.
• Bunny Hop – simple hopping.
• Surf - try to stay alive while surfing.
• Bomb/Bomb2 – classic defuse mode.
• Random – you’ll be given a random weapon to establish your dominance.

And 9 more (18 modes in total).
My personal favorites are “Random and “Zombie Survival”.

The former mode really makes you think out of the box, stimulating your neurons to find a way of surviving. Especially when you’re armed only with a police baton, and there are your foes flickering around, ready to put holes in you with their M-16’s.
The latter mode is the most popular in the B.S. community and allows you to be either a crazed zombie hunting for living flesh or a terrified prey.

Perhaps the creative team tried to compensate for the visual austerity of the game bringing in numerous customization opportunities.

You can:

• Personalize your character by creating a unique skin.
• Make your weapons look original/funny/provocative.
• Tweak the controls.

Oh, and one more thing: you must definitely try the “Juggernaut” regime.
The in-game purchases allow you to get top-tier weapons mostly (up to $4.5)

Controls

The game emulates the classic FPS controls, giving you a joystick on the left and jump/fire/reload/squat buttons on the right. Luckily if you’re a lefty, you can switch their sides and also adjust the button transparency and sensitivity.

But I must add that playing a shooter on a mobile device without an analog controller is a suicidal thing to do for your finger joints.

The Sentence

A Block strike isn’t a masterpiece or a game-changer. But it can surely provide you with a couple of hours of brain-numbing, refreshing fun. If you have the guts to bear the infantilism of some of the players of course.