Josh Atkinson

After our review of the hit 4 IN A 3D ROW, we were itching to pick the brain of its creator. Thankfully we were able to do just that as we now discover the inspirations behind the game and his thoughts on the gaming industry with this exclusive interview with NEONFIVE Studio’s Founder and CEO, Martin Franke.

J: What was the initial inspiration in taking Connect 4 go into the 3D realm?

M: My wife Helen gave me the idea of combining a classic Tic Tac Toe game with connect 4 when we were talking about famous puzzle games and how one could improve them.

I just thought “Wow, that is a good idea. It would be even better with 4 levels – in 3D“. From the first moment I was fascinated by the concept that started to develop rapidly in my mind. I knew immediately how the game should look like, but wasn’t so shure about the gameplay. Therefore we build a realistic model made of plastic. We kept playing for hours and even friends, visiting us, had a lot of fun playing it. The new strategie that evolved out of the new dimension made the gameplay completely adictive. So I decided to develop “4 IN A 3D ROW“ for iOS, Android and Mac. A good friend of mine, Marco Nowara, was so enthusiastic about the game, that he finally decided to program the AI. This way he became the programmer and I am very thankful for his job because he made the game the way it is now.

J: Are there any other board games that you would like to reinvent? I personally would love to see a Hungry Hungry Hippos adaption!

M: That could be a possible game idea. I have to admit that I only develop that kind of games which captivate me right away. At the moment there are a few board games I could imagine to reinvent and Hungry Hungry Hippos is probably one of them, but I am not fully committed to any of them. But if me or my wife should ever have an idea for another reinvention of a board game, that carries me away at the first glance, I will shurely implement it.

J: What got you into wanting to make games for the mobile platform?

M: That is easy to answer. I am and always have been a passionate player, which brought me directly to my job; I am a graphic designer and have been working in the game industry for half of my life. I have been part of small and big studios and a lot of interesting projects. But at some point I had so many ideas I wanted to put into reality but no time for doing so, that I decided to open my own company. „NEONFIVE STUDIO“ is my startup company and I always wanted to develop games for mobile devices because of the fantastic new Input possibilities they offer.

J: Something we mentioned in our review for the game was that unlike other developers, you haven’t forced the player to register through a bunch of loop holes just to get to the actual game. You have the login screen if you wish to have an online persona or you can just play as a guest. What do you think of the current trend for having gamers register to services just to play the games they love?

M: Personally I don’t like being forced to register somewhere to be able to play a game. In my opinion a registration should alway be only a bonus and no necessity. With “4 IN A 3D ROW“ the registration is a bonus which enables you to be part of a worldwide ranking system, which is not directly linked to the device. All registerd players of “4 IN A 3D ROW“ are part of that ranking system, no matter if they play iOS, Android or Mac. It is a great feature, which is connected to the registration. That is excactly the way a registration should be like and not for collecting data as some companies do.

J: I’m sure you have had hundreds of your own epic moments in the multiplayer portion of the game. Are there any matches you can remember that just took you by surprise?

M: I am thinking of one of the first multiplayer test games we did. I wanted the multiplayer game to work everywhere around the world with any kind of internet connection. Therefore I sent my brother, who was in the Australian Outback at that time, a testbuild and we opened our first multiplayer game within a distance of 16000 km. The response time was incredible and even the gameplay had a good perfomance. After we had a couple of multiplayer games my brother called me and he was fascinated by the gameplay. That was my epic moment, because since that moment I knew that one could play the game against each other from anywhere around the world.

J: Could we see 4 in a Row 3D hit other platforms like the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360?

M: That is hard to tell, because “4 IN A 3D ROW“ is originally developed for mobile devices. I don’t think that PS3 and XBOX360 offer a big market for puzzle games; they are rather dominated by blockbuster titles.

J: What have you learnt from the community feedback for the game?

M: The community is extremely important for us. Therefore we try to respond to every idea or improvement from the players. There are good suggestions among them. Thanks for that. We also try to solve every problem immediately.

J: Can current fans expect any expansions or differently themed versions of the current game?

M: There will be an Update soon. All the small bugs will be finally solved, but there won’t be a different themed version yet. I still think that the game design matches the look of the smartphones perfectly . But I am always open to new ideas, and if there is one improving the game I will implement it.

J: If you had any advice to give aspiring game designers, what would you say?

M: Live your dream. If you are really persuaded of an idea you should realize it, come what may. Develop your own ideas. It is a great feeling to present your games to the world and see other people like what you have created. The only thing that matters is that you are committed to it for 100%.

J: Finally are there any future projects that you would like to give a shout out for?

M: As I said before I have a bunch of ideas and right now I try to decide on my next project with NEONFIVE STUDIO. It will definitly not be a puzzle game again but rather an Arcade/Casual game. Either some kind of jungle game with monkeys or a western shooter. Stay excited, because NEONFIVE STUDIO intends to produce only high quality games that we are really committed to.

4 IN A 3D ROW is Available now for the Apple iPad and iPhone via the App Store now!

Einfo Games said in their  4 IN A 3D ROW Review “Overall you will get a great gaming experience for the price you are willing to fork over. “

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In some ways I wasn’t looking forward to writing this review. Now don’t get me wrong I love Resident Evil, I play Resident Evil 2 and 4 from time to time because let’s be honest they were the best the franchise has had to offer so far. Now we come to Resident Evil 6, but is this the direction we want the series to be taking?

Resident Evil 6 begins as Leon Kennedy, the gritty cop from Raccoon City, wakes up in the middle of what looks to be the apocalypse. Buildings are falling around him and zombies are everywhere. Sounds great so far right? Flash forward ten minutes and our hero is now running like a seasoned athlete over burning cars as a wall of fire chases him. Ok, this is getting a little worrying. No fear dear readers for Leon then jumps for his dear life to a circling chopper while battling an ankle hungry zombie in a grumbling quick time event.

I don’t know about you but this isn’t the way Resident Evil was supposed to end up in my opinion. Even though its lacking predecessor was sloping on uneven ground of franchise loyalty, it was still able to offer gamers something quite solid and enjoyable. Resident Evil 6 though suffers from a really bad case of unsure identity. It is kind of like a man is looking into a mirror and wondering “Am I gay, or am I straight?”

This is based on the fact that Resident Evil 6 attempts to cater to multiple audiences through a selection of different, lengthy campaigns. Sure each individual character story is a near ten hours long, but it is the complete spiralling difference in narrative that just makes the quantity seem incredibly unappealing and forgettable.

These campaigns come in the form of different character perspectives that players must adventure through to understand the full outcome of the story. First you have Leon’s two cents on the outbreak that tries to give fans something that they have long being missing in survival horror. Instead though you end up with an experience that gives too little of what fans wanted to begin with, while also borrowing from other franchise successes but completely forgets why they were good in the first place.

The developers were probably all sat around a big table with three different games on the drawing board. The tough thing for them though was that they all just couldn’t agree on a final decision and so just shoved them all into the same game. Though the intention of this was good, it is saddening to see the plot suffer because of this and especially the game’s ultimate villain. Resident Evil 5 fans will know that series regular Albert Wesker has been finally defeated, the funny thing is though that because of his death the devs all of a sudden ran out of good ideas for bad guys. I seriously got to the final boss fight for each campaign and just thought “Who are you again?”

Umbrella, the company behind the whole virus thing has been gone for a while and it is a shame to see Capcom spend most of their time trying to copy other games and completely forget about their own franchise lore. Not only that but because the actual story suffers, so does the sense in existence for its constant stream of dim witted enemies. I truly don’t understand why the enemies transform into multiple forms of insect, or animal and it is never actually explained either. On one instance I fought a boss that transformed into a saber toothed tiger, tyrannosaurus rex and finally a spider/fly. In another I ended up fighting a huge man eating snake that never quite got given a reason to exist.

The game just throws these things at you and expects you to accept them, but you just can’t. Not only that but the main cast just aren’t that likeable either. Most of the characters you play as have for some reason turned into unrelatable jerk faces. Chris Redfield and his little chum Piers are the main criminals in this act of douche baggery, and it is not until you get your controller on series newcomer and Terminator Salvation inspired mercenary called Jake that it truely comes apparent. He seriously has some personality issues to deal with and I feel that if Capcom had not tried to make him Resident Evil’s attempt at Dante then I probably would have accepted him as a series regular for the on-going series.

Gameplay wise things kind of go a little hit and miss too. Fans have been screaming for the ability to walk and shoot for years upon years and finally Capcom have given them what they have been craving. Sadly this comes with a few hiccups along the way. I don’t really understand why the developer decided to put the vault, action and cover crouch action all on the same button, but they did. This means that you will be spending a lot of your time trying to hide behind tablets, sand bags and boxes only to see yourself climb over them and take a machine gun to the face. Sure it is manageable if you take it slow but for a game that is trying to appease more to the action crowd, this kind of things needs to be executed with a thought of mistake. In some ways it is best to take your steps slowly though because more than once I have found that the game would like nothing more than to kill you with its own scripted environmental changes. At one point I was running down a spiral staircase only to be crushed without warning by ninja-like falling debry that crunched me from out of no where. In another campaign I was blasted off a bridge from an enemy tank just because I was on the wrong side of the scripted event. Yeah thank you right there narrative progression.

I really hated that the game ran along a path of very scripted events. Unlike the popular Dead Space games that did it right. You will always come across a number of idol bodies during your journey. Sure you might think to double tap them in the head but sadly you will find that your wasted bullets will only go through their lifeless bodies. Upon walking up to them though, you will soon discover that those thought to be dead lumps of flesh are actually there for scripted cheap scares and attempts at chipping your health away. There is no way around it but to just accept it and move on. It doesn’t even help that it contributes to the fact that your health will be low for the majority of the game.

One thing I really liked about Resident Evil 5 was the ability to upgrade your weaponry, but this feature has ultimately been dropped in 6 in favour of a skill based system that lets you pick from a list of different abilities, such as increased weapon damage to larger enemy drop rates. It is a welcome change I guess but it is a shame that the fun micro management of dumping cash into your favourite guns has all but gone.

Combat itself though has improved a lot this time around. Gone have the days of hoping that a bullet won’t ding off an enemy’s head like a plastic dud and finally bullets feel like they make an impact when colliding the a victims squishy skull. Shooting enemies will generally blow chunks off their body and seeing them crawl towards you in blood filled anger gives a rather good sense of awesomeness when popping the final bullet in the enemy’s eye socket.

Unusually though the game tries to keep its classic feel of resource management but completely forgets that it chose the action game route. There will be times where you will run out of every kind of ammo and all you will be able to do is sit back and let your AI partner farm some boxes of shells for you. This might be because the game tries to make you use the completely revamped melee system more over weapons, but to be honest I would rather be shooting enemies than round house kicking them across the screen like Chuck Norris.

On the note of the AI though I have to say that my reaction it is was one of surprise and then disappointment. The AI partner is A LOT better this time around but don’t let their now added invulnerability and skill at headshots fool you. At times I have noticed my partner shooting walls, leaving me to die and in some instances standing idolally by as I scream at them to help move a team environment object.

You can play all of this through the game’s added multiplayer feature but really why would you want to suffer all these problems again and with a human partner is could be potentially dumber than your AI counterpart. Other additional modes have been added like the classic Mercenaries mode, but I found myself losing interest fast as I realised that the tiny time limit and fact you can only kill up to 150 enemies before a game over became a very unappealing factor.

Capcom have also attempted to copy a feature From Software’s popular Dark Souls game got famous by. This mode comes in the form of a separate option called Agent Hunt where you can invade other player’s campaigns and try and kill them for the fun giggle of it. Sadly the infected characters you play as are all so different in damage output and health that sometimes you might be stuck playing as something that won’t give you that tiniest bit of advantage.

Finally I come to the visuals. What is surprising with this one is that the overall aesthetic quality has shot down a tad bit since the beautiful HD outing of RE5. The animation is still top quality for the most part but I don’t really understand the drop in its graphical presentation. The console versions especially suffer from a case of rough edges and blurry textures. It may be a better idea to buy the game for the PC if you do decide to give it a shot.

Resident Evil 6 is available now for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC!

For more information on Resident Evil 6, click here.

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