Isn't it funny how "action adventure" is no longer a classification applied only to video games? Sahara, the new spring blockbuster starring Matthew McConaughey, probably fits the genre better than most games can--its qualifications include a hero named Dirk, a love interest played by Iberian temptress Penelope Cruz, lost Confederate gold, and corrupt African militias. The mobile game, which has been developed by Gosub 60, manages to compress all of this tomfoolery into an excellent overhead adventure. While playing this game, you'll not only relive all the right-angle twists of Sahara's hyperbolic plot, but you'll have fun doing it, too.
Here's the basic, as-spoiler-free-as-possible rundown on Sahara. McConaughey's character, crackpot adventurer Dirk Pitt, is on a quest to find the Texas, an old Confederate ironclad that disappeared into the Atlantic during the Civil War. Pitt is convinced that the ship actually reached Africa and sailed up a river into Mali's portion of the Saharan desert; everyone else in the movie, including Pitt's wiseacre sidekick (played by Steve Zahn), is convinced that Pitt's gone totally bananas. Sahara the mobile game covers Pitt's crazy safari through 10 objective-based levels. We haven't seen the movie, but when we say Sahara covers the movie's plot, we mean it. This game has the most dialogue and exposition we've ever seen in a mobile game of this type, and it is all very well done, complete with a couple of pretty funny jokes and the digitized likenesses of the movie's stars. Basically, this mobile game could easily serve as a surrogate for the movie.
We're not sure what that says about the film--but it speaks volumes about the game. Simply put, Sahara is one of the best movie-licensed mobile games you can download. The action adventure gameplay is built on an augmented version of the engine Gosub 60 used in OP15 several months ago, and it works better than ever. You control Pitt from an overhead perspective and can move him in eight directions using the number pad; there's a single button for attacks, which auto-aim, and a few special commands you can access with the star and pound keys. The objectives themselves are standard fare. To complete each level, you have to walk from south to north, generally acting as a do-gooder should--diffusing bombs, rescuing hostages, shutting down villainous industrialists, and so forth. At the end of each level, you'll be scored based upon how completely you beat it, including how many optional pickups you found. If you receive a score over 90 percent, you'll unlock various cheat modes, like permanent night vision and quadruple health.
This is a boon for the game's already high value, and it makes all of the other interesting tweaks the developers added to their basic model that much better. In OP15, you were able to pilot a tank, but Sahara adds jeeps and boats to the mix, too, and uses them effectively. For instance, the primary objective on one level is to keep your boat in one piece as you sail upriver and fight off baddies. You can use jeeps to run down your enemies, or pull off a jeep sacrifice to blow open blocked doors (this maneuver is called a "Panama," for some reason). Sahara also adds additional weapons that are all useful in different situations. You can knock out a bad guy with one punch from behind, while rocks are good for silent, ranged kills--neither is as powerful as the pistol or rifle, though, which will alert nearby enemies to your presence. Add this to the game's mild stealth elements, and you get some pretty interesting strategic combinations. If you stay in the shadows of buildings and trees, an icon of Pitt's face will shade over in the corner of the screen, and most enemies won't be able to see you while you're not moving. This system doesn't always work correctly, because it seems that some enemies will just notice you at certain random points, but it's still an asset to the game. Additionally, you can secure a disguise that will let you walk among the bad guys unmolested--until you mount a surprise attack, that is. There are very, very few mobile games that have this number of gameplay possibilities and do as good a job with them as Sahara.
Sahara's presentation is great on the LG VX7000. The graphics are a step up from OP15, with sharper lines, higher-resolution art, and more-varied sprites. The game's brown-and-white color scheme is ugly, but this is Mali, after all, and it won't break your eyes. Gameplay moves at a pretty leisurely pace, but this seems to be intentional, to keep the controls manageable and bullets dodgeable. Soundwise, there's a crescendoing title theme to get your blood pumping, as well as a nice range of digitized sound effects. More variance in the effects would have been nice, but they're impressive enough as is.
Sahara is a superlative mobile action game. It's fairly lengthy on the first play-through, and the three difficulty modes really do change the gameplay substantially--the same enemies that are sort of stupid and fire in predictable patters on easy mode will present a very tough fight on hard mode, forcing you toward stealthier strategies. Most players will probably get a good three to five hours of entertainment out of this game, which is probably more than you can expect from the movie. This is a great download for almost any mobile gamer.
