This is how we roll at Techland: we spend some cheese.
Buying N.O.V.A. for the iPhone is like driving down the street in a stretch Hummer in a rap video, and you hit the button to clean your windshield, and instead of windshield wiper fluid, pure Close du Mesnil champagne (1979, a great vintage, their first bottling, 98 points in Wine Spectator) shoots out. It gets your windshield all sticky. If anything your windshield is dirty than when you started. But still: everybody knows how you roll.
I say this because N.O.V.A. costs $6.99, which makes it the most expensive app I’ve ever bought. I bought it because it’s a balls-out, no-shame clone of Halo. Which I loved. So why wouldn’t I love its clone?
Maybe because it feels gross to play a complete knock-off of a great game. (I mean seriously, there’s a sexy A.I. called Yelena. Stay classy, folks.) Maybe because it’s simply impossibly to put a credible shooter on the iPhone, lacking as it is most of the controller hardware on which the genre was founded.
Or maybe I will love it. Damn, it looks amazing. Check back in a few days. Or play along! Share the shame.
