Operation wow HD (iPad)

♫ “My childhood was a bizarre parade,
Broke off the uzi from Operation Wolf, and robbed the arcade”

10 word description: Operation wo.. reimagined for multi-touch. Story, endless, minigames, GameCenter

The menu has that whole "looks familiar" thing going on...

10 word review: Fabulous cartoony re-working of the legendary cabinet shooter. Classic fun! 

If you never played Operation Wolf, you'll miss out on the deja-vu, but it won't spoil your enjoyment of this game.

You will like this if you enjoy: Operation Wolf (which this game is not, honestly your honour, not at all).

Alternatively - Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.

The good news: Impressive multi-touch screen-tapping shooter. Plenty of modes, lots of action, great cartoon style graphics. 

The bad news: You’ll wear your fingers out before you get anywhere near tiring of this game.

Peace ... through superior firepower

Arcadelife verdict: The original game (yes, OK, let’s admit we’re talking about Operation Wolf) tried for fairly realistic graphics (realistic for 1987 anyway) and was arguably based on Rambo and Missing in Action, etc., putting a cabinet mounted Uzi in your hands and throwing hundreds of enemy soldiers, helicopters and armoured vehicles at you, all of which generally succumbed to a few well-aimed shots or a hand grenade.

Taking screenshots of multi-touch games - not my favourite task.

Fast forward to 2011 and Operation wow, which takes the original game concept, replaces realistic characters with some great looking cartoon style creations, gives you 3 difficulty levels in story mode, two highly replayable mini-games and, in the latest update, a super-hard endless mode.

Multi-touch shooting works incredibly well. It also has to be used with extreme care, even in Easy mode, or you will rapidly run out of ammunition, which is never good!

If only I'd had one more bullet.

The whole game feels polished and runs very smoothly. Story mode feels pretty much as I remember it, yet faster and more colourful, super-hard endless mode is a twitch inducing tap-fest and the two mini-games are a great bonus: Targets is a fast-paced, simple target shooting game and Meat Ninja is a fairly obvious Fruit Ninja impersonator, only with burgers and steaks flying around instead of fruit.

With multi-touch you can hit all the green targets at once. And, erm, one of the red ones too.

Overall, this is a great touch-screen game; graphics are cute and varied, gameplay is rock-solid. The variety of modes should keep anyone happy. If you’re after a shooter that looks a bit different from the norm, or you’ve been secretly hoping for Operation Wolf on your iPad, here you go!

Arcadelife rating: 87/100 

The version of  that Arcadelife reviewed is 1.1  

Ivanovich Games website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
iPad (OS 4.3)