inglorious

Early, early, early this morning Touch Arcade’s Eli Hodapp (who apparently doesn’t sleep) posted the above video for the release of Anrufen Online, a cross platform MMO, now available on the App Store [Link for the Bold.]

I guess subscribers to Anrufen Online might find this exciting, but the video did little to peek my interest in the MMO. Still, I summoned my courage and I downloaded it. I’ll be honest, I spent very little time with this game. Maybe ten to twenty minutes, what I found really put me off.

Inglorious appears in the world of Anrufen.

The UI and control scheme is, well, at it’s best it’s awful. I found the UI to be clunky, confusing, crowded and ugly. Icons are a muddy mess, surrounded by these stylization elements that server little purpose. When screen real-estate is at a premium, you don’t waste precious space by over styling your UI. A large majority of the screen is covered up by the players thumb when moving about. Onscreen text is a mess, and I am not sure whats going on in that mini map in the upper right hand corner.

So, this might have viruses in it? Wait a second!

While technically impressive to port your MMO to the IPhone, all it does it strengthens the idea that while it’s possible, is this really necessary? If you’re looking to get your MMORPG fix on the go, I’d look somewhere else, or hope and pray that Anrufen’s developer WiSTONE’s takes a solid pass at correcting the issues after this first release.