Destiny Companion

The stats of Destiny in a rounded, neat package.

As the collective eyes of the gaming community are fixed pretty heavily on Destiny this week, I thought I might have a look at its companion app to see how useful these things actually are.

It turns out Destiny Companion is a good download to have while you are attempting to fight Earth’s enemies across the stars, if not a completely necessary one. Unlike other Companions, it doesn’t seem to provide any in-game bonuses or extra features, but it does give you a well presented summary of stats, facts and updates for hardcore players to peruse.

After going through a brief sign-in process, you’re taken to a home screen detailing the latest news and updates for the game. From there, a side menu gives you a number of options, although your first stop will probably be checking in on your Warlock, Titan or Hunter to see them lovingly recreated in statistical form.

Everything from your current equipment to undertaken bounties and challenge progress is recorded, and navigating is as simple as swiping left and right. You can also look at an extensive run-down of your achievements across all of the game’s modes and missions, with the app even telling you your kill/death ratio across story levels as well as PvP matches .

All of this info can be compared with your friends’ campaigns, which should inspire some healthy competition as the game grows. Nonetheless, aside from a few features, most of this stuff is just as easily accessible in-game. It’s a testament to Destiny’s inventory screen that a dedicated companion app might actually slow you down, and its not going to have you pausing play to look at your phone any time soon.

However, this isn’t to say that the companion is completely obsolete. In particular, anyone interested in looking deeper into the game’s story and characters will be delighted to find the app collects and stores Grimoire cards you’ve found in-game. Grimoire cards are unlocked through progress in all of Destiny’s activities, with some of them providing extra info about the game’s post-apocalpytic setting you won’t find elsewhere. As a lot of reviews have claimed they felt the story was a bit anaemic, this app might be a good way to bolster the narrative slightly.

Moreover, Destiny’s outwardly social bent is reflected by its Companion, which does a lot to bring you into its community even if you aren’t a regular forum poster. The app is perfect for getting updates on what’s going on quickly, allows you to browse forums for tips and expertise from other gamers, and even join online groups and clans. Most importantly, it’ll tell you when your friends are playing, which gives you more than a little incentive to abandon whatever you’re up to and jump back into the fight.

Destiny’s companion app might not be a must-have, but it’s very well presented and does a great job of keeping you in the loop when you aren’t in front of your TV wiping out aliens. It’s free too, so there’s no reason not to give it a punt, if only for the statistical bragging rights.

Destiny Companion is out now on iOS. Developer: Bungie Website

Tank Biathlon

A bland, unforgiving and unenjoyable experience that’s outgunned by countless other simulator apps.

Tank Biathlon does the unthinkable by somehow making tanks boring. Taking its cues from a popular Russian sport doesn’t save it from being essentially a bunch of repetitive minigames that might appeal to tank loving masochists, but is utterly uninspiring to anyone else.

Instead of dropping you into a war zone, Tank Biathlon keeps its “action” grounded in a small arena of tank-based challenges that you’ll take on one after another in a sequence. Everything is tested, from your control of the tank at specific speeds, to your skill at shooting at bits of cardboard, to your ability to not go back to app store and find something  better to play.

To the game’s credit, the work put into detailing a realistic looking tank on iOS is commendable, and the sharp models and explosion effects are quite nice to look at. The Unreal Engine once again works its magic touch, and once again it makes another game looks its best on iPad and chug to near unplayable levels on earlier iPhones.

The trouble is that most of your time won’t be spent marvelling at visuals, but cursing clumsy controls that are nowhere near precise enough for the task. There are two systems for moving, one relying on you pushing two throttles (one for each side of the tanks wheels) and the other using one throttle for speed and a stick for turning. Both are terrible, and make it difficult to avoid pillars that give you massive time penalties, even when you are driving in a straight line.

You’ll crave a controller, if you haven’t already given up by the shooting segments. A heavy tutorial system makes everything clear except why none of your shots hit the target no matter where you aim, although if you are still struggling on iPhone the bulk of your thumb dragging the gun will usually prevent you from knowing where you are aiming anyway.

But worst, worst, worst of all is the commentator. Oh, God. Never has a voiceover man made me want to fire a shell into his mouth more than this. Not only does he never shut up, constantly blabbing about how wonderful tanks are and thanking the organisers of this crappy fictional competition, but he also shows a ridiculously irritating level of glee in your failure. “Terrible, just terrible” he’ll tut, as if actually playing the game isn’t punishment enough.

In short, the strength of your patience for Tank Biathlon will really depend on how much you enjoy faffing around in a unwieldy tank while an inane idiot commentates over it. Much more enjoyable faffing can be found in World Of Tanks Blitz, a game which completely blows this one out of the water.

Tank Biathlon is out now on iOS.