Line Knight Fortix Is Alright Once It Stops Fighting You [Review]

1981’s Qix is one of those games that just won’t die. It’s come out in its original form no fewer than four times, most recently in the Nintendo 3DS handheld’s retro-game marketplace Virtual Console in 2011 (in Japan, anyway). I’ve also seen versions of it as minigames in titles like Bully. It’s a long-lived game with a lot of versions.

And here’s another one.

Line Knight Fortix is a new variation on the old territory-capturing game with a medieval skin including dragons, ogres, and castles. The same basic idea of carving out and capturing territory before enemies cross your path and kill you remains, but you can also unlock weapons and generally just run around being all knightly and cool.

It has a couple playability issues, but it’s mostly decent.

While even mediocre Qix is still Qix — and therefore awesome — Line Knight has a couple issues that hold it back. First, your knight character is tiny, so it’s usually pretty difficult to see where he is. You can zoom in a bit, which helps a little, but that’s when you run into the second problem.

To claim territory, you drag on the screen in the directions you want your knight to go. You don’t have to trace directly on top of him, which is good, but it’s often twitchy and unpredictable. The little guy will be going along just where I want him to be, but then he’ll veer off for reasons I can’t determine, usually to his death.

It has a couple playability issues.

It’s silly to think that a video-game character could have a death wish, but this game nearly convinced me that such a thing was possible. It was rare playing Line Knight that I felt like my failures were my fault, and that’s not because I’m a bad sport.

Although I’ll admit that doesn’t help much.

So I’m going to just say that Line Knight Fortrix is mostly alright. I’ve played worse versions of Qix, but I’ve also played better ones.

Game Name: : Line Knight Fortix The Good: Interesting variation on The Bad: The camera’s a bit too far away; controls are touchy (both literally and in the negative sense). The Verdict: It’s not the worst thing ever, and the ability to permanently take out enemies with unlockable catapults is cool, but if you have a chance to just play Qix, do that instead. Buy from: App Store

[rating=game3]