Caster HD is a third-person shooter and doing that properly on an interface like the iPhone touchscreen is difficult. Unfortunately for Elcorn, makers of Caster HD, it seems to have been beyond them.

They did themselves in when they limited the controls to left or right side of the screen. That then means that you can’t really shoot and turn at the same time. Strafing is no problem as that’s on the left side. But if you want to continually shoot and say run a circle around the enemy, you would be very hard pressed to do so as you would need to double tap, drag, lift, double tap, drag lift.

Yes, I know I jumped right in on the interface and didn’t talk about the story, graphics etc. The controls are so vitally important to an FPS or TPS that they are often the make or break point for a title. In this case they are certainly broken. Why the did not make a button on screen to use for shooting, or anything else for that matter, is beyond me. Others have done it to some good effect. Also the controls themselves are often difficult to use in the heat of battle. I quite often found myself moving in the wrong direction and since you can’t turn while firing if an enemy moves you have to stop shooting to turn and then fire again. Extremely cumbersome.

So much so that the game just offers no fun as far as I can tell. It’s more problematic to navigate the game than it feels it should be. In fact, it just made me want to skip the title altogether. Even when you are not shooting and want to turn you will have to drag your finger, pick it up, drag it again, etc. to turn 360 degrees. I managed it in only four drags but again, why it doesn’t continue to turn at the edge of the control area is beyond me.

The graphics in the game are jagged and bland. Similar to what you might expect a very early 3D game to look like on the old PCs. Oddly, you have to sit through a fly over of each level when you begin it, only further dragging down the game’s pacing and demonstrating the poor quality of the graphics themselves. Some are calling the game ’retro’ but personally I just feel like the graphics are poor. Some of you will probably disagree and that’s fine. The screenshots in this review are most definitely from the PC version of the game because they are better than the iPhone graphics.

There are some interesting facets to the game such as the ability to upgrade your shields, weapons, dash and jump but it’s so little that it can’t overcome the rotten controls. This is certainly a title that needs further development before I recommend any of you lay out even a dollar for it.

Now there’s a PC version of the game which might be totally different from the iPhone version. A lot of the problems probably stem from the controls being the touchscreen so if it had a more standard interface and more power it would probably be a completely different game.