9mm

Before we get into the actual review, I want you to simply taste the name of 9mm's protagonist: John Kannon. Pretty masculine, eh? If you can't decide if it's a masculine name or a toe-curling masculine name, let's add his middle name into the mix. Loose. That's right. John Loose Kannon.

My first impression of 9mm was that it was mostly inspired by Max Payne, with its third-person action, bullet time and a story about the mob and corrupt police officers. A closer look reveals that it's more of a mix between Max Payne, True Crime and some pointless QTE-sequences that forms the base of the game. Compared to Gameloft's Backstab, which was filled with action, platforming and a big open world to explore, 9mm is a much more linear and shorter game. It didn't take me more than three hours to finish the story mode, but don't let that scare you away.

The 12 chapters that make up John Kannon's story are well told, varied and entertaining. It feels as if the team at Gameloft has had a great time working on it. The graphics are top notch, and despite a few bad textures and lighting they are still some of the best of any iOS game to date. The levels offers up a lot of variation (including a fun sniper-section together with John's partner), enough to keep the game exciting from start to finish. You also get to upgrade your character using money dropped from fallen enemies and you can of course also collect any weapons they leave behind.

The voice acting is good as well, much better than in previous games from the publisher and manages to evade the "that guy from Gameloft"-syndrome. The music, mostly hiphop with the correct gangster-attitude, will probably strike a chord in a lot of players - even if the number of tracks is pretty limited, which makes it hard to keep my interest for long. Another sore point for the game is how many times enemy models are reused, but since most of them are cannon fodder anyway and not as annoying as in Backstab, it doesn't really matter that much.

As you can expect from a Gameloft-title these days, the controls are really good. You can move around the buttons as you see fit, and one half of the screen controls the camera while the other is used to control John. If you prefer to use your iDevice's internal gyro, you can turn that on too. 9mm's auto-aim can also be shut on and off depending on how much control you want. The only problem with the controls shows up if you decide to only use swiping to control the camera - even at the highest sensitivity, it feels as if though you're using a very slow mouse. You swipe and you swipe, yet the camera slowly crawls to where you want it. If you, like me, have an iPad and hate gyro-controls, it will become an issue in the game's multiplayer mode, where the slow camera will lead to certain death.

To make up for it, you often die with a big grin on your face while playing multiplayer, and it's because of this mode that 9mm crawls its way to the upper tier of our grading scale. Gameloft have proven that they can put together good multiplayer in the past, and 9mm joins the ranks of N.O.V.A. 2 and Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus as some of the best multiplayer games for the platform. 9mm comes with four big and well-designed multiplayer maps (two of them taken from the singleplayer) and they all have room for 12 players.

As one can expect these days, multiplayer comes with the now obligatory experience points, perks and choice of weapons. A nice detail is that all the money you make is shared between single- and multiplayer which means that even level 1-players get a fighting chance when they step into the arena for the first time. If you feel the need, you can buy virtual currency for real money - it's pretty pointless though, since all items come with a level-restriction anyway and most weapons can be collected from killed opponents.

There's no bullet time in multiplayer, obviously, but to make up for it you get an extra mini-joypad which allows you to sprint, duck down or dodge which in turn add another tactical element to the fights. You get the typical multiplayer modes, like deathmatch and a cops-and-robbers edition of team deathmatch. The latter works really well, especially since it's surprisingly easy to tell a friend from enemy on a small screen.

If 9mm deserves a purchase or not depends a bit on how you look at it. The price isn't higher than a rental movie, and for that you've secured at least three hours of entertainment. There is the question if you should buy it now or wait for one of the many sales the publisher usually holds, which I think will be decided by the amount of players that go online.

I've many times found myself looking at 9mm as a console game and not as a mobile game. The game is out on iOS now and will also be released for Xperia Play and Android. No matter what you think about John Kannon and the other GTA-stereotypes present here, you will find an entertaining - but short - singleplayer-part and a fantastic multiplayer mode in 9mm and it's nice to see Gameloft back in top shape.