Brave New Shallow-Mobile-Game

When a character's name is something like "Aldous Orwell," you pretty much know where to set your expectations.

Epoch doesn't have much of a hook -- its dystopian-future setting is stale from the outset, and the story (at least as of the halfway point) utterly fails to develop. And for as much visual fidelity it gets from the Unreal engine - which, to be fair, is a good amount - the art style is similarly dishwater-dull. There are robots, there are scrap-heaps, there are guns and lasers. Nothing radical here.

The gameplay is ... well. On the one hand, it's very well-thought-out for a mobile game: shifting between cover positions, and strategically choosing attacks based on enemy patterns, feels like a real game mechanic. Epoch avoids the bear-trap of trying to shoehorn precise aiming into a touch-based game. But on the other hand, it's still shallow; once you've mastered the art of dodging enemy attacks, there is no variety or challenge left in the game. New enemy types and new equipment upgrades do nothing to switch this formula up.

There's also a frustrating quirk in the cover controls, where swiping upward from the bottom of the screen will sometimes be confused with the Google Now (Android) swipe. Sure, this isn't really the game's "fault." But it should know well enough to avoid conflicts with OS-level gestures.

I have to give props to Epoch for pulling off a mechanic that's playable on a mobile form-factor. But the game's lack of depth and unengaging content give me little reason to continue playing.

Progress: Finished five missions.