Parents' Guide to Invisigun Reloaded

While this is a visually striking game, the lack of instructions and clunky controls can ruin the game experience. A variety of environments and playing modes help keep Invisigun Reloaded from feeling routine, and achievements and other charts do a decent job of illustrating your progress and providing a big picture view of where you are in the game. The app's graphics feature an impressive amount of detail -- birds' wings flutter as they take to the sky when you approach them, and bushes you walk into rustle and sway.

The joystick control can feel tricky at times -- particularly because you can't see where you're going, which involves some getting used to. The initial playing instructions are so detailed, that you may assume you'll get ongoing guidance throughout each round, but that's unfortunately not really the case. It's not always clear what you can jump over, what might be helpful to shoot, or how to get around certain objects to reach other portions of the room, and if you can't figure it out, you have to just keep trying different things and hoping something is successful. There are a couple of offline resources that may provide help, such as a Wiki page, but viewing them forces players to pause and open a browser -- and finding a specific answer can require some searching. Parents may have concerns about the local multiplayer game mode, which pits kids against other players, although user comments mention finding opponents can be difficult, so that aspect may ultimately not be an issue. If gamers limit their playing time to the individual Hero's Journey mode -- opting to face off against puzzling scenarios, instead of people -- Invisigun Reloaded should offer a safe, though sometimes frustratingly challenging way to spend some time.