Videogame Review: Shooter: The Official Movie Game

Mark Wahlberg I am not. Paramount’s new iPhone game app, which the studio boasts is the first true shooter game for the iPhone, puts users into Wahlberg’s role of marksman Bob Lee Swagger in the 2007 film Shooter. The game follows the movie script, but the story line feels more like filler before the real playing, when you’re dropped on the field to shoot and kill enemy snipers.

That’s where Shooter hits its mark. Paramount takes full advantage of not just the iPhone’s touch screen, but also its motion sensors, so players have to tilt the phone to just the right position to aim the rifle and touch the screen to shoot.

It takes patience. Lining up the targets took me several tries in just the tutorial. But once I got to the actual game, I started to get the hang of the slight adjustments I needed to make in the position I held the iPhone. Once you narrow in on the target, you see snipers on guard, ducking behind walls and tires as they try to kill you before you kill them. The phone even shakes when you take a sniper hit, making it more difficult to aim and shoot.

Though I couldn’t make it past the first of 30 levels, I was already getting addicted. For a 99¢ game, this one more than delivers.