Epoch is a brilliantly designed third-person shooter for mobile phones, although it eventually becomes somewhat repetitive and lacking in depth.

This is what Smartphone games should be. It is quick accessible and easy to play, but its combat is smooth, fluid and challenging at higher difficulties. Overall it is appealing to both hardcore and casual audiences and is a lot of fun.

Realtime action games for mobile platforms generally have to sacrifice somewhere. The graphics suffer, the control system is wonky, the animation jaggy, or something else is wrong. Amazingly, for everything it tries to do, EPOCH actually does a very admirable job in creating a not just passable, but very entertaining and well-playing game. You play as, no joke, an amnesiac robot that wakes up after the cybernetic revolt robot apocalypse. What's clear is that everything has been blown apart. What's not clear is why, or where the princess you were originally tasked with protecting is now. Yep, it sounds a little weak (protecting a princess? What am I, Robo-Mario?), but it isn't. So, let's run it down. First, gameplay is simplistic but engaging: maneuvering is done by finger swipes, and the simple swipes translate to effective maneuvers; targeting enemies is done with a tap. Your robot fires automatically whenever not under cover, so you don't need to double-thumb anything. Graphics are surprisingly good, the atmosphere of the wrecked city in which the game takes place grim and heavy, but without putting a damper on the game. (It's rare that the environment in a twitch game actually helps tell the story, but they do in EPOCH.) Sound is good, although effects are reused fairly regularly; music is simple but fits well with the game. Best yet, there is a large menu of customization options for your bot, allowing you to improve weapons, armor, and utilities to match the tactical situation and personal play style. Difficulty progression is smooth and reasonable. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the writing: through "log entries" of various entities, the story of the robot apocalypse is told, and quite effectively. So, what are the negatives? Well, the game isn't particularly long; there are only about a dozen levels, and each difficulty level runs the same levels again, just with tougher enemies. Gaps between affording one level of upgrades and the next get downright huge, which means a lot of grinding to accumulate the cash. And sadly, the storytelling seems to either have a bug or a serious stall, because the logs stop coming close to the end (only about five more entries to go) and didn't return, so that leaves the conclusion of the narrative up in the air. (Oh, one more "stealth positive" about EPOCH: for a game with 3D graphics and the features this one packs, it sips battery power. It is NOT a power hog.) So we're talking a well-earned 9 for EPOCH, a game well worth your time if you want a good action game that doesn't require a lot of investment (financial or otherwise).