Clear Vision (17+) Review

Tyler’s been having a rough day. From the look of it, it’s been kind of a tough life. After being pushed too far at work he decks his boss and hands in his notice. The impending job search doesn’t go so well. With no other options available he decides to take up contract killing. Okay sure, why not?

Clear Vision is a stick figure sniping sim, through and through. Contracts come in and earn players cash for successful jobs which can then be used to purchase better firearms. Things get more complicated as the work piles up and it won’t be long before wind and distance will have to be contended with. As well as timing and some fairly clever processes of elimination.

For a game about shooting stick people in the head with high caliber rifles, Clear Vision is remarkably well made. The animations are grotesquely realistic, the cutscenes are unexpectedly dramatic, and there’s quite a bit of strategy involved in figuring out which is the right target. There’s a good deal of variety to the missions as well, with some requiring phone calls to ferret out a mark and others that need to “look like an accident.”

As impressive and entertaining (and gruesome) as Clear Vision is, it’s over far too quickly. Things start to ramp up and get pretty cool, then it just sort of ends. I suppose it’s a testament to how much I was enjoying the proceedings that I feel somewhat short-changed by the lack of missions. Still, being able to beat the whole thing in less than an hour (assuming the cutscenes aren’t factored in) is a pretty sizeable let down. For all intents and purposes I felt like I was being honed for much tougher jobs that lay over the horizon only to get a face full of credits.

It’s hard to knock a $0.99 iOS game for being too short, though. What Clear Vision does, it does extremely. It just doesn’t do enough of it. At least not for my liking. Still, I think it more than deserves all the praise it’s been getting up and down the App Store.