KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch [App Store] is a strategy game that takes place in China during the second and third centuries. The iPhone version is the latest in a long line of ports, sequels, and remakes starting with the original PC release in Japan in 1985.
In a nutshell, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is pretty much the dream come true of an App Store gamer that have found the current offering of strategy games not detailed enough, or lacking depth. The game is split between managing your forces on a map of china broken in to smaller areas where you build up your armies or weaken the resolve of others and a sequence of turn-based battles when push comes to shove. The amount of choices you have in game is mind boggling, and even with the in-depth tutorial system I've felt slightly overwhelmed trying to get a grip on this game not having experienced any of the other entries in the series.
AppBank shot a brief video of the game in action, and while they're not playing the English version of the game, you can at least get an idea of how the game looks and feels in motion:
It's hard to say how much appeal Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch will have on the App Store. Currently we have a thread on our forums with a few very enthusiastic members posting how much they love the game, but if you weren't around for previous iterations of the series or don't enjoy extremely involved strategy games, it not going to be for you.
What do you get when you combine a creative lead from Spore and an artist that just finished working on Brütal Legend with the indie spirit of the App Store? Apparently, a dragon with an insatiable desire to stomp on castles while raining fire down upon unsuspecting victims and doing other things dragons do. Or at least, that's the premise of their game Earth Dragon [App Store].
The game features a mixture of tilt and touch controls to maneuver your dragon and spew fire across 15 different levels of increasing difficulty. The recently released trailer shows a bit of the gameplay as well as expanding on your duties as a dragon-
Developer Chaim Gingold has an impressive resume revolving around his involvement in Spore (along with his own Wikipedia page) and artist Jane Ng has spent time as a Senior Artist at both Double Fine Productions and Electronic Arts. It's interesting to see what the two have come up with on the iPhone, and while Earth Dragon doesn't really provide anything revolutionary to the platform, it's still a fun game to play.
One game that we neglected on its initial release was Undead Attack Pinball -- an interesting combination of a defense game and pinball.
The goal of the game is to avoid damage and ultimate destruction of your gate at the bottom of the board from hoards of zombies. You can take out these zombies through the use of the pinball itself and collect money for upgrades.
While hardcore pinball fanatics may find these gameplay changes a bit gimmicky, I find the inclusion of these in-game goals (smashing Zombies, in this case) holds my interest much more than compared to traditional pinball games. The initial version of Undead Attack! generated criticisms for the quirky ball physics, but the game has since been updated to address this issue.
The developers also recently released a Lite version so you can give the game a try yourself. The latest update of the full version released today also adds a Halloween theme and provides some additional bug fixes.
The game has also seen a price drop from $2.99 to $0.99 in celebration of Halloween, so give it a shot.
While we all wait for Doom Classic to be approved in the App Store, id Software has released a major update to their popular Wolfenstein 3D Classic game which adds a ton of new content.
Features include:
Now with the Spear of Destiny levels - 21 total new maps
5 new Bosses
New enemy - Ghosts
Download custom made maps
Double tap to Zoom in-game map
id Software trivia section
Scrolling map selection menus
The update is free for existing Wolfenstein 3D Classic owners and remains at only $1.99. The map download instructions are detailed here. Instead of in-app downloads, id allows you to distribute .map files through Safari which load the maps directly into Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone. To create levels, you will need to download a Wolfenstein 3D map editor for your computer.
Well, we were wondering what the next game from iShoot's Ethan Nicholas could be. It turns out it is an outdoor hunting game that has been created in partnership with four-time Olympic medalist, Kim Rhode.
In Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting the player is placed in a variety of realistic environments teeming with animals such as white-tailed deer, grizzly bears and wild turkeys. Available weapons range from realistic pistols, rifles and shotguns all the way up to the thoroughly unrealistic but highly satisfying M134 mini-gun and RPG-7. Complete with lifelike sound effects and a natural environment, players are immersed in settings that allow them to hone their shooting skills.
The game is expected in late 2009 or early 2010. No pricing information has been made available.
Despite objections by some TouchArcade commenters, the hunting genre of game has been very popular on other platforms and has even seen a ton of success on the iPhone platform. John Moffett's iHunt [$0.99] ranked just above iShoot in a list of best selling App Store apps of all-time. Meanwhile, Glu mobile's Deer Hunter 3D has been consistently ranked in the top 100 for the past 3 months.
Based on screenshots and description, Nicholas' version does seem to have notable improvements over those titles, which may strike a chord in fans.
We first heard of Data East's plans to bring Cobra Command to the iPhone last month, and just got word that they plan on submitting the game to Apple this week. Originally released in 1984, Cobra Command was one of the first games to overlay computer generated graphics on top of Laser Disc footage to create arcade games that were unlike anything else available at the time.
Here are some screenshots from the latest build of the game:
Update: A new gameplay video was just released:
For comparison, here is a video of the original running inside of the Daphne emulator. This latest version of the game for the iPhone will have the following improvements over the game from 1984:
Full motion widescreen video, fully restored and presented in H.264 running at 60 frames per second.
Vastly superior graphics and effects to match the on-screen action. Including an all new Cockpit, guns, missiles, and sound effects.
Redesigned precision multi-touch controls.
Accelerometer-based tilt steering! You really are in command of the worlds most awesome combat machine.
Instantaneous seek time, providing a seamless experience where on on-screen action unfolds uninterrupted in real time.
Unlockable Bonuses. Including Arcade Classic, and Expert Modes.
If Cobra Command is submitted this week like they're planning, it should be available on the App Store sometime in mid-November.
Two Lives Left have been posting regular updates in a thread on our forums about their upcoming game, Wheeler's Treasure. I recently got my hands on a copy of the game, and so far I'm extremely impressed. Not only did they seemingly create an entire game inspired by the Orlando Bloom water wheel fight scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, but they've really managed to nail the difficulty curve.
One of the things we've discussed at length during our podcasts is how much we enjoy games that foster the feeling of if you could only have managed to not make that last mistake you could have gone even farther, almost forcing you to play again to see if you could beat your previous attempt. Games like Flight Control and its associated spinoffs, Doodle Jump, and the recently discovered Boost 3D all provide this experience, and so far Wheeler's Treasure is giving me a similar vibe.
The goal of the game is to see how many yarrds (get it?) you can accompany a wheel through a sidescrolling environment filled with all kinds of obstacles. Your character is moved using simple swiping gestures, and buttons in the bottom corner of the screen control the use of your items-- Another clever feature of Wheeler's Treasure.
The game includes achievements, such as picking up a certain number of jewels or stomping on a certain number of bats in one run. Each achievement unlocks a map that gives you a hint for where you can find items that your character can equip. During the tutorial you're awarded boots that allow you to double jump, and a hook that you can use to grab on to the wheel for a brief period of time. Meeting the goal of the jewels achievement tips you off to where you can find the loot magnet, making picking up coins easier.
The entire game is wrapped in a whimsical hand drawn art style with music that matches perfectly with the look and feel of the game. Wheeler's Treasure features complete OpenFeint integration, so when your game is finally over either from your death or your wheel's destruction you can submit your score to the online leaderboards before starting again. These scores appear in-game as tombstones, providing an excellent indication of how you're stacking up next to your friends' performance.
The game world is procedurally generated, so no two games will ever be the same, and obviously the farther you go the harder the game becomes. As you progress in game, you also will unlock additional 3D scenes to reveal the story behind Wheeler's Treasure.
Two Lives Left recently released this gameplay trailer, along with a few other gameplay videos and control demonstrations in their thread for the game:
Wheeler's Treasure has already been submitted to Apple for approval and is expected to appear on the App Store sometime soon.
Last month we posted a brief preview of Chillingo's upcoming hack and slash RPG, The Relic. Originally described as "Gauntlet on steroids", this latest gameplay video does a great job showing exactly what they mean by this. Here is Chillingo's latest description of the game:
Long ago, craftsmen of legendary art conceived an artifact of immortality; an engine of life to overthrow death and usher in the rule of peace. Yet one thousand years the Quinotaur reigns and fills the holes of the earth with horrors. Ascend from the deep where he has buried you, end the tyrant and destroy the source of his power - The Relic.
Play alone or with friends the intense hack and slash game that pits you against hordes of skeletons, spiders and evil wizards. Live the story, consume potions, collect spells and complete quests through a number of levels to uncover the secret of The Relic and finally restore peace to the world. Enjoy stunning graphics, animation and music that make the world of The Relic come alive.
The Relic will be playable with up to two players via bluetooth, and if you're on WiFi up to four players will be able to slash their way to victory.
While still under development, The Relic is looking very interesting.
The excitement for Halloween seems to be in full swing, both in the real world and on the App Store. There has been an overwhelming amount of Halloween themed games to be released lately, not to mention quite a few great games that have been out for a while now with themes that perfectly fit the holiday. Here are five that have piqued my interest lately, but there are many more where these came from-
Skullpogo, $1.99 - A ridiculous game from the creator of Enviro-Bear 2010 [99¢] where you bounce on a pogo stick taking out pigs, bats, zombies, and other baddies. There are tons of power ups, and a scoring system that rewards combos of multiple bounces. I've had a lot of fun with the game, but I've always been a sucker for simple games that have tons of power ups that offer all kinds of positive and negative effects.
Doodle Jump, 99¢ - No stranger to Touch Arcade coverage and already host to several Easter eggs, this beloved game of ours recently had yet another bonus feature added in a recent update. When you enter your name as "Boo", your character turns in to a glowing ghost and monsters get a Halloween makeover. This Halloween mode is incredibly difficult as all the platforms turn black, so you never know what to expect until you land on one. As always, Doodle Jump is highly recommended and this Halloween mode is yet another reason to pick it up if you haven't already.
Pet Sematary, 99¢ - Paramount recently released this iPhone game based on the 1989 classic horror movie of the same name. The gameplay is fairly basic, you tap on undead pets to protect humans trying to escape off the screen through 15 levels of increasing difficulty and then publish your scores to Facebook. That's pretty much all there is to it. If you're a child of the 80's, like me you likely have fond memories of being scared to death watching Pet Sematary. It's just unfortunate the game doesn't do more with the movie, as I see a lot of lost potential here. Regardless, you can't really have Halloween without Pet Sematary.
Ezone's Scarecrow, 99¢ / Free - A simple game by the creators of Galactic Gunner [$2.99 / Free] where you tilt your phone and tap your screen to see how high you can blast your scarecrow up in the air. Scores are tracked via Plus+, and a recent update added power-ups. Ezone has other halloween themed games such as Crazy Snowboard - Halloween Special [99¢ / Free] and Crazy Pumpkin [99¢ / Free] that are also worth checking out.
Zombie Pizza, 99¢ / Free - Appy Entertainment's latest game takes place in a world full of zombies, hungry zombies, to be precise. Gameplay is a mixture of matching and time management as you make pizzas based on an in-game cookbook to feed the zombies before they smash down your door and eat you. Zombie Pizza is a fun game with a ton of charm, and I recommend at least trying the lite version to see if it makes you smile.
Following ngmoco's announcement that their upcoming online multiplayer deathmatch game Eliminate is going to be free, our forums have absolutely exploded with activity. Anxious gamers who can't wait to have Eliminate in their hands have created an unstoppable juggernaut of a thread that recently topped 6,000 posts with over 160,000 views. Eliminate is in Apple's hands, and hopefully will be approved and on the App Store soon.
In the meantime, ngmoco released another gameplay video. While it's obviously not as good as playing the game itself, it gives you a fairly good idea of the kind of fast-paced gameplay you can expect in the world of Eliminate.
Touch Arcade forum member Rozgo has been posting for around a month now on the progress of his currently untitled 2.5D sidescroller that already shows a lot of promise. In the two videos he has posted we see multiple weapons, using missiles to break things, a grappling hook to solve physics puzzles, and many other amazing things that have come out of this one-man wolfpack of iPhone development.
This game looked impressive in screenshots, but seeing it in motion is something else. As a huge fan of both MegaMan and Metroid, these videos have me amazingly excited to have the game in my hands.
Alex Rozgo's game is still in development, which you can follow in his thread on our forums. According to his posts, he's optimistic to have the game submitted in early November to hopefully see it released on the App Store a few weeks later.
Fish Labs' long awaited rally racer that we first heard of back in August has finally arrived on the App Store. Originally a J2ME game released in 2008 that received rave reviews from mobile gaming sites, Rally Master Pro 3D [App Store] for the iPhone is completely remastered with four times the polygon count of the original with all kinds of additional visual effects.
The extra once-over Fish Labs gave Rally Master Pro 3D is amazingly apparent from your first launch of the game. It looks absolutely gorgeous and can easily stand next to the other graphical marvels of the App Store. Your car is one of the best looking car models I've seen on the platform, the weather effects look excellent, the draw distance is far, and pop-in of scenery is minimal. From a technical standpoint, Rally Master Pro 3D is phenomenal.
The game is controlled similar to other racing games. Your steer your car either by tilting your phone, using an analog wheel, or digital buttons to turn right or left. Acceleration can either be handled automatically or via a button, and there is a button for braking. I've found myself preferring the buttons to steer right and left, which seems a little odd as tilt controls have worked so well with other games. Both tilting and using the analog wheel somehow feel significantly less precise than using the digital controls.
When you're doing well, racing through the countryside in Rally Master Pro 3D feels great. As a rally game, you are competing against the clock rather than other racers, and like other rally games, turns are called out and the tracks are mostly easy to navigate with plenty of turns and jumps. Where things start to go pear shaped is when your tires slip off the road, which is where the car damage system comes in.
If you don't maintain a perfect racing line, your car slows significantly whenever you even slightly veer off the road. On top of that, a bar showing your car's current durability is displayed on the top left corner of the screen. In addition to being slowed when you go off road, your car takes constant damage and must be repaired between races.
When I first noticed my car taking damage for sliding off the edge of the track through turns, I suspected that there was going to be some really slick multitouch enabled mini game where you used various gestures to repair your car or some other clever way to play as a member of your pit crew. Instead, you're offered two options-- You can either have the game repair automatically to repair some lost durability, or assist the pit crew by playing timing based mini games to do things like refill your tire pressure or tighten the lug nuts of your wheels to repair much more.
What could have been a neat gameplay mechanic similar to how you hot wire cars in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS instead is accomplished by just pressing a virtual button on screen. When you're refilling your tires you hold a button to add or release air in to your tires and must guess the correct duration to get the pressure gauge within the desired range. When tightening lug nuts, you simply tap a button when a series of lines match up inside of a bar similar to how you putt in most golfing games.
What could have been a great opportunity to inject some mini games that suit the unique controls of the iPhone instead just come off as shallow and contrived. The vehicle durability and repair system really seem to be the fly in the ointment of an otherwise phenomenal iPhone game.
At the end of the day, Rally Master Pro 3D is still worth checking out. It's a fun racing game with great graphics. Once you eventually get good enough at the game your car doesn't take very much damage, and you can begin to mostly ignore the durability system. There is a ton to unlock by playing through the three difficulties of career mode, each with a rally course set up over 9 individual legs. Times are tracked locally as well as online, creating a sizable amount of replay value if you enjoy competing in online leaderboards.
Despite the release of Tap Tap Revenge 3 with in-app purchases, Tapulous is still releasing specially themed versions. The latest band to get this special edition treatment is Metallica.
The game includes new Hard and Extreme landscape modes with 4 or 5 tap rails, respectively, rather than the usual 3. List of tracks included are:
geoDefense developer David Whatley joins Arnold Kim, Eli Hodapp and Blake Patterson in our second ever podcast. Here is an outline of topics we discussed.
Following Kolonists' apparent removal from the App Store, Catan [App Store] fans were left without an outlet for their need to build roads and settlements along with gathering various resources on the go-- That is, until USM and Exozet Games' recently released official Catan hit the App Store.
Catan for the iPhone is a faithful reproduction of the board game, which was first published in Germany in 1995 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since. The game is played with up to four players (or more with expansions not present in the iPhone game) on a board game with 19 hex tiles that randomly go together to create a different layout for each game played.
Players then build settlements, cities, and roads as they gather resources and settle the island. To win the game, you need to have a certain number of victory points on your turn which are earned by meeting various goals within the game. In the iPhone version, victory points are configurable from 8 to 12 along with a few other options to customize gameplay to both make it harder for veteran players and easier for new players.
If this is the first you've heard of Catan, you will be happy to find out that the game has a remarkably full featured tutorial included that covers nearly every aspect of the game. Catan, like most strategic board games can be somewhat intimidating to new players, but the tutorial does an excellent job of starting with the basics and teaching you everything you need to know to be a proficient settler of Catan.
The thread on our forums about the game is filled with great feedback and reviews. INCyr, a fan of the board game, posted a review and thinks its a great game with a few issues keeping it from being perfect. Forum member Farnsworthiness had never played Catan before posted his thoughts and agrees with me on the strengths of the game's tutorials but mentions that the game is a bit of a battery hog.
I've been having a great time with Catan, although I was disappointed with the lack of anything other than hot seat multiplayer. Having spent so much time playing Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] lately, I really wish more turn-based games adopted a similar push-alert powered asynchronous multiplayer mode.
KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch [App Store] is a strategy game that takes place in China during the second and third centuries. The iPhone version is the latest in a long line of ports, sequels, and remakes starting with the original PC release in Japan in 1985.
Last month we posted a brief preview of Chillingo's upcoming hack and slash RPG, The Relic. Originally described as "Gauntlet on steroids", this latest gameplay video does a great job showing exactly what they mean by this. Here is Chillingo's latest description of the game:
Following ngmoco's announcement that their upcoming online multiplayer deathmatch game 
