One of my favorite things to do in the Battlefield series is take a helicopter, set C-4 all around it, get people get into it, and then take them on a... trip. Sometimes I bail so I can watch the turmoil unfold from afar. Sometimes, I’ll just stick it out and see the deed done in first-person mode. People don’t like to be the victim, but I get a laugh out of it.
X-Plane for iPad [$9.99], as well as the series as a whole for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has just been updated with a new system failures tab that simulates various woes that can lead to a sure and quick fiery explosion. It’s like creator Laminar made an update just for me!
It’s stupid-fun for me to set up some of the incidents. For example, earlier this afternoon, I set up a four-engine failure coupled with a bird strike. You can also go easier and set up easier problems to cope with, like elevator system, landing gear, reverser failures. You can also set up “unreliable” mechanical issues, though I think this is more for the serious bunch of X-Plane pilots out there.
X-Plane is an ancient series in App Store terms, but they’re good for what they are, which is to say, serious flight simulators. There is even an Apollo mission IAP option built into the iPad version I’m currently checking out!
Obviously, there’s more to the system failure options -- good pilots will get a kick out of trying to right the ship, so to speak, and fight the aerodynamics of these issues.
What an update! Now, excuse me while I go see what happens when trying to land with three tire blow-outs combined with landing gear problems.
If you've ever played Spectromancer on PC, you know what you're getting into with Hothead Games'Kard Combat [Free, with in-app unlockables]. Not because it's been ripped off, mind you, but because the co-creator of Kard Combat is Richard Garfield, the man behind Spectromancer and the big daddy of TCGs, Magic: The Gathering.
The thing that sets Kard Combat and its progenitor apart from other card games is the complete lack of deck building. For some, building a carefully constructed deck designed to devastate your opponents is what the genre is all about, but I find it more of a necessary evil. I don't particularly want to spend all my money buying boosters, or spend hours agonizing over whether this card or that card is a better fit for my deck. If you feel the same, you'll find a lot to like here.
For starters, Kard Combat completely eschews the booster pack model. Instead, you earn your cards in the game's substantial single-player mode. There are four mages to take through the campaign, The Tower, each defined by an affinity: Death, Holy, Dominator and Machine. Whichever one you choose, your cards will be randomly chosen from four elements, Fire, Water, Air and Wind, and a fifth that matches your affinity. Each match, your deck is built out of twenty randomly chosen cards picked from those you've unlocked and spread evenly between the five categories.
When you face off against an opponent, you each get a field with six positions to fill. On your turn, you can play one card, which is either a unit that can be placed in one of those six positions, or a spell that affects you, your opponent or his cards directly. Units face off against the cards placed directly across from them. Each card has a mana cost, and you have a pool of mana for each category of card - this mana starts out at random levels and increases by one point each round, barring any cards that modify your mana growth. Both players have a pool of health, and the loser is the one that runs out of health first.
There are two ways to unlock cards. You can play through the Tower, which is free for the first few levels and can be opened up with a $0.99 in-app purchase for each mage (or $2.99 for all four). Each opponent you defeat on your way up the tower gives you a new card or an item. If you'd rather just hop straight into multiplayer fully armed, you can unlock all the cards, mages and items with a one-time purchase of $9.99.
Kard Combat has asynchronous multiplayer through OpenFeint. Strictly speaking, this means you can walk away and take your turns whenever you want to, but most of the community seems to play as though this is a synchronous game. There's nothing to stop you from playing in real time, and with such a fast, strategic game, you'll probably prefer it that way.
That's a lot of technical stuff, but the technical stuff is pretty important here. You know what else is important? The art. The card art in Kard Combat is pretty great, in a moody, gothic sort of way. Unfortunately Hothead has chosen to only let you see it in tiny little boxes to keep the game's file size low. Since the game's interface isn't much to speak of (it's functional, but with an unpleasant 90s-retro-gothic style), and the art is so small, the whole thing is a bit bland to look at. The sound design is also underwhelming, leaving us with a somewhat uninspiring package.
But looks aren't everything, and thankfully Kard Combat makes up for its weak points with a great personality. It's a fun game, and the lack of deck-building means it's easy to get into -- even for card game newbies. The single-player campaign has three difficulty modes, so you should be able to find a challenge no matter your skill level, and the multiplayer is both functional and well-balanced. Our forum users are pretty into it, too. Kard Combat has a bright future ahead of it, and Hothead Games has given every indication the plan to keep it growing for a long time to come.
Phosphor Games, a collective of game creators with ties to Midway Games, has revealed its latest announced project, The Dark Meadow. It’s an ambitious FPS that seeks to blend long-range projectile combat with Infinity Blade-inspired [$5.99] melee combat. And as its name conjures, it’s set in a fantastical and twisted storybook world. The goal of the project is to do more than entertain you -- it wants to scare you, too.
Like I said, it’s an ambitious game. We don’t see many handheld or tablet games fiddling with the horror genre, no less the FPS one. Aside from a Kinect mini-games project, this studio is also behind the wheel of an unfunded open-world action game called Awakened, which is just as ambitious as The Dark Meadow.
Inspiration was a big theme in the exclusive Pocket Gamer interview that revealed this project. Phosphor notes that the story and world resembles, to some extent, del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, while Infinity Blade and even Fruit Ninja [$.99 / HD] inspired the sword-based melee combat. A duo of id Software titles were name-dropped for the long-range stuff, as well as Time Crisis, which is a notable duck-and-cover arcade game that you play with a plastic gun and a pocket full of quarters.
For the better, Phosphor notes that organic, gesture-based controls seem to work best for these two platforms, so it’ll use them in The Dark Meadow. That gives us a fair bit of confidence in the project -- natural, uncluttered games tend to be the better ones. But, of course, it’s wise to remain cautious. Big games like this one always sound eye-poppingly amazing on paper. We'll keep an eye out for this as it rolls to release.
Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, in your memory, you might adore a title to death, but when it's ported and released to a modern system, you often find your favorite games broken or boring. Bitmap Brothers' Z [$4.99] was a favorite of mine when it was originally released in 1996 and for better or worse, Kavcom Limited's port hasn't changed much in the games structure.
Other than a few tweaks to the user interface, the core of Z is exactly as you remember it. An expanded view of the battlefield is enough to make the bigger screen on the iPad the more enjoyable experience, but it's not impossible on the smaller screen of an iPhone/iPod Touch. All that said, it is a fifteen year old game, so don't expect a whole lot of bells and whistles here. Or a tutorial for that matter, but we'll get to that later.
Z is technically a RTS game, but although cut from the same cloth as Dune and Command and Conquer, it's a different suit altogether. There is no resource management and units can be built up ad-infinitum provided you have control of an area. To gain control, you capture a flag and subsequently get access to a building that produces units on a small plot of land. To finish a map, you need to capture all points and destroy the enemy's stronghold. The faster you complete all these tasks, the higher your score, which can be viewed and compared through Game Center.
At your disposal are six robot soldier types and several types of tanks, jeeps and armored carriers, all of which you'll be deploying over the course of twenty levels. The premise for all this war mongering is a thin story about two warring robot factions, one of which is lead by your leader, General Zod. While the plot is about as loose as it can be, cutscenes in-between missions tell the story of two bumbling robots named Brad and Allen, who are something of a cross between Bill and Ted and Beavis and Butthead. In its humor and its presentation, Z is bleeding the mid-'90s all over the place.
Control is handled with a single tap to select and another tap to set a destination. You can select multiple units by pinching, but each unit is generally grouped together in twos and threes already. The same goes for picking which units to build out of your base, tap once to bring up a build menu and hit the scroll marks to pick a unit. As these things often tend to go, more units become available as you advance through the campaign. Unlike most RTS titles, your ground units can pick up different weapons and grenades off the ground and they can get into enemy vehicles if you're lucky enough to kill the driver without blowing up the whole thing. It's an added layer that replaces resource management in your strategy -- if your snipers can pick off a driver, you get a free vehicle, but it's a heck of a lot easier just to blow it up with a tank.
I'm only telling you all this because the game doesn't. Some of it is tucked away neatly in the Help menu, but most players are used to booting up a game and running through a tutorial -- you won't get that here and the already difficult game is a bit harder because of it. There's also a difficulty toggle hidden awkwardly away in iOS's system settings.
Where Z still stands out is in its auxiliary presentation. Sound effects and voice work still add a humorous glow to the whole experience and the music, which ebbs and flows with the combat sounds great. This isn't a game you'll find yourself muting after ten minutes. Graphically, the game holds up on style alone. You're not going to find fancy 3D, fantastic animation or even that much diversity in the environments, but it looks good, albeit clearly created in a far simpler time. Plus, there's really nothing better than robots in cowboy hats yelling at you.
The only feature that's truly lacking is the multiplayer, which, if memory serves, was rather entertaining over a 28k modem back in the day. This seems like a perfect fit for a mobile version, especially over Bluetooth or WiFi and it's a weird omission from the iOS version.
While the look and play of the original is intact, it also means some of the problems have carried over. Pathfinding is still a bit off and you'll often find units walking into walls. The same goes for the enemy AI, which seems to randomly fluctuate between brilliant and idiotic on a whim. The humor will appeal to some more than others, but it never gets too in your face or offensive to totally put anyone off. For their part, the controls take a bit to get used to and you'll often find yourself sending units in the wrong direction with a miss-tap. It's an easy remedy, but an annoying quality nonetheless.
(Video from PC version.)
There is a deep point of entry and the difficulty curve ramps up pretty quickly, but if you can handle it, there is a great RTS game hidden in here that's unlike anything else. The controls could certainly have been tweaked a bit further and the interface cleaned up, but overall, it's a solid strategy game with different mechanics than most. At first glance, Z might scare off people, but once you figure out how it works it's perfect for fans of both casual and deep RTS games, it's just too bad there isn't a little more handholding from the outset to bring in new fans.
Earlier today, Taito tweeted out a link that led to a teaser site for a game called Groove Coaster. On the site, we learned that Groove Coaster is "an exhilarating next-gen groove game" being developed by Reisuke Ishida, the creator of Space Invaders Infinity Gene [$4.99/Lite]. Unfortunately that, along with the below image, is all there is to know about the game at this time.
In case you're unfamiliar, Space Invaders Infinity Gene is the retro-rebirth of the legendary arcade game Space Invaders. It was released way back in July of 2009 and basically blew everybody away with its incredibly stylish visuals, fantastic music, and manic gameplay. The game is utterly phenomenal, and if you asked anyone what they would consider the top iPhone games of all time you would hear Space Invaders Infinity Gene's name frequently.
As for Groove Coaster, all we can really do is speculate at this point, but it does sound like it will be some sort of rhythm or music game. If you think about Space Invaders Infinity Gene, the awesome music in it was a huge part of what made it so special. There was even the ability to create your own levels from songs in your iPod library. It will definitely be interesting to see what sort of gameplay will be involved in Groove Coaster, how it will utilize music or "grooving", and just how the Space Invaders brand will come into play.
We'll definitely keep our ears open for any information for Groove Coaster, and in the meantime you can head over to our forums to talk about the game.
This past May, we came across one of the crazier trailers that we’ve seen for a game called Techno Kitten Adventure [Free] from Elite Gudz, and it featured a large man in an awful cat suit. But the silly video wasn’t the important part, as amazing as it was. What was important was that Techno Kitten Adventure, which previously had been been released as an Xbox Live Indie Game, was making its way to the iOS platform in a new enhanced version.
Techno Kitten Adventure dropped into the App Store last month to a hail of glitter and rainbows, and I even shared a few thoughts about the game on our podcast that week. Basically, Techno Kitten Adventure is a cave flyer where you travel automatically to the right, raising and lowering your position to avoid obstacles along the way. Gameplay-wise it’s about as barebones as they come, where you literally just travel for as far as possible without crashing. The farther you go, the higher your score, and that’s pretty much it.
However, where Techno Kitten Adventure earns its stripes is with the spectacularly crazy sights and sounds that blast your every sense during play. There are bright, flashing colors and all sorts of things going on in the foreground and background that are just dying to distract you during the game. There can be so much happening that it’s nearly impossible to make out the floor, ceiling, or objects in between that you’re supposed to be avoiding. This sort of artificially created difficulty would normally be frowned upon, but it’s actually kind of the point of Techno Kitten Adventure and is part of its charm.
Quiz Climber [Free/$1.99] is about as simple as a trivia game can be. The game asks a question, you pick from one of four options, and then you move to the next one, bam, bam, bam. It'd be easy to write it off as a game that's not worth noting -- if I could just stop playing.
As trivia games go, this one does the job. It's published by Chillingo, but it was created by Relentless Software, the developers behind the Buzz! trivia game series. At the very least, this should give you some faith in the questions. Relentless does a great job of bringing in a variety of topics -- pop culture, sports, history and literature feature heavily -- with well-designed questions and answers. They're a British studio, but the questions offer a good mix of British and American influences, and they're occasionally surprisingly funny.
But the questions aren't what keeps me coming back. Rather, it's the way the whole game hinges on a single failure. Your Quizzel, some sort of chubby squirrel, ascends into the branches of a pair of trees as you answer questions, and the questions get more difficult as you reach new heights. You keep climbing until you fail to answer a single question, and with that one screw-up, you're done. Your position is marked and your high score is noted, and you're left to start over again.
I never stop wanting to start again when I fall, because the games are so quick and it always feels like that one mistake that cost me my run could have been avoided. It's even worse if you take the plunge and sign into Facebook, because then you're competing with your friends for who can reach the highest branch. I've had a running competition with a friend since the game was released -- right now I'm on top, but I know it won't be long until I'm overtaken. Even with a strong lead, scores are reset every week.
If avoiding even a single mistake is too much pressure, you can give yourself a break with a lifeline. You earn them by answering enough questions correctly, or you can buy them with in-app purchases. You can only use one per game so it hardly gets abusive, but it's nice to have the option. When you miss an answer while sitting right under another Quizzel and a new high score is within reach, you aren't going to want to sit back and accept failure.
When it comes down to it, Quiz Climber is an extremely straightforward game. If it weren't so totally addictive, I'd have a hard time recommending it. But at the low, low price of free for the ad-supported version, or $1.99 for the ad-free version, it's worth roping a few Facebook friends into competing with you. When you leap right past their Quizzels, leaving them frowning in your dust, you'll be glad you did.
A good story is hard to find. I'm not pointing any fingers, but many iOS developers will leave huge, obvious gaps in their games rather than try to delve into story writing. So when I downloaded Monkube's6th Planet [$0.99] after its most recent update, I was pleasantly surprised to find not just a game with a story, but a story that's both well-executed and compelling.
If I hadn't been going in blind, I wouldn't have been surprised. The game's comic-book cut scenes were created in part by Vivifilm, an Oscar-nominated production company who worked on, among other things, Les Triplettes de Belleville, and the colorist has long worked with Marvel. This pedigree shows. In the near-future tale of 6th Planet, Saturn has changed. The governments of earth are left scrambling to discover why, and two trained chimps may be the only ones who have a chance to decide the future. This story is compelling, the dialog is sharp, and while the characters are cliched, they're cliched in a forgivable, comic-book sort of way.
The story's quality actually creates some dissonance early on, because the gameplay (while also quite good) doesn't match up well with the serious tone of the cut scenes. Aside from its story, 6th Planet is a fairly standard lander-style game. The thruster physics feel great, the level design is excellent, both in looks and layout, and it all works very well, but it doesn't quite mesh with the story. Just as I was getting grumpy about this problem, the game dealt with it in a very satisfying manner. I won't spoil it, but this dissonance definitely isn't worth worrying about.
Otherwise, 6th Planet is tight. There are two on-screen buttons that control the lander -- tap one to go left, the other to go right (and these can be inverted) and both to thrust upwards. Like any lander game, you've got a limited amount of fuel to burn, and you've got to get to the landing pad safely and slowly enough to avoid crashing. The levels, which often have sci-fi neon and elegant flourishes, throw obstacles in your way, like asteroids, walls, gates and the occasional martian. Your performance is rated on your fuel conservation, and you can replay levels for better scores.
Story Mode is easy, but with a good reason. When 6th Planet was first released in February, Monkube found that most players were getting stuck early on and missing out on most of the story. Rather than let that stand, they reworked the game, creating 30 new, easier levels for story mode and moving the existing 50 levels to a Master Levels mode. The new story levels are smaller, taking up no more than 3 screens. The Master Levels can be up to 12 screens, and they're meant to pose a serious challenge to experienced players. In that, they definitely succeed.
The 1.1 update also added Retina support and an in-game store where you can buy the ability to skip levels and purchase faster or more armored ships (neither of which is necessary to complete the game). Normally I'd hope for Game Center support in a future update, but 6th Planet has 80 levels, each with its own leaderboard. Until Game Center can support more than 25 leaderboards, the game's OpenFeint support will have to do.
6th Planet ends with a cliffhanger, after two full comics worth of story. I'm looking forward to the next installation, which should be coming later this year in 6th Planet II: Mission Earth. Looking forward to an iOS game's story is a rare enough treat, but 6th Planet also has great music and game design too. If you've skipped over it until now, the 1.1 update offers a great chance to jump in.
A new RPG is hitting this summer and it appears to have all the makings of a solid third-person, narrative-led hack-and-slash. Swords and an odd world? Check-check. Spiders and other monsters? Check-check. Simple click-treat action? Check. Muscles? Check. A dry, weird name? Yeah, Emissary of War passes that test, too, I think. But does it have the leadership and vision to see the promising project through? It might.
Former BioWare lead Tobyn Manthorpe, and now owner of Cedar Hill Games, creators of Emissary, is credited in an assortment of hardcore RPGs, including the oft-lauded Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and a personal favorite of mine, Dragon Age: Origins. He has the chops... but we also need to stick a caution flag in here: we’ve seen many a mobile splinter cell studio drop the ball after abandoning big budgets and AAA production lines. We’re not saying that this is doomed to be middling or lackluster, but it’s best to be cautiously optimistic about these smaller, yet still as ambitious mobile projects.
As you can see in the video, Emissary will be voiced and shows flashes of the story-driven style that has served BioWare so well in the recent past. If there’s one spot iOS studios have whiffed on repeatedly, it’s this. So, fingers are crossed.
If you’re wondering what’s up with the not-barbarian, that’s Hassock, an alchemist who will travel with the barbarian Ghent as he mucks through a “diplomatic mission that goes horribly wrong.” Hopefully, the issue isn’t as simple as breaking the seal on a letter. We'll see later this summer.
DrawRace [Free] just dropped to the low, low price of free for the day. This means one thing: If you don't already own it, you should download it immediately. DrawRace is a racing game that hinges around a remarkably clever line drawing mechanic where you draw the racing line for your car, and the speed that you do it at controls your car's accelerator and brakes.
My absolute favorite part of the game has definitely got to be the pass and play mode. Up to four players can play at once, taking turns drawing their racing lines. When everyone is done, the cars all race based on each player's input, and whoever managed to draw the best racing line wins. The drawing-based input method is so simple that you can play with total non-gamers and other people who otherwise would likely never be interested in a racing game, making DrawRace a great game to just keep on your phone. There's even a sequel on the way.
Seriously, if you don't download DrawRace I'm not sure we can be friends. Unless of course you've already downloaded it, in which case, hey buddy.
Before I get started with this, let's get folks up to speed that might not be aware of what cocos2d is- Cocos2d is an extremely popular totally free framework that provides core functionality for developers to use to build their games. The basic idea behind cocos2d and other similar projects is to provide easy to use tools to do things like handle sprites, sounds, physics, and more so developers can focus on building their games instead of, for example, investing time into writing their own text rendering or texture handling.
For examples of the kinds of things I'm talking about, check out the following demo video for cocos2d:
As of yesterday, cocos2d went 1.0.0. This is the product of 2600 commits to the codebase from 140 different contributors, with the first commit taking place just a little over 3 years ago. Cocos2d even saw 63 releases before it officially went 1.0.0.
It's been a long road too, cocos2D started as a Python project by Ricardo Quesada with some friends of his in the Argentinian town of Los Cocos, hence the name. The coconut logo comes from the spanish meaning of "cocos," although Ricardo admits that when it was originally named they didn't exactly have coconuts in mind. Oh, and check out the original roadmap as it was sketched out, emphasis has been placed on the original planned 1.0 release in February of 2009:
Even though cocos2d took forever to hit the 1.0.0 mark, it's easily among the best frameworks out there for iOS developers to use, and chances are you already have several games on your device(s) that utilize it. Ricardo estimates that more than 2500 iOS games are using it now, along with 50 or so on the Mac App Store. Feed Me Oil [99¢], League of Evil [$1.99], heck even FarmVille [Free] uses it.
We’ve known for about a week or so that Firemint was working on an update to Real Racing 2 [$6.99] and Real Racing 2 HD [$2.99]. That update is now available on the App Store for the generous price of $0. As you’d imagine considering this studio’s track record of solid releases and post-release support, this update is meatier than the traditional fare. A few bug fixes and performance tweaks are present and accounted for, but so are new, solid game-changing features. Firemint has expanded on the campaign in Real Racing 2, as well as introduced a tighter online offering for the HD version.
To get the hardcore specifics, visit the game’s official blog. You’ll see that Firemint has added several latency-squashing features such as visual indicators as well as a “new method” to quash high-latency drivers. IAP cars and upgrades are also now a thing, as well as in-game notifications to alert you when new stuff is available. For Real Racing 2 owners, seven new career events have been added, too.
That’s a lot of new stuff for an aging game, right? If you haven’t seen or read about Real Racing 2 aside from this, definitely give our review a read. Spoiler: it’s really good.
In celebration of the July release of Battle Slugs [$.99], a hexagonal strategy game that has you, as a storm of slugs, claiming territory, German creator GameProm has slashed the price of one of its key releases to pennies, while also cutting cost of a select group of games to $0, which is always a great price.
Think of the money you’ll save as you devour the following free offerings. Now you’ll finally be able to afford Netflix! Or detergent! Or cat food! I’m screaming!
I'm currently checking out Wild West Pinball. The other night, actually, I started thinking about how badly I wanted to see "Young Guns" again. Hopefully, this'll sate my grit and sand desires until the work day is over. If not... well, there's always Thunder Ball Pinball, which is alright but has nothing to do with cowboys.
How do you kill stuff and move around in Uppercut Games’ forthcoming cover-based shooter Epoch? It’s a question we asked ourselves after the first and then subsequent 14 viewings of the game’s smooth theatrical debut trailer. Earlier this week, we went to the source and got the answer. Turns out that Epoch is on-rails. Intuitive flicks and taps will guide the action as you obliterate the robot hordes in the game’s tortured future.
If you’re choler is rising at the moment, take a second and consider Infinity Blade [$5.99]. On-rails, for whatever reason, has become something of a dirty word, but Chair’s character action game proved that rails-based systems can provide the same amount of satisfaction that other, more open action games dish out. It’s all in the execution.
While we can’t speak to the overall quality of Epoch, we’re optimistic that Uppercut will knock this one out of the park. Industry veterans who have dealt with huge properties in the past founded the studio and created that trailer, which while noisy, proves that the studio has an eye for detail and a passion for good presentation and production.
To get more specific about how you’ll be guided in Epoch, action and movement occurs in what are called “arcs of cover.” You’ll be ushered between smaller arcs and setpieces, all the while tapping and flicking on enemies. We’re told that identifying whom to target first will be a big factor in the overall strategy. There are also special attacks, though at this point, we’re unsure what effect they’ll have beyond the surface.
Next week Uppercut Games hopes to be sharing a “How It Plays On iPad” video to give everyone a better sense of this. We’ll be keeping our eyes out for it, for sure and can't wait to see the game later this year.
As a huge fan of both action-platforming games and endless runners, I’m pretty darn excited for the upcoming game Roboto from developer Fenix Fire. Roboto looks to blend aspects from both of these genres. The levels in the game are heavily designed for running and jumping through quickly like an endless running game, except you aren’t moving automatically and you still have full control of your character. This means you can stop to turn around if you happen to miss an item, or engage in a quick gunfight with an enemy during your run towards the finish line.
There’s also a gravity flipping mechanic in Roboto, similar to Gravity Guy [99¢/Lite] or the gnomey level in Hook Worlds [99¢]. As you’re running along, passing through certain gates will trigger a gravity flip, and you’ll run upside down along the ceiling as if it was the ground. The core gameplay elements in Roboto all work together really well, as you can tell for yourself by playing the first 3 levels of the game via the free web demo on the Fenix Fire website. And here’s a free tip: the web demo plays wonderfully with the Joypad [Free] controller app paired with its desktop client.
While the gameplay is indeed quite nice, what I’m really liking the most about Roboto are its striking visuals. The game is bright and colorful, with a sort of cel-shaded look to it. The backgrounds are rendered in 3D which gives the game a great sense of depth and movement as you’re running through a level. The whole thing gives me a bit of a Viewtiful Joe vibe, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. Check out the trailer for yourself:
The release date for Roboto is vaguely set for sometime this Summer for both the iPhone and iPad. It will feature more than 30 levels including several mini-games, one of which is playable in the web demo and is a fun little riff on Space Invaders. I’m really impressed with what I’ve seen and played of Roboto so far, and there’s a lot of commenters in our forums who seem pretty stoked on the game as well. We’ll keep a keen eye out for pricing details or a release date for the iOS version of Roboto, and in the meantime make sure you give the web demo a try.
One of my favorite things to do in the Battlefield series is take a helicopter, set C-4 all around it, get people get into it, and then take them on a... trip. Sometimes I bail so I can watch the turmoil unfold from afar. Sometimes, I’ll just stick it out and see the deed done in first-person mode. People don’t like to be the victim, but I get a laugh out of it.
If you've ever played 
Before I get started with this, let's get folks up to speed that might not be aware of what cocos2d is- Cocos2d is an extremely popular totally free framework that provides core functionality for developers to use to build their games. The basic idea behind cocos2d and other similar projects is to provide easy to use tools to do things like handle sprites, sounds, physics, and more so developers can focus on building their games instead of, for example, investing time into writing their own text rendering or texture handling.
We’ve known for about a week or so that Firemint was working on an update to Real Racing 2 [$
In celebration of the July release of Battle Slugs [$
How do you kill stuff and move around in Uppercut Games’ forthcoming cover-based shooter Epoch? It’s a question we asked ourselves after the first and then 
