2K Games’ NBA 2K12 [$4.99 / HD] doesn’t have quite the thrill or the touch of its brethren, but it’s a competent basketball title that stresses simulation over finesse and AI over finer points of control. Super fans might want to stay on the bench, though: 2K has reigned in and streamlined the overall NBA 2K experience to such an extent that it's hardly a recognizable game in the long-running series. It’s a shell of the experience available on consoles, and it’s not much of a looker, either.
What 2K did with 2K12 is similar to how it handled Civilization Revolution [$6.99 / HD]. Civ Rev, which was already a dumbed down version of Civilization proper, is even more dumbed down on touch devices, offering up simpler menus and actions that keep the pace ramped up without throwing away what made the core game good in the first place. 2K12 is an exceedingly simplistic game in the same vein. You can’t pick plays, some control options have been removed, you won’t be going online, franchise mode is missing some parts, and some of the special Michael Jordan touches -- the retro teams in particular -- have been stripped. What’s left is a fairly linear basketball simulation experience that you never really have direct control of, but can still participate within. (more...)
A pre-existing game might be one of the best to show off your soon-to-be brand new iPhone 4S’ power, if Firemint’s Real Racing 2 is in your collection. Real Racing 2 [$4.99] and Real Racing 2 HD [$6.99] are set to receive a free and new update that’ll add an extra layer of graphical goodness on top of their pre-existing sizzle, all in the service of harnessing the A5 chip. New dynamic shadows and lighting, increased polygon counts, reflections, and exposure effects are all being added in the game’s latest update, which should hit pretty soon.
And that’s not all -- iOS 5 is coming and so are a handful of features to Real Racing 2 that revolve around Airplay support. With the update, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream the game’s content to your TV. Also, if you’ve got friends with the game and an iPhone 4S or an iPad 2, you’ll be able to play with them in split-screen. “Party Play” mode will allow up to 4 players to compete on the same screen, provided the host has Apple’s new hotnesses.
Firemint isn’t known for missing a hardware launch, so we didn’t expect any less. Still, this seems like an absolutely spectacular deal for current and new owners of the game. Real Racing 2 was great to begin with, and now it’ll look even sharper than ever.
Arcade Jumper [$1.99] by Black Hive Media is a retro side-scrolling platform game which feels like the old classic Mario. There's enemies to either shoot or jump on their heads, and the main character wears a red cap with red and blue clothes. Yup, that certainly sounds very Mario-esque, but fortunately there's plenty of innovation in this game too.
It's the 1980's and Eddy's brother Jimmy has been sucked into an arcade machine by 'Ghosty', the naughty child-abducting spirit with a friendly-sounding name. To save Jimmy, you need to complete 10 zones, each with three stages (30 stages in total).
Stages are completed by finding warp-tokens, then returning to the start of the stage to insert the token into the glowing arcade cabinet and warping to the next stage. There's a timer which counts down, so you need to keep moving. At the end of each zone (3 stages) you're confronted by the floating kidnapper, Ghostly, who must be chased down and then shot or jumped on before time runs out to complete the zone.
Want more out of Groove Coaster[$2.99]? Good news: the dudes over at Taito have rolled in three new tracks and a couple of bug fixes in the latest free update. Two of the songs, Just No Friend and Protocol Signal Generation, immediately bolt on to the core game, while the third of the new bunch, Hello 31337, is available as a one dollar IAP. Naturally, these tunes come with a flashy experiential level that compliments what you’re hearing and doing with the song.
Taito has also added “new album versions” of Play Merrily, Not Get Wish, and Breach of Faith in this update. Neat!
I’m not the kind of guy who usually gets into rhythm games, but Groove Coaster's crazy level progression system and with its insane visual style and direction hits just the right notes for me. Plus, the music isn’t so bad. I heartily recommend you check it out, or at least, read our review.
We’ve done a lot of things in zombie games over the last decade and survival has been the key ingredient in 99.9 percent of them. Action Mobile Games’ 2013: Infected Wars isn’t going to set the world on fire with its atypical focus on zombie survival and its same-y premise, but it is a game that we think you should take mental note of. Developed with UDK Mobile, it’s a competent-looking third-person shooter with a great visuals and the promise of carnage, as it boasts a bunch of zombie-chopping weaponry, as well as tons of guns.
In the game, you’ll play as a post-apocalyptic survivor of a zombie virus who moonlights as a mercenary hired to grab supplies amidst a near-complete zombie take-over. At your side will be your trusty guns, as well as a few friends -- 2013 will allow for co-op over the ‘net.
We don’t have a release quite yet, but considering this is alpha footage and all, I wouldn’t expect it to hit within the immediate future. We’ll definitely keep our all-seeing eye turned towards this as it shambles towards release, though, and give you what we can.
Developer ustwo™ doesn’t really consider themselves game developers, though they have dabbled with their series of “DOT” games, most recently DOT5URBO [Free]. No, most of their success and notoriety is from their utility and entertainment apps, and their extremely well-received interactive children’s app Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime [$3.99].
However, they’re preparing to jump head first into the world of games with their upcoming Whale Trail. A take on the endless cave flyer genre, Whale Trail gets the base mechanics of this type of game just right. You play as Willow the Whale, trying to escape an evil underwater monster who has invaded your ocean home. You realize that a magical whale trail gives you the power to float into the sky and escape his grasp.
The iPhone 4S will utilize the Apple-designed A5 chip, which according to Apple, allows for studios to make games with up to “7X faster graphics.” At its press event moments ago, Apple brought Epic Games CEO Mike Capps on-stage to discuss the innovation and show off a new project set to harness the dual-core chip: Infinity Blade 2, the sequel to the hugely popular and eye-poppingly gorgeous Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment.
The demo was brief, but people on the ground apparently got an eye-full of graphical awesome, as Capps showed off a significantly better looking sequel with shadow and reflective effects, as well as some neat little touches like, say, real-time koi swimming in a pond. The mechanical part appears to be pretty similar: you'll play as a soldier-y type of guy charged with killing big monsters with various slashes.
Capps said, during the demo, that the game is “only going to run like this on the iPhone 4s. Why? Because it's awesome." And the wait for it won't be long: Infinity Blade 2 is due out this December 1.
The day is upon us, and there's barely an hour left to go before Tim Cook (presumably) takes the stage at 10:00 AM Pacific to potentially unveil the iPhone 5, or maybe the iPhone 4S, who knows-- But, either way, we'll find out shortly. Yesterday I posted a little roundup of sorts of what we might be able to expect today, and as of this writing we've taken in over 50 comments on that story of people speculating what might be coming. Whatever it is, I want one.
If you're the kind of person who likes to have every possible liveblog open in different browser tabs so you get everything the second it happens, here's a pretty awesome list of other sites doing live keynote coverage:
Poor Timmy is not having a good day. CB Labs’ The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run [99¢] starts off in the thick of Timmy’s misery: He’s a playground outcast in a cat costume whose only friend/probable true love, Kitty, gets snatched away and held prisoner in hulking bully Mitch’s tree house. Rather than accept this, however, Timmy puts his cat suit’s hood up and gets down to business—a rescue operation that spans 36 levels of 2D platforming awesomeness.
There’s a reason that some of our forum users compare Run Kitty Run to classics like Super Mario Bros. It shares a lot of elements, from the rescue angle to gathering coins. Probably the most important similarity, though, is the way you feel playing it. It’s challenging, sometimes frustrating, but often rewarding.
We’ve been eagerly anticipating Rocketcat Games’ newest upcoming iOS game Mage Gauntlet since it was first revealed back in July, and that anticipation has only intensified with the newest gameplay trailer that was released for the game late last month. The funny thing about game development, though, is that projects tend to go through a pretty intense evolution from their beginnings until the time a finished product hits the market. One of my favorite things is to see early prototypes or concepts for a game and then compare them to later versions, much like the incredible transformation that Aralon: Sword and Shadow [$4.99] underwent during its development cycle. There’s even an entire thread in our forums dedicated to developers showing off their before and after work on their games.
Mage Gauntlet is no different, and Rocketcat has recently released a short video showing the earliest version of their game, which charming as it may be, looks like the nasty gas station hot dog that’s been sitting on those spinning heat roller things for the past week compared to the filet mignon that is the latest Mage Gauntlet trailer. Ok I’ll admit, sometimes I have a hankering for those crazy hot dogs, but still, Mage Gauntlet has come a long way since its humble beginnings:
Backflip Studios' Boss Battles [Free / HD] is difficult to really talk about in a lengthy matter. After all, you know exactly what the game is based on its title alone and the fact it's free should ensure nobody will hesitate over it too much. Still, the concept alone is interesting enough to warrant a discussion.
The idea of basing a game on boss fights has been done before, Shadow of the Colossus, for instance, and Cave's Japanese only Kesui Death Label, but Backflip's pedigree of casual titles mixes the idea up a little by creating an easier to push through barrier of entry.
RobotRiot [99¢] from Glowing Eye Games and Retromite, is a Universal 2D sci-fi platform game with retro graphics where you control an armed, hovering, debt-collecting robot, named SLUG. And frankly, each part of that sentence sounds appealing.
SLUG's job description involves helping to repossess spaceships when citizens are late with their tax payments. To do this, he must enter each section of a spacecraft to locate and destroy the power generator. Once all sections have been powered-down, the craft is left disabled and defenseless, allowing a tow-ship to easily tow it away for impounding. And you'll be paid a wee bounty for your efforts, by your boss, Commander Krupp.
A few weeks back, we brought you the news that SEGA was bringing arcade title Brick People [$1.99 / HD] both across the ocean and onto the small screen. Before arriving on iOS devices, the brick-folk were limited to arcade cabinets in Japan. You'd gather up physical bricks to place against the screen, and tiny dudes would climb up and over them to collect fruit. I'm sorry I've never had a chance to try it out -- it sounds like great fun.
Some of that fun may have been lost in translation when the game moved to iOS. The physical bricks and arcade constraints seem like they would have made the single-player content much more engaging than it is in its current state. It's much better if you can go head to head, but with only Bluetooth connectivity and, in the HD version, single-device multiplayer, you may be hard pressed to find an opponent.
Our ratings for games we reviewed in September are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a 3 or higher is considered a "good" rating.
Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in September, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in September. (more...)
Free-to-play and I don’t get along too well. If it’s not the embedded ads turning me off, it’s the oddball paid power-ups and the off-kilter balance and experience boosters. In the worst cases, it's the lack of fun because a developer pulled it out and made it a paid feature to sponge revenue. I’d rather just pay up-front and get the entire experience from the get-go. It saves me time and frustration.
Steambirds: Survival makes F2P an exceedingly easy pill to swallow. It looks sharp, it seems to function just fine on a mechanical level, and its fun without needing to immediately pump money into it. In the early going of our preview build, at least, it appears to have all the functionality and fleshiness of a paid game, minus the paid part. This is what this new-age of free-to-play is supposed to look like, right? (more...)
2K Games’ NBA 2K12 [$4.99 / HD] doesn’t have quite the thrill or the touch of its brethren, but it’s a competent basketball title that stresses simulation over finesse and AI over finer points of control. Super fans might want to stay on the bench, though: 2K has reigned in and streamlined the overall NBA 2K experience to such an extent that it's hardly a recognizable game in the long-running series. It’s a shell of the experience available on consoles, and it’s not much of a looker, either.
A pre-existing game might be one of the best to show off your soon-to-be brand new iPhone 4S’ power, if Firemint’s Real Racing 2 is in your collection. Real Racing 2 [$
Want more out of 
We’ve been eagerly anticipating 
Our ratings for games we reviewed in September are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a 3 or higher is considered a "good" rating.
Free-to-play and I don’t get along too well. If it’s not the embedded ads turning me off, it’s the oddball paid power-ups and the off-kilter balance and experience boosters. In the worst cases, it's the lack of fun because a developer pulled it out and made it a paid feature to sponge revenue. I’d rather just pay up-front and get the entire experience from the get-go. It saves me time and frustration.
