The original Cut The Rope [$.99 / HD / Lite / HD Lite] now boasts a new box, yet another new mechanic, iOS 5 support, and some other goodies and bug fixes in its brand new update. Tool Box, the branding of this new utilitarian themed box, has 25 additional levels and introduces rotating saw blades to avoid if you plan on making Om Nom’s day. The update also introduces a new Om Nom drawing, as well as “perfect box” stamps for jobs well done across entire boxes.

As for the technical side, Cut The Rope now boasts a “safer game progress reset” and a better selection screen -- it’s now apparently easier to scroll through worlds map courtesy the game’s new scrollbar.

Cut The Rope, regardless of how long in its sweet tooth it's getting, remains one of our most highly recommended games. You can read our review here if you’re still in dark about Om Nom and his cravings.

Yesterday at EA's Naughty or Nice event in New York, I sat down with Levi Buchanan of Chillingo to have a look at a few of the titles the studio has in the pipeline for iOS. One of the titles in question places iOS gamers in the role of a hero that is in no way wanting in the blue and red spandex department. Yes readers, the Man of Steel will soon be training his heat vision upon the App Store.

Superman, developed by Tiger Games, is an iPhone only game that puts you in the red boots of the son of Jor-El. It's a stand alone action adventure, not tied to any particular film outing, old or new. The story goes like this. Lex Luthor has taken it upon himself to launch a series of satellites to "help" with the whole climate change problem. Superman is understandably concerned by the bald villain's true motives. (Spoiler: they're bad.)

The game throws you right into the City of Metropolis, represented in side-scrolling 2D, with a good sampling of your superpowers available for use. The goal is to make it through 18 levels, defeating baddies by any of a number of different means, putting out fires with your freeze-breath, and working your way to defeating the evil Luthor and his orbiting offensive.

The game is designed to be played in mobile-friendly 3-4 minute sessions, each of which call upon most of Superman's superpowers to get the jobs done. As Superman flies about Metropolis, arrows surrounding his powerful self point directly to situations that need attention, color coded for urgency. The backstory is told via comic book-style panels, appropriately, and the whole thing is a touch-controlled race against the clock.

As long as your iPhone case isn't crafted from Kryptonite, you should have no problems taking a stab at the role of Kal-El in Superman later this year.

We sat down with EA at yesterday's Naughty or Nice games event in New York and had a look at a number of upcoming iOS titles, one of which should put a smile on the faces of all the real-world FPS fans out there. Coming this winter, for iOS only, is a spin-off of the imminent, big-news home console title Battlefield 3, entitled Battlefield 3 Aftershock, which we first covered back in August.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is a single- and multi-player FPS that will feature a range of battlefield locations around globe. The early demo version I played with was set  in Iraq (only) and the additional play locations have not yet be revealed.

Single player mode, EA explained, is being built around powerful 3D visuals, great gameplay, ragdoll physics and a wave system of enemy attacks designed to provide the best mobile wargame possible -- with an emphasis on mobile. The combat system is built around incoming hordes of enemies -- 150 waves per map -- designed to deliver relentless FPS action that can, on the go, be played just one wave at a time in 3-4 minute sessions.

There are four different character classes with heavy weapons variation (over 50 in all) and a high degree of player customization options. The multi-player game is expected to support matches with up to 10 players and character experience gained in single-player mode will translate over to multi-player, allowing for solo build-sessions between matches.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is controlled via two on-screen "sticks," movement on the left and aiming on the right. There is also an aim-assist button on the right that helps lock down targeting for those wanting a bit of help with the headshots. A few minutes of gameplay showed an impressive degree of detail and action on the demo iPad's screen. In this early build of the game, there's still room for some shader work, it seemed, but striking visuals are on EA's list of priorities for the final release, so I expect that will get tightened up before release. Even still, as is, it's one of the best looking iOS shooters I've seen.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock will arrive as a universal application (for iPhone and iPad) in late '11 or early '12 and will feature integration with EA's own Origin online network. You can count on a review of the title, closer in.

Yesterday, TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and spent time with a number of just-announced titles on the way from Chillingo. Perhaps the most stand-0ut game of the lot is Zombie Wonderland 2, sequel to the June 2010 release Zombie Wonderland [App Store]. As in the original, the upcoming sequel puts you in the shoes of Chuck, the renowned Zombie Cleaner of the pleasant little '50s Americana town, Niceville. While, before, your task was to keep the homes of your clients as clean and as zombie-free as possible, your new order of business is a bit more complex a proposition.

Now, while we aren't allowed to get into to many details as far as the storyline goes, just yet, I can tell you that the rooms you will be defending (and cleaning) are, this time around, spread throughout time. From the local museum, which serves as a kind of time-hub, you will be traveling to medieval castles, ancient Egyptian crypts, Viking halls, and ancient Japanese dwellings -- all riddled with zombies that make terrible stains when dispatched.

Some of the tasks that must be completed involve several stages set in different locations and / or times. For instance, one of your clients, Vlad the vampire, has given up drinking blood and moved over to milk. So you must travel through time to get him a glass of milk by milking a cow in a zombie-swarmed barn. Each of the temporally far-flung locales features its own mini-boss that appears and drives the zombies into attack frenzies that make the task of keeping the rooms clean and zombie-free quite a challenge.

While the original release featured four locations, four weapons, and five types of zombies, Zombie Wonderland 2 delivers 25 locations, 25 weapons, and 22 types of zombies, as well as a mega-boss zombie. Some of the weapons available are special bullets, medusa bullets, gnawers, turrets, lightning bottles, killer grass, the brain toy -- even a Roomba(-like robotic vacuum). Weapons can be damaged by zombies, but can also be repaired. New weapons can be quickly bought via in-app purchases or unlocked through dedicated gameplay.

Some areas of the town's museum are visibly under construction, and serve as placeholders for additional areas that will arrive in updates, down the road.

We'll take a closer look at Zombie Wonderland 2 when it arrives sometime before Christmas, but, however we rate it, it's sure to is sure to take the crown as far as number of genres represented. This survival cleaning, time management, tower defense zombie shooter will be priced at $0.99.

So far, the top note on my "Things I Didn’t Expect To Hear This Morning List" is this: Grand Theft Auto 3 is coming to a smattering of high-end tablets and handsets later this fall. No, really -- I have a list and, yeah, Rockstar Games announced plans to port its once-technical marvel to touch devices at some point in 2011 in celebration of its 10th birthday.

We don’t know anything about Grand Theft Auto 3 for mobile, including what it’ll look like or what price it’ll launch at. The blog post announcing this ‘big deal’ bit of news is strangely focusing more on a new and limited run of $150 12-inch Claude toys with “30 points of articulation” instead of the game. But, hey, pre-orders for the toy are open now!

I’ve got a fantastic and equally unfulfilling love and hate relationship with GTA3, just as I do with every other GTA title. I love the bluster, the scale, and a good deal of the content, but the controls and general technical wonkiness of Rockstar’s open worlds drag everything down. It’ll be interesting to see if this tenth anniversary edition on handhelds will debut with an improvement or two. I guess we’ll see.

Oh! And here’s the devices you’ll have to have in order to play it:

Apple iOS Devices: iPad 2, iPhone 4S
Android Phones: Droid X2, HTC Evo 2, LG Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix, Samsung Galaxy S2
Android Tablets: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

We’re in the middle of a fluid and defining time in the games space as digital really takes hold, nontraditional payment models continue to prove viable, and expectations of how and where people play their games mutate. Things are changing, no doubt, and we’ve heard a fair share of doomsday scenarios for multiple platforms as a result. This one from Valve boss Gabe Newell is pretty juicy as far as these things go. Speaking at a tech panel the other day, Newell said that he suspects Apple might step into the living room and blow up that particularly isolated experience into a perspective-shifting one that’ll spell the end of a ‘separate’ console platform.

For some context here, Newell believes there are four legitimate platforms at the moment: Internet, mobile, the computer, and the console. Newell’s also a noted not-fan of closed platforms, which was pretty apparent during the panel covered by The Seattle Times.

“I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he said.

“I’m worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going -- there's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.'"

I often wonder if Apple’s hobby project, the Apple TV, is ever going to become the core living room games device it seems primed to be. With features like iOS 5's AirPlay mirroring, it's on the cusp. This isn't the shiny and new thing Newell is speculating about here, but it’s a solid start.

[Via The Seattle Times]

Somehow, at some point, it became public yet-still-unofficial knowledge that Criterion Games’ Burnout Crash was coming to the iPad. It’s official now. In a new blog post, publisher EA has confirmed that the top-down racer is headed to our favorite tablet in 2011. It’s also coming to the iPhone and iPod touch, too, during the same “holiday” release window. Neat!

We haven’t seen this version in action yet, but the features EA is noting makes it appears as if it’ll stick pretty close to its XBLA and PSN source material:

Use intuitive taps and swipes to steer vehicles, trigger explosions, and rack up ridiculous scores across three game modes, 18 traffic junctions, and six unique locations. In addition to a rocking 80s soundtrack featuring Vanilla Ice and Gloria Estefan, you can look forward to Autolog support to connect, compare, and compete with friends and rivals.

Basically, Crash is a critically middling top-down version of pre-Paradise Burnout’s uber-popular crash mode. Like vehicular pinball, you wreck your tiny car into traffic and hope to pull off various multipliers and chain effects with explosions. We think it’ll actually be better on touch devices, but we’ll have to wait to see.

Yesterday , TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and got some hands-on time with a host of new titles on the way to the App Store from EA, Chillingo, and PopCap Games. We'll be sharing details on these titles across several posts, but first up is the new one from PopCap, Popcorn Dragon.

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A lot of game-changing updates are coming out this week thanks to the release of iOS 5 and its long-anticipated cloud support across devices. We want to go ahead and hit pause on the whole digital whirlwind to bring you this choice bit of information: Capybara Games has pushed out its iOS 5-centric update for Sword and Sworcery [$4.99], most notably adding in a Twitter sign-in functionality that jives with the integrated account you’ll be using in the OS update. It’s also addressed some ‘hard-to-find’ bugs and somehow tweaked and sharpened the “artwork and visual designers that have helped define” the game.

Sword and Sworcery is a ridiculously special experiential game with some of the coolest music, art and points of design we’ve seen on touch devices. It’s great and we think you should own it. If you don’t, go to a doctor because you’re broken.

What’s next? I don’t know, but I hope it has the words “cloud” and “save." Or "badger." The latter is just because I like badgers.

Madfinger Games is continuing to tinker with Shadowgun [$4.99] after its shaky late September debut on the App Store. For starters, the game is cheaper. For a limited time, you can grab it at $4.99 instead of its usual upper tier price tag of $7.99. It’s also less buggy. An initial patch run has sealed up its iPad 2 crashing issues, the Driller bug in the fourth level, and ‘optimized’ memory on lower-end devices.

These things combined present an interesting value proposition for anyone who read our review of the original build and remain on the fence. While we loved its technology, we weren’t too big on its level design or a handful of its mechanics.

Here’s a snippet:

If Madfinger can fix the crashing and save-game deletion issues with a patch, they're still left with a repetitive, but lovely looking shooter. There are hints of true quality in the boss fights and some minor sections of the campaign, but the majority relies on a simple, corridor design that's hard to find engaging for very long.

We’ve seen Madfinger say that it’s continuing to work on the game post-release and that’s great news. Its also still planning for an Android release later this month. We’ve been told that the Android iteration will support anything with a Tegra chip in it, so make sure you’ve got the right hardware for the job if you want in.

It's been sort of a strange week for new iOS releases. First off, several developers opted to release their games earlier in the week than usual in order to coincide with the release of the shiny new iOS 5 software update. Second, TouchArcade's trusted Captain Hodapp is off gallivanting around at GDC Online in Austin, so was a little too tied up to bust out the usual midweek roundup of Wednesday new releases. Thus, the burden has fallen upon yours truly, The Bearded Night Watchman of TouchArcade, to put together a list of what has come out today.

But hey, this post coming later than normal has a nice side effect - if there's a game on here you weren't expecting, then it's already out right now, and you don't have to suffer in anticipation as you wait for it to filter through the various international markets and hit your own local App Store. Ok, enough blabbering, on to the releases, and we should be back with your regularly scheduled Wednesday release post next week.
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Who would've thought there was room for a new endless runner in the App Store? Imangi Studios, apparently. They surprised us in early August with Temple Run [link], an excellent new take on the formula that scored 4.5 stars in our review and was among the titles in our Best iOS Games of August 2011 roundup. I think our own Nissa best summed it up as, "the endless runner that makes you feel like an archaeologist with a penchant for deadly situations."

The only complaint I've had with the game is its lack of native iPad support. Well, I'm happy to report that the game's third update, which landed last night, takes Temple Run universal.

The v1.3 update brings the following enhancements, as listed by Imangi:

• Universal iPad Support! Run for your life on the big screen!
• Two new characters to unlock! Barry Bones, a city cop with an attitude, and Karma Lee, the fastest legs in the Far East. To unlock new characters, just go to the Store and scroll down.
• More objectives to increase your score multiplier!
• You can now Tweet your score at the end of a game! That way all your friends will know you're the Temple Run champ!
• More ways to get free coins! Go to Store > Get More Coins to check it out!
• Lots of performance enhancements and bug fixes! Temple Run should run smoother than ever!

I've been running this latest version of Temple Run for a while now and it's definitely more fun than ever. It's surprising how much richer an experience the game is on the iPad with its 10-inch screen. But, entrenched leaderboard kings watch out -- I quickly found that playing on the iPad is conducive to much higher scoring.

A couple of weeks back, at the release of their v1.2 update, Imangi made Temple Run a free download, which is something iOS gamers seem to have appreciated. I recently managed to pull some stats from developer Keith Shepherd regarding the game's activity across its life-so-far in the App Store. As a paid app, in its first month, Imangi saw 10 million games played. Three days after going free, Temple Run hit 20 million games played, and after a week as a free app, it hit the 100 million games mark. All told, right now 350 million games of Temple Run have been played. Not a bad run...so to speak.

Imangi is working on iCade support for Temple Run and hopes to bring it in the next update.

Steve Jobs unveiled iOS 5 back at WWDC this year. Since then, those of us with an iPhone 3GS or later device have been anxiously looking forward to the array of new features and functionality introduced in the update. At last week's Let's Talk iPhone keynote, Apple revealed that today was the lucky day for iOS 5, and if you've got a device that'll run it-- Plug it into iTunes, make sure you sync, and mash that update button.

My favorite improvement so far has definitely got to be the entirely revised push alert notification system. That nasty blue popup that interrupts everything you're doing when you get a text message, your Tiny Tower is ready for something, or the zillion other things that used that type of been notification is a thing of the past. Now there's an incredibly elegant notification center where all these alerts are stored, and the actual popups themselves simply scroll in from the top instead of stealing focus.

If you've got an iPad 2 (or are getting an iPhone 4S in a few days), you'll be able to do display mirroring via AirPlay. Doing cool things with this is largely dependent on developers utilizing it in interesting ways, but so far Firemint is doing awesome things with Real Racing 2.

In addition, Game Center has seen a few tweaks. One I'm most excited for is turn-based support. If developers utilize it, Game Center can handle all of the matchmaking and turn data management between players. I've heard from developers that this functionality does not degrade gracefully to previous versions of iOS, but once iOS 5 adoption picks up we could see a rush of great turn-based games now that developers can offload their entire online infrastructure onto Game Center.

 

 

iCloud isn't something that should be underestimated. Out of the box it'll keep your device backed up to Apple's data centers and in the event of device failure, loss, theft, or whatever else you'll be able to re-download the entire contents of your phone regardless of the last time you synced. Also, once developers start embracing it, you'll be able to seamlessly sync save game data between devices. As someone who often plays games on both my iPhone and iPad, I can't wait for this to pick up steam.

iOS 5 is an incredible upgrade. I've been running the developer version since the gold master hit last week, and much like the upgrade from iOS 3 to iOS 4, my iPhone 4 feels like a totally new device. iOS 5 boasts a feature list of over 200 additions and improvements, so if you want to know everything that is new and different, check out this huge list over on MacRumors.

5th Cell’s and Iron Galaxy Studios' Scribblenauts Remix [$4.99] is a work of utter genius. Think of a noun, type it in, and then the game conjures whatever you chose to aid you in a puzzle. Need to find a way to reach a button on a cliff above the sliding door it controls? Hop on a pegasus. Want to bury a dead man? A stylish coffin, a shovel, and a spot of dirt will do the trick. Remix's brilliance is in its ability to let you use any tool to solve any puzzle. It cradles creativity unlike any other game, and Remix isn’t shy about letting you play in its world, to create all the fire-breathing dragons or toasters you can handle.

If you said Remix is a Best Of port of Super Scribblenauts and Scribblenauts, you wouldn’t be wrong. Remix is the sum of those core experiences with added touch controls that can, in some instances, feel inorganic. It strikes me as more of an upgrade, though. The game engine has a noticeably sharper look and feel, extraneous movements and navigation elements have been stripped or streamlined, the play is generally snappier, and some new levels have been thrown in for good measure. While 5th Cell didn’t re-invent the wheel with Remix, it did bother with the balance, weight, and treads on the thing. (more...)

TouchArcade Rating:

It seems like a recent trend on iOS is for developers to band together on projects, putting all of their various resources together to create a better final product. This past July we learned of one such project called Bike Baron, a collaboration between Mountain Sheep, Qwiboo, and music composer Ari Pulkkinen. Bike Baron is a side-scrolling motorcycle stunt game in the vein of the popular Trials games from Redlynx, but ditches the overly-industrial visuals for a more cartoonish look and a heavy dose of humor.

Today, the developers have sent along information regarding pricing and the release date of Bike Baron. You can look forward to the game hitting the App Store on October 20th at a price of just 99¢. They have also sent over a new gameplay video featuring one of the extreme levels in the game, and in this case the word "extreme" seems to mean "really freaking difficult", as you can see for yourself:

I'd like to stress again that this was a demonstration of an extreme level, and you shouldn't expect all of the 40 levels in the game to be lined with explosive barrels, though there should be plenty of danger to be had in the game's normal progression. Also, you'll be able to create levels with as much danger as you'd like using the included level editor. Other features of Bike Baron will include iOS 5 and Universal iPad support, Game Center integration, and enhanced visual effects for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

We'll be looking to get our hands on Bike Baron just as soon as possible, and while you wait for the game to drop on October 20th you can stop by our forums for a discussion of the game.