Blitz Brigade [Free] is a class-based, competitive shooter that takes a lot of cues from other class-based, competitive shooters like, say, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 1943. It's a Gameloft joint, so it's more copycat than original and it's loaded with a ton of free-to-play features, including the ability to buy gems to respawn instantly in battle. I'm guessing the free-to-play part specifically is going to turn folks off. I get that. But, I've gotta say, this isn't a terrible shooter as far as touch device shooters go. Also, the matchmaking and network functionality actually works consistently, which is pretty rare for these types of games.
Eli and I gave it a spin the other afternoon. We killed a bunch of dudes and we also got to drive around in a tank for a few seconds. More importantly, we met a man named Bobby. He was a good man (or a spy), that Bobby:
Blitz is free, so the barrier to entry is pretty low. Give this a shot if you're in the mood for a shooter and can stomach virtual controls and the design wizardry that comes with it. Oh, and if you see Bobby, tell him we said "Hi!"
Rail shooters are one of my guilty pleasures as a gamer. They're mindless fun, like climbing into a rollercoaster car that happens to rumble and weave through a shooting gallery. I'm especially fond of The House of the Dead, the first on-rails shooter I had the pleasure of touring from inside the cool darkness of a video arcade. The House of the Dead: Overkill - The Lost Reels [$4.99] is arguably the best entry yet, but an aggravating pay model and IAP leaves some divots in an otherwise smooth and flowing track.
Lost Reels consists of three episodes broken up into five stages each. You choose a character, lock and load two guns, and unlock levels as you clear haunted houses and zombie-infested hospitals. By default, you aim your crosshair using a virtual d-pad. After the first few levels, zombies come rushing in from all directions, and the d-pad just doesn't respond fast enough. Aiming using the accelerometer works much better, but did leave me massaging my wrists as I stepped over dozens of corpses toward boss battles and victory screens.
After a soft launch period that began in February, Gameloft's free-to-play class-based shooter Blitz Brigade [Free] has now been officially launched in the App Store. Originally announced in January, Blitz Brigade feels like the lovechild of Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield Heroes. It's a lighthearted kind of game, as opposed to the gritty, realistic nature of most shooters nowadays. Despite not being an entirely original concept, I'm actually surprised with how much fun Blitz Brigade has been so far.
As you'd expect, it's pretty freemium'd out, but not really in a gross or unfair way. It looks like you'll be able to earn everything the game has to offer just by playing, or if you're impatient or otherwise just don't mind dropping a few dollars on in-game currency you can purchase packs of gems to spend on basically anything in the game. The part that's annoying is that Gameloft takes every chance possible to let you know you could be spending that gem currency, so it's pretty in your face, but at least it doesn't appear to gate any of the content from you outright.
It's sad that so much time need to be dedicated to explaining how a game's pay model works, but that stuff aside Blitz Brigade is pretty darn cool. It looks nice, it plays well, and it's fun. The main dish is of course its online multiplayer, but there's also a good deal of single player missions to work your way through that'll pretty much walk you through all the different aspects of the game and its characters. The online connection has been a bit iffy but seems solid for the most part. If you've played any other Gameloft shooter you pretty much know what to expect.
I'll be spending the weekend playing some more of Blitz Brigade to dig in further, but I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised with it so far, and our forum goers seem to be digging it as well. It's free so give it a look if you've been waiting for this type of shooter to hit your iOS device.
We've been following along with the development of iMech Online [Free] since its first unveiling at WWDC last year, and over the weekend the game quietly launched for free in the App Store. Actually, to back up a bit, iMech was a game originally released way back in 2009 and was among the first iOS games to feature full competitive online multiplayer for up to 8 players. It was extremely impressive for the time, and iMech accumulated a dedicated fanbase of online players.
As can happen, the original development team broke apart and eventually iMech was removed from the App Store and its servers were shut down. A phoenix rose from the ashes in a sense, though, as some of the original team banded together and purchased the iMech IP and set forth to revamp and rerelease the game. And that's where we're at now with the release of iMech Online.
It's free to download and try iMech Online, and there's really no reason why you shouldn't. It has a fairly robust selection of mechs to choose from as well as a ton of customization options so you can trick them out with special abilities and weapons. It's a free-to-play title, though, so expect to need to grind away to earn some of this stuff or pony up some real dough to do it more quickly.
However, the game's new developer Mobula has tried to ensure there's nothing that's "pay-to-win" about their upgrade system, so even if you are new to the game and not quite fully-equipped just yet you can still match up well with those who are. Also they're using a League of Legends-inspired rotating system which gives you a selection of different mechs to try out each week, so you can check them out before committing to investing time or currency into them.
So far I've only spent a small amount of time with iMech Online, but it feels like there's a lot of potential here. I like the amount of different mechs and customization options, but with just one arena and a simple deathmatch game type it feels very basic. We'll see how it continues to evolve, but for free I think it's definitely worth the time to check out. Also, there's a discussion thread in our forums if you want to drop your own thoughts or suggestions on iMech Online, or just find some folks to frag.
Earlier this month we told you that Gun Commando, a retro-styled first-person shooter previously released on PlayStation Mobile devices, was on its way to the App Store, and it's worming its way through international markets as we speak and should land in the US later tonight. I've been toying around with Gun Commando for a bit and so far it's pretty much what I expected: a simple, but fun, frag-a-thon that's a real throwback to the early days of FPS games.
When I talk about throwback, I mean that Gun Commando is like Doom [$4.99] or Wolfenstein 3D [$1.99 / Free] in that you're aiming is fixed to a single plane, so you don't have to worry about aiming up or down. This makes the game less complex, but also much easier to control on a touchscreen. The controls are still as fiddly as most touchscreen FPS games, and I'm sure a far cry from the actual dual-sticks of the Vita, but they get the job done fine.
Graphics in Gun Commando are really simple, with blocky environments and textures, but it has a really cool stylized look that makes it feel like you're playing an '80s cartoon. The levels are simplistic and are all really bite-sized, which is well-suited to mobile. You aren't likely to get lost working your way through them, but there are 3 trophies to search out and collect in each one and plenty of little secret areas to find that give you additional goals to shoot for.
By far the most interesting aspect about Gun Commando is its weapons system. Unlike traditional games where you where you can switch between the various weapons you run across in the game, here you'll always start out with a base pistol and work your way up from there. You do this by landing shots into enemies consecutively, which builds up a meter in your HUD.
Each time you fill the meter your weapon levels up, turning it into a more powerful weapon. With every hit you land the meter notches up a bit, and when you miss it notches down a bit. This system is brilliant as it makes you focus on accuracy rather than just mashing the trigger willy nilly, but on the flip side I do miss the strategies that come with being able to choose your weapons and manage your ammunition.
The lack of strategies or complexity isn't necessarily a negative in Gun Commando's case, especially for a mobile game. Its focus is on running around and blasting bad dudes, and I like it that way. It also has a really cool visual style and lots of tongue-in-cheek personality, and players in the forums seem to be digging it too. Gun Commando should land around 11pm EST, so throw this bad boy on your TouchArcade [Free] app Watch List and we'll alert you when it hits the US App Store.
Back in the late '90s, Sega's House of the Dead was one of the most popular games in arcades. It let you team up with a buddy, each with brightly-colored plastic guns in your hands, and lay waste to hordes of the undead. How could it not be popular?
While having a stand-up cabinet with physical faux guns attached was a big part of the appeal of a game like House of the Dead, the franchise went on to become quite popular on home consoles, utilizing its own set of gun peripherals or more recently being compatible with motion controllers like the PS3 Move and Nintendo Wiimote.
Tonight Sega is getting ready to drop House of the Dead: Overkill - The Lost Reels on the App Store. It's a touchscreen-tuned, remixed version of the title released for the Wii back in 2009, and I've been playing around with it for most of the morning. To be honest I wasn't exactly expecting much out of the iOS House of the Dead, but I have been pleasantly surprised so far, save for a few head-scratching quirks.
The game is broken up into three different "movies" which each contain four levels and a boss fight at the end. The initial download gives you the first movie, Papa's Palace of Pain, as well as a locked second movie Ballistic Trauma. You unlock that second movie merely by playing through the first, but the third movie, Naked Terror, must be purchased for a $1.99 IAP. I don't mind so much having to pay for additional DLC levels in games, but on day one in a paid game that already only comes with two chapters it feels a bit weird.
On the bright side each chapter in the game is quite lengthy. You're guided around "on rails" through each environment, blasting at zombies (oh sorry, I mean the infected) at every turn. There are also a ton of cool little touches to discover, like hidden items or secret doors you can access by shooting them.
A pretty robust shop system allows you to buy and upgrade new weapons. While you can certainly buy the "Koins" currency as IAP, I found I had more than enough to upgrade my starting shotgun and handgun quite well just using what I earned through playing. Good thing too, as the third segment of the first chapter is where things really started to get tough, and the upgrading instantly made the going a lot easier.
The weapon upgrades are permanent, and there are some abilities you can permanently upgrade for your character too like beefing up your life bar or combo multiplier. The shop also contains consumables which will give you a temporary boost in things like damage done or Koins earned.
One of the biggest head-scratchers so far has to do with the controls. There are options for a virtual stick which moves your aiming reticule around the screen, and it works really well, and then there's an option for accelerometer controls which aren't quite as good in my opinion but still seem to get the job done alright. Then there's a Frenzy Tap option, which sounds like a tap-to-shoot scheme, and also seems like the control option that would make the most sense for this game.
I say "sounds" and "seems" because I haven't actually tried Frenzy Tap yet. For some inexplicable reason it's locked, and I haven't quite figured out how to unlock it. It seems very strange to lock away something like a control option, but I'm getting along just fine with the virtual stick so I guess I'll just see what happens I do end up running across Frenzy Tap.
Other than the couple of quirks I mentioned, the actual action in House of the Dead is as solid as ever, and I'm having a blast so far. The production values are quite high, and fans of the series should be pretty happy having a version to carry around in their pocket. House of the Dead: Overkill - The Lost Levels should be hitting the US App Store tonight at 11pm EST, so in the meantime hit up our forums for more impressions and feel free to add the game to your Watch List in the TouchArcade app [Free] to be notified when it does land here in the US later tonight.
The retro game porting experts at DotEmu have brought all sorts of classics to the iOS platform in impressive fashion, and this past December they gave us the landmark scrolling shooter Raiden along with some of its sequels in one tight little package called Raiden Legacy [$4.99]. And for the first time since launch Raiden Legacy is on sale for just a couple of dollars, down from its normal price of $4.99.
Raiden Legacy comes with four titles in total: the original Raiden, Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet. The original game is an all-time classic, but the Raiden Fighters series really shows the strides the shoot 'em up genre made during the '90s. I was a huge Raiden fan as a kid but never got around to playing the Fighters series, and was pleasantly surprised with just how excellent they are when I experienced them for the first time on iOS.
Of course since this is the work of DotEmu you can expect all sorts of great features and options in Raiden Legacy. Control-wise you can adjust the speed of your movement, even setting it to the arcade original. By default touchscreen controls make shooters like this easier since the ship moves at the speed of your finger, so the arcade setting is nice for purists. You can also move your bomb and fire buttons around to wherever you like or just toggle auto-fire on or off. There's also video settings including running the game in fullscreen or the original arcade aspect ratio, and a toggle for video filtering if you like your pixels smooth or crisp.
If you were a Raiden fan back in the day, or if you've never experienced the series but love yourself a good shoot 'em up, definitely jump on Raiden Legacy during this sale. Hopefully the folks at DotEmu have another compilation in the works that will include the other two games from the original trilogy, Raiden II and Raiden DX, and then I can finally die a happy man.
Remember that tech-demo-y not-quite-a-game game Aves (Which has since been removed from the App Store) released in late 2009? It was a game with (then) great graphics, a really cool physics model, and a ultra-basic gameplay mechanic that just centralized around shooting a bow and arrow. Well, The Legend of Holy Archer [Free] takes that similar vibe and just runs with it, and keeps running, all the way to super-epic archery land where you're put to the task of firing arrows at huge monsters in several fantasy environments.
Despite definitely being an archery game, The Legend of Holy Archer almost feels more like a flying game. See, when you fire off your arrow, you can actually swipe around on screen to control its flight path. Monsters rarely (if ever) are a simple straight shot from where you're standing, so you'll usually need to bank around columns, avoid hills, and other terrain to hit your mark.
Sure, you might think you're a old school mobile phone gamer if you have fond memories of Nokia Snake, but the real cool kids were busy playing Space Impact [$0.99]. It was available on the Nokia 3310, the 5210, that weird sideways 5510, and a ton of those other bulletproof Nokia phones that seemed to have a battery that lasted for ages compared to modern smartphones. There's been a number of sequels and spinoffs over time, but Space Impact is the core game that every real Nokia gamer knew by heart.
Its available now, in all of its low-fi glory complete with ridiculously massive faux dot pitch for that old school feel:
Admittedly, what once was a pretty mind-blowing game to play on your phone a decade (or more) ago really doesn't stand up that well against the many other horizontal shooters available on the App Store... But, much like Snake 97, it is pretty cool spending a little time playing just for the sake of nostalgia. One weird thing about Space Impact is it isn't iPhone 5 widescreen compatible, but, really, of course it isn't, widescreen wasn't even a thing back in its day.
While we're checking out the onslaught of scheduled weekly releases which will be hitting later tonight, there's actually a new game which you can play right now which dropped ahead of the pack. It's called Fangz [$0.99 / $0.99] from two-man developer Game Whizzes, and it's a weapons-based beat 'em up that features vampires. Nice to see something other than zombies, you know?
If you've played something like Zombieville 2 [$0.99] then you should feel pretty comfortable jumping into Fangz. You make your way through levels left to right, fighting back hordes of attacking vampires with various weapons at your disposal like shotguns, machine guns, a flamethrower and more. The levels are timed too, so there's a sense of urgency to get to the end without too much dilly-dallying.
Where I think Fangz really sets itself apart from similar titles is in sheer production value. The art style and animation makes it feel like you're playing a cartoon, little specks of humor are peppered all over, and the controls are top-notch. You can tell the developers spent time making sure the game felt just right, and it shows.
Giving the game some legs is an upgrade system that sees you leveling up and improving your character's attributes as you progress, as well as unlocking new weapons and skills. Sounds like the kind of system rife for IAP, right? Well, wrong. There is none at all in Fangz, so if you're amongst the crowd that dislikes games with IAP, feel confident in picking this one up.
One other thing worth noting is that Fangz comes in two different flavors: a standard and an HD. The regular Fangz is a smaller size but doesn't contain Retina level assets for iPads and contains compressed audio. Fangz HD however spares no expense when it comes to space, and includes full resolution iPad assets and uncompressed audio. They're both the same price, but the regular version is about 100mb whereas the HD is just over 500mb, so it really comes down to if you can spare the space for the extra fidelity.
With either version, though, you'll be getting a fun and bloody romp that's been a blast so far in my short time playing. The players in our forums are absolutely loving Fangz so far, so if it sounds like you're kind of thing don't be afraid to sink your teeth into this latest brawler.
Of course it wouldn't be a Wednesday without a Chillingo game, and tonight's title seems to be R.I.P. Rally, a rare free to play game in Chillingo's typically fairly "premium" lineup. I dig the premise of the game, which is laid out in an entirely text-less comic book page showing your car (with a giant gun mounted on top) being heli-dropped into a massive arena of zombies. I think the easiest way to describe R.I.P. Ralley is to take the vibe of those arena levels in Twisted Metal, throw in a dash of Smash TV, replace all enemies with zombies, then apply a heavy glaze of free to play on top.
The gameplay loop seems to revolve around fighting wave after wave of zombies, earning coins, upgrading your car, getting slightly stronger, fighting slightly stronger enemies, and repeating this process. The vehicular-based combat is actually quite a bit of fun, as just being able to run over massive groups of zombies always feels satisfying. One thing that immediately jumps out at you is how (comparatively) poorly the zombies themselves are animated, and I'm wondering whether or not that was a conscious decision to simplify the zombies to allow way more of them to be on screen without any kind of performance drop or not- As even on my iPad mini, the game runs great with loads of undead lumbering around.
I liked the game a lot until I started delving in to the upgrade system, at which point the freemium elements begin to rear their ugly heads in a big way. R.I.P. Rally features the whole kit and kaboodle of free to play trimmings between ads (which you can disable for 99¢) and two different currencies (one you can buy). There's even super-gross Burstly referral deals where you can do things like sign up for a Discover card or complete a survey to qualify for a free glucose meter from Alliance Healthcare Services for a small stipend of in-game coins. Being pushed into trading a Blockbuster membership for a bumper upgrade really makes me sigh and say, "I wish I could've just paid $2.99 for this game."
R.I.P. Rally should be available on the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern, or potentially much earlier if you're in a region east of the USA. To be alerted when the game is available, open this story in the TouchArcade App [Free] and add it to your watch list. A little after 11:00 PM tonight you'll get a push alert with the download link.
Those of you who weren't born with a smartphone in your hands might recall the simpler days of video games. How simple? I'm talking stick figures, backgrounds painted in one, maybe two shades of color, and jarringly loud bleeps that passed as sound effects. Some of these games were awful. Others stand as classic examples of gameplay over graphics, a no-frills approach often lost in the desperate struggle to produce photorealistic graphics, and realistic physics, and realistic bleeps.
Plasma-Sky [$1.99] isn't quite so stark, but it does hearken back to the simpler days of shmups. There's no IAP, no dizzying array of ships with different stats and weapons, and the screen won't fill up with bullets and background flashes and flickers that send you into seizures. At least not right away. Like Geometry Wars, Plasma-Sky applies a coating of retro paint. You control a shiny ship made up of brightly colored lines and fire away at fleets of equally effervescent enemy ships, collecting bigger and better power-ups that light up the black-as-ink sky like colored pegs battling it out on a Lite-Brite.
Plasma-Sky's utilitarian aesthetic carries over to its control scheme, and in a good way. You can tilt your device to steer your ship, or better yet, slide your thumb around; where your digit goes, your ship will follow. Firing is done for you, giving you the leisure to focus on dodging enemy fire and weaving in and out of their synchronized (space) swimming formations. The tilt controls aren't responsive, and your thumb occasionally impedes your view, which can mean the difference between an enemy tagging or missing your vehicle. Otherwise the touch controls are snappy and will carry their weight on your flight to victory, depending on how you choose to play.
The game offers three modes, each of which should pose a hefty challenge to even the most accomplished shoot 'em up-er. Conquest starts you at level one and challenges you to survive up to 80 waves of ships big and small. Every second you survive increases your score multiplier; die, and those impressive numbers you racked up reset to zero. Hardcore mode strips away your life bar and gives you only a single hit point to go on, and Survival throws massive waves of enemies at you in wild displays that should please fans of tough-as-nails shmups like Dodonpachi Resurrection.
As a shmup fan, I enjoyed Survival and Hardcore modes the most, but Conquest presents a rounded mode suited for players of all skill levels. The mode increases the challenge at a slow burn, giving new players time to find their space legs. At the same time, old hands will appreciate the challenge of keeping scores and multipliers intact during the more grueling stages that come up later on. Giving players unlimited continues might seem a strike against challenge, but it actually adds a layer of difficulty: do you continue, knowing that pressing on means losing your score and power-ups? Or do you go all the way back to level 1 and give 'er another go?
Three modes, touch controls that hop to at the slightest touch, and retro graphics. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Don't be fooled by appearances, Plasma-Sky is a solid addition to the ever-expanding galaxy of shmups available on the App Store.
Foursaken Media's Block Fortress [$0.99] is one of those games that could last you forever. It plops you into a Minecraft-like block-based sandbox, tasks you with creating the most impenetrable fortress possible out of those blocks, and then sends wave after wave of enemies in to see if your creation will indeed stand up to the test. Oh, and while these enemies are attacking you're thrust face-first into the action by dropping into your created map in first-person mode, allowing you to help blast away at the baddies yourself. It's pretty great stuff.
The ability to create your own levels means that Block Fortress is really only limited by your imagination (and a device's technical limits), and today Foursaken extends the game's legs even further by updating it with the ability to upload and download user-created maps right into the game.
In Block Fortress's sandbox mode, you're given basically endless resources to create the craziest fortress possible. With today's update you can now upload your creations for the world to see, as well as download the maps that other people have made to test them out yourself. A simple "thumbs up/thumbs down" rating system helps ensure that the best maps are readily visible, and already there are tons of maps available to download.
Block Fortress is awesome, but it's also a pretty complicated and challenging game. Once you get warmed up to it, though, it's an amazing experience. To help you out, we commissioned some tips from the developers, and an avid player of the game submitted his own set of tips as well. Check those out for a closer look at the strategies behind Block Fortress.
Besides the level-sharing functionality in this new update, there's also a boatload of tweaks, fixes, new block types, and more that you can read about in full in the App Store's update description. To top it all off, Block Fortress is currently on sale for just a buck, so now is definitely a good time to give it a look if you have not done so yet.
In a vaguely RAGE-like post-apocalyptic future where some sort of weird manmade oil has the power to turn dudes into zombies, a gigantic uh-oh sort of oil spill ends up turning a lot of dudes into zombies. So much for warning labels, right? These zombies ain't your usual type of brain-diggers, either; their desire seems to revolve around beating folks up and then dragging them into the magical sludge, which now covers a tiny island chain you'll be exploring in DeNA's upcoming free-to-play first-person shooter The Drowning.
Not that there was much to it, but The Drowning doesn't use its premise for much more than just an excuse to put you in the shoes of a scavenger who roams this little island in search of parts to various vehicles and guns in an effort to survive, keep moving, and maybe escape. For the most part, this is a hollow game; you're tasked with little more than just moving from arena to arena, killing dudes and collecting random parts after the battle. The story is too lean to be a driver and the arenas too scripted and bland. You play an area enough, for instance, and you'll learn exactly when and where dudes spawn.
Sporting an overall sore of 78 on Metacritic, Sega's House of the Dead: Overkill is on its way to mobile in the not too distant future. Like similar House of the Dead titles, gameplay revolves around mowing down loads of bloodthirsty zombies. This time around, Overkill explains the origin story, revealing the "horrific truth" behind the origins of the House of the Dead.
Reviews of the original Wii title mention an overall lack of diversity, which I suppose is somewhat expected in these kind of games, but Overkill is packed with all the ridiculous over the top B-movie zombie stuff that House of the Dead fans will love. Sega isn't giving a release date any more specific than "April," nor a price, although they have mentioned that it will definitely not be free.
Also, as usual, we've got a thread in our forums if you want to discuss the game with other fans of the series.
Blitz Brigade [Free] is a class-based, competitive shooter that takes a lot of cues from other class-based, competitive shooters like, say, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 1943. It's a Gameloft joint, so it's more copycat than original and it's loaded with a ton of free-to-play features, including the ability to buy gems to respawn instantly in battle. I'm guessing the free-to-play part specifically is going to turn folks off. I get that. But, I've gotta say, this isn't a terrible shooter as far as touch device shooters go. Also, the matchmaking and network functionality actually works consistently, which is pretty rare for these types of games.
