Being a stealth assassin sounds like the coolest job ever. Hunkering down in the shadows, sneaking up on your target, and quietly handling your business – all without making a peep or being noticed by anyone. While it sounds cool on paper, I could never actually handle being an assassin in real life. I feel bad even swatting a fly, and I'm clumsy as all get-out. I wouldn't last a second.
Recreating the feeling of being a bad ass assassin through video games is something I'm capable of, though, and series like Metal Gear and Splinter Cell have done a good job over the years at putting players in those shoes. So when I saw an iOS game simply titled Stealth Assassin [$0.99 / Free], where all you do is sneak around and take out marks, I got excited.
And it delivers everything it promises in its name: level after level of assassination jobs, but an inaccurate control scheme has had me pulling my hair out in frustration, not to mention getting myself constantly killed, in what is an otherwise fun game about covert killing.
While I'm not sure the opinion of our forums could be more split on how our community feels about Halfbrick's recently released Fish Out of Water [$0.99] one thing is for sure: We're absolutely stomping the in-game leaderboards. See, the way competing with others works in the game is by joining a "league" which then competes in some kind of cumulative score black majiks to compute an overall leaderboard.
The "TouchArcade" league was full by the time the game hit the US App Store, but it seems people have taken it upon themselves to just increment the number behind "TouchArcade," forming leagues "TouchArcade1," "TouchArcade2," and others... And we're doing quite well it'd seem, per Halfbrick's twitter:
I feel like we need to somehow intelligently re-organize our existing leagues to either put all the best players in one, or, at least equally distribute them across multiple leagues to ensure total leaderboard domination. But, hey, we're beating Halfbrick proper, Reddit, Bacon, and apparently the entirety of the People's Republic of China... So I guess that's pretty good.
At the outset of Garden of Fear [$0.99 / Free], you wake up in a cold, dark dungeon with no idea how you wound up there. I think there's more to the story, though. I submit that your rowdy friends got you liquored up, blindfolded you, spun you around a dozen times, stuffed some supplies in your pocket, and dumped you down a hole, leaving you to feel your way to freedom while avoiding bloodthirsty monsters and a wicked hangover. That's how playing Garden of Fear feels, at any rate.
Garden of Fear's randomly generated dungeon is a snarl of gloomy hallways, dead-ends, and doors. One door leads to freedom and a nifty take on a developer credits screen; the others lead deeper into the dungeon. You don't receive a map to keep track of the halls you've traversed. Instead you get a compass and a finite amount of charcoal to mark doors and passageways you've explored.
You might think that the flayed, mouth-breather demon stalking the dungeon presents your biggest obstacle. You would be wrong. Movement feels ponderous and will test the stomach of even the most stalwart first-person gamer.
For some reason there isn't an iOS adaptation of HeroQuest, the adventure board game that informed the childhoods of many folks my age. There are a few that tread similar territory, though, and one of them is Mighty Dungeons, [$1.99] published by Forest Moon Games.
It's a fairly literal take on board-based dungeon crawling, with tokens for heroes and enemies and tiles to reveal as you explore. You choose a hero from one of a few classic classes—warrior, ranger, mage and the like—then take him out on your choice of a ton of missions. Each one takes you down into a dungeon to smite orcs or skeletons and claim their belongings for your own.
Practically speaking, that means tapping. Lots and lots of tapping. Tap on a tile to move to it, then tap the Attack button to attack over and over on the combat screen. Tap doors to open them, traps to disarm them, and objects to investigate them. Every so often you might want to tap a potion or spell, too.
This might sound a little mindless—and frankly, it is. There are few meaningful decisions to be made in Mighty Dungeons. Do you attack, or do you chug one of your plentiful potions first? Do you explore this room first, or that one? It makes no difference, as you'll probably clear the map each and every time you take on a quest.
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.
Just under a year ago we got our first whiff of Game Stew's Tower of Fortune [$0.99]. It's a super-retro lightweight RPG which revolves around a slot machine mechanic, which we get deep into in our review. We actually even liked the game enough that we included it in our 2012 best games round ups. Today's release of Gargoyle Ruins [$1.99] walks down a similar retro path, this time leaning heavily on what I'd describe as a slightly updated Game & Watch game.
Gameplay basically amounts to avoiding gargoyles, saving princess, collecting gold, then buying various items with that gold. All the gameplay and animations are super jagged, just like a Game & Watch game, and doing well basically involves mastery of the timing of crossing the bridge and back to get the princess.
My gut is telling me I'm preferring Tower of Fortune more than Gargoyle Ruins at first blush, but they're really different games so it's sort of an apples to oranges comparison. There's a discussion brewing in our forums for the game, but as it was just released there isn't really a vibe either way regarding whether or not people are diggin' the game. Regardless, if you liked Tower of Fortune, and have any fond memories of those ancient handheld LCD games, Gargoyle Ruins should be on your radar.
Disney's Temple Run Oz [$0.99], a movie tie-in mashup between Imangi's mega-hit endless runner and the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, has just been updated with a brand new environment and some new features. The new environment is Winkie Country, and like the rest of the game it's quite a visual treat. It also sports a new hazard in the form of Winkie Guards who will block your path either high or low, but you won't know which until you're right up on them, forcing you to keep on your toes.
You can get to Winkie Country using normal means by following the signs in-game, or you can warp directly to it or any other environment in the game right from the start by using a selection of new utilities that are sold in the in-game store. Also new in this update is your friends' high scores displaying while you run past them, just like in the original Temple Run [Free]. There's also new weekly challenges and more in-game objectives to achieve rounding out this update.
I was blown away when I downloaded Temple Run Ozupon release and expected a semi-boring movie tie-in but ended up with my favorite Temple Run game to date. I'll be spending a good chunk of my day running through Winkie Country, and if you're also a fan then you should check out the new update and get running yourself.
I feel like I've said it a million times by now, and probably most recently (and most publicly) discussed the idea in a recent episode of the TouchArcade show where we got on the subject of how your iPad is basically as powerful (if not more so) than the PC's we played "classic" MMO's on a decade ago. So, where the heck are the shared experience MMO clients that let me take my game with me regardless of where I am or what client I'm connected with?! Sure, there's a couple of them (Spacetime Studios is particularly killing it.) but nowhere near as many as you'd think there'd be. The just-released Vendetta Online [$0.99 (HD)] seems like it's just what the doctor ordered.
It's a huge-scale space MMO that's giving me some serious Freelancer vibes, which is definitely a good thing. The payment model is cool too, as your initial 99¢ download gets your access to the game for a month, then after that it's just another dollar a month if you want to keep playing. That seems super-low risk, and really agreeable if you want to keep playing.
Oh, and there's even a "Player Contribution Corps," per the iTunes description, where you can directly contribute to content that gets added to the game if you become a hardcore member of the community. Getting started on a new MMO is intimidating, that's for sure, but this one is tickling all the right places for me and I'm stoked to spend some time with it. For more info on the game, check out the official web site which has downloads links for the Mac, Windows, and Linux clients as well as the thread on our forums.
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.
Halfbrick's Fish Out Of Water is among the many other games that are launching tonight, and I'm not sure I could be more stoked about it. We've extensively covered the game in the past, but here's the gist (again)- Imagine skipping stones in a constantly changing ocean that's directly linked to the weather in game, only instead of stones you've got a variety of fish that each have slightly different abilities such as being able to fly extra far or being able to skip across the surface like mad. Each attempt is graded by a set of judges who each look for specific things in your tosses, and doing well involves not only choosing the right fish for the weather but also throwing them appropriately to best handle the current state of your waves.
Of course there's a Jetpack Joyride-style objective system, so even if you're totally failing at impressing the judges you can at least complete different mini-goals, such as tossing all of your fish to stay under a low vertical line across the screen and much more. Will it be the next Fruit NinjaFish Out Of Water.
Fish Out Of Water 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.
I used to play outside. Then I turned seven and discovered computers and video games. (Nope, no arrow to the knee.) But I can't give the siren's song of electronics all the credit for luring me to the air-conditioned indoors. Like karma, Mother Nature's a... Well, she's a nasty one. There are all sorts of creepy-crawlies lurking in her leaves, her trees, her grass. Better slouched in front of the computer than out under the sun, that's what I say, and nobody knows that better than Little Chomp of Little Chomp [$0.99] fame.
Half climber, half puzzle game, Little Chomp asks you kindly to guide a caterpillar from the bottom to the top of trees infested with vengeful critters. Moving Chomp is simple. Just pull back on him, line him up where you want to go, and release to catapult him from leaf to leaf. It's much like aiming birds in Angry Birds, except physics aren't as important here. No matter how far back you stretch lil' Chomp, he'll slingshot off exactly where you pointed him.
When we checked outTiny Troopers [Free]Â last year, there really wasn't much to critique with the simplified real-time strategy title. With streamlined controls, plenty of action, and a robust weapon and upgrade system, there was in fact a lot to love.
Fortunately, developer Kukouri has elected to not mess with a good thing when it comes to their follow-up release Tiny Troopers 2: Special Ops [Free]. Focusing more on refinements of the already established gameplay system, Tiny Troopers 2 offers more of everything we loved about the original and is an excellent sequel.
Illusion Labs has a reputation for quality iOS games, with Blast-A-Way [$4.99], Touchgrind [$4.99] and a few other classics under its proverbial belt. Let that be enough to convince you to try out the studio's newest, Mr. Crab [$1.99]. At a glance it looks visually busy and overly simple, a vertical platformer of no great account. A few moments in action, however, show that it's more appealing - and more interesting - than it first looks.
Since my taste in platformers tends toward the sadistic, I was skeptical of Mr. Crab's one-touch platforming. It isn't a cruel game, for the most part, but it's also far from mindless. Each trip around its pillars manages to bring out new challenges, ones that range from amateur to agonizing. It also has the whole cute thing going for it—I dearly wanted to save all of Mr. Crab's little baby crabs, and that's where things got interesting.
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.
Pretty much every iOS gamer is familiar with Illusion Labs, and along with that most people know they are known for releasing high-quality and technically impressive titles. They don't release games very often, but when they do, it's almost a sure bet that it will be a winner.
Their latest title, Mr. Crab [$1.99], pretty much came out of nowhere this week, and true to form it's a clever, beautiful, and challenging title that is worth your attention. Its titular main character is also stupidly adorable, as are the many enemies and environments you'll encounter. Seriously, Illusion Labs, fire up a Mr. Crab toy line and I'll be first in line.
Back to the game, Mr. Crab is essentially an auto-running platformer – but don't dismiss it just yet, even though that descriptor fits hundreds if not thousands of games in the App Store. Mr. Crab's approach is really well done.
Picture a normal platforming level, with all the typical slopes, pits, and obstacles that impede your character's progress. Now wrap that entire level vertically around a pole, and that's how levels play out in Mr. Crab. Your character scuttles along on his own, and you merely control when and how high he jumps in order to negotiate your way around.
If you've played something like Wind-up Knight [Free] there are similar mechanics at play in Mr. Crab. Since you can't change direction on your own, you'll need to find walls to bounce against in order to travel in the opposite direction. This is required in order to collect the various bonuses like coins and pearls, as well as your stranded crab children, if you want to get the coveted 3-star rating for each level. Mr. Crab's levels are so well-designed that getting every objective is almost like a puzzle, and will take trial-and-error and paying attention to details to be successful.
There's more to the Mr. Crab experience that we'll touch on in our upcoming review, but if you're itching for a new game to play then I feel pretty confident in recommending Mr. Crab already. I've been loving it since I picked it up on Wednesday, and our forum users have been really enjoying it too. It uses a simple one-touch control and can be played one-handed, two important factors for a mobile game. But it doesn't feel dumbed-down because of it, and there is a ton of content to play through. Also, if you don't like Mr. Crab's huge googly eyes and buck teeth, well, then your heart is made of stone.
Being a stealth assassin sounds like the coolest job ever. Hunkering down in the shadows, sneaking up on your target, and quietly handling your business – all without making a peep or being noticed by anyone. While it sounds cool on paper, I could never actually handle being an assassin in real life. I feel bad even swatting a fly, and I'm clumsy as all get-out. I wouldn't last a second.
