Namco Networks has just announced that it has submitted Pac-Man Remix, a modern take on its 1980 arcade classic, to the App Store.
Based on the world-famous arcade hit, PAC-MAN REMIX showcases enhanced graphics and lots of new exclusive features like boss battles, stage-specific gadgets, and power-up items! Guide PAC-MAN through the maze and avoid the brightly colored ghosts while chomping up all the dots. Eat a power pellet to temporarily turn the tables on the ghosts. Gobble up as many ghosts as possible while they are blue. Chomp the ghosts consecutively during one power pellet to score major bonus points!
The game holds onto the core Pac-Man game mechanic, but expands greatly upon it, both as far as visual presentation and gameplay are concerned. Pac-Man Remix is played across six different stages (with five levels each) and features various power-ups that can be acquired to help beat those familiar ghosts and their six new boss ghost friends. These include:
Jump — jump over ghosts or walls
Dash — move faster
Lucky Item — all the pellets turn into Power Pellets
Ninja Item — Trick the ghosts with an illusion of Pac-Man
Two methods of control are offered in the game: on-screen directional buttons and swipe controls, like those used in Namco's iPhone version of classic Pac-Man.
The game appears to be an evolved / extended adaptation of the studio's well-reviewed 1996 release, Pac-Man Arrangement, which is an excellent remake I've spent considerable time with on the Gameboy Advance. If Remix is anywhere near as good as Arrangement — which it should certainly be — then iPhone gamers are in for quite a treat.
Pac-Man Remix has been submitted to the App Store and should appear later this week at a price of $5.99.
Namco also took this opportunity to announce the launch of a new division within the company, dedicated exclusively to the iPhone and iPod touch. The new 'Apple Games' division is headed up by former I-Play Mobile Gaming producer and designer Jonathan Kromrey. And while the announcement of Pac-Man Remix brings a smile to my face, the creation of the new division within Namco focused entirely on iPhone gaming, and the studio's commitment to the platform that such a move reveals, is a much more significant turn of events.
We can't wait to see what the studio has in store.
Cowboy Rodeo's port of the classic Amiga pinball game Pinball Fantasies [$5.99] arrived in the App Store tonight. Early reader reactions are positive for the game. Cowboy Rodeo previously brought us Pinball Dreams to the iPhone.
Pinball Fantasies features four tables, each with one or more high scoring rounds that are started by achieving certain targets. Each table is vertically taller and generally more complex than those in Pinball Dreams. Level details as described by the game's Wikipedia entry:
Party Land – a table oriented around an amusement park, where the letters of either PARTY or CRAZY must be lit to start a high-scoring event. This is the easiest table due to several high scoring targets such as the Arcade and the Loop Ramp. This is the table included in the shareware release
Speed Devils – focused on car racing, and the player must overtake cars to take the lead. This is more difficult due to much fewer high-scoring targets
Billion Dollar Gameshow – a gameshow-style table where the player attempts to win prizes by achieving certain combinations of ramps. This is the most difficult, as if the player loses the ball before winning the jackpot the prizes are lost
Stones 'N Bones – based on a haunted house, where the player must go through different modes of play (by hitting targets spelling out "Stone" and "Bone"), with the later modes scoring more points. This is generally considered the highest-scoring table. It is similar in theme to Nightmare in Pinball Dreams.
Zenonia [App Store] is an epic action RPG has seen a phenomenal reception both from review sites and on our forums. I reviewed it when it was released last month, and aside from a few minor 1.0 annoyances, I really enjoyed the game.
At $5.99, it is an unbelievable value for the amount of gameplay you're getting. At over 40 hours per play-through, three classes, along with the good and evil alignment system, Zenonia should provide for at least a second fresh play-through as you choose the opposite alignment of your previous game. There really isn't anything like it on the App Store, and if you're looking for a solid RPG to settle in and sink your teeth in to, look no further than Zenonia.
Gamevil has once again reaffirmed their reputation of listening to community feedback with Zenonia 1.1, as every change implimented is something that the players have asked for. The controls have been substantially improved in this update. The touch area that activates the virtual D-Pad has been expanded, and they added quite a bit of transparency to the on-screen controls along with tweaking the inventory navigation controls.
A major complaint of mine was how often your character needed to eat and how quickly your equipment degraded. Thankfully, in Zenonia 1.1, these things have been completely rebalanced. Item durability and hunger both advance at much more reasonable rates, and running back to town to repair and eat before finishing your active quests seems to be a think of the past.
Also, you can now toggle the background music, allowing iPod playback during play.
While nothing has been done to address the amount of grinding required to level up in some areas of the game, the improvements in 1.1 have made playing Zenonia substantially more enjoyable. Since most of my original problems with the game having been addressed, I highly recommend Zenonia to anyone looking for a great action RPG with enough content to keep you busy for weeks.
Gameloft has released their new side-scrolling platformer game Castle of Magic [$5.99] into the App Store. We previewed the game back at E3 and thought it looked great.
The game really has that console feel to it with polished animations and intricate level designs. There seem to be a wide variety of level design elements to keep things interesting, as well as a number of secret areas that can be found.
The game was actually briefly released on Tuesday and then re-released later in the day. This did allow some early reviews from those who have already had time with the game (sizzlakalonji):
First of all, I was pretty starved for what I felt was a "true" platformer for the iDevices, and this certainly fills the void.
….
Overall, the graphics are impressive, colorful, clean and sharp. The sound is fine, as someone mentioned before the music isn't Nintendo, but what is except Nintendo? I like the sound effects, and the small elements of voice added. I like the level designs, and the first boss battle was fun as well, although pretty simple to defeat. I have high hopes for the rest of the worlds, and wholeheartedly recommend this for anyone at the current price, which I feel is quite reasonable for a game of this quality.
After we've spent some time with the game, we generally agree with these sentiments. The game carries an overall polish and level of detail lacking in many other iPhone titles. The levels in particular seem very well designed with an attention to detail as well as secret areas to explore:
So the second world is a pirate ship. Imagine my surprise when I miss a jump and fall to the water below, and instead of dying like I expected, I discover an underwater portion to the level! I also find a new power-up, the SWORDFISH! You can now color me officially impressed!
There are perhaps two areas of possible contention for a game like this.
Game length is always a concern for any level-based games. Castle of Magic has 5 worlds with multiple levels within each. The official gameplay estimate is about 3.5 hours playing straight through. Each level, however, seems to have additional areas and a number of gems to collect so completing these levels fully will likely take you a fair bit more time. Simply trying to get to the end, however, will result in relatively shorter gameplay time.
The second area is of controls. The game offers Gameloft's typical virtual-dpad and button layout. If you've played other Gameloft games, you'll be relatively comfortable with these controls. As always, however, there is some level of clumsiness with any virtual-dpad control on the iPhone, though this does not seem to be a major impediment to the game. Regardless, I suspect this control scheme is the best (only?) option available for such a traditional platformer. While iPhone-specific games like Rolando or Toy Bot have the luxury of mixing swipe/accelerometer controls, Castle of Magic is seeking to mimic the traditional console platformers so many have grown up with.
Our gameplay video shows us playing the game after only a little practice:
One of the big surprises to me in iPhone gaming is how much I’ve been drawn to tower defense games. I never really understood why people were so into them back when the Warcraft III tower defense maps were so popular (and don’t even get me started on Defense of the Ancients) but the iPhone quite literally is the perfect platform for these types of games. Ngmoco's Star Defense [App Store] is the latest in the series of tower defense games for the iPhone and with the Twitter challenge as well as the early review copy I was sent, I’ve managed to sink a ridiculous amount of time into this game.
The basics of Star Defense are no different from any other tower defender, and if you’re even remotely familiar with the genre you won’t need any explaining to pick it up instantly. You place towers along a path to defend your shield wall from hordes of S’rath invaders, kill them to get credits to buy more towers or upgrade your existing ones, survive for a certain number of waves, and win. Standard stuff.
What sets Star Defense apart from the other tower defense games on the iPhone is having to build your towers on 3D spheres (cubes in later levels) and constantly managing the viewport of the game using standard iPhone gestures. It’s all very intuitive and works exactly as you would expect, pinching controls zooming, a single finger swipe moves the camera, and two fingers on the screen rotates it. Handling the camera creates an effect similar to fog of war in real time strategy games, and as the path the S’rath travel down snakes all over the planet you’re defending, you’re only ever capable of seeing half of it at a time.
Included in the game are five tower types which cover the standard array of towers we’ve seen in other tower defense games. Gauss Turrets serve as the standard low-cost tower, Neo-Plasma Blasters have a damage over time effect, DX-3 Cannons slow enemies, Phase Coils do area effect damage, and Quantum Launchers do high single target damage. Naturally, each can be upgraded, and part of the strategy of Star Defense is deciding when to upgrade and when to build more, as each upgrade is progressively more expensive.
Additionally, each tower has a damage type which may be more or less effective depending on the enemy. For example, some of the S’rath are resistant to fire, so your massive array of Neo-Plasma Blasters will be rendered ineffective. Obviously this forces you to have a variety of towers, which adds a level of complexity as some tower defense games are just a race to fill up the map with whatever the best tower is fully upgraded.
In this initial offering of Star Defense players can fend off the S’rath across seven different planets, as well as playing an endless Challenge mode. Each planet can be played on three difficulty levels, and I found them to be varied enough that each one required a different strategy to complete. ngmoco previously detailed on their blog about the work that went into balancing the way Star Defense plays, and it really shows.
Playing the game on Easy is, unsurprisingly, very easy. Unless Star Defense is your first tower defense game, I’d recommend starting on Normal. I’ve found Hard to be brutal, and while I haven’t yet broken out the ol’ pad of graph paper to map out some of the levels as I did when competing in the Twitter challenge, I’m getting close to it.
Instead of achievements in Star Defense, you earn commendations. Some of them will be easy and you will earn them without even trying, but others like completing 40 waves without selling any towers or upgrading 1000 towers total will take some work.
The included galaxy map is a great time, but the Challenge mode is where the meat of the game is going to be for hardcore players looking to compete against friends. This is exactly what we played in the Twitter challenge, so give it a try and see how you could have done against us.
Star Defense was demonstrated during the WWDC 2009 keynote, and towards the end, ngmoco's Stephanie Morgan revealed the ability to (BAM!) add a second galaxy to your pocket via microtransaction downloadable content (DLC) add-on packs. DLC has been a hot topic lately on our forums, and I’ve seen some people suggest that Star Defense is an incomplete game that simply a vehicle to sell things that should have been included in the release.
As I posted in a previous story, this is an area that ngmoco seems to be taking very seriously. I asked several people at the press event what their plans were with DLC and everyone stressed that they were approaching it cautiously, being sure to provide a good value to the gamer, with no intentions to nickel and dime anyone. Morgan mentions in the keynote video that the additional galaxies add tons of gameplay, so I’m having a hard time getting worked up over them selling add-ons for the game if they do in fact substantially increase the originally included playtime. And with that said, Star Defense is certainly a complete game in its current form.
So I suppose the inevitable question here is do I recommend Star Defense? It is more expensive than its competitors, but it does have all the fit and finish you would expect in an ngmoco game. The 3D graphics are great, the backgrounds are colorful, and I really enjoy the 3D camera management of the game. Star Defense gets incredibly hectic in later levels when multiple waves of S’rath are out at once, as all your towers need to be managed in real time. This is a welcome change from other similar games where you pause, build a few things, wait to get more money, and repeat. Star Defense brings an unexpected level of action to a genre that classically just has you building and waiting.
Because of this, I can’t help but recommend picking up Star Defense. Its classic tower defense gameplay combined with the unique 3D perspective puts Star Defense a step above my 2D tower defense favorites.
Star Defense takes the classic tower defense formula and puts a 3D spin on it. The spherical worlds the game takes place on adds a level of fast-paced action and micromanagement not seen in other tower defense games.
Ngmoco and a dozen other companies are presently sponsors of this site, but that does not affect our choice of coverage or influence our reviews.
As mentioned in an earlier post, Apple's WWDC keynote took place this morning and the new iPhone 3G S, the fastest member of the iPhone family, was announced. On the software front, iPhone OS 3.0 took center stage and a number of games and apps were demonstrated that utilize OS 3.0 functionality. Among them were Gameloft's Asphalt 5 and ngmoco's (just released) Star Defense. We were able to capture brief videos of the games in action during the keynote.
Gameloft's Mark Hickey demonstrated Asphalt 5, which he calls the best racing game on the iPhone. Featuring online (WiFi) multiplayer and peer-to-peer (Bluetooth) one-on-one, Asphalt 5 will take advantage of iPhone OS 3.0 by offering content packs for sale ($.99 for a new racetrack + three new cars).
Neil Young and Stephanie Morgan of ngmoco demonstrated Star Defense, which launched today for $5.99 [App Store]. When iPhone OS 3.0 debuts, the game will feature additional, downloadable universes for a small fee.
iPhone OS 3.0 is set to debut on June 17th, free for iPhone users and a $9.95 upgrade for users of the iPod touch. The iPhone 3G S will be available on June 19th at a price of $199 for the 16GB unit and $299 for the 32GB unit.
ngmoco's Star Defense [App Store] is finally here for $5.99! I competed in the Twitter Challenge a while ago and I've had my hands on the final copy for a few days now. So far, Star Defense has been an enjoyable spin on the tower defense genre. Expect a full review soon, but for now, here's part of the press release ngmoco sent out:
In Star Defense, players battle hordes of alien S’rath invaders in their quest to save human outposts across the galaxy. Using innovative Multi-Touch controls, players twist, spin, and zoom-in on breathtaking 3D planets and examine the terrain to plan their defenses.
Armed with a powerful arsenal of five classes of towers, for a grand total of 15 different weapons, players strategically place turrets that unleash everything from burning hot plasma to high-voltage decimation. The S’rath regularly fortify their troops with new unit types, new formations and new armor. Survival depends on the player’s ability to respond to their maneuvers in real time.
Innovative integration with social networks allows players to expand their campaigns and compete with friends over Twitter, Facebook, or email. They can also check out scores posted by other Star Defense players and take on all challengers by searching for #StarDefense on Twitter.
With seven unique planets, two different game modes, more than 50 Medals and Commendations to be earned on the field, and three different difficulty settings available at launch, Star Defense offers endless replayability for newcomers and war-hardened veterans alike.
ngmoco will provide regular updates to the game with expansion packs, bringing new weapons, planets, invaders and new modes of gameplay to the Star Defense universe.
As I mentioned in the keynote post, we have a ngmoco press conference to attend at 4:00 PM PST. I'm not sure what is going to be discussed, but hopefully we'll find out a little more about their plans with the future of Star Defense.
Update: ngmoco posted on our forums clarifying the content of the game and future updates:
For $5.99, you are getting the full SD experience. That's an entire seven-planet galaxy, three difficulty modes, and a challenge mode. We'll also be regularly updating the game with free content.
Once 3.0 launches, we'll be offering much larger expansion packs for sale.
Few iPhone games have been as highly anticipated as Gamevil's latest epic RPG, Zenonia [App Store]. Our forums have been swarming over it since we first caught wind of the game at GDC '09, and things only got worse as the beta started and its App Store release approached. But does Zenonia live up to months of hype? There's no question it stands alone in providing over 40 hours of faithful 16-bit era action RPG gameplay, but Zenonia certainly isn't perfect.
I'm reluctant to spoil too much of the plot, but it touches on several RPG cliches. You play as a mysterious child unsure of his identity in an adventure that takes place during a conflict between the Dragon Clan and Holy Knights. Along the way you're able to make choices that change both your alignment and the direction the game takes through the story. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are plentiful, and even insignificant characters often have amusing things to say if you talk to them enough times. Grammar mistakes are abundant in Zenonia's English localization, but more often than not I felt these just added to the humor of the game.
It's nothing we haven't seen before on other platforms, but Zenonia brings welcome change to the App Store in providing an insane level depth that most games seem to lack. Ironically, it's this same level of depth that will most likely leave casual gamers either frustrated or taking a pass on Zenonia entirely.
Zenonia comes packed with an item and character upgrade system unlike anything I've played on the iPhone. As you gain experience by completing quests and killing monsters, you're able to increase your statistics as well as spend points making your way down skill trees very similar to talent trees in games like World of Warcraft or Diablo which can grant both active abilities and passive bonuses. Abilities can be assigned to the action bar on the bottom of the screen to quickly have access to them, and after leveling up and spending points to gain a few different skills, combat actually stays pretty fresh instead of just mindless button smashing.
The depth of Zenonia continues as you complete quests in a game world that has both day and night cycles, allowing for quests or quest objectives that only appear at certain times of day. There are ten different slots for your character to equip gear in, a ridiculous amount of potions, power-ups, and a detailed magic item upgrade system that focuses on combining items to create more powerful ones.
Items degrade over time, requiring repairs, and your character even needs to eat regularly. While I suppose these things could aid the immersion of hardcore RPG gamers, it seems like they just serve as a needless time and gold sink. You can pick up five quests at a time, and most quests will generally have you heading to the same area, but more often than not you have to run back to town to eat and repair before you can complete all quest objectives.
On top of this, there are several points in the game where grinding is absolutely required to earn enough experience to be a high enough level to stand a chance in the next area. Experience points usually come quick, and while the combat is generally fun, grinding still feels like an unnecessary chore rather than an entertaining gameplay element.
Zenonia is controlled using an on-screen D-Pad and buttons, similar to other Gamevil games and I honestly feel this is the game's biggest flaw. Absolutely everything in the game is controlled using the virtual D-Pad, including navigating menus. It's no secret that Zenonia on the iPhone is a port of an extremely popular Korean cell phone game built with cell phone hardware in mind, I just wish Gamevil would have made some attempt to (for lack of a better term) make the iPhone iteration of Zenonia a little more iPhone-y.
It seems extremely archaic to navigate through the various submenus that make up your character's information, inventory, equipment, and skills, especially after seeing how Underworlds [App Store] handled this so well using a touch interface. Saving your game is also done using these same submenus, which seems really unnatural for an iPhone game.
Your character also can't move diagonally, which is a major pet peeve of mine, and I felt the controls took an awful lot of getting used to. Zenonia would be many times more enjoyable to play if instead of a rigid Up/Down/Left/Right D-Pad it controlled more similar to iDracula [App Store], allowing you to move in any direction. Even after having hours of gameplay clocked in to Zenonia I still find myself occasionally moving in the wrong direction or accidentally dashing forward. Thankfully, tapping the attack button will always make you face any monster in range of your character so the clumsy D-Pad doesn't hinder combat that much.
The graphics are excellent, and it's not hard to draw visual comparisons between Zenonia and classic 16-bit RPG's. Combat animations are colorful and often come with screen flashes and other fun-to-watch graphical effects. Since the game weighs in at under 10MB, music and sound effects are fairly limited. The combat sounds get repetitive quick, and while there seemingly is a large variety of music, most of the tracks consists of loops that only last a few seconds.
So do I recommend Zenonia?
At $5.99, it is an unbelievable value for the amount of gameplay you're getting. At over 40 hours per play-through, three classes, along with the good and evil alignment system, Zenonia should provide for at least a second fresh play-through as you choose the opposite alignment of your previous game. There really isn't anything like it on the App Store, and if you're looking for a solid RPG to settle in and sink your teeth in to, look no further than Zenonia.
However, if you consider yourself more of a casual gamer and only play iPhone games in short bursts, chances are you won't get very far in Zenonia. The game's objectives revolve around accepting and completing short quests, but needless tasks like equipment repairs and character hunger along with required grinding between areas will likely grow tiring for the casual gamer long before you get close to completing the game.
Gamevil has already submitted Zenonia 1.1 to the App Store, and they've proven in the past that they'll continue improving a game until they get it right. Baseball Superstars [App Store] has gone through an amazing transformation through updates, and I expect Zenonia will do the same. Despite my criticisms, as a fan of more classic RPG's than I can even list, I'm enjoying Zenonia immensely.
While the controls take some getting used to, classic RPG fans looking for a deep and lengthy adventure to sink their teeth into will certainly enjoy Zenonia. More casual gamers, however, may be put off by some of the more tedious gameplay tasks that are required of them.
Gamevil's classic action role playing game Zenonia has gone live in the App Store [link] at a price of $5.99.
Zenonia is a port of the company's mobile title which ranks very highly on the Korean mobile charts (over 600,000 copies sold). The game is a very deep RPG with many nice details including day/night changes, slower movement when carrying many items, as well as the usual leveling up system, and skill upgrades.
“We’re thrilled to launch ZENONIA on the Apple App Store”, said Kyu Lee, president of GAMEVIL USA. “The revolutionary iPhone and iPod touch have allowed us to develop a unique version of this game and we are certain fans will love the engaging gameplay and captivating fantasy world we’ve created.”
We spent some time with Zenonia during our interview with Gamevil at GDC and our own Eli took a look at a pre-release of the iPhone version earlier this month.
If you've been looking for something on the App Store that compares to the classic 16-bit RPG's from days of yore, Zenonia may just be what you've been searching for — especially since according to GAMEVIL, Zenonia comes packed with over 40 hours of gameplay.
Over the past few months, iPhone gamers have all been wondering what in the world happened to Sega. They released Super Monkey Ball [App Store], then Columns Deluxe [App Store] not too long after, and then just disappeared until tonight when Sonic the Hedgehog [App Store] was finally released–Surprising us all.
There have been some good ports for the iPhone and some bad ports for the iPhone. Sonic the Hedgehog safely lies somewhere in the middle. The default display mode for the game stretches the screen to fit the aspect ratio of the iPhone and overlays a transparent D-Pad on one side and matching transparent button to jump on the other. This not only makes the game look slightly blurry, but in my testing with an iPhone 3G resulted in frame rates which are less than desirable for a game that is all about going fast.
Fortunately, Sega included a second view style in to the game that does away with the transparent controls and instead centers the screen in its original resolution of 320×224 for a crysttal clear representation of the original. In the smaller screen size, the framerate, while improved, still isn't perfect. There is still noticeable slowdown when Sonic gets hit and loses all his rings, but it's quite playable. Disabling the game's sound also increases performance, but I don't think this is something you should ever have to do. If you have a 2nd generation iPod touch, you're in luck because the game runs noticeably better than on the older iPhone hardware.
The simple controls of all Sonic games translate well to the iPhone, and since all you really ever need to be doing is running forward or jumping, none of the problems exist with the virtual D-Pad that other games which require more precise controls have.
Also, I was surprised to find that if you quit Sonic the Hedgehog mid-level, the game remembers exactly where you were and you're given the opportunity to continue the next time you start the game.
Here is a gameplay video that shows both full screen and original screen sizes in action:
It seems fairly obvious that Sonic the Hedgehog is little more than the Genesis ROM wrapped in an official Sega emulator. If this is the case, I think I speak for all iPhone gamers interested in classic titles when I say: Sega, please, release more games. You're sitting on a gold mine here. Optimize the emulator a little more so it runs well on the iPhone then do absolutely nothing but release every good game from the Genesis library you still hold publishing rights to. Thanks in advance!
Two methods of control are offered in the game: on-screen directional buttons and swipe controls, like those used in Namco's iPhone version of classic Pac-Man.
Zenonia [
One of the big surprises to me in iPhone gaming is how much I’ve been drawn to tower defense games. I never really understood why people were so into them back when the Warcraft III tower defense maps were so popular (and don’t even get me started on Defense of the Ancients) but the iPhone quite literally is the perfect platform for these types of games. Ngmoco's Star Defense [
The simple controls of all Sonic games translate well to the iPhone, and since all you really ever need to be doing is running forward or jumping, none of the problems exist with the virtual D-Pad that other games which require more precise controls have.
