I always find that the arrival of a traditionally non-mobile developer on the iOS platform fills me with equal parts excitement and skepticism for their prospects; wondering if we're headed for the next Rayman Jungle Run [$2.99] ...or the next Final Fantasy: All the Bravest [$3.99]. Case in point? Our announcement last week about Uber Entertainment's foray into iOS. The developer of Monday Night Combat is bringing a game to phones and tablets!? And it's based off of that awesome series? Excitement...Oh. It's an endless runner. Skepticism. After diving in and playing the title, I find myself surprisingly caught in the middle.
Set in the same dystopian future as Monday Night Combat, Outland Games similarly lampoons reality TV by introducing players to the latest and greatest bloodsport: combat running. For the amusement of onlooking millions, you're forced to dash through fiery  caverns and hazardous deserts, and battle your way through small armies of deadly robots for good measure. In your arsenal for survival is a mean pair of jumping legs and a handy assassin's blade, controlled with taps on the left and right side of the screen respectively.
When it comes to character action games on iOS, there seems to be a perpetual battle between preserving the fast-paced combo-driven combat of the sub-genre with touch controls that typically aren't conducive to the experience at hand. Unfortunately, Chillingo'sThe Gods: Rebellion [$0.99]Â isn't going to resolve that battle anytime soon. While the game looks great, offers a load of content and preserves that fast-paced feeling of character action titles, the controls leave a lot to be desired, keeping that schism of controls vs gameplay alive and well.
The first thing you'll notice when firing up Rebellion are its impressive visuals. Utilizing the Unreal Engine, Rebellion features detailed (and occasionally moving) backdrops, nicely done combat animations and effects and a stable, fast framerate. While character models themselves don't particularly standout, I was impressed with the game as a whole.
From a gameplay standpoint, Rebellion is as close to the character action genre as you're going to get on iOS. You won't find any puzzles or exploration here; Rebellion instead focuses on lots of enemies, lots of combat, and lots of combos. Each of the 7 levels are typically broken up in pieces where you move to an arena, the path forward gets blocked, and you fight a myriad of baddies until the game is satisfied and you move on. At the end of each level is a boss which with moves that require a bit more thought to process and avoid than the standard enemies.
As far as pure action is concerned, Rebellion is does a great job hitting its mark. Enemies are varied and cover all standard types (such as ranged, counter-heavy, light warriors, etc), each with a preferred manner of being dispatched. In addition, a perpetual experience system a la God of War allows players to upgrade basic stats and attacks (which unlock new standard combos) as well as new special moves that require a combination of attacks in order to pull off. These are all good tools because even on the easiest difficulty, I found Rebellion to be a bit on the difficult side, particularly when it comes to the bosses. The game also features a robust IAP system that allows you to buy health items, experience and new characters, each with their own different stat-lines. While Rebellion doesn't feature anything particularly groundbreaking, what it does offer is executed well.
While Rebellion definitely hits the mark as far as possessing graphical flair and a solid combat and upgrade system, the most important question yet to be answered is how well it controls on iOS devices. Unfortunately, Rebellion's exclusive reliance on virtual buttons coupled with an inability to customize the scheme in any way definitely works against it. Players use a joystick on the left side side to control character movement, while the right side contains buttons for basic attacks, special attacks, blocking, and countering.
The biggest issue with the scheme as currently implemented is the fact that all the combat buttons are too clustered around each other, leading to a lot of miscues as you think you're attacking and you block instead (especially since so many combos require use of multiple attack buttons). Even stranger, the counter button is bigger than the others and placed in a location where I imagine an attack command would be better placed. This lead to a lot mistimed counters during my playtime which just ended up being frustrating (especially considering executing a counter takes a few seconds, regardless of whether you actually counter anything). Finally, the lack of any control customization just boggles my mind, as even a system such as Gameloft's (which allows you to move and resize any button on screen) would have gone a long way towards making Rebellion control better.
It's a shame because the current control scheme, combined with the difficulty curve seems to want to push players towards purchasing the IAP health items and experience, when in reality simply fixing the issues would make the game far more playable (and enjoyable, to boot). As it stands, The Gods: Rebellion does a decent job recreating the character action experience on iOS in nearly every aspect save controls. If you have more patience than me (or are simply used to iOS character action titles) by all means check out Rebellion as it offers a lot in its other elements. For folks hoping this is the magical game that successfully merges combo controls with a touch screen, prepare to be disappointed.
PinWar [$1.99] isn't a game for the pinball aficionado. The tables lack the (literal or figurative) bells and whistles of other pinball games, and the physics aren't right at all. No, PinWar is pinball for the masses. It's fast, it's fun and it's fiercely competitive—assuming there's another pair of hands nearby to enjoy it with.
Unlike your typical pinball experience, there's no real scoreboard to dominate. There are Game Center leaderboards, but they're for things like "Levels Reached" or "Medals Earned." The competition in PinWar is of the playground variety—just you and a friend across the table, duking it out for bragging rights. Or not. PinWar also has its strong points of the single-player variety, they're just not the ones you might expect.
The game's biggest surprise is that there's no way to just sit back and play pinball. Either you battle against a local opponent or a less-than-impressive AI, or you complete single-serve missions on gimmick boards.
While a lot of attention is paid to iOS games that seek to replicate and modify the experiences of dedicated gaming devices, one area that has little competition to the mobile scene is the casual genre. Relic Rush [$0.99], from Forest Moon Games, is the latest title from the casual-minded producer and hits a lot of the right notes for a simple gameplay experience. While Relic Rush is a bit short on content and lacks some features that are expected in this day and age, it's still a fun, simple platformer worth checking out.
Simply put, Relic Rush can best be described as Donkey Kong on auto-run. Players take the role of an explorer searching for lost relics. Relics are obtained by taking on missions, with each mission consisting of eight single-screened stages. Each stage puts the explorer at the bottom of an enemy filled setting and tasks him with maneuvering past all the baddies to get to a door at the top of the stage. Reaching the door leads to the next stage and so on (until you get to the last stage with the relic). Getting hit by an enemy forces the explorer to start the stage again from the beginning.
Meanwhile, a timer at the top of the screen keeps track of how long you've spent on the overall mission, with your final ranking being based on the timer's position. When you combine the old-school graphics and music with the above gameplay, Relic Rush feels like a multi-layered retro platformer inspired by the arcade hit mentioned above. While this isn't a bad thing, I did find the gameplay to be incredibly formulaic, with the game's different worlds and enemies only doing so much to add some variety.
Where Relic Rush differs is in the auto-run controls. Your explorer is constantly moving and the only control afforded to you is to stop him (which can be done by simply touching the screen). Enemies and platforming elements are always in motion, so the entire goal of Relic Rush becomes a balancing act of timing your explorer's movements, avoiding the enemies, and getting past the stages in as fast a time as possible. It's an incredible simple system but it still offers room for timing and tactics.
Thankfully, Relic Rush gets a lot of things right in making sure that its simple control scheme succeeds. The hit detection is near perfect, meaning that you (hopefully) shouldn't be frustrated by errant enemy attacks when it looks like your explorer wasn't touched. In addition, while the difficulty certainly ramps up in later stages, the challenge is never overbearing. I'd argue that Relic Rush is a little too easy, but considering its casual undertones, I'm not too going to complain too much.
Considering what Relic Rush gets right, there are a few missteps and omissions that I thought would have helped improve the overall experience. For example, Relic Rush lacks any Game Center support. While I don't care much about the achievements portion of Game Center, I think leaderboard support would be a very nice add, especially for a game based on completing levels as fast as possible.
Of course, in order for leaderboard support to be meaningful, it'd help if Relic Rush also featured an actual timer for keeping track of how long it takes for you to complete missions. Currently, the only indicator is a bar that slowly depletes and changes color, letting you know when you've fallen down a relic tier. While this simplified method of tracking progress works with the rest of the game's motif, I still would have liked something more detailed. This and leaderboard support would have gone a long way towards adding some replayability, an important consideration since Relic Rush currently only has twenty missions (with each mission featuring eight levels).
While the above concerns are important for players looking for some longevity, others looking simply for a casual title with an incredibly approachable control scheme and a cute retro-inspired theme need not look any further. Relic Rush may not have the length or variety to propel it to the upper tier of iOS casual games, but it's still worth a shot for folks looking for a simple platformer to try.
I've played and enjoyed a lot of role playing games over the years, but one genre I could never quite get into was the first-person dungeon crawler. Typically very non-linear and lacking the conveniences of modern-day RPGs in terms of tutorials and guidance, new dungeon crawlers always felt like titles that only appealed to gamers that were already fans. However, QuestLord [$1.99]Â doesn't elicit that feeling of being immediately overwhelmed that I seem to encounter with other dungeon crawlers. In fact, I'd argue that QuestLord's simplicity in both scope and gameplay, while probably a turnoff to genre veterans, makes it a great title for folks looking to get into the mix.
If you've never played a dungeon crawler, QuestLord is a first-person turn-based RPG with an emphasis on exploration. Players initially make a character by choosing from one of three races, each with different stats. In addition, depending on your selection, you're placed in a different location within the world to start. Regardless of where you start, you're immediately given the role of QuestLord and told to travel the world providing assistance to the populace of the Shattered Realm.
As you might imagine, a large portion of QuestLord's content centers around the various quests assigned by the NPCs. From the first task given, the quests do a good job of encouraging exploration and placing players near other quest givers as well as providing ample award for completion. However, the actual objectives definitely lack variety and mainly revolve around killing certain enemies once you reach a location. I also wdould have liked more in terms of story narration and scope as QuestLord's writing is somewhat weak.
Based on the above, you'd think QuestLord wouldn't have much to offer but that's not really the case. The game's emphasis on simplicity goes a long way towards making what it does offer approachable. Stats are divided into three attributes which boil down to attack, defense, and spell points and can be increased with each level-up. Meanwhile, the spell system is based on discovering new spells in the world, a nice incentive to explore every map. In addition, QuestLord also features a robust item system, with plenty of slots and equipment to find. I also appreciated the game's auto-map feature which not only shows the player's location in the world, but also within each individual map (some magical items will even instantly reveal said maps for you if for some reason you don't want to explore).
This all leads to a game that's very manageable in terms of quests, world-size and objectives. Without having to worry about some of the traditionally more complicated pieces of dungeon crawlers, I found it enjoyable to simply explore the world and see what I could discover. It sounds like a small thing, but I think this, combined with the relatively easy difficulty went a long way towards making QuestLord approachable.
While it seems to be a calling card for the genre, one area that I really didn't enjoy was QuestLord's visual style. While I do realize that old-school graphics are part of the charm with most dungeon crawlers, the visuals in QuestLord are a little too classic, with retro graphics that are highly pixelated and a menu/item system and control buttons that just don't look too good. Does it detract much from the experience? Probably not, but it's still something that needs to be mentioned.
Still, I give QuestLord a lot of credit for properly introducing me to a genre that I never really could get into. With a streamlined attribute and quest system, there's not a lot of depth that is traditionally found in other titles. However, it's for this exact reason that I think it succeeds for newbies like me. Assuming you're looking to give dungeon crawlers a try, I'd definitely recommend QuestLord as an introductory taste.
When Table Top Racing [$2.99]Â hit the new release charts last week, we were pretty stoked not just by the pedigree surrounding the developers, but also its interesting graphical theme. Now that we've had some time to check it out, it's obvious that Table Top's environments and overall visual flair are pretty top notch. Unfortunately, a relatively generic gameplay outing and its emphasis on auto-acceleration controls keep the game from reaching loftier heights.
The first thing you'll notice with Table Top Racing is its unique visual style. Taking a page from classics such as Micro Machines, Table Top has you racing across giant tables filled with every day items. For example, one theme has you on an Asian-themed restaurant table while another might put you in a Hawaiian luau setting. Not everything is food themed, as others simply place you in a kid's room with wooden blocks setting up the racetrack. Maps are nicely done, inventive (at least for iOS) and look great.
In addition to the fun theme, Table Top also excels in simply executing the basics. The graphics simply look great, with the behind-the-back camera angle doing a great job showcasing the visuals. The game even does a great job of making even the static backdrops come alive as you race around the level. Meanwhile, Table Top runs at an incredibly smooth frame rate, a must for frenetic racing games. Finally, I'm also a fan of the music, even if some of the tunes are heavily "inspired" takes on familiar songs.
Otherwise, Table Top Racing is relatively straight-forward from a gameplay perspective. A robust campaign mode challenges racers to participate in a variety of cups that have players taking part in a variety of races that eventually lead to the proper cup. Race objectives range from standard fare (time trials and place matches) to objective (run into your opponent a set time has elapsed) to the dynamic (such as elimination matches). Hitting objectives or placing high enough earns coins that can be used to purchase and outfit your vehicles, which give you a better chance to succeed. Single race modes and multiplayer round out the selections. While there's a lot to see and do in Table Top Racing, the game doesn't really offer much in terms of innovation.
Controls-wise, Table Top offers the choice of tilt-based controls or a simple left/right button scheme with both options using auto acceleration (and no brakes). Auto-acceleration seems to be the control scheme of choice these days for iOS racing titles and while I think the controls work decently, there's still a certain amount of control lost that can be frustrating. It would have been nice to simply offer it as an alternative, even if it's not the "preferred" way to play.
Meanwhile, there's a few facets of the game that don't feel right. Players aren't allowed to upgrade their vehicles in their own way; each vehicle has a set upgrade path and you'll be spending coin on the next upgrade. If you don't like the attribute it's improving, all you can hope for is that the next stat in the queue is your choice. For that matter, the tuning in regards to earning coins, upgrades, and being able to advance in the campaign is a little too heavy on the coins, offering too much of an emphasis on IAPs.
In the crowded iOS racing genre, there's a growing collection of decent racing titles that either focus on killer visuals or innovative gameplay (with the best succeeding in both). Table Top Racing falls in the former category with a fun visual style that does a good job eliciting feelings of nostalgia. Whether that's enough to differentiate itself from the pack is a matter of opinion, but as far as racing titles go you can do a lot worse.
Nineties-era 16-bit gamers who spent time in front of an Atari ST or Amiga might recall a rather unique and atmospheric first-person 3D game with an ominous premise. Archipelagos places you hovering above a chain of islands, once inhabited by a mysterious race known as the Ancients. Long dead at the hands of the Visitors, another race of their own creation, the Ancients' blood soaked into the land, poisoning it and bringing forth the twisted, writhing trees that crawl across the islands. And, standing as evidence of the dominion of the Visitors is a lone monolith and the smaller stones spread about the landscape from which it draws power to keep the Ancients at bay.
Archipelagos is a strategy puzzle game developed by Paul Carruthers of Astral Software and released in 1989 to critical acclaim, receiving an 84% rating in Amiga/ST Format, and a 92% from The One magazine. Original developer Carruthers, who also created Mortal Kombat, Batman Forever, and T2: The Arcade Game for the Sega Genesis, has just released a remake of his 1989 classic, Archipelagos [$0.99], here 24 years later, for iOS (Universal) as well as the BlackBerry Playbook / 10 (with an Android version on the way) under the Anthill Games label.
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition [$9.99 (HD)] is a faithful port of the classic AD&D computer game, and that in itself is an impressive thing. Overhaul Games put a lot of work into this one, massaging the antique codebase, agonizing over the implementation, adding a new tutorial and arena-brawling in the Black Pits.
Fans of the original Baldur's Gate have been drooling over this one since it was announced, and we were pretty jazzedas well. When the game hit, players with anything older than a 3rd generation iPad had problems that varied from minor irritations to unplayable crashiness, but the new patch seems to have fixed those issues for nearly all iPad 2 / Mini users, and greatly impoved original iPad performance (results still vary).
As you can imagine from its title, i-Free's I am Vegend: Zombiegeddon [$1.99 / Free] doesn't take itself seriously. Blatantly spoofing tons of references from popular mobile gaming titles, Vegend also employs this philosophy in its gameplay, combining action with tower defense elements from a multitude of sources. While this leads to a game that should be innately familiar to those that have played iOS tower defense titles, Vegend still manages to leave its own mark as an enjoyable and amusing game worth checking out.
I Am Vegend tells the tale of a zombie apocalypse that threatens to destroy the whole world. It's up to the 'Vegendary Heroes,' a group of vegetable heroes to take on the enemies and save the world. Players control the Vegendary Heroes in a pseudo-tower defense like manner with each mission giving you control of up to three Heroes. Players switch between each hero and simply tap on the screen to aim and fire each of their weapons. Each hero also has to reload between volleys, encouraging folks to utilize each of their three heroes strategically as weapons are reloaded.
Mister Frog! [$0.99] is Coconut Island's follow-up to the impressive One Tap Hero, so it has big shoes to fill. In this case, they're probably clown shoes, as Mister Frog! presents itself as a Vaudeville act, in which the titular frog is performing to entertain an audience: perhaps you and the child you're trading turns with.
At a glance, one might me tempted to draw comparisons to Frog Fractions, what with the stationary frog catching flies with his tongue-thing, but this game is as straight up as that one is twisted.
You swipe to stretch Frog's tongue out to catch bugs, with three or more creating a combo. Combos of all the same color insect worth more, and a progressive combo multiplier that drives you to keep up the combos.
The Walking Dead is starting to seem like quite the media empire, given its ever-growing pile of retellings. The Telltale game, the AMC series, the novelization, the original comic series—all unique takes on the same story of the end of the world and the horrible things we do to each other afterwards.
The Walking Dead: Assault [$2.99] takes the property in a new direction. It isn't about the end of the world, it isn't about the horror of humanity stretched to its limits. It's about obliterating zombies and living to tell the tale.
Arguably, that's not quite as interesting.
It's certainly slick as all heck, with a gorgeous isometric take on the comic book's style. Its a joy to peer down at Rick and company as they wander familiar landscapes, sweeping and clearing the walkers away.
Double Fine Productions has entered the freemium market with their new Superhero management sim Middle Manager of Justice [Free], a game that has been hotly anticipated since it's announcement, early release, and subsequent yanking from the App Store.
Is this the game that will revolutionize the free-to-play market and bring about a golden age of games you don't have to pay a penny for (unless you want to), or is this just another big studio getting in on the freemium shtick? The answer, like the game's title, is that it is somewhere in-between.
If you played the accidental early-release, you already have a good idea what the game is like. The tweaks since then improve the game overall, but don't change any of the fundamentals.
It's hard to believe that it's been over three years since Mountain Sheep's Minigore [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)]Â hit the App Store. While the game started out small, it'd see multitudes of updates, making it one of the first "big" dual-stick arena shooters to hit iOS. Fast-forward to today and Minigore 2: Zombies [$0.99]Â looks to come out of the gate with tons of content, along with small refinements to the arena shooter formula. Unfortunately, fans looking for significant innovations will probably need to look elsewhere as Minigore 2 is really more of the same.
If you're one of the few that have never heard of Minigore, you've probably at least played its genre: the dual-stick arena shooter. Minigore 2 continues the genre trend, placing players in moderately sized levels with the goal being to survive and destroy every zombie that gets thrown into the mix. Taking out the opposition earns 'souls,' which act as the game's single currency. In addition, weapons, health kits, and four-leaf clovers (which still activates character powers) can also be found, giving players a leg-up on the opposition. Each level culminates with a boss battle that showers the player with rewards if the boss is defeated. At this point, missions can either be restarted with harder foes (a new 'night') or players can move on to a new level.
If you're a fan of card games on the App Store, there's a good chance you've heard of Playdek. Creators of the competitive card game Ascension [$4.99], we gave it acceptable marks when it debuted over a year ago. Now, Playdek has partnered with Looney Labs to create an iOS port of Fluxx [$2.99], a more casual-oriented game than its previous offering. Assuming you're in the mood for a game more reminiscent of Uno than Magic, Fluxx may be worth checking out.
For folks unfamiliar with the actual title, Fluxx is a card game for 2-4 players with an emphasis on changing the rules. Cards are divided into four different types: Rule Cards, Keepers, Goals, and Actions. Players initially start out with two cards the baseline rules of having to draw a card from a pile and playing a card from their hand. However, strewn across the virtual deck are rule cards that can change a variety of different parameters. Some examples are cards that change how many cards you can hold in your hand, the amount of cards drawn during each turn, the maximum amount of cards you can hold at any one point, and so on.
About twelve years ago, I went through a phase where I was convinced that blood sport would be the next evolution of American entertainment. This was around the time Survivor hit, and I was watching videos of a lot of very unsettling Japanese game shows. Then reality TV took a sharp left turn into the land of American Idol and The Bachelor, and my fears (hopes?) were allayed.
Man in a Maze [$0.99] is pretty much what I envisioned in those cynical days of my youth: one man, trapped in a maze filled with killer robots, electrified floors and other completely insane things, competing for prizes that wouldn't feel out of place on the The Price is Right. A nice little crystallization of everything that's wrong with mass-media and its obsession with pain and suffering, right here in the middle of a clever game of hide-and-go-seek with death robots.
The contestant of the day is Chuck, an eternally cheerful fellow always ready to throw himself into danger for a nice set of steak knives. The circumstances are almost laughably stacked against him. One man versus the most sadistic set-ups a gameshow host could plan with only a tennis ball to save him.
I always find that the arrival of a traditionally non-mobile developer on the iOS platform fills me with equal parts excitement and skepticism for their prospects; wondering if we're headed for the next Rayman Jungle Run [$2.99] ...or the next Final Fantasy: All the Bravest [$3.99]. Case in point? Our announcement last week about Uber Entertainment's foray into iOS. The developer of Monday Night Combat is bringing a game to phones and tablets!? And it's based off of that awesome series? Excitement...Oh. It's an endless runner. Skepticism. After diving in and playing the title, I find myself surprisingly caught in the middle.
