Backflip Studios' Boss Battles [Free / HD] is difficult to really talk about in a lengthy matter. After all, you know exactly what the game is based on its title alone and the fact it's free should ensure nobody will hesitate over it too much. Still, the concept alone is interesting enough to warrant a discussion.
The idea of basing a game on boss fights has been done before, Shadow of the Colossus, for instance, and Cave's Japanese only Kesui Death Label, but Backflip's pedigree of casual titles mixes the idea up a little by creating an easier to push through barrier of entry.
A few weeks back, we brought you the news that SEGA was bringing arcade title Brick People [$1.99 / HD] both across the ocean and onto the small screen. Before arriving on iOS devices, the brick-folk were limited to arcade cabinets in Japan. You'd gather up physical bricks to place against the screen, and tiny dudes would climb up and over them to collect fruit. I'm sorry I've never had a chance to try it out -- it sounds like great fun.
Some of that fun may have been lost in translation when the game moved to iOS. The physical bricks and arcade constraints seem like they would have made the single-player content much more engaging than it is in its current state. It's much better if you can go head to head, but with only Bluetooth connectivity and, in the HD version, single-device multiplayer, you may be hard pressed to find an opponent.
Back in the depths of 2008, we had our hearts broken by I Love Katamari. The controls were problematic, there were performance issues, it was Katamari, but it was a mess. Now Namco is taking another shot at winning our love with Katamari Amore [Free].
Full disclosure: I'm a Katamari fan from way back. I got in on the ground floor with Katamari Damacy on PS2 and I've played every console release since. Over the years the formula has become a little stale, the craziness has started to feel a little forced, but I'm still a person who loves to roll things up. Sushi, cats, Ultraman, I'm not picky. So it's with a heavy heart that I tell you that Katamari Amore is a loveless thing.
Metro Games’ Pixel Ranger [$.99] is a deliciously offbeat vertical shooter that executes on its old-school SCUMM-like art direction and its jokey It Came From Outer Space vibe well, but it’s an otherwise forgettable game on a mechanical level. A crippling jump mechanic that feels out of place, a horrific control scheme, and poor checkpointing hamstring the action and combine for a storm of constant frustration. Pixel Ranger looks good, is hilarious when it intends to be, and it has a lot of potential, but it falls flat in the face of its issues.
Like most of its breed, Pixel Ranger combines tons of overhead enemy archetypes and power-ups into an increasingly feverish orgy of upwards-based shooting and pixelated vomit. Its angle is that shooting should be methodical: ammunition is a finite resource and in order to get more, you’ll need to take out enemies and gather up what they spill onto the ground. (more...)
I want to love Madfinger's Shadowgun [$7.99]. I really do. It's a lovely looking game, one of the best on iOS, but it's so riddled with holes, crashes, bugs and repetition, it's easier to walk away frustrated than in awe of it.
You play John Slade, a brute with a gun hired to bring back a mad scientist. There's a whole back-story about how corporations rule the world and whatnot, but none of that makes a difference to the core of the game. It's basically you and your A.I. making bad jokes at each other while a mad scientist is on the loose causing havoc.
Shadowgun is a looker in all respects and running it on both an iPhone 3GS and an iPad produces amazing results (although, text is incredibly blurry on the 3GS). If you look closely, you can see some of the tricks Madfinger used to make it run and look the way it does, but as far as the environments go, it's hard not to sit with your mouth agape in awe.
When it comes to the crowded Tower Defense genre, a game truly needs to take an innovative (or extremely well-produced) approach in order to make its mark. Unfortunately, Tiny Defense [$0.99] doesn’t really satisfy this lofty goal. Sure, Tiny Defense manages to take the core gameplay of Plants vs Zombies and offer a twist on the traditional formula (as well as a vastly different setting), but it just doesn’t offer any sort of gameplay experience that can’t be found in better games in the genre.
As mentioned above, Tiny Defense closely mimics tower defense gameplay made popular by Plants vs Zombies – gamers place various attacking and support units on the right side of the screen in order to defend against baddies coming in from the left. If any enemies get to the other side, you lose a life. Lose enough lives, and the game is over. Tiny Defense differs somewhat in its theme and perspective. Instead of plants, you control a variety of robotic units that are defended against evil (and usually much bigger) robots. Also, instead of the gameplay arena taking place from a top-down perspective, Tiny Defense has a purely 2D perspective.
I want to tell you about Do Do EGG! [$0.99], the newest title from PONOS. They're the studio behind Mr. AahH!! [$0.99 / Lite] and several other fine titles, and I'd hate for their newest to get ignored just because it happens to a bit like a match 3. I want to tell you how tangled and twisted my brain got trying to understand this game, where matching too many of the same color is a good way to lose. I want to tell you about the impressive amount of content Do Do EGG! has, with puzzles, an arcade mode and multiplayer right out of the gate.
Instead, though, I'm trying to get this bad taste out of my mouth.
You see, Do Do EGG! is a good game. And what you get for your $0.99 isn't too shabby: 20 puzzles, one arcade mode and both single-device and Game Center multiplayer. You also have the opportunity to unlock three more arcade modes through skilled play. If you look at it in that light, the value proposition is pretty darn good.
Cowboy Guns [$0.99 / Lite / HD / HD Lite] is probably the most generic name for a game that I’ve heard in a while. Thankfully, that faux pas is one of the worst that Chillingo’s latest offering commits. Sure, Cowboy Guns isn’t going to win any awards for innovative gameplay, and the general lack of variety accompanied by an uneven difficulty is somewhat annoying. However, Cowboy Guns does succeed at creating a decent dual-stick shooter supported by a single player story that takes you through the harsh domain of the Wild West.
Gameplay-wise, Cowboy Guns is a classic dual-stick shooter similar to Minigore. In fact, the visuals sort of have a Minigore motif as well, although the muted graphics of Cowboy Guns are not as detailed, regardless of whether you opt for the retina “HD” version or not. The main adventure mode in Cowboy Guns has you playing as “The Kid,” a former gang member turned law man that must take down his former posse when they threaten his town. Okay, the story isn’t going to turn any heads, but it’s nice to see a dual-stick shooter actually try and incorporate a full-fledged story into the game instead of the usual generic prompt accompanied by hours of mindless killing. If a cheesy narrative-based game mode isn’t for you, Cowboy Guns also has a quickplay mode that operates more like the traditional games you find in this genre (although you need to play through at least some of the adventure mode before you can unlock quick play).
When Plushed [$0.99 / Lite] was first released, nearly two years ago now, it seemed like the start of something great. When we played the platformer we found it flawed but ambitious, a funny, lovely-looking game that was a few tweaks short of complete success. For the first App Store release from Blacksmith Games, though, it was an impressive start.
Now, following quite a gap, we have the next game under the Plushed banner: Plushed Gold Fever [Free]. And while it's good to see Blacksmith Games back at it, those of us hoping for an equally ambitious follow-up will need to keep waiting. Plushed Gold Fever is an enjoyable game, but it isn't quite a worthy successor.
Three minigames make up the meat of Plushed Gold Fever, and they're all designed around a gold rush theme. Gold-Grabber is a fast-paced claw machine, Gold-Cart is an endless runner, and Gold-Smasher is a color-matching brick breaker. They're all fun, and they're all centered around collecting gold that you can use to buy power-ups and new characters. It should come as no shock, but you can also purchase gold and skip the messy business of actually playing the game.
Between the three games, I'm partial to Gold-Smasher. It's not outstandingly original, but it's fun. Mineral bricks fill the play area and you can smash any group of two or more, causing more to fall into place and filling a progress bar. As you level up more block types are introduced, making it ever-harder to proceed. The game only grants you a minute per level, so a screen filled with mismatched blocks is a quick trip to failure.
Gold-Grabber is all about timing and aim. A claw rotates on a static mine cart, and tapping launches it straight outwards. You earn points by grabbing gold and other valuables, but stones, bats and other obstacles slow you down. This mode is on the same timer system as Gold-Smasher, so a lack of precision can hurt.
In Gold-Cart, your character of choice climbs into a runaway mine cart and travels as far as possible. Your input is limited to swipes -- up to jump and down to duck. There are occasional tricky bits, but you're most likely to be killed by something that appeared on screen too late for you to react to than any particular challenge. Or, if you're stuck on an older device, you may fall prey to slow performance.
In all of these games you earn coins that can be put toward power-ups. These are consumable, but they're relatively inexpensive and can save you from certain death. You can also unlock two alternate characters. You also collect plush toys while you play, and these tell a bit of a story in the game's Library.
I've had a good time with Plushed Gold Fever, but on the whole it falls flat. There's nothing here to push it beyond mindless entertainment. A hefty selection of Game Center achievements and leaderboards may motivate the meta-gamers, and attractive art and good music keep things from becoming too dull. It's just that it's no Plushed, and it's not interesting enough on its own merits to make up for that failing. But for the price, it's a reasonably fun package, one that our forum users have enjoyed as well.
By the unspoken law of videogames, a sequel tends to follow at least a full year after the original, but in the case of HotGen's To-Fu: The Trials of Chi [99¢/ HD], it has been less than six months before we're seeing the follow-up, aptly titled, To-Fu 2 [99¢]. You wouldn’t think much could happen in just those few short months, but what To-Fu 2 lacks in artistic changes, it makes up for in level design chops.
In a lot of ways, it would have been easy to pull a Madden 12 on To-Fu 2 because, for the most part, this is the same game as it was before. The art, music, sound effects, and everything else are pulled from the original. That is, except for one single new feature: you can now charge To-Fu and send him rocketing through wood blockades.
Boiling down the themes of uber-profitable App Store games yields a single undeniable fact of the universe: animals are lazy. The birds can be as angry as they like, but they don’t seem to do a thing about the pigs on their own. It’s only when you launch them out of slingshots that they take action. The gormless Om Nom would starve to death if it weren’t for you rewarding his horribly sedentary lifestyle with candy by cutting the rope. Let’s face it. You’re all a bunch of enablers.
However, since your co-dependent tendencies aren’t likely to change any time soon, it’s as good a time as any to take a look at yet another creature lacking motivation in Swing the Bat [99¢]. Published by Chillingo and created by Deadbug, the game draws in numerous elements from many recently successful iOS games.
Ever have one of those games that you desperately want to hate but can’t? You know there are better games on your phone and that by all definitions you’re essentially wasting your time by playing it, yet you can’t seem to escape the grind. That’s Pygmies-Hoglet [$.99]. It’s the digital equivalent of a menthol cigarette: it’s in no way what you originally planned to smoke, but the flavor is weird enough to see you through while you get your fix.
I don’t want to come across too harshly, but in good conscience I need to spell out up front that this game may quickly turn off some folks. That disclaimer behind us, this game has an innocent, playful charm I can’t seem to shake and some simple tweaks to classic RPG mechanics that kept me from dwelling on its shortcomings. If you liked the movie Rudy even ironically, you may consider giving this scrappy underdog (underhog?) a try.
Steampunk-themed programs have done pretty well on the App Store. Games such as Gears [$1.99] have certainly demonstrated the viability of incorporating that sort of fantasy/mechanic aesthetic into a game. ArkanoArena [$1.99 / Lite / HD] is the latest game to incorporate the fantasy/steampunk motif, this time in a brickbreaker. While I think ArkanoArena definitely nails the steampunk visuals, issues with the controls may turn off some folks.
Before we get started, a quick history lesson on ArkanoArena. It was originally released as an iPad-only game back in early January. A “free” version of ArkanoArena then appeared on the App Store for the iPhone in July as a prelude to the full version of the game, which came out last week. This full version of ArkanoArena for iPhone includes more levels (or “Arenas”) as well as a third weapon that wasn’t in the main gameplay mode of the free version.
If this review had the same layout as Avalon Wars [Free], here’s how you would get a feel for what the game is like. First, you’d go to the reviewer’s home base screen. For now, ignore the individual game-mechanic analysis buildings titled Combat, Resource Management, Base Building, Troop/Hero Development, and MMO Elements; we’ll come back to those later in the tutorial. To start, simply click on the Review Overview Command Center. Once on the Overview Command Center screen, you’ll select the Review Introduction tab. Choose “Two Paragraphs” as your option from the Review Length sub-menu.
Now, exit the Command Center and scroll over to the Reviewers’ Barracks. Enter the Barracks and select my name from the list of recruited reviewers. Drill down into the Writing Skills menu and click the sub-menu tab for Add New Skill. Spend 30 TAPs (TouchArcade Points) to activate the skill “Analogy Synopsis”. If you lack the necessary TAPs to activate the skill, a modest in-browser purchase will get you more to speed up the process. Now, launch the reviewer and see him crank out a brief overview of the experience of playing Avalon Wars in the style of Avalon Wars.
If you’re still reading at this point, you may just be the kind of person who will love the hell out of this game.
It seems like physics-based puzzlers are always popular with fans of iOS games, but the genre is undoubtedly saturated. Mikrotie's take on it is prettier than most -- in fact, graphics are likely to be the first thing to suck you into Treemaker [$0.99], which has a modern, atmospheric look to it that certainly is easy on the eyes. I admit that I am totally a sucker for extremely pretty games, so I was interested to see if Treemaker could offer great gameplay to accompany its uncommonly good looks.
Some iOS games like to supply a story, but Treemaker doesn't bother, and it's just as well. You play a silent, smiling character who uses frondlike arms to swing from platform to platform in each level, collecting orbs,setting smaller creatures free as you go and planting trees in the process. The levels are very short ( I admit I would have enjoyed it if they were longer), and each gives you the opportunity to score one, two or three stars, depending on how you play the level. You have an unlimited number of connections at your disposal when it comes to casting your branchy arms about, but only certain connections that allow you to score three stars in each level, so there is replay value in figuring out the best way to play each level.
Touch controls are very responsive, but getting the swing of things (yeah, I went there) takes some practice if you don't have a lot of experience with physics-based titles. The movement is pitch perfect, and after you learn to control the treemaker, you'll be swinging him all over the place to land on the platforms you want. You can also pinch the screen to zoom in or out, which makes it easier for you to plan your next move rather than go sailing of finto the abyss.
While Treemaker is a lot of fun to play and really lovely to look at, I have to admit that I was disappointed with the lack of variety when it came to the appearance of the levels. The level design is great as far as gameplay goes, but the look of the levels only changes by way of color, and there are only a total of four platforms in the game to land on. Some new elements are introduced as you progress, such as exploding blocks and spring blocks, but the game feels like it could have benefitted from a wider variety of things to do.
The other letdown in Treemaker is that it has absolutely no online compatibility, so you can't share your scores with friends with GameCenter or any other similar service. Considering the scoring aspect, I think this would have made it more fun. The game itself has a great vibe, and I enjoyed my time with it, but it feels like the ball was dropped when it came to the social elements that people seem to enjoy in iOS titles. Achievements would have been great oto and given the game more of a replay value. In other words, what's there is great, but if you play these types of games often, you can't help but see the missed opportunities that feel as if they should have been fleshed out.
Backflip Studios' Boss Battles [Free / HD] is difficult to really talk about in a lengthy matter. After all, you know exactly what the game is based on its title alone and the fact it's free should ensure nobody will hesitate over it too much. Still, the concept alone is interesting enough to warrant a discussion.
Back in the depths of 2008, we had our hearts broken by I Love Katamari. The controls were problematic, there were performance issues, it was Katamari, but it was a mess. Now Namco is taking another shot at winning our love with Katamari Amore [
Metro Games
I want to tell you about Do Do EGG! [$
Cowboy Guns [$
When Plushed [$
It seems like physics-based puzzlers are always popular with fans of iOS games, but the genre is undoubtedly saturated. Mikrotie's take on it is prettier than most -- in fact, graphics are likely to be the first thing to suck you into Treemaker [
