A world of teddy bears and pretty lights doesn't sound like the perfect setting for a killer platformer, I'll grant. Penumbear's [$0.99] teddy bear is, however, a ball of fluff in serious trouble, and the pretty lights are all that stand between it and a gruesome stuffing evisceration. The shadows, in this case, outweigh the light.
Those shadows are an integral part of the platforming experience. The titular Penumbear awakes alone in a dreadful tower with only a firefly for company. That firefly can manipulate light switches, and the bear can explore the penumbras: the places where light and dark meet. With directional controls and a jump button, it's well equipped for classic platforming. But it's the ability to walk on light that gives the bear real hope of escape.
From the simple building blocks of platforms, darkness and light, over 100 levels are formed. There isn't much too them, really: a few solid stones, a couple light switches, and maybe a few more aggressive obstructions make up the brunt of every level. With that formula, Taco Graveyard put together dozens of layouts that rarely repeat themselves, creating a massive, sprawling beast of a platformer.
It seems like an eternity since King Cashing [$1.99] came out of no where in 2011. Combining a strong slot-machine battle system with a loose RPG system, King Cashing was a little rough around the edges from a presentation standpoint but absolutely nailed its combat mechanics, making it a sleeper hit amongst our forums. That same mechanic returns excellently preserved in King Cashing 2. With a refined leveling system, new characters, a wealth of weapons and items and a story told with an excellent visual novel style, King Cashing 2 addresses every issue I had with the original, making it a game that begs to be played.
If you're unfamiliar with how an RPG with a slot-machine battle system works, I'd encourage you to check out our review of the original King Cashing. For everyone else, the same combat system that we loved before makes a return with some minor improvements. Players still participate in battles with cherries as the currency of choice for spinning the reels with the goal being to match up characters and weapons against enemies to cause damage. One new twist is the ability to eventually purchase a power-up that will a selected reel for one turn during a battle. Otherwise King Cashing 2 focuses less on innovation and more on simply adding to an already excellent system.
With only three character types and corresponding weapons, simplicity was the name of the game in the original King Cashing. King Cashing 2 looks to up the ante with a lot more variety. Players eventually unlock 7 characters, each with their own preferred weapons and critical bonuses. Weapons also continue the hit/damage trend of the previous game, meaning that the stronger the weapons is the lower its hit attribute is (meaning the less likely it'll show up on a slot reel).
Some of the new weapons and characters are also pretty unique, such as the Necromancer, a relatively weak character that converts a 'Miss' reel into a 'Human' weapon with each hit. Another interesting addition is the potion weapon class which offers a wide variety of effects ranging from damage-over-time poison to armor damage, to enemy 'bait' (which temporarily adds more enemies to the reel). There's also a wealth of new secondary bonus items which can be equipped to modify the slots even further. These new additions and options lead to a lot more different ways to play the game and go a long way towards formulating new strategies, especially as later enemies start to become resistant (and immune!) to more and more weapons.
The most impressive improvement that Productions Multimage has made in King Cashing 2 is in its visual style and narrative technique. Taking on an entirely different theme than its predecessor, King Cashing 2 employs a slick graphic novel style that does a great job of telling its tale. It also doesn't hurt that everything simply looks amazing, with the game taking full advantage of retina visuals which are pretty essential for any game attempting to emulate comic-book visuals. King Cashing 2's story, meanwhile, is infinitely better than the original, telling a tale of an undead king awoken from his slumber and searching for gold. One minor complaint is the lack of full iPhone 5 support (borders fill out the extra space on the elongated device), but the game still looks great nonetheless.
Most importantly, like its predecessor, King Cashing 2 is simply fun to play. Battles are streamlined and offer players the ability to play the game as one of chance or to focus on memorizing and individually stopping reels. Incredibly difficult enemies return as 'side quests' that offer quite a challenge. Achievements, ranking systems for each battle, and leaderboards that track how fast you complete 'issues' all return, adding some extra replayability. While the story itself is a bit short, the system in place makes it easy to add new 'Issues' with a future already being promised.
As I mentioned in the review for King Cashing, a slots-based RPG is certainly not for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be folks that can't (or won't) grasp the unique battle system. However, for folks that can, King Cashing 2 is the definitive title for the genre. Where the original at times felt like a nicely implemented tech demo, King Cashing 2 is an excellent game in its own right, improving on nearly every facet over the original and well worth checking out.
Chillingo's position in the App Store has become somewhat of a double-edged sword. As a mega-publisher with a huge user base, getting signed to work with them can mean instant success for a smaller developer. Yet with the crazy flood of new releases, the blessing of brand recognition can just as easily be a curse. Hand-crafted standouts from talented studios risk being dismissed as "this week's Chillingo game," passed over by players and reviewers as they scour for something more 'unique.' Until a couple of days ago, I had typecast Room 8 Studio's Cyto [$0.99] as one to skip. While checking out our forums, though, it became clear that it had readers intrigued and impressed, wondering why there wasn't more being said. One non-stop play session later, I'm here to make amends.
Cyto puts you in control of the world's cutest piece of cytoplasm (I think this may be the only time someone has ever written the words "cute" and "cytoplasm" in the same sentence). A smiling, blinking, blue amoeba missing its memories and desperately searching for its friends and family. As usual in the puzzle platform genre, it's all a thinly veiled excuse to fling, stick, and drop your way through a slew of bite-sized levels in an attempt to collect three tokens. In this case, glowing pieces of Cyto's past. Familiar mechanics are where the slippery slope to boredom ends, however.
Deftly avoiding the trap of lazy visuals, Room 8 delivers a vibrant and ominous little world. Static backgrounds filled with painterly orbs and tentacles dwarf your microscopic protagonist and allude to the body of something sinister. Meanwhile, the playing field is abuzz with life as microbes pulsate and motes of glowing particles spiral in all directions. It even seems like Cyto is reacting to it all with wide eyes, agape mouth, and looks of trepidation mid-flight. Tying the experience together is an evocative piano soundtrack; part nostalgic waltz, part funeral dirge, it'll have you taking the game's recommendation to use headphones seriously. Cyto tickles a lot of the same synapses as Chillingo cousin Contre Jour [$0.99 / $2.99], and the comparison goes further with the game's absorbing design.
It's a hallmark of too many three-star, one-screen platformers that I can barely remember one level from the next. They all mix together in a soup of vaguely rearranged obstacles and objectives that enter occupy my thoughts one second, and are gone the next. With Cyto, many of the game's 81 levels stick around after the score screen has faded. This is due in no small part to the surprising sense of choice that runs throughout the game. Instead of having essentially two ways to complete each level - the easy way, where you careen straight to the exit, or the substantial way involving collectibles - it's often apparent that you took one of a handful of paths to the level's glowing exit orb. The meticulous arrangement of the game's sticky surfaces, thorny obstacles, and precious open space allows for ample experimentation as you try to chart your course to the far corners of each level. I'd often finish with that wonderfully satisfying feeling that the way I played and beat the level had been a complete fluke; that only I had beaten it that way.
Cyto doesn't mollycoddle when it comes the difficulty curve, either. The back nine levels in each world deliver shades of the same cerebral thrill that made Portal so spectacular. Instead of slingshotting around, proverbial guns blazing, you'll have to digest portions of the level as you take yourself through the paces and consider cause and effect. When pulled off perfectly, the game becomes an opponent you outplayed in chess, conquered at the hands of your mental trapeze work. Easily the crowning jewel here is the game's "gold" levels, given out as sadistic rewards for perfecting the eight levels that came before. Each one caps off the mechanics of that section, and adds huge longevity to the game by sucking you into a brain-busting challenge that's best served when you have plenty of patience on hand.
Mechanically, Cyto is also a breath of fresh air. Sure it's got all the typical add-ons like wind, portals, and bouncing pads, but every new feature rolls out in such that each stage has a healthy mixture of what you've seen and what you haven't. Function even becomes form as new obstacles like multiplying spikes and fading memories throw a wrench in the game's measured pace and turn levels into tense races against the clock. The result is an experience that very much keeps you on your toes...perhaps too much so, in some cases. The game takes a noticeable hit by demanding extreme precision, but not delivering it in return. Shots that launch you onto a safe piece of grass during one try seem to bounce you off a wayward edge during another; detaching Cyto to roll down an edge to the exit will often send him tumbling the other way, all with little to explain why. Luckily, the game traces your last five shots with angled dots, making retries far less frustrating than they could be.
That's ultimately Cyto in a nutshell. With every opportunity it has, it proves that it's not lowest common denominator fare. This is one of the few in this genre with the promise of more levels "Coming Soon" which has me eagerly awaiting the update notification on my iPad. Rather than judge a book by its publisher, pick this up today: it'll be a delight for your left and right brain alike.
Have a love of adventure games and an hour or so to spare? You absolutely must take a look at Finding Teddy [Free / $1.99]. No, the name may not inspire confidence, but trust me, Look At My Game has published a real gem. It may not quite be the next Sword & Sworcery [$4.99], but that's not for lack of beauty or heart.
It begins with a childhood nightmare, a teddy bear stolen by something monstrous from the closet. The wordless little girl that stars in Finding Teddy is brave and curious, though, and she ventures in after it. From there it's a trip into a world of lovely pixels, terrifying creatures and magical music.
As with the best adventure games, the short time I spent with Finding Teddy was filled with moments of discovery. Some were of the traditional point-and-click variety—finding bits and pieces lying around and figuring out where they're meant to be used. This is the mixed bag it always is. If you buy into the game's logic all the pieces fall into place. If not, there are moments of dragging and dropping and aggravating experimentation.
There's a great story -- perhaps apocryphal -- about Will Wright designing SimCity to reflect his political beliefs. Specifically, the thinking is that Wright designed the trains and buses in that game to run smoothly and efficiently to reflect his own views about the importance of public transportation. I'm not sure how true that is, but it's a great illustration that the games we play -- and how we play them -- says something about us.
Kairosoft's latest, lightweight city management sim Beastie Bay [Free], for example, let me build my own kind of environmentalist utopia. Sure, I could probably attract more tourists (and therefore more money) by building roads through my island, but I'd rather have the beaches and wooded hills and caves -- and the fish, bears, and mecha-chimpanzees that live in them. I have plenty of food and lumber -- resources you'll need for everything from researching electricity to building nests to upgrading weapons -- and my upkeep costs are low enough that I'm not forced to expand faster than I want to. I appreciate that Beastie Bay is flexible enough to allow me that freedom.
Richard Perrin's Kairo [$4.99], released under his Locked Door Puzzle label, is billed as a minimalist, first-person exploration puzzle game. That's a mouthful, and it's true, but it doesn't begin to describe the game's texture and feel -- it's equal parts serene, melancholy, unnerving, and dreamlike.
The world of Kairo is like a playable, explorable tone poem.
Kairo's minimalism is its defining characteristic: it affects everything in the game, from the puzzle design to the environments. There's no real narrative frame (or text, really) to speak of, just a few scattered hints that the game takes place in some deserted future-Earth. Abandoned monuments abound, but there are no people, just the puzzles and long-dormant technology they left behind. The game's environments are built out of simple shapes -- cubes, blocks, spheres -- giving the game a futuristic, alien quality.
The abstract environments, lack of narrative, and audio direction all help set the mood for each section. The lack of some over-arching emergency gives players time to relax and explore the nooks and crannies in a peaceful, pixelated garden, but it also keeps us disoriented and confused when Kairo takes a turn for the creepy and macabre. Kairo isn't a horror game per se, but it re-creates the feeling of being alone in an old house -- every scrape, every bump in the dark, every muffled footstep feels overblown and significant. Disembodied voices are terrifying when you know you're literally the only living being on a dead planet.
The game's visual and narrative style is matched by equally sparse controls and puzzle design. On the left side of the screen are virtual buttons that move your first-person avatar forward and backwards, and the the camera is controlled by touching and dragging with the right thumb or index finger. The controls are tight and simple and worked well on my iPad 2, but here's the kicker: there's no dedicated interaction button.
This means that every puzzle in the game is a mix of aural, visual, and spatial cues. With no way to interact or pick up items, entire swathes of traditional puzzles (physics puzzles, inventory management, etc.) are rendered off-limits. Some designers might find that restrictive, but Perrin finds a lot of interesting and graceful ways to work within that context, mostly with the help of audio cues -- a bell-chime for "good," a cymbal crash for "bad" -- and visual symbols. The majority of the puzzles are logic-based, which works well with the control scheme and mood of the game.
Perhaps my favorite puzzle involves walking on a giant track-pad connected to two wall-mounted dials: moving vertically moves one dial, but moving horizontally moves the other. Getting the dials aligned just so -- there are clues on the wall to help you figure out where this is -- will activate the machinery necessary to advance.
Doing away with text-based instructions and relying on atmospheric clues makes Kairo an elegant and understated game, but that elegance isn't always intuitive. Kairo is perhaps over-dependent on players paying close attention to each puzzle's fine details, or on making connections between disparate parts of the world -- even after "solving" a puzzle, you may not notice what affect it had or why it was important. Kairo doesn't always do a good job highlighting the salient features of its design: I was stuck for two days on the game's second hub area before I had an epiphany about how to interact with the game's numerous fragmented monoliths, for example.
It also helps to know that kairo is the Japanese word for "circuit": there are four hub areas, each with a number of puzzle rooms attached. Once each puzzle is solved, the circuit is complete, the hub area is activated, and the player can move on. Given the lack of text or narrative in Kairo, learning the structure can do a lot to keep players focused and oriented.
In any case, any unintuitiveness is largely mitigated by a generous hint system. Kairo isn't about making players feel dumb or setting up arbitrary challenges and goal posts: Perrin is obviously focused on letting the player explore the mysterious world he created, see how it works, and try to make sense of it. There are no penalties for using the hints or experimenting as much as you need to solve each puzzle -- it's more important to see what the world has to offer than it is to be stumped by a designer's funky logic.
I like that Kairo demands attention, demands that you clear out some time, relax, go slowly, and be observant. It's a thoughtful, deliberate, and delicate game. Few players, I would imagine, unlock of all of Kairo's secrets during one play through -- there are a few optional rooms that I haven't been able to wrap my head around, hints or no hints. Even after having beaten Kairo, it's story is still mercurial and vague -- all that exploration provided more questions than it did answers.
Kairo's roots as an indie PC game are apparent, but it's made a great transition to iOS. The controls are responsive and well-suited to touch devices, but more importantly, Kairo brings something fresh and unique to the platform -- there's nothing like it, to the best of my knowledge, on the App Store. We need more games like it.
I'm what you might call a pinball dilletante. Oh sure, I've played a table here and there, downloaded a few pinball games and poked around, but I lack discipline. I dabble, I don't commit. I've never learned to play with real accuracy or attention to the goals of the game beyond keeping the ball in play.
Momonga Pinball Adventures [$2.99] has changed all that. I discovered a reason to learn to be accurate, to pay attention: furthering the adventures of a ludicrously cute flying squirrel named Momo. A momonga, to be precise—a Japanese dwarf flying squirrel. He is the ball in this game of pinball, and he's on a mission to save his people.
Pinball adventure games are a niche within a niche, so maybe it's best to think of Momonga in broader strokes. It's a game of tiny challenges, a handful of which are stitched together to build a level. A beautiful level: Momonga Pinball Adventures is better crafted than most of what we see on iOS, with lush 3D environments that vary wildly and a simplified style that looks great on the small screen. Paladin Studios says that one level can take up to two months to create, and the effort shows.
But let's step back to the content of those levels. The game's story mode presents a series of fairly straightforward challenges of the flipper-control sort. Knock Momo into a few targets, then a few moving targets, then a few still targets immediately followed by moving targets. For anyone with more skills with a flipper than me, there probably won't be much need to slow down—especially with only 9 major levels.
Of course, that's just the trip through the game's simple, charming story. After each level is finished for the first time a series of challenges unlock. These present new reasons to run through: breaking every block in a level, collecting all the stars, or dipping into more obscure paths and procedures. When you've cleared a few of these you'll also unlock an odd little endless mode that has nothing to do with pinball. It's delightful nonetheless.
There are a few stumbling blocks on the way to freeing Momo's people and really sinking your teeth into Momonga Pinball Adventures. Failing at challenges can be a huge hassle, for instance—the relevant portion of a level might be midway through, after a good chunk of loading, a few cutscenes to skip and a section or two that needs completing. Failure is generally this game's biggest problem: I find myself wondering what a three-life limit adds to the experience aside from frustration.
Otherwise it's all about the pinball physics. They're good, but not great. The action is pleasantly fast. The flippers feel good, with a simple left-side/right-side tap control, but they can't pull off some of the light lobs or quick shots experienced pinball players might expect. There's also no way to tilt the board—it's not a board, it's a level. That's the saving grace, really. Momonga isn't built like a pinball game, so it doesn't suffer badly for missing some of pinball's finer features.
Momonga's Pinball Adventures is already a winner. In part for its impressive look, certainly, but the charm and challenge of the game are a big part of what makes it so loveable. If anything stands in its way now, it's simply that Paladin Studios has already squeezed everything it can out of the existing content—new levels are all that will keep the game going now. Given what goes into them, that might take a while. Just don't mistake this for a complaint: more Momonga will be well worth the wait, and there's plenty of tiny squirrel action to love for the moment.
We've been watchingFoursaken Media'sHeroes and Castles [$1.99] ever since we got wind of its existence shortly after the release of N.Y. Zombies 2[$0.99]. Departing from its comfort zone, Heroes is certainly its most ambitious title by combining both third-person action gameplay with castle defense and resource management. That sort of combo on iOS would be intriguing on its own, but Heroes and Castles also does an excellent job implementing it, making it another winner for the developer.
Simply put, Heroes and Castles is a game of third-person combat and castle/tower defense. Players control one of three heroes (each with their own attacks and moves) against a horde of undead looking to destroy your keep. As you play, you continually earn gold, which can be used to purchase buildings and recruit armies. Units come in various types, such as the archer which stays on your wall shooting from afar, the pikeman which has piercing damage or the peasant which are cheap but plentiful. Meanwhile, buildings range from essentials such as the gold mine (which increases your rate of gold accumulation) to arrow towers and ballistas (which target enemies) to even support structures which improve your units.
Mobile games have left their roots behind, no longer relying on entertaining us with a dozen variations of Snake and Bejeweled. Our habits haven't quite kept up. For every one of us that sits and plays an iOS game for hours straight there are many more who will never load up a game for more than five minutes in a sitting. That's reasonable: these games are a diversion on the go for most people. It's just a shame because there are games that can't be digested in five short minutes. Take Lucky Frame's Wave Trip [$1.99].
I didn't fully grasp Wave Trip until I played with the level editor. The studio's latest comes off like a competent cave flyer that makes pretty music—to Lucky Frame's usual impressive standard of pretty music, of course. The scoring rules seem a bit opaque, and you're never quite sure what's coming next. In fact, what's coming next seems to change each time you start a level over. But open up the level editor for a few moments and the whole game unfolds before you.
When Imangi Studios originally launched Temple Run [Free] in August of 2011, the small indie developer had no idea the kind of phenomenon it would go on to be. In fact it wasn't even a success right off the bat, and only after a switch to free-to-play about a month after release did it start to build up some momentum before flourishing late in the year and all throughout 2012. The latest tally is that Temple Run has been downloaded and played by more than 170 million people across all platforms. That's just insane.
Now with Temple Run a household name and the kind of bona fide success that can spawn a successful spinoff game with a major Disney movie in Temple Run Brave [$0.99], a proper sequel has stealthily landed in the App Store. Not a lot has changed in Temple Run 2 on a fundamental level, it still plays very much like the original game you know and love, but it has received a massive upgrade in the visual department along with a few new tweaks to the formula that make it a substantial improvement over the first game in just about every way. It feels like a fresh start, a new Temple Run that's geared towards the future.
I'm sure most everyone is familiar with how Temple Run works, but just for kicks let's go over the basics. You follow your perpetually running character from a third-person perspective as they're being chased by a humongous demonic primate. You see, your adventurer swiped the beast's precious idol and that didn't seem to go over too well, so now you've got to run for your life.
Control of your character is handled by swiping up or down to jump over or slide under obstacles, and swiping left or right to turn when necessary. Tilting your device moves the character back and forth inside the lane for collecting coins and avoiding additional hazards. That's about all there is to it, and it works great. Temple Run 2 is one of those perfect games to play with just a single free hand, for just a few minutes at a time or for hours on end as you tirelessly try to top your best run. Nothing has changed with the sequel in that regard.
The biggest improvement in Temple Run 2 is in the graphics department. The game has been built from scratch in Unity and boasts gorgeous lighting and colors as well as extremely fluid animations. My one gripe is that the draw distance isn't the best, which means environmental elements will pop-in right in front of your eyes. It doesn't really bother if you're focusing on not dying like you should be, but it's still kind of disappointing considering what iOS devices are capable of.
The original Temple Run didn't have that great of a draw distance either, but it was masked quite ingeniously using a fog effect that worked well with the dank jungle theme. In Temple Run 2 you're running in a temple in the sky, so everything is right out there in the open. This new sky temple is great though, offering a much more dynamic feel to the level design. The track will curve, dip and elevate in ways that the rigid straightaways of the first game never did. It feels like a more organic environment, and it also keeps you on your toes just a tad bit more since you never really know what's coming around the next bend.
Like I said before Temple Run 2 is a beautiful game, and there's a greater variety to the types of scenery you'll see, like various temple ruins architecture and forests with sunbeams poking through the leaves. There's a couple of new environmental elements too, like a zip line to ride and mine cart sections. These parts aren't drastically different from the rest of the game's normal running, but they do add some additional drama and excitement to your adventure.
Temple Run 2 brings back 4 playable characters from the original, and each one is associated with a specific power-up. As you unlock the additional characters beyond the default Guy Dangerous, their associated power-ups become unlocked too for any character. There's the standard set of upgradeable attributes too, like a Head Start boost and a coin value increaser, which are also shared across all characters.
The power-up you choose for your character can be activated with a double tap once you've collected enough coins to fill up the associated meter on your screen. The power-up itself can be upgraded too, using the game's premium gem currency. Both coins and gems are available as IAP and are also earned through play. The coins come at a relatively fast clip, especially if you splurge on the IAP coin doubler, but the gems are typically few and far between. It still feels balanced though as the number of gems needed for normal upgrading is gradual.
One other use for the premium gems and something that's a huge change in Temple Run 2 from its predecessor (as well as a point of contention with some of its fans) is the ability to continue your run after a death by spending gems. This essentially sullies the scoring as in theory you could drop enough cash on IAP gems that you could just continue on forever.
The cost to continue doubles in gems each time, and it's possible there's a limit to how much you can continue that I just haven't seen yet. Even so I'm not super interested in the leaderboards anyway so it doesn't really bother me, I just have fun playing for the sake of it. Still, adding a special "sudden death" leaderboard where continuing with gems isn't allowed would be a nice compromise. Really what's more annoying to me is the un-skippable continue countdown that plays after a run ends. It would be nice to be able to immediately retry.
If you weren't a huge fan of the first Temple Run then I doubt the sequel will drastically change your mind. Though, it's free, so I'd say just try it anyway just in case it clicks differently for you this time around. You don't have anything to lose. If you loved the original game then I think you'll love Temple Run 2 just as much or more so. Granted the continuing aspect is kind of suspect and there's some minor technical issues, but Temple Run 2's improvements far outweigh its flaws.
There are plenty of more complex runners out there, and the beauty of the App Store is that you're free to play any and all of them to suit your tastes. But Temple Run 2's simplicity and intangible "something" is what made its predecessor a game that I always went back to even in the face of a smorgasbord of alternatives, and it's what will keep this on my device easily within thumb's reach for a long time to come.
There's no denying Kumobius'sTime Surfer [$0.99] owes a lot to Tiny Wings [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)]. It has the same swoopy hills, the same leap-and-glide movement, and the same joy of flight. After that, things go a bit off the proverbial rails.
If the '80s exploded all over Tiny Wings, we'd be part way there. Time Surfer is a glorious mess of bright colors, pixel art and the most upbeat of chiptunes. It's more than that, though. Take the calm simplicity of Tiny Wings, crank up the speed, stick it in space and add a dozen good ways to die. Not so calm, but death is just a state of mind: you can turn it around with the rewind button.
The rewind button is key to the whole Time Surfer experience—you'd only be half a time surfer without it. As you surf you collect gems; these add to a pool you can use for a bit of quick time travel. You can only head back a few seconds, even at full power, but that's often enough to save yourself from death or a bad jump.
More than that, time travel lets you be creative. Given the usual laws of physics, it might be impossible to grab a certain powerup and also manage a perfect curve on your next jump. You, however, aren't limited to the usual laws of physics. Grab that powerup, then rewind and line yourself up for the perfect jump. You have the power.
Let's clear the air: clean lines and futuristic stylings aside, Pixelbite Games' Repulze [$2.99] shares little in common with Wipeout. One is an iOS racer that costs less than a dollar, the other is one of Sony's most popular and enduring racing franchises. That's not to discount Repulze, though -- it's from the same team that developed the excellent Reckless Racing 2[$1.99]. Whereas RR2 included drifting mechanics and a dynamic difficulty system, Repulze is comparatively stripped down: it only does one thing, but it does it really well.
The game's most obvious feature is its visual design. The tracks and hovercraft all fit squarely in sci-fi's artistic wheelhouse, but the vibrant colors and sharp lines look nice on a big iPad screen. One of my favorite hovercraft, for example, is the Yugana SB-23, the one that looks most like a podracer from The Phantom Menace. I like the way it handles, of course, but I also like the the way its hydraulics pulse up and down as I bank left and right. Each vehicle is full of small visual touches that set it apart from the rest, and Pixelbite's attention to detail permeates the entire game. Even the menus look nice.
When Grand Theft Auto 3 hit the video game scene over a decade ago, it caused a pretty big splash with its shift to 3D action as well as the elaborate (for its time) narrative being weaved in Liberty City. However, I think Rockstar really started to hit its stride when it released Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Similarly, when GTA3 [$4.99] debuted on iOS last year, we thought it was a pretty good port of the PS2 title with the exception of its touch controls. However, with the release of GTA: Vice City [$4.99], Rockstar has delivered a refined port with improved controls, nuanced improvements to the visuals and gameplay, all with the great story and totally awesome soundtrack that made it popular ten years ago. Other than some lingering control issues, Vice City is well worth checking out for a blast to the past.
If you're one of the few people that have never been exposed to a Grand Theft Auto game, I'd advise you to check out our review of GTA3 for a quick recap in regards to general gameplay rules and overarching story architecture. In regards to Vice City, the same open-world freedom to do whatever you want still exists and translates well to iOS. New features such as an improved auto-save function, the ability to instantly replay a mission if you fail, and iCloud save compatibility make this version a bit more friendly to play in this day and age (and even has a few tricks that GTA3 iOS didn't have when it first came out).
Just as was the case with GTA3, folks playing Vice City will experience a deluge of on-screen virtual buttons. Some buttons are contextual and only appear when they need to (such as the carjacking button), while others (such as the virtual joystick for movement) are always present. While the button schemes look intimidating for the initiative, Rockstar has put a lot of work into trying to make the situation bearable. While some folks averse to virtual buttons will still be turned off, for others it mostly succeeds.
For starters, every button and on-screen element (including the mini-map, tutorial messages, and health bars) can be moved around the screen in any way you wish. In addition, buttons can be resized to various levels, allowing you to make actions that are important to you stand out more. Additional options like left-handed options, auto-aim tap-to-shoot (which will remove one button from your screen) and tap-to-aim round out the control options. Tap-to-aim in particular is an interesting addition, as it replaces the previous toggle aim found in the console version and works well with the innate auto-aim to make taking out bad guys easier.
While the above options will alleviate some of the issues with touch-based controls, the simple truth is that it can't fix everything. Just as is the case with previous ports, there's a certain amount of precise movement and reaction lost with the lack of tactile input. This issue becomes a problem particularly during the heavy action sequences, such as when you have to take on multiple enemies head-on or when you're in a chase mission having to damage or destroy another car. Also, the heavy reliance on auto-aim also shows that the developers recognize that it's simply harder to play these types of games on iOS devices.
Otherwise, Vice City plays like you'd expect for an iOS port. Visuals are improved but not in a drastic manner (there's only so much that can be done with graphics originally conceived a decade ago). In addition, the phenomenal soundtrack remains my most favorite port of the game, with a stellar selection of themed radio stations full of 80s hits everyone should know. As with the console version, you'll get a lot of enjoyment simply driving around Vice City listening to every radio station. It's also important to remember that this is the full version of Vice City in all its glory, with tons of content, hidden items, side missions, and a whole city to explore.
A lot of the appeal from playing ports on iOS is the simple fact that you get to play whatever the game is on your phone regardless of any pratfalls that emerge from the translation process. With GTA: Vice City it also helps that the developers have put a lot of time and effort into attempting to address the issues that have occurred during the porting process. Sure, the controls are still not ideal for an iOS game, but they work and allow you to experience the awesomeness of the game. There's also the simple fact that Vice City is an amazing game in most regards. In this regard, the high points far outweigh the control issues, making Vice City for iOS a no brainer for most gamers.
The first time Lost Treasures of Infocom [Free] hit the scene it was 1991. The treasures weren't actually all that lost at the time —all the games had been published in the '80s and Activision had only dissolved Infocom two years earlier. Now, over twenty years on, it seems a bit more reasonable to call them lost.
"Treasures" isn't much of a stretch either. Interactive fiction is still chugging along nicely in some of the quieter corners of the gaming world, but there's no doubting that the text adventure was in its heyday in the 80s. Zork, Trinity, A Mind Forever Voyaging—Infocom's games defined a genre. If you've ever typed your way through a game you're probably playing something inspired by Infocom's parser, if not its games. From standing in an open field west of a white house all the way to depths of cyberspace, Infocom explored the universe.
There was a time I was content to simply match three. This was around the same time I had, no joke, a Palm Pilot so I could play Bejeweled with a stylus in class. Nowadays I need a little something more with my matching, and Pixel Defenders Puzzle [$0.99] has plenty more to offer.
For starters, it plays a lot like Triple Town [Free] without that game's aggressive turn limits. Not like "oh my goodness this is the next Yeti Town;" more like "now that's a clever way to use those mechanics." If you match three units, they upgrade to the next tier of unit. Then you match that with two more like it, and it bumps up another level. Familiar, but you're not upgrading little trees and houses, you're upgrading an army. It's what you do with it next that makes things interesting.
As with Triple Town, you'll run into all sorts of problems with the tight board. You'll need to watch for corners and edges rendered unreachable, combos that can't be completed, and obstacles that can't be dealt with. You're not dealing with just one upgrade path and a pile of angry bears, though. Each of Pixel Defenders Puzzle's levels gives you a selection of armies to deal with—maybe one, maybe more. Each is defined by its own color, and there is no upgrade path that lets units of different colors get together.
A world of teddy bears and pretty lights doesn't sound like the perfect setting for a killer platformer, I'll grant. Penumbear's [$0.99] teddy bear is, however, a ball of fluff in serious trouble, and the pretty lights are all that stand between it and a gruesome stuffing evisceration. The shadows, in this case, outweigh the light.
