There's a certain kind of puzzle game that would gnaw away at my gaming hours if I let it, logic puzzles with a hint of drawing, like Picross, or the excellent PathPix series on iOS. These are games that rely on incredibly simple and clear rules. Colors and numbers sit on a grid, and they tell you exactly how to put together a picture if only you can figure out how to make them all work together.
Puzzle Restorer [$0.99] fits perfectly within that description, but it's a new sort of beast. The picture is already there in a reference image; it's your job to make the one on screen match it. You have two limitations: the number of strokes you can make, and how much squares you can fill with paint. Within those limitations is a host of interesting puzzle possibilities.
At first the game will be very familiar to anyone who's played a PathPix title: you know the area you need to fill, and you know how many squares it will take to fill it, so all you need to figure out is the path that will manage both conditions.
From those early, easy steps the game gets more and more clever—always using the same simple rules. For instance, to paint a line you need to start it and end it on the color you want to paint with, so finding the right start and end point can be confounding. After that, you'll find you need to use more colors and more strokes to complete each puzzle.
The biggest step is when Puzzle Restorer starts demanding you mix colors—painting over black does nothing, but painting one color over another will mix the two together. Elementary school color theory will suffice here, but deciding exactly how to get the colors you need where you need them can be a bit of a trip, particularly when you need to avoid contrasting colors and anything that's already correct.
In a strange twist, the game's only real problem is communicating the image you need to replicate, especially in the more complex puzzles of the bunch. There's no full-scale reference for the image you're trying to restore, no easy overlay. That means complicated images sometimes require a lot of back-and-forth comparison, a tedious process that adds nothing to the experience.
Otherwise, there's nothing fussy to get in the way of a relaxing, thoughtful time. You can undo moves easily, or simply trace them back. You're never left wondering if a move is legal until it's too late. Just follow the rules, and all will be well.
Like any of its logic game brethren, Puzzle Restorer thrives on the strength of those rules. Because they make a solid foundation, the game is free to open up into greater and greater challenges without ever becoming bogged down in complexity. This could be the start of a puzzle game legacy if Gavina Games has the tenacity to keep it going. As a new twist on a popular type of puzzle game, there's plenty of room to grow.
Help Volty [$0.99 (HD)] is an experiential puzzle game that works in large part because mystery is carefully massaged into every aspect of its core design. From the sound production, to the art, to the mechanics and premise, each constituent part works together to create a lingering sense of wonder that keeps piping you into the next puzzle. It's a trip, man, and one we'd gladly welcome again -- but it's also one that isn't without faults, most of which are a direct result of all the secrets Volty constantly throws at you.
It begins with a render of a nighttime scene set deep in some sort of fantasy land -- or at least, that's you'll gather from the cobblestone tower resting in the background and the crackling campfire in the foreground. Click on the tower and you'll be transported into a alleyway. A Dark Age bum (or maybe a down-on-his-luck wizard?) is sitting there with a puzzle box and a sack strewn in front of him. There's a coin in the bag. Take it, you can pump it into the box and start the series of puzzles that define the game.
This setup leaves a lot of questions on the table, and the game doesn't try to answer them. What is this box? Is this dude going to get angry about me stealing his coin? Is he a bum or is he a wizard? Honestly, who hangs out in alleyways at night waiting for strangers to try their puzzle box out anyway? In the meantime, a floaty soundtrack is playfully teasing you to look deeper. And you do, because the mystery is irresistible.
Each puzzle, presented in an over-the-top perspective, tasks you with moving around an electronic bug that can discharge electricity. Puzzles have concrete solutions; most of the time, you need to get the bug (or bugs) to "charge" the box's wires. When charged, the box pops out a coin that unlocks the next puzzle.
As you play, bugs that you can't control are introduced, as well as "boss" monsters that can hurt you. In the "late" game, most of the box's scenarios have you flipping switches and experimenting with various wires to see what they control. Steadily, more clockwork gadgets with weird components are introduced, including tadpoles capable of generating electricity because, reasons.
In a lot of ways, each new puzzle is just as baffling as the box itself. And the new things that are introduced are clever and weird enough to make the journey interesting. Also, the ah-ha moment when you put everything together is pretty satisfying.
At the same time, it's kinda frustrating to have to learn something almost completely new with every new puzzle. The mechanics don't stack; what you learned or saw in the last puzzle, in general, won't be useful in the next.
That's not to say the puzzles aren't clever -- they are. You just have to view each as its own unique thing. Also, logic isn't the only tool you'll need to clear puzzles. You also need some dexterity, as you'll be tasked with avoiding obstacles and bad bugs as well as guiding several of your own bugs at the same time via multi-touch.
Anyway, Help Volty is a strange game set in a strange world, for sure, but that's the best part; you can't figure it out and you can't help but want to continue because you want to try. It's neat.
Aside from downloadable content that lets you dress a marshmallow in a medieval helmet, Rise of the Blobs [Free] doesn't have much in common with Wind-Up Knight. Both are made by Robot Invader, but Wind-Up Knight [Free] was a viciously funny precision platformer while Rise of the Blobs is a matching game with broader humor. Jiggly blobs, fruit splatters and big bright colors, all these things are hallmarks of a friendlier, simpler game. Here's the thing about Robot Invader's games, though—what you can see on the surface rarely reflects the depth of what's beneath.
Let's not give too much thought to the premise. A friendly marshmallow named Mal stands atop a mighty, rotating tower while cubic blobs rise up below him. He throws down fruit of many colors at an increasingly frantic rate. If you match a piece of fruit with the same colored blob it will be absorbed, and you can pop the whole works. This triggers a chain that pops any adjacent blobs of the same color.
For a few seconds, Rise of the Blobs might fool you. It might make you think it's a walk in the park. Not for long. The difficulty curve is steep. The first few lobs of fruit are slow and steady, and the swipe-to-drop mechanic comes in handy.
The whole roguelike thing can seem kind of intense—the permadeath, particularly. It's all struggle and strife and the near-inevitable fall. It's hard to relax when you know each and every move could be your last, after all. Dungelot [$1.99 / Free] makes the whole formula much simpler.
It's the mythical casual roguelike, in fact. Yes, you will die. You will die often. On the way to those deaths, though, things will be relatively relaxed. Combat is simple. Inventory management is simple. Exploration is a matter of flipping tiles and seeing what's underneath. It's almost perfect for the world of casual mobile games.
"Almost" sounds ominous, but there's only one thing seriously holding Dungelot back right now: there is no save system. Now saving isn't always a roguelike thing, but it's kind of a problem when you switch to another app and your game is gone. Or when there's a crash and your game is gone. Or when… well, you get the picture.
Skygoblin's The Journey Down [$2.99] is a classic point and click adventure with a certain visual similarity to Grim Fandango, due in part to the way that many of the characters' faces are modeled on African tribal masks, and a setting and mythology that owes as much to African diasporic culture as Grim Fandango owes to Latin American traditions.
Shoring up this impression is the way that the game opens with jazz and a thug who looks a bit like a chibi version of Baron Samedi - pity he's one of the bad guys. I've always wanted to play a game where the protagonist was a Guédé.
The game's actual protagonist, Bwana, comes from a long line of blundering adventure-game protagonists: Roger Wilco, Guybrush Threepwood, Sam & Max, and Liz Allaire, among others. Despite this, it took me a little while to become comfortable with the antics of Bwana and his brother, Kito.
In the gaming culture we have, a game where most of the characters are neither white nor some "stand-in" for Caucasian (pale-skinned elves, for example), is automatically significant in racial terms. At first, Bwana and Kito's cheerful and careless ignorance was uncomfortably reminiscent of a Stepin Fetchit routine, as they are surprised that the power company cut them off over a mere four grand in unpaid bills.
The reference to the old "lazy and ignorant" stereotype, and the fact that Bwana and Kito speak with a distinctive Caribbean accent, seem like the setup for a series of stale Rastafarian stoner jokes. Thankfully, as the game progresses, the characters grow beyond the stereotypes. The truth about Bwana and his brother is that they have lived by clinging to the literal and metaphorical edge of society, and are being not-so-slowly "pushed off." Thus their journey to the fabled Underland is both an escape from desperation and (potentially) a cultural allegory.
I don't want to make The Journey Down sound like something other than what it is: a comedy adventure game. For a comedy adventure game, it does contain some serious elements and broader themes, as well as the usual productive misuse of everyday items that characterizes the genre.
Technically, the game is well-put-together, with a very convenient swipe-to-show-hotspots mechanic and low overhead: it ran well on my old 4th gen Touch, and better on my new Mini. The art is original and fresh, and the reggae-jazz soundtrack is superior.
The puzzles are of middling difficulty and they all make sense, but are run-of-the mill fare overall, with one exception that I won't spoil here. The voice acting is good, and many characters have optional dialogue branches that provide tantalizing clues to the nature and mythology of the world. Unlike, for example, Telltale's The Walking Dead [Free], dialogue isn't used to make key decisions with lasting consequences.
Like The Walking Dead, The Journey Down is serial, and this game is part one of four. Seriality and a black protagonist are just about the only common points between The Journey Down and The Walking Dead, and that's not a bad thing. The combination of lighthearted play and serious themes in this game fits with its world and it's own Bwana-like story: a free retro-styled version of the first chapter (PC only) attracted enough positive attention to drive the commercial development of the series.
I'm looking forward to the forthcoming chapters of the series, but my ultimate judgment of the series will depend on how Skygoblin handles the larger themes in the world and the continued development of the characters, especially Lina, a confident and intellectual woman who is clearly central to the plot, but who spends this game waiting for Bwana and Kito to get their act together.
I credit Square Enix's Final Fantasy IV as being the first game to really make me see the wonders of the role-playing genre. Just as FF4 ushered in the golden age of 16-bit RPGs on the SNES, it also began an interest in me that continues to this day. Thus, one could imagine my excitement when we found out a few works ago that Square Enix would be porting over the DS version of Final Fantasy IV to iOS. Just as was the case with Final Fantasy III[$15.99 / $16.99 (HD)] when it debuted in 2011, FFIV [$15.99] for iOS should be considered the definitive version of a classic title and is a must-have for any RPG aficionados.
Following the trials and tribulations of the Dark Knight Cecil, Final Fantasy IV is the first game of the series heavily driven by narrative. The story is also pretty engaging (for its time) with themes of genocide, betrayal, atonement and sacrifice, along with a few twists. While the game does offer the opportunity to deviate from the storied path set before you with side quests and optional dungeons, those adventures are few and far between. Still, I'm a huge fan of the epic tale weaved in Final Fantasy IV and I'm glad to see it stand the test of time and succeed even on iOS.
Meanwhile, FFIV employs the same, classic turn-based random battle that has been a staple of the series. Rather than the customizable job-based system found in FFIII, each character in FFIV has a pre-defined class that can't be modified. However, characters that come and go from your party can impart augments, items that can bestow that particular character's special ability to another character. While this offers some ability to customize, the augment system in general is rather unnecessary and feels tacked on (which it is, considering augments didn't exist in the original SNES version).
Similar to the iOS port of Final Fantasy III, FFIV enjoys a number of improvements over its DS predecessor. For starters, the visuals are nicely improved, taking advantage of the higher graphical and processing prowess of iOS devices. The music has also been upgraded, with each remixed song of the classic Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack sounding exquisite. The difficulty has also been tweaked, with two difficulty modes available (a pretty unique addition for classic FF games). I'm particularly pleased with the changes to difficulty, as the game seems to require less grinding than previous versions. This change goes hand-in-hand with the ability to auto-map dungeons, a feature sorely missing from the original and a welcome addition to this version.
In addition, FFIV also employs the same touch-based revamp of the menu system found in FFIII, allowing for much easier touch-based navigation. Despite these improvements, menu navigation can still be a bit cumbersome, especially during battles with characters that have a large amount of spells. Still, the inclusion of an 'Auto-battle' mode (along with some simple command customization) alleviates most of the annoyance.
While we've mostly focused on what has and hasn't changed in this port, what's more important is the simple fact that Final Fantasy IV is still an amazing game to play. The overall story, character development and pacing are excellent. The modifications to the core gameplay, whether they were changed from the US SNES version to the DS version or created exclusively for the iOS port, make the game more accessible to a wider audience. While the 3D visuals don't illicit the same feel as the original sprites of the SNES version, they still do a great job preserving the look and feel of the overarching tale (iffy voice acting notwithstanding). With so many RPGs feeling unfinished or superficial on iOS it's nice to actually play one that hits all the notes and demonstrates why it was, and still is, a classic. Sure, there's a lot of nostalgia in play here, but there's a reason why Final Fantasy IV is so memorable. I'd suggest checking it out to see why.
Are you the sort of person who knows all about the majestic alot? Have you considered sending your friends posters to help them with their little their/there/they're problem? Well then, we should probably hang out some time, since insufferability loves company. Also, you might want to take a look at The Grading Game [$0.99 / Free].
There's an argument to be made that this isn't really much of a game, that it's just badly disguised work. You take poorly written 'student papers' plucked straight out of Wikipedia, locate the errors that have been inserted into the text, and see how well you did at tracking them all down within a short timer. For the wrong person, this would be agony. If you're anything like me, though, you'll love it.
It's the timer that does it. I'm not the fastest editor out there, and The Grading Game isn't exactly generous. So many great games are about snap reflexes for skills you'll likely never use in real life, but this one hones skills that are actually pretty useful. Get good enough at it and you'll have no problem spotting a misspelling, a run-on sentence or a poorly-place punctuation mark at a glance.
There are two ways to play The Grading Game. One, Career mode, has you work your way through dozens of levels that focus on individual topics. Each time you complete a level you earn fake cash and unlock the next. The narrative has you grading to pay off a crippling pile of student loan debt, working for the abhorrent Dr. Snerpus. Fail his students and he's ecstatic. Let them through with a decent grade and you're fired.
Career mode's levels are split into three rounds, and your performance on each is paid out into one hefty total—supposing you've managed to get the students down to sufficiently low grades. Each round generally has its own style of play. Sometimes it's a matter of finding a certain number of errors before the timer runs out. Sometimes sections pop up one at a time, each with a single error to find. Occasionally a whole round will hinge on finding one sneaky little error, a nice break for your marking hand.
In Quick Play mode you're still working for Snerpus toward the same goal, but this time the play is more or less endless. Each time you finish a round you're presented with a new one, and you keep going until you fail to, er, fail a student.
The problems with this game are the ones you might expect if you're a seasoned stickler. There are rules that aren't always cut and dry, so the difference between success and failure can sometimes ride on iffy calls. Similarly, there are occasional errors in the text that the developers apparently neither introduced nor noticed. You get hit with a time penalty for incorrectly marking an error, so this can be a hassle.
I'm also going to nitpick briefly, as this is a game for nitpickers. The Grading Game is a nag. It nags me about following the developers on Twitter. It nags me about rating the game. It prompts me with all manner of prompts, and I'm really not interested. Learn to take no for an answer, mode of expression.
Most of the time, though, The Grading Game is pretty cool—assuming your idea of cool is finding other people's mistakes and punishing them. Allow me to propose that it's a better outlet for that sort of thing, than, say, your friends' Facebook conversations, or comments on blogs. Not only will The Grading Game make you a better, faster, more precise editor, it could make you more likeable to boot. How many games can claim that?
Mike Singleton's The Lords of Midnight [$4.99] was originally released for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, on magnetic cassette tape. It was quite possibly the most ambitious game of its time, and you can see the roots of the modern open-world RPG in it as well as its influence on later strategy games and the development of the graphical adventure game. The iOS port is by Chris Wild, and his devotion to the game, and its sequel, Doomdark's Revenge is obvious.
The first thing that will strike most players is the unique look of Lords of Midnight. Rather than embrace the "pixelated" look of most classic and retro games, Singleton and Wild decided to keep the aesthetic of the original, with its bright, crisp primary colors, while sharpening the images to the resolution of modern devices. The result is distinctive and perfectly lucid in its presentation of meaningful information, but it does take a little getting used to – at first, the game looks like a construction-paper version of Lord of the Rings.
Certainly Lords of Midnight is deeply and unabashedly indebted to Tolkien. The scenario is familiar: on the night of the winter solstice, the Witchking Doomdark invades the lands of the free. Disunited human lords, fey creatures of the forest, and tower-dwelling wizards must be united to fight him even as one unique individual, Morkin the half-Fey, sets out into the heart of the enemy's territory in a perilous quest to destroy the Ice Crown, the focus of Doomdark's power. There's even a wretched Gollum-like creature, Fawkrin, who may play a crucial role in the story.
Unlike its inspiration, however, Lords of Midnight includes contingencies. To win, either the armies of Luxor the Moonprince must conquer Doomdark's citadel of Ushgarak, or the Ice Crown must be destroyed. The game is lost only if Morkin is killed and the armies of the free are defeated. Moreover, there are are at least two ways to destroy the Ice Crown, but I'll say no more of that...
Lords of Midnight bills itself as "epic" and still feels epic today, even thought the world is smaller and can be explored much faster than in a modern RPG. This is partially due to a remarkably clever multiple first-person perspective system and a turn-based mechanic in which each of your characters can use up the hours of the day independently, and then Doomdark's forces move by night.
I keep comparing Lords of Midnight to the modern RPG, but the developers describe it as an "Adventure Strategy game." There are no levels to gain, or skills to learn in Lords of Midnight. Inventory plays a nominal role and is managed automatically, and combat is resolved instantaneously and without explanation. The look and feel, however, is much closer to Wizardry (1981) than Kings Quest (1984), and Morkin's quest feels more like the sneaking about that Frodo and Samwise do than the object-use puzzles of text and graphic adventure games.
I think modern players will find the Strategy component of the game more familiar, as it plays a bit like an ancestor of King's Bounty (1990) and especially the subsequent Heroes of Might and Magic games. You recruit the diverse Lords of Midnight to your cause, and they in turn recruit infantry and horsemen at fortifications. Armies only travel with a hero/lord, and they can meet other armies on open ground or lay siege to the enemy's keeps and citadels.
Heroes without armies can fight Doomdark's scattered minions (Wolves, Skulkrin, Trolls, and Dragons), but have no chance against an organized army. The difficulty curve is surprisingly flat for these lesser battles, and hard to predict unless your hero has one of the "-slayer"swords, which seem to give a 100% success rate against the specified enemy type.
In my first game, Mokin encountered wolves on the first turn. Figuring he could take a few wolves, I told him to fight, and then he was (permanently) dead. That's it. One entire path to victory foreclosed before turn 2. In another case, I had a different hero fight dragons without an army or Dragonslayer sword on the first turn, and he slaughtered them.
This is one of the legacies of game design of the period that may make it hard for some fans of modern games to get into Lords of Midnight. Another is that not only do clashes between armies happen between turns, but there's no combat report: to find out how many soldiers each side lost, you have to go to the Lord(s) in question (assuming any of your heroes still live).
Clues that are strategically helpful and/or relevant to Morkin's quest can be garnered at towers and occasionally elsewhere, but the process is tedious and the average answer is useless, something like "the Lord of Utarg can be found at the keep of Utarg." It seems like the best strategy is to play a couple of games just to gather information (the game is not randomized in this way), and then play to win. On a related note, the in-game tutorial tells you that you don't have to read the included novella, but if you don't, you are likely to waste time trying strategies that are intended to be impossible, like trying to confront Doomdark's armies head-on on the plains of Blood.
The game's interface is well-designed for touch, and is easy to navigate and use with one significant caveat. At least on my 4th gen iPod Touch, I had to aim low on or even below the smaller icons in order to select them. This sometimes caused problems with the pop-up tutorials, where missing the small book icon could cause the selected character to move forward one "space."
I mentioned the lucidity of the game's art before: this is one of its greatest strengths. Unlike in most modern overrendered games, you always know what you're looking at in Lords of Midnight. If there's an army far off on the plain, you can see their banners but not make out their numbers. When seeking a magical "henge" or one of the towers of the Wise, you will be able to see it in the first-person view before it shows up on the automap (unless something tall, like a citadel or mountain range, is directly in the way).
Once you get used to the game's combat mechanics and the touch sensitivity, this clarity of vision makes it easy to avoid "stupid" mistakes. The way you can play a couple of minutes at a time with no worries about losing your progress and little concern over forgetting where you were shows both that the original game is suited to mobile play and that the adaptation plays to that strength.
If you're interested in classic games, especially fantasy and/or strategy games, Lords of Midnight is a must-have. On the other hand, if you are an action gamer whose idea of "old school" is Goldeneye 64, you'll want to give this one a pass.
Mike Singleton died this past fall, and with him any possibility of a long-intended final game rounding out the trilogy. Wild's release of the iOS version on December 21st, 2012, the winter solstice and the night the world was "supposed to" end but did not, is a fitting tribute.
When Square Enix first released the 3DS version of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy in the US this summer, it was a welcome departure from the standard fare we've come to know from the Final Fantasy name. Instead of creating a standard RPG, Theatrhythm celebrated the incredibly large catalog of music that spans the entire Final Fantasy series with a good rhythm game wrapped in some light RPG garb. With the iOS port of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy [Free], Square Enix has made some significant changes to the game, both good and bad. While some of the changes (particularly in regards to IAP) might turn-off a lot of players, I think the upgrades outweigh most of the bad, making this a rich music game worth checking out.
Like most music games, Theatrhythm challenges players to perform moves on the screen to the tune of songs. Songs are divided into two stages, Field Music and Battle Music. Battle Music Stages have players tapping, swiping and holding notes with each successful note doing damage to enemies that are encountered. Field Music Stages, meanwhile, follow your lead character on an overworld journey and operate similarly with the exception that hold notes require you to trace up and down the screen. Finishing songs reward experience for your party, which go towards leveling up your characters.
You've probably already made one big, incorrect assumption about Matchblocks [$0.99 / Free], so let's get this out of the way: it's not a match-3. Yes, it does look a lot like one in its poppy, colorful way, but it's that other kind of matching, the kind where you see a color or pattern and parrot it. You know, the Simon-kind of matching.
There's a little Tetris in this bad boy, too, as you frantically try to clear the screen while more and more blocks fall from some mysterious world above. These are good, strong inspirations. Importantly, they're not Bejeweled. It's pretty great that One Minute Games (Commander Pixman [$1.99]) has made a game that I haven't played before. It's even better that it's fun.
My arm still aches from last night's marathon run. This game is not designed with RSI sufferers in mind, certainly. Sequences of squares fall from the top of the screen, and there is a row of colors at the bottom. To play, you tap the colors on the bottom in order to match the blocks that fall. When you match a full sequence, you clear it.
If Hollywood Monsters [$5.99] feels like a bit of a throwback to yesteryear’s adventure gaming heyday, well, that’s because it is. I mention the following not to bog you down with the game’s lineage, but to help you better understand the context with which it truly exists: Hollywood Monsters, freshly out for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 and both platforms more recent iterations, came out in 2011 on PC as The Next Big Thing, which itself was a sequel to a somewhat obscure 1997 PC adventure game called Hollywood Monsters. The reason why this sequel bares the same name as its predecessor? My guess is it’s the same reason that it’s coming to the iPad, etc. all this time later: Nobody really played or remembered the original.
You don’t need to have any prior experience or knowledge of the games’ series because it’s instantly recognizable: It’s an adventure game in the more modern sense of the genre term, where you control multiple protagonists and don’t need to worry extensively about scooping up anything not bolted down “just in case.”
In my apparent unintentional quest to provide a splash of snooty culture to everywhere I contribute, what came to mind for me while playing Word Derby [$0.99 / Free], Chillingo’s newest addition to the word-game oeuvre (nope, that isn't the snooty part of the sentence), is the inherent unfairness of competitive word games explored in the Broadway musical 'The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee' song “Pandemonium” (yup, that’s it).
The gist of the song is that spelling against your rivals or friends relies on the luck of the draw: You might get “elephant” and I’ll get “tuberculosis” (a word I actually drew in the fourth grade, that I got eliminated from the spelling bee with). Many iOS word games attempt to even the playing field by giving everyone the same letters to take a spelling machete to, and there haven’t been many new wrinkles added to it since. Word Derby is a little overzealous in its attempts to jazz things up, but more of the ideas work than misfire here, meaning it merits a look — particularly if you’re a fan of Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] or Scramble With Friends [Free / Free].
How this tarnishes both Words With Friends and Scramble's crowns somewhat is in its execution: You can play with four people total (instead of just one other) and there is a greater emphasis on spelling a higher-scoring word instead of a bunch of words.
Another year, another entry in Gameloft'sModern Combat series. As was the case with Fallen Nation[$6.99], Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour [$6.99] continues the trend of a decent single player campaign with an established formula made successful with the previous Modern Combat games. While players won't find anything particularly innovative or substantially new to the series, they'll still find a campaign with all the pros (and cons) we've come to know from Modern Combat.
Following an overarching tale of terrorists launching simultaneous attacks around the world and kidnapping the president, Zero Hour puts you in the role of several different protagonists (and antagonists, for that matter) as they each play their parts in the larger narrative. The game employs some interesting techniques, such as letting you play the same event but from the perspectives of different teams. While Zero Hour isn't going to win any awards for story-telling, it still manages to weave a somewhat cohesive story, even if the plot is completely over-the-top (and really, what military shooters these days aren't?). Series veterans will even see the return of an old enemy from Fallen Nation, although he seems to have become a complete caricature of every generic bad guy ever.
The first time I played Choice of Games' The Fleet [$2.99], the hideous Tribbles succeeded in their conquest of Altair 4. The second time, my homeworld, Earth 2, wound up in the horrid reptilian clutches of the Republicans. It was only on my third try that I liberated Duroon from the Kargham (I went with default names that time.)
The Fleet is Choice of Games' latest iOS gamebook, and at a glance, looks similar to their recent sci-fi release, Choice of the Star Captain [$2.99]. After all, both feature space ships and megalomanical aliens. The style, however, couldn't be more different. Choice of the Star Captain is farcical, somewhere in the cosmology of Red Dwarf, Bill the Galactic Hero and the Space Quest games.
Interest in the retro gaming scene has really expanded in the last few years, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of capable mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad and the App Store behind them. As such, retro-minded iOS gamers have a wide range of games to choose from, such as retro-inspired new releases, retro remakes, as well as the actual games of olde brough forth through faithful emulation. It is in the last arena that, early this year, Rantmedia Games decided to toss its hat, sharing word of their upcoming Vectrex Regeneration, a one-stop-shop for fans of the much vaunted, early '80s Vectrex console.
We have been following Rantmedia's progress closely since then, and are pleased to have finally had an opportunity to put their Vectrex emulation / game library through its paces. Vectrex Regeneration [Free], a universal app for the iPad (2 and up) and iPhone (4 and up), is now live in the App Store, and here's the low-down.
First, some needed history. Released in late 1982 by General Consumer Electric (GCE), the Vectrex is a highly unique game system. Unlike every other console of the time, the Vectrex features an integrated CRT display -- but not of the standard, horizontal-scan variety. The Vectrex utilizes a vector monitor, which is similar to an oscilloscope and draws its graphics on the screen in a fashion similar to the display process of a laser light show. It's the only console from gaming's past defined by a complete lack of jaggies.
There's a certain kind of puzzle game that would gnaw away at my gaming hours if I let it, logic puzzles with a hint of drawing, like Picross, or the excellent PathPix series on iOS. These are games that rely on incredibly simple and clear rules. Colors and numbers sit on a grid, and they tell you exactly how to put together a picture if only you can figure out how to make them all work together.
