Hello everyone, and welcome to the week! It’s time once again for our look back at the noteworthy updates of the last seven days. Some really great games got big updates this week, with at least one long-awaited content drop finally arriving. Mix in a few of the regular updaters and you’ve got a nice list to chew on while enjoying your coffee. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper or by participating in the TouchArcade forums. This weekly summary is just here to fill you in on the things you might have missed. Let’s go for it!
Jetpack Joyride, Free Let’s kick things off with a very familiar face. Jetpack Joyride has been getting rather consistent updates for the last while, so it’s not that surprising to see it climbing on board the Lunar New Year train. Collect Red Envelopes to unlock a variety of Lunar New Year-themed goodies, like the Golden Ox Costume, the Dumpling and Chinese Fan Jetpacks, the Nian Chopper, and the Gold Plated Koi. Lots of cool stuff up for grabs if you’ve got the time and/or money required. And if you don’t? Well, you can enjoy the new theme while it lasts, if nothing else.
Dan The Man Platformer, Free While this game doesn’t get quite as many updates as its stablemate Jetpack Joyride, it does join in on the odd holiday now and then. The latest version celebrates the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, bringing in a new multiplayer event with new arena layouts, a new Huggies fighter costume, and some new Valentine’s icons and emotes. You… sigh… you Dan’t want to miss it! I really need to talk to my agent about these jokes they’ve been having me read lately.
Star Traders: Frontiers, $6.99 Realistically speaking, I could include Star Traders: Frontier in these articles every week. There’s new stuff coming all the time, it’s just a matter of how comfortable I am with including the same game every time. Now, most of the time? That I’m okay with. The latest version adds the new Rychart-only Peak Velocity Matrix 4, with plenty of perks you’ll want to take advantage of. A lot of tweaks have been made to the Mutiny system, so you’ll want to be a bit more careful about letting unrest grow among your crews. Other than that, you get a few more bug fixes and adjustments, as usual. Not a bad little update all around.
Marvel Contest of Champions, Free We’ve got a double-dose of Marvel updates to check out this week, starting with the stalwart Contest of Champions. Emotions are running wild in the Marvel Universe, and for once it doesn’t involve the fans. No, this time it’s the heroes that are acting odd, and anyone who has been on more than a few trips with Marvel’s First Family will know that when this kind of thing happens, the nefarious Psycho-Man isn’t far behind. But wait… is Kl’rt the Super-Skrull also mixed up in this mess? Get to the bottom of it all by playing the latest quests and events, and enjoy a little holiday fun with the Lunar New Year event on top of all of that.
MARVEL Strike Force: Squad RPG, Free I love that the icon for this particular game is using a version of Spider-Man with the Raimi-style raised, reflective webbing on his suit. Very nostalgic. Anyway, this update puts the once-popular X-Men character Jubilee in front. She may not be as big as she was back in the day, but I still like her. She’s one of four new playable characters, with the remaining newcomer slots filled out by Bishop, White Tiger, and Moon Knight. Some improvements have been made to the Real-Time Arena, and the Dark Dimension has seen some updates as well. Most of the other changes in this version involve bug fixes and balance tweaks, but that’s fine enough gravy for the new characters.
Asphalt Legends Unite, Free Time for the vroom-vrooms, friends. Asphalt 9: Legends has its first big update of the year, and it’s a fairly big fellow. There are five new cars to collect along with return engagements for some of the more popular rides from previous seasons. That’s part of the latest season, Fire & Lightning, which brings a number of race events to complete and rewards to earn. Take part in the Inferno Automobili event and you may be able to earn yourself a lovely 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport for your trouble. Basically, there are plenty of good reasons to hit the road again, and that’s all you really want from an update to this kind of game, right?
Fire Emblem Heroes, Free Four years. This game has been running quite successfully for four whole years. By this point I’m sure this game has made Nintendo more money than the entire rest of the franchise added together. Well, at least it’s a good game. Anyway, some events are going on celebrating the anniversary, so do check in to see what’s what. This update also adds a new feature called My Summoner that allows you to customize your avatar, equip them with skills and accessories, and take them into Mjolnir’s Strike battles. Those battles now take place on 8 x 10 maps and have some new mechanisms to reckon with. Finally, some adjustments have been made to the pools for future summoning events.
Toy Blast, Free Wow, there’s a lot going on in the update notes for the latest version of Toy Blast. Yes, it’s the typical update of 50 new levels to play, probably with very little in-game context. But these notes! They talk about a windy autumn afternoon where Sir Rhino is waiting for his lover. But unbeknownst to him, Ms. Mouse is right behind him at the watchmaker, taking her time and possibly putting their rendez-vous at risk. This all sounds very salacious, friends. Very, very salacious. I mean… a rhino and a mouse? No, no, no. There are some barriers that even true love cannot overcome, I think. I need to move on before I overthink this even further.
Mini Metro, $3.99 Oh nice, another Mini Metro update. I really appreciate that the developers keep adding to this game. It offered plenty to begin with, so getting so much additional content is the finest cherry on top of the sundae. This update is connected to the Lunar New Year, adding a new city, Chongqing, to the line-up of locations. This relatively large city sits at the meeting of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, an interesting bit of geography that is sure to throw more than a few wrenches into your planning.
Wayward Souls, $7.99 Many of you probably have guessed who this week’s winner of the coveted UMMSotW award would be. Wayward Souls is an awesome game. I loved it all those years ago when I reviewed it, and I still love it now. Sure, I also really like Death Road to Canada, but I think this is Rocketcat Games’ masterpiece. This hotly-anticipated update adds the Paladin, Gallus, to the playable line-up. He’s super-powerful, so he has his own extra-challenging dungeon designed specifically to put his skills to the test. Along with the dungeon, there’s new music, new story, new equipment, new abilities, and some new special appearances for Gauntlet bosses. There are a few other things in this update, but those are the main points. Sadly it seems as though this will be the final major update for the iOS version, but what a way to go out!
That about wraps it up for last week’s significant updates. I’m sure I’ve missed some, though, so please feel free to comment below and let everyone know if you think something should be mentioned. As usual, major updates will likely get their own news stories throughout this week, and I’ll be back next Monday to summarize and fill in the blanks. Have a great week!
