Dog Fight 2:
Dog Fight 2 is an aerial combat game set around World War 1 which has you doing acrobatic feats while shooting down enemy planes and bombing key targets. You gain bonuses and score multipliers by performing ace evasion tricks such as low altitude flying, evasive loops, and barrel rolls. You control your aircraft using the arrow keys, fire your primary machine guns using the space bar, and the shift and/or control keys are used for dropping bombs.
Crush the Castle:
Link
Crush the Castle tasks you with operating a trebuchet armed with several different types of rocks to load into it in order to topple the castle your sieging. This game boasts very simplistic controls: simply click the mouse to start the trebuchet and click once more to release your payload. While toppling the castle will usually net you a victory you must be certain that every one in the castle dies (gets hit with either your launched rock or by a wall that came falling down).
The Heist 2:
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The Hist 2 puts you in charge of operating a getaway car and managing crew members in order to work you way to robbing 5 million dollars. You start at a home screen that allows you to hire new specialists (hacking, muscle, safe cracking, etc…), buy new weapons, upgrade your getaway car, and select a mission. Once a mission is activated your selected specialists will attempt the heist and then try to make it to the getaway car. This is where the real fun starts as you try to work your way down roads trying to evade the police while taking your car off jumps and having your specialists shoot out the windows.
Dragon Slayers:
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Dragon Slayers puts you in control of a ballista as you try to defend your castle from swarming dragons. controls are simple simply use the mouse to aim load and fire the ballista. after every successfully defeated wave of scaly foes you can use your hard earned gold to buy castle upgrades to make the subsequent waves a bit less tasking.
Magic Pen 2:
Link
Magic Pen 2 is a very creative game where you are given a red ball in a level that must reach the flag and your only tool is a pen with which you can create a slew of objects simply by drawing them in order to reach the flag.
Tags: addicting games, crush the castle, dog fight, dragon slayers, free games, magic pen, online games, the heist
First off let me say that Gameloft’s Castle of Magic is beautiful. I mean its absolutely stunning. From the large and candy coating colored levels to the inventive and and enormous bosses at the end of each stage. There’s so much that Castle of Magic does right that its almost unfortunate that I have to proceed to my main gripe with the game.
O.K, so, my primary complaint, and this is a big one too. The controls are just not as precise as you need them to be to pull off the platforming antics this game demands. The first few times you fall of a ledge or into a pit can be chalked up to your fault. But by your 20th inexplicable fall or death, you begin to realize that maybe it isn’t your fault. Castle of Magic’s virtual d-pad is just not adequate for the job. Too often you cannot accurately direct jumps or target enemies. Ducking is entirely too sensitive, too. If you thumb so much as slips even a hair toward the bottom part of the d-pad, your little magician slams to a halt and ducks. The fact that the controls are not matched for Castle of Magic is a huge disappointment because, as mentioned, this game does so much right. You have been pulled into another realm by an evil wizard, fortunately, this fantasy world turns you into a magician as well. And with your newly acquired powers, you set out to rescue your kidnapped sister and collect as many purple gems as possible. These gems are similar to the gold rings you find in Sonic games. When touched by an enemy, you lose gems but can reclaim them. There are also many powers your wizard can acquire, such as grabbing a magical feather that turns you into an archer enabling you to fire arrows that not only pierce enemies, but they also create impromptu ladders for climbing walls.
Where Castle of Magic shines though is in its level design that hearkens back to the golden days of platforming games like Mario Bros. There are tons of secret rooms loaded with coins, hidden stars, and plenty of other secrets to uncover.But, as stated prior the enjoyment from playing these fantastic levels is marred by the shoddy controls and instead of allowing you to feel nostalgic and have fun, you will most likely find yourself cursing about missing the same jump for the last ten of your lives.
All-in-all, Castle of Magic is a great game that has had a great injustice done to it in the way of bad controls. The virtual pad in Gameloft’s Hero of Sparta worked great, so it is a mystery as to why the d-pad in Castle of Magic just isn’t up for it. Too often will you find yourself struggling with moving and jumping and it results in a frustrating death. I certainly stuck with it, though, in hopes that practice would make perfect and I wanted to see what delights appeared on my screen next, such as the colorful candy stage or the loss of gravity that turned things upside-down. I really hope for an update that addresses the controls — barring that, and external controller because for once on the iPhone, I really wanted a physical d-pad. Give the lite version a download and see if you can get around the controls in Castle of Magic, because if you have the patience, there is a hell of a game waiting for you.
Tags: app, application, castle of magic, game, Gameloft, iphone, ipod touch, platformer, review
For those who have never heard of the Doom franchise let e give you a brief over view. Doom is about a space marine who, while investigating an accident in a research station on mars, happens upon an infestation of demons and he must fight through them till he ends up finding the heart of the problem, a gateway to hell itself. Traditionally Doom has always been a first person shooter but this iPhopne/iPod Touch remake strays the course to become an on-rails shooter a la Time Crises or House of the Dead.
The controls in Doom Resurrection are well designed and very accessable. Tapping the upper right of the screen reloads, you’ve got ammo count in the top center, and your own health in the bottom center. The options menu also lets you invert the cursor controls if you prefer reversed tilting, and there’s a lefty flip for the fire and dodge buttons. With no sensitivity change, however, shooting at corners requires a bit too much of a tilt for my liking, though the game does a nice job of keeping most of the enemies out of the more extreme corners.
As most fans of the series would expect there is a variety of weapons strewn throughout the game. Some of these include an assult rifle, double barreled shotgun, plasma rifle, chainsaw and yes, the near famous BFG. Weapon selection is more than just an addition to visual flair though, as different weapons are more or less effective on different enemies. Health and ammo pickups are available throughout levels and are picked up by tapping on items directly.
As far as the overall presentation goes, Doom Resurrection is one of the better looking iPhone games, and a true benchmark as to what the iPhone can do. The enemy and character models blow most 3D games found on the iPhone out of the water, the lighting is very well done, and other than of some iffy blood textures Doom Resurrection is an incredibly good looking game. There’s also a pretty nice amount of enemy variation throughout the game and each has their own gimmick to them. Commando zombies require you to take cover, the fat zombies can grab you and require that you shake your device in order to escape, some enemies will fire projectiles and have you constantly dodging, and the Forgotten and Maggots do a lot of rush attacks. There’s even a pretty awesome battle with onrushing pink demons and a chainsaw you just found.
On the audio side things are kept pretty creepy and well produced, though you won’t get music for many portions of the game and voiceover work is exclusive to the game’s intro. Still, with assets taken and scaled from Doom 3 it’s at least obvious where your higher price tag ($9.99) is coming from. I’ll repeat myself, this is a great looking iPhone game.
While I had a blast playing Doom Resurrection I was left with the feeling that I should be getting more in order to warrent the premium price tag. While eight levels at about 15 minutes each is still a nice amount of content, and you can always go back and play through each stage on harder difficulties to extend play. There are no leaderboards for top scores though, so you’re basically getting a couple hours of play (two to three for most) for $10. There are deeper games out there in the premium price bracket, but if you have your heart set on Resurrection either spring for the game now or hang tight for a price drop. It’s a great game, I’m a fan of the on-rails design, and it’s visually stunning for iPhone. It might just be a bit too costly for most impulse buyers.
Flamming heads are always annoying.
Who's a good doggy?
The cinamatics are jaw dropping compared to most other iPhone offerings
Told you the blood effects were shoddy.
Tags: app, application, Doom, doom resurrection, game, ID, iphone, ipod touch, on-rails, review, shooter
Nostalgia is a powerful force. This is especially tre with React Games’ remake of the classic commodore 64 title Archon (One of EA Games’ very first titles). Archon is a strange mix between a classic game of chess and an action game. Two sides, light and dark, square off in a battle for control of a checkerboard of white and black spaces. Victory comes either when one army is completely destroyed or one faction controls all five power points on the board. It was a smash hit 25 years ago and maintains a sizable fan base.
This is a faithful remake of the classic. Save for updated visuals and audio, nothing has been changed. All of the original pieces, from banshees to basilisks, are back and they use the same attacks. The flow of light and dark on the board remains so strategy-oriented players can wisely choose their strikes. All of the magic spells each team’s king-like character (wizard and sorceress) are the same, too. You can still summon elementals, heal wounded monsters, temporarily imprison foes, and more. Seriously, if you played Archon a few decades ago you’ll find yourself in some very familiar territory.
The action scenes that arise when two pieces vie for power of a square require good controls. For that Archon offers two schemes: virtual d-pad and tilt. Don’t bother with the tilt controls, they’re awful. The virtual d-pad is far superior, but even then it is not exactly as pin-point as some may demand. Sometimes I would get stuck on a rock or blow a shot due to fumbling with the virtual pad. However, I’m not sure what more React could do with touch-screen controls. It works well, but I know that for some it just will not work well enough.
Archon has multiple difficulty levels. The easy setting is almost too easy though. I was annihilating upper tier creatures such as unicorns with goblins (The chess equivalent of a chess pawn). But, boost the difficulty and you’ll be sure to find quite a challenge. Archon currently only has one game mode: single-player classic. Which I found relatively suprising considering how much fun it would be to play this game with a friend or even a random player from across the globe.
Pros:
- Very faithful remake of the original Reagen-era title.
- Fans of the original will love this revival.
Cons:
- Needs more game modes.
- Graphics may be too close to the original to entice the younger generation.
- Controls are in need of a bit of tweaking.
The forces of light and dark meet to battle for a chessboard.
Damn Banshees
Chess has never been so violent.
Tags: app, application, Archon, atari, chess, Commodore 64, game, iphone, ipod touch, React, review
They say that success is the greatest enemy of innovation and that proves to be true with Digital Chocolate’s Crazy Penguin Catapult 2. The original remains one of the most downloaded app store titles and thus I can see why the developers didn’t really want to rock the boat by altering the formula for its sequel.However, while I am disappointed that there is not much new to the sequel, it is still a very fun game of polar bear-smashing.
In Crazy Penguin Catapult 2, you use a catapult to launch penguins over a field of pesky polar bears. Penguins dive in front of the catapult and you must activate the catapult at just the right moment so that they fly out of your cave unscathed. If they smack into a wall or the ceiling, they cannot be used to defeat polar bears in the second-half of each stage. Once you’ve launched all of your penguins, you must then dive-bomb the polar bears and knock them off their perches. Some bears are protected by ice which must be broken, others are hidden in tunnels that must be infiltrated by a sliding a penguin through icy crevices.
Each stage has a required number of bears to bash into, but the more you hit the more stars you bank. When you gather a set amount of stars, you earn power-ups for your penguins. You can earn extra penguins so that you have more shots, bear-seeking penguins, drill helmets for breaking through ice, dynamite boxes that blow up patches of ice when hit, and much more. Some of the power-ups are new to Crazy Penguin Catapult 2. Other than new power-ups and 50 brand new stages, that’s about all that’s new to Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 that seperates it from the original.
Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 includes the strategy-style side game from the original, too. It’s still very playable and a nice addition to the winning casual game formula of penguin-launching that the developers have mastered. This is an excellent example of Digital Chocolate’s one-touch gaming philosophy that does not exclude any gamer, regardless of skill level. No need to worry about tilt sensitivity. No complicated button combos. Just tap to launch, tap to have a penguin initiate a dive.
So, in spite of Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 being something of a rehash of the first game, I still cannot help enjoying it. The concept is brilliant and that’s timeless. I think if you played the first game extensively, you may get less out of Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 than a newcomer. However, it still makes for some great fun especially at a $2.99 price tag.
Who doesn't love bowling with penguins.
Incoming!!!
Both lethal and fashionable. An unbeatable combo.
Tags: action, app, application, crazy penguin Catapult, digital chocolate, game, puzzle, review
I was relatively skeptical upon my first glance of Hero of Sparta. It seemed as if Gameloft was simply trying to jump on the bandwagon that is Sony’s God of War series and the blockbuster film “300″. However, instead of schlopping together aspects of the two franchises and relasing a sub-par clone Gameloft released a great action adventure game that pushes the envelope for iPhone gaming.
The game opens with a cinematic of your protagonist King Argos awakening on a desolate beach to find his ship in tatters and his crew missing. But, make no mistake while there is a mystery to be solved instead of sleuthing Argos takes up his sword and shield in order to solve things the way any true spartan warrior would, by killing any Greek mythological creatures he sees until the problem is resolved. There is no shortage of monsters to cut down, either. The Oracle’s Island, and the several stages the follow it, are crawling with Minotaur, centaurs, and gorgons just to name several of the enemies you will encounter.
When you kill monsters, you collect colored orbs that serve various purposes. Green orbs restore health while red orbs are accumulated until you can level up your weapons, just like you might find in the God of War series. It’s a nice touch, since it keeps you from just running past enemies. Sure, you may want to avoid a few battles when your health is lacking, but skipping too many means you cannot purchase the best upgrades and attacks and that will make some of the bigger battles much tougher.
In addition to collecting orbs, you also earn special equipment such a larger shield that unlocks a slam attack, a bigger sword, an axe, and more armor. The game is smart about doling out these improvements as it keeps you playing to see what you can earn next, keeping the game fresh throughout its entirety.
The control system is rather generic for this genre but still effective. You hold your device horizontally. There is a virtual analog stick in the lower left corner of the screen with the attack and defend buttons appearing in the lower right corner. I had very few problems controlling Argos, and those that I did encounter, were in the beginning of the game while I was still familiarizing myself with the inputs. The attack and defend buttons are always responsive and using them to unleash special moves and combos is easy. For example, when you get your shield upgrade, you can use it to push enemies back through a special move by pressing the defend button and then dragging your thumb up. Right away, Argos will release a shock wave that pulverizes nearby attackers. Gameloft’s virtual controls deserve to not only be looked at but imitated by other developers considering their own action games.
The 3D graphics in Hero of Sparta are top-notch. The world around Argos is richly detailed and painted with an impressive number of colors. The texture work on Argos, the monsters, and the environments is stellar. Hero of Sparta is illuminated by excellent light effects, too. Slowdown is rare. The soundtrack is as loud and bombastic, as you might expect for a “300″-style game.
At a budget price of $.99 its hard not to recommend Hero of Sparta to any action fans. This is a thrilling action game loaded with cinematic flair. The controls work exceptionally well and it’ll last you a good 6-7 hours of play time to finish up the adventure but you may go back just to find everything.
There are several different weapons (such as this bow) for you to dismiss foes with.
The cinamatics and top-notch
Gotta hate gorgons.
Tags: app, application, game, Gameloft, hero of sparta, iphone, ipod, review, touch
I doubt I’ll be the first to say it, but, what a disappointment. As a fan of the Xbox 360 franchise I was expecting at least a slight tie in with the epic space action/RPG game Mass Effect that came out a while back. However, I was severly dissappointed with what I had after downloading this game. What makes Mass Effect Galaxy such a tragedy is that it did not have to be a bad game. The iPhone is more than capable of hosting a Mass Effect experience that fans would appreciate.Would Mass Effect on iPhone be a huge epic like the Xbox 360 game? No, but it could get a hell of a lot closer to it than this disinterested shooter. This isn’t even a compromise; it’s a cop-out.
The game is a pointless tilt-and-tap shooter where you just clear out room after room of space thugs pretty similar to the arcade game “Smash TV”. You simply tap an enemy to target it and then Jacob does the rest of the work, auto-firing bullets until you either select another enemy or the current target is dead. You access special moves like biotic attacks (temporarily freeze the enemy) or shield removal by touching icons along the side of the screen. The most effective secondary attack is the heavy shell, which acts like a grenade. Each special move has a refill timer, so you cannot simply hammer on the heavy shells. Once you kill every enemy, the exit opens and you move into the next room only to repeat the exact same procedure with the obstacles and walls moved to different locations.
Tilting the phone to guide Jacob is clumsy. Supposedly, you can calibrate the accelerometer by pausing the game so you can play the game at any angle, such as sitting or in bed. This never did quite work right for me, the only time I could get Jacob to move with any degree of precision was when I held the iPhone parallel to the floor and hovered over it. The dialog scenes between combat missions are also slimmed down from the console game. Since the narrative was such an integral part of the Mass Effect console game, it was important for Bioware to include them here. You do not have the branching conversations but you can select responses from multiple options and sort of guide a conversation along. You can immediately challenge a foe and jump into combat, or talk it out a little and get more pieces of the story. How much consequence dialog scenes have is questionable. Your responses do not shape Jacob’s character like they did Shepherd’s in Mass Effect. That’s terribly disappointing since personal evolution is so critical to the Mass Effect experience.
As for graphics, the stylized, comic book-like direction doesn’t bother me at all. The drawings are smart and clean. What is unfortunate, though, is the weak animation. There are little half-assed animations throughout the game where Jacob will stay perfectly still, but his body just moves ahead. No leg movement. No arm movement. It looks weird. Worse, it looks cheap.
Unrelated gameplay mechanics with a popular console game license strapped on top of it do not fool anybody. The simple shooting scenes could have belonged to any game. That the Mass Effect universe is bolted on to them is puzzling and, as mentioned, very disappointing to a real Mass Effect fan like me. The technical issues like slowdown and clumsy controls are just further twists of the knife. Avoid this uninspired, un-fun game.
Sounds like... I really don't care anymore
Oooooh... another room full of bad guys what could await me after I finish up here....?
Oh yeah, thats right. Some more of the exact same thing...
Tags: app, application, bioware, Galaxy, game, iphone, ipod, Mass Effect, review, touch
Now, before you write Chillingo’s Knights Onrush off as yet another tower defense game you should know that it would be a grave mistake. Knights Onrush tweaks the tower defense credo by tasking you not with setting up a gauntlet to slaughter incoming enemies, but with arranging a series of defenses on the castle. With the gold you earn by killing enemy units, you can buy cannonballs, door strength upgrades, boulders, fireballs, bottomless pits, gigantic columns, dragon lures, and more. All of these defensive measures will help you keep the encroaching enemies from battering down your door during their multi-day onslaughts.
The controls in the game are pretty standard fare. When a fireball is active, just tap and hold to pick it up and the swing it toward a group of meddling knights to reduce them to charcoal. Tap a loaded cannon to blast the knights away from your gates. Touch a switch to grab a column and then drop it on enemies. You can also pick up knights individually by touching and holding them. While holding them, you can hang them on the dragon lure hook and wait for a passing dragon to swoop down and gobble them up or hold one over the fire pit and drop them to their doom when the lid opens up. Some knight come running in with explosive barrels which you can tap to make them blow up in their faces. Amidst all these weapons you still have the old standard of picking up a knight and then just swiping down to slam him into the ground.
With eleven different enemies, Knights Onrush will keep you from getting all too comfortable with basic strategies. You must prioritize enemies, like the little magicians or assassins, and ranged enemies. There are 12 different castles to defend, too, and many of the stages have specific scenarios and last different numbers of days.
The art style in this game is absolutely gorgeous. From the almost too cute to slaughter knights with huge heads and tiny bodies, to the bright red dragons, and vivid backgrounds. Everything in this game is bright colorful and vibrant enough to make you think your in some crazy, brutal, cartoon.But do not let its cartoon looks deceive you: there is a real-deal strategy game in here. This innovative take on the tower defense concept is one of the genre’s best.
Time to let loose some of that hatred for magicians.
Golden armor won't be saving you here knight.
Hey, Dragons can get hungry too ya know...
Tags: app, application, castle, Chillingo, defense, game, iphone, ipod, Knights, Onrush, review, touch, tower
