Company: Namco Players: One Price: $15/$12 Compatible: iPod touch, iPhone, iPad Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Friday, January 20, 2012 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod Rating an early 2012 port of a mid 1998 arcade game isn't easy, particularly when the title in question was ambitious at the time but has been surpassed numerous times by subsequent releases. Namco's universal iOS release SoulCalibur ($15/$12, aka Soul Calibur) is that game -- the first of many sequels to Soul Edge, a breakthrough one-on-one fighter that broke from convention by giving its polygonal combatants weapons, and successfully created medieval backdrops in which they could battle. By looking, sounding, and playing roughly as well on Apple's latest devices as it did on Sega's Dreamcast console 13 years ago, the semi-3-D SoulCalibur manages to become the most advanced game of its kind in the App Store, though it's hard to miss the small bugs, high price, and other ways in which the title falls short of iOS perfection. Soul Edge’s cast of characters felt like a largely serious bunch, marking the debut of the beautiful Greek swordstress Sophitia, vaguely monsterous dagger-wielding Voldo, classical German longsword warrior Siegfried, and Japanese-inspired samurai/ninja pair Mitsurugi and Taki, amongst others. SoulCalibur strategically tweaked the fighters to include more youthful and fantasy influences, adding characters such as the expanding sword-wielding Ivy, the Korean Elvis-alike nunchuck master Maxi, and the Chinese swordgirl Xianghua, while transforming the blonde Siegfried into the masked warrior Nightmare—one of several costume and identity swaps. Between the ten selectable fighters, you have the opportunity to battle with all sorts of different medieval weapons, and their on-screen interactions are amazingly impressive: Namco managed to make their glowing swipes, sparking collisions, and occasional bursts of energy look convincing—no easy feat back then, and one only Epic’s Infinity Blade games Read More
Company: Epic Games Price: $7 Compatible: iPhone 3GS/4/4S, iPod touch 3G/4G, iPad, iPad 2 Accessories Editor, iLounge Published: Thursday, December 1, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod When Infinity Blade launched just shy of a year ago, we were blown away. The game combined gorgeous graphics, intuitive controls, a beautiful soundtrack, and fun gameplay into an iOS-defining experience. It was a perfect showcase of just what the iPad and iPhone 4's hardware, specifically the A4 chip, is capable of. Infinity Blade earned not only a flat A rating from us, but also the distinction of iPad Game of the Year in our 2012 iPhone + iPod Buyers' Guide. It should come as no surprise then that Epic Games' announcement of Infinity Blade II ($7, version 1.0) at the iPhone 4S launch event in October 2011 was one of the highlights of the keynote address. Built to leverage the more powerful graphics capabilities of the A5, this sequel had a lot to live up to to best the original. In almost every way, it succeeded. If you’ve played Infinity Blade, the sequel will feel very familiar. You control the previously unnamed warrior Siris who, having just defeated the God King, is on a quest to find the Worker of Secrets—the creator of the Infinity Blade. He begins the game fully decked out, equipped with some the most powerful weapons and armor. After battling through a few opponents in an Asian-influenced opening section—one of the many cool teases in the game—you once again come face-to-face with the God King. Before the battle begins you’re felled by an arrow. As in the original game, your character is re-spawned. It’s revealed that Siris is a Deathless; he cannot truly die but instead goes through a cycle of rebirths. Having been reborn with low-level Read More
Company: Gameloft S.A. Players: One Price: $7 Compatible: iPod touch, iPhone, iPad Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Friday, October 28, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod As impressively as Apple's iOS devices have evolved over the past year into direct rivals for both portable and TV-tethered game consoles, it's unrealistic to expect even the best App Store games to fully rival the gameplay of top console releases -- in other words, Gameloft's new Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation ($7) isn't a full-fledged replacement for Activision's $60 Modern Warfare 3. But if you're a fan of first-person shooters, we strongly recommend that you check it out nonetheless, as it's certainly amongst the most impressive examples of its genre yet released for Apple's devices. Better yet, it's a no-nonsense universal game with support for every Apple device sold over the past two years, so you don't need to purchase it separately for an iPad and iPhone or iPod touch. While obviously inspired by the high-grit Modern Warfare series, Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation is, like Modern Combat 2, somewhat closer to Nintendo’s and Rare’s classic shooter Goldeneye 007 in execution: only rarely does the game depart from presenting you with shooting galleries full of well-armed but apparently not well-shielded enemies, and even then, the departures tend to be light on strategy and heavy on action—different types of shooting rather than anything requiring deep thinking. Before the game shifts away from its initial United States locales, you’ll enjoy a Modern Warfare-style night vision distance gunning mission in an airplane and a high-speed ATV/helicopter shooting mission from the back of a truck in the Alaskan woods, as well as multiple on-foot segments. Most of these segments involve swiping on the left of the screen to move, swiping at the center or right to change your Read More
Company: Bravo Game Studios Price: $4 Compatibility: iPod touch 3G/4G, iPhone 3GS/4, iPad, iPad 2 Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Thursday, July 14, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod There's a very odd sort of genius at play in Bravo Game Studios' newest release Xtreme Wheels ($4), an impressive 3-D update to Nintendo's classic motocross title Excitebike. Most of the time, gamers aren't supposed to enjoy repeatedly failing at a task, particularly when the consequence is the injury of a human on-screen avatar. But somehow, with a combination of gentle camera closeups, slow motion, 3-D ragdoll physics and groaning sound effects, Bravo turns every one of your motorcycler's many crashes into an amusingly brutal display -- enough to make for almost sick, repeated enjoyment no matter how many times they happen. Even after mangling that would make Jackass fans wince, you'll want to keep coming back to try and solve each of the game's puzzle-like levels. Putting its 1990’s-styled “extreme!” name aside, Xtreme Wheels is as up to date as App Store games get—a fully universal app with iPod touch and iPhone 4 Retina Display support, plus even better graphics on the iPad 2, where there’s even more screen real estate to let the detailed 3-D models and textures really shine. The game runs at a fine frame rate on the small devices, including menus that look too detailed to be realtime 3-D but are, and becomes nearly silky on the iPad 2, where you get to really enjoy objects, environments, and lighting effects that would have been unimaginable on portable devices 10 years ago. A fitting instrumental rock soundtrack plays in the background, well-matched with sufficiently punchy sound effects and the growling bike engine. You take control of a BMX-style motorcycle that rides through a series of 20 different courses Read More
Company: SNK Playmore Players: One-Two Price: $8 Compatible: iPod touch 3G/4G, iPhone 3GS/4, iPad/iPad 2* Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Friday, July 8, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod When Capcom's one-on-one fighting game series Street Fighter needed legitimate competition nearly two decades ago, rival Japanese developer SNK rose to the challenge by releasing a number of different rivals. Each title's characters were obviously inspired by but different from Street Fighter's, and evolved over time --with many sequels -- to become very compelling gap-fillers for Capcom's releases. The King of Fighters was a crossover title, taking some of the best characters from SNK's fighting and action games, and pioneering a new three-on-three format. Instead of choosing just one character, you picked a team of three, and winning required your team to have the last person standing. Now SNK Playmore has released The King of Fighters-i 002 ($8) for iPhone 3GS/4 and iPod touch 3G/4G devices, and though this isn't the perfect iOS fighting game, it feels even closer to the original source material than Capcom's App Store titles Street Fighter IV and Volt - Battle Protocol. Following Capcom’s lead, SNK has boiled The King of Fighters-i down from an arcade and console game with detailed, multilayered backgrounds and complex character animations into a flatter, simpler experience. The iOS title is based upon the latest KoF title, The King of Fighters XIII, but has only 14 characters compared with the console game’s 34, plus 12 completely flattened and unanimated backgrounds. Because of these reductions in scope, KoF-i’s is limited to Teams Fatal Fury, Japan, Women Fighters, and K’, plus solo characters Ash Crimson and Billy Kane. SNK fans keeping score will recognize a heavy bias in favor of Fatal Fury characters, with too few from Art of Fighting, and none from Ikari Read More
Company: Gameloft S.A. Players: One Price: $7 Compatible: iPod touch 3G/4G, iPhone 3GS/4, iPad, iPad 2 Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod In one critical and laudable way, the new 3-D action adventure game BackStab ($7, version 1.0.0) represents a major step forward for leading App Store game developer Gameloft: it is the first truly universal iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch game we can recall from this company, which previously sold "HD" and non-HD versions of its past games for separate devices. We are truly thrilled by the fact that BackStab works on iPhone 3GS/4s, iPod touch 3G/4Gs, and iPads at whatever their maximum resolutions are, and really does a great job of spotlighting the different devices' graphics processors and screens. BackStab isn't quite as ambitious visually as Infinity Blade, but moving away from device-specific game releases is a big step for Gameloft to have taken, and deserves praise. Apart from its universal iOS support, though, BackStab is otherwise pretty much the definition of a “solid” game, and cut from the same sort of good rather than great cloth we’ve seen in other Gameloft titles over the past year or so. You take control of Henry Blake, a British naval officer whose seeming friendship with fellow Captain Kane is ended with a double-cross during a violent raid of a city. Blake is knocked out and imprisoned, then told that his fiancee has been killed. This narrative occurs during some of the game’s many dark-themed dialogue scenes, which at times come nearly as close as possible to R-rated language. You need to help Blake escape from prison and take vengeance on Kane, using a virtual joystick to make Blake run and climb, screen swipes to change camera angles, and virtual buttons for attacks and Read More
Company: Llamasoft Price: $2 Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches, iPads Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Friday, March 4, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod As game designers go, Jeff Minter is a living legend. He was internationally known for his computer games even before he programmed Tempest 2000, one of the only must-have titles for Atari's final game console Jaguar. Thereafter, he was famous enough to attract considerable attention to the psychedelic visualizers and retro-styled games he released -- most often under the Llamasoft name. This week, Llamasoft released Minotron: 2112 ($2, version 1.0), so we wanted to give it a brief review today. It's a universal app for iPod touches, iPhones, and iPads. Minotron: 2112 is an updated version of Llamatron: 2112, itself an unlicensed Atari ST and Amiga computer clone of the classic 1982 Williams arcade game Robotron: 2084. All three games place you in control of a main character who can walk in eight directions inside a box, separately shooting in eight directions. The box is filled with enemies who shatter when you hit them, and you end a level by taking most of the targets out. Jeff Minter, a seemingly lifelong fan of furry beasts, transformed Robotron’s human lead character into an energy-blasting llama for Llamatron, and in Minotron, you instead control a minotaur. Minter tweaked the enemies and other on-screen obstacles from Robotron to Llamatron, notably adding a 16-ton weight to some levels as a crushing device for the unwary, and little odes to 1980’s culture and arcade games—enemy french fries and bananas look as if they could have come out of Atari’s classic Food Fight, while Berzerk and other seemingly familiar sprites pop up here and there, too. In addition to including a variety of power-ups, notably a multi-directional gun and a way to increase the Read More
Company: Electronic Arts Price: $7 Compatible: iPad Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod If ever there was a poster child for ambitious but buggy iPad gaming, Telltale Games would unfortunately top the list: the developer behind last year's seriously glitchy Wallace and Gromit The Last Resort has just released Back to the Future Ep 1 HD ($7), a similarly amazing use of the iPad's 3-D graphics hardware that feels as if it wasn't debugged before release. Fans of the Back to the Future movies and light walk-and-tap adventure games will be impressed by this title's ambitious storyline, voice acting, and fully realized 3-D world, but they'll also be shocked by the pervasive stuttering and glitches Apple overlooked when choosing its latest "iPad Game of the Week." Back to the Future includes a completely new storyline that seems to pick up where the first movie left off, following a relatively inexperienced Marty McFly on a quest to rescue mad scientist Doc Brown from a jail cell in the 1930’s—back when Hill Valley was in the midst of Prohibition-era boozing and mob activity. Using the time-traveling DeLorean and clues found by tapping on objects and people within Hill Valley, you move from one truly 3-D environment to the next, getting the chance to play with everything from the car’s famous Flux Capacitor to the massive speaker in Doc’s lab and new, less well-known inventions. Characters actually speak their dialogue using sophisticated facial animations; Marty, Doc, Biff, and George McFly all look and sound basically as they did in the films, albeit as cartoony avatars rather than photorealistic versions, with modestly caricatured features for dramatic effect. Additionally, familiar Hill Valley roads and areas are shown as they were in a decade sandwiched between ones presented in Read More
Company: Electronic Arts Price: $5 Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches, iPads* Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Thursday, February 10, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod Some classic arcade games are ideally suited to the iPhone and iPod touch. Thanks to virtual control innovations that were trailblazed by others and perfected by Electronic Arts, the just-released NBA Jam by EA Sports ($5, version 1.0.0) is one of them. Based heavily upon the original 1993 release with nods to its successors, the iOS version of NBA Jam captures the spirit of the breakthrough two-on-two basketball game and maintains all of its innovations -- plus some that were subsequently introduced -- but also misses two obvious slam dunk opportunities. Released in the heyday of one-on-one fighting games such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, Midway’s original NBA Jam took brilliant creative license with the sport of basketball, removing the visual clutter and squealing shoes associated with ten-player games in favor of a game that four people could play at once on a single arcade cabinet. Midway intensified the action by focusing on surreal dunks, eliminating fouls and most other violations, and adding a “turbo” button so that characters could run from one end of the court to the other at breakneck speeds. Like Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam included hidden easter egg features that kept players talking and hunting, and with the help of digitized photos of real NBA players, it delivered a better than realistic experience that could be enjoyed in quick, bite-sized sessions. The iPhone and iPod touch version of NBA Jam offers all of these features and more. You choose from any of the NBA’s teams, select two of a handful of players from a limited roster, and take control of one player for the duration of the eight-, twelve-, or twenty-minute Read More
Company: Capcom Price: $2 Compatible: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Monday, February 7, 2011 Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod If this hasn't already started thanks to the success of Rovio's Angry Birds, Firemint's Real Racing, and Gameloft's N.O.V.A. -- and the decline of Sony's and Nintendo's handheld platforms -- there will almost certainly be a point at which Apple's iOS devices become the primary target platforms for console game developers' latest handheld releases. When that day comes, we'll all look back on titles such as Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 Refrain ($2) and laugh -- first at the idea that major companies would knowingly release cell phone-quality dreck for such popular devices, and then that they'd risk damaging their most popular game franchises in the eyes of millions of players. As with several other high-profile Capcom App Store titles, this game falls so short of the original series it was based upon that it only barely belongs in the same family, and probably would have been better off never seeing the light of day at all. Devil May Cry 4 Refrain is a semi-sequel to a nine-year-old PlayStation and Xbox action game franchise, based upon scenarios from the 2008 title Devil May Cry 4. Ostensibly set in the present day, the series is famous for its complex and gothic 3-D environments, as well as edgy fantasy-inspired characters who occasionally dabble in gunplay. Original series hero Dante carried both a sword and a gun, and now Devil May Cry 4 Refrain’s lead character Nero starts with a sword, a gun, and a glowing energy arm, enabling a mix of short-, medium-, and long-range attacks that grow slightly in power as the game progresses with automatic power upgrades. Everything is presented using a 3-D camera system that shifts automatically Read More
