Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Richard Brown'
Remedy's Explosive Death Rally Reduced To Free
Death Rally, Alan Wake, Max Payne, Max Payne 2: the sum total of Remedy Entertainment's gaming output since 1995. Not what you would call a prolific developer then, but, by heck, an influential one. Their debut release, Death Rally, was, of course, rejigged for the iPhone a couple of months ago, and earned a very creditable four stars from our Andrew. If you are still sitting on this particular top-down racer fence, mind, the news that Death Rally has gone free for a limited time could push you over the edge. What's more, since AppSpy reviewed Remedy's heavily armed driving game, the devs have upgraded its chassis with a new vehicle, paint jobs, achievements, and challenges Fancy wiping…
Survival Mode Brings Depth To Mighty Fin
AppSpy is, of course, the best resource on the planet for iPhone game reviews, yet with only one full-time reviewer on board to cover the scene, the odd beaut is bound to slip through our trawl net. That's why each month we publish a round-up of the Top 10 iPhone games sourced from the Quality Index. In May, Launching Pad Games's casual arcader Mighty Fin leapt like a salmon to fin-ish 3rd on the Qi countdown, only beaten out by Chaos Rings Omega and First Touch Soccer. We ourselves awarded it a 4/5, praising its single-finger simplicity, clever level design, and infuriatingly catchy soundtrack. The solitary piece of criticism levelled at Mighty Fin was its - cough - shallowness, which m…
Celebrate Sonic’s Birthday With Sega All-Stars Racing Game
A certain special somebody (or rather someTHING) is 20 years young today. Nope, not my nephew Samuel, but Sonic...Sonic The Hedgehog. The speediest of speedy anthropomorphic hedgehogs first whizzed onto a Sega Mega Drive / Genesis near you on 23rd June, 1991, and has zoomed onto countless platforms since. One of these is, of course, the iPhone, which The Blue Blur has graced on no less than five occasions already. The pick of the bunch, hitherto, is undoubtedly Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episode 1, if you were wondering. The latest Sonic experience to appear on Apple's touchscreen is Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, a Mario Kart-inspired arcade romp featuring ten of the Japanese game maker's…
Peggle-Style Coin Drop! Reduced To Free For Limited Time
Selected by Andrew as one of our Top 3 iOS games of April 2011, Full Fat's Coin Drop! is a nailed on blend of Pachinko and Peggle. With a title that perfectly encapsulates its gameplay, Coin Drop! invites you to tap on the iPhone's touchscreen with precision timing and watch a copper or five tumble into the receptacles at the bottom. As they cascade down south, the coins must demolish obstacles, rescue girl coins, and eradicate evil blue coins. In its most recent Just Desserts update, the publishers have incorporated 15 brand new levels into Coin Drop! What's more, Full Fat have - ahem - dropped the price of the game for a limited time to free. Yep, nada. Reminds me of many a lost penny…
10 Warriors Added To Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Roster
One of the most - if not THE most - recognisable elements of Midway's brutal Mortal Kombat series was Shao Khan's imploration, "Finish Him!" What normally then followed was a gruesomely entertaining 'fatality', which totally showed your executed opponent who the flamin' boss was. From Heaven, presumably. The makers of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, however, EA, can't seem to 'finish' off their own iPhone iteration, for they've dished out an update to their six-month-old title. In EA's (self-)defence, version 1.2.57 of their 3/5-star fighting game does deliver what the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 App Store community has been waiting for since December... ...namely 10 extra playable characters (i…
Gameloft Unveil Screenshots For Stealthy Silent Ops
An iOS operative whose mission is to relay to AppSpy readers counter-espionage info from Gameloft's top-secret bunker, my name is Agent Brown. Richard Brown. The objective today is to reveal some unlicensed screenshots of, and illicit gameplay tidbits about, the French developer's Silent Ops sneak-a-thon. Often accused of 'jacking' ideas, artwork, and settings from existing famous IP, Gameloft have, on this occasion, looked to one of their own for inspiration...the brilliant Splinter Cell: Conviction. With three intelligence agents from the under-under-underground organisation Ubiquity at your disposal, you must save the planet from a bunch of evildoers intent on mass cloning. Odd…
Java Classic Skipping Stone Plops Onto iPhone
Korean devs Gamevil didn't just arrive on the gaming scene via the popular Zelda-esque Zenonia RPG series, oh no. They’ve been around for donkey’s years. For example, their Java game Skipping Stone first skipped onto mobiles in 2005. Six years, eh? Well overdue a remake, in my opinion. This casual one-touch game challenges players to time their taps and send the cute rock far into the big blue. Unfortunately for all concerned, octopuses and dolphins lurk along the surface, impeding your skimming progress. Anyways, Skipping Stone features a sizeable 32 achievements, along with 4 maps called City, Jungle, Island, and Magical World. Those of you who look back at the blissful da…
Chillingo and MetroGames Partner Up On iOS
Famed publishers of Angry Birds on iPhone Chillingo have just announced a business partnership with MetroGames, primarily known for their plethora of Facebook-based social games. The first fruits of the partnership to grace our iOS palms will be a portable remake of Pixel Ranger. Already popular on Zuckerberg's social network, Pixel Ranger puts you in the heavily armed boots of the titular hero, collecting ammo, avoiding sticky goo, and traversing platforms. Further along the line, we can expect a lot more content to free-fall onto the App Store as a consequence of this collabo, since MetroGames possess quite the back catalogue of content. By way of examples, they've already adapted the…
Zoo Keeper DX Touch Edition Aligns Itself With iPhone
A few weeks after one phenomenally popular handheld franchise roared onto iPhone, another portable gaming favourite crosses the platform divide. So, following the well received port of PSP hit Monster Hunter Dynamic Hunting, classic DS puzzler Zoo Keeper has been adapted for the iPhone by Kiteretsu. For those of you fortunate enough never to have succumbed to this legal gaming crack, Zoo Keeper DX Touch Edition requires you to remove the on-screen animal tiles by lining them up in rows and columns of three. Doesn’t matter whether the lines of three animals are horizontally or vertically – just so long as you ‘catch’ 100 of the critters. One note of warning, though…
Snake Updated For 21st Century In Hard Lines
On the universally accepted scale of annoyance, ‘hard lines’ is sandwiched somewhere between ‘hard times’ and ‘hard cheese’. One game that we feel certain would have elicited shrieks of ‘hard lines’ from concerned high score owners looking over your shoulder is Snake, that frightfully addictive Nokia gem from yesteryear. Well, get ready for some similar self-loathing, knuckle-biting experiences in Spilt Milk Studios’s Snake reimagining on iPhone...unsurprisingly called Hard Lines. Due out on Thursday (9th June), Hard Lines features six different modes, ranging from Gauntlet to Time Attack, and Survival to Piñata. And as in its…
Max Damage Is Jenga With A Gun
Sometimes, games don't have to be about saving the world, collecting trophies, or even managing a football team. Sometimes, we all like to settle back with a hand cannon and watch things burn. In Max Damage, Dundee-based developer Digital Goldfish is going to give us another excuse to cause wanton destruction all over our iOS systems. With an array of cannons on offer such as lasers, machine guns and TNT launchers players will have to cause, well, Maximum Damage, through various colourful cartoon block filled stages. Similar to other physics-based puzzlers like Angry Birds and Fragger players can rate themselves via a three star ranking system through 50 levels of playful block genocide.…
Two Extra Levels Bolster Siege Hero's Battlement
Not two weeks after its release, Armor Games's physics-based puzzler Siege Hero has only gone and got itself an update. But what could possibly have been updated so soon? Well, for one thing, the difficulty curve has been smoothened somewhat - good news for noobs. For two things, a couple of extra levels have been included in Treasure Map mode. If you're a bit greedy and that's still not enough for you, then consider this... Scores for the Treasure Map now contribute to the overall Fortress Age tally. A Total Score leaderboard, therefore, has been introduced by Armor Games for you to gauge how much of a destructive menace you truly are. Siego Hero is available at a special introductory…
First Touch Soccer Updated To Universal Build
While the identity of the Premier League footballer purported to have shared relations with E-lister Imogen Thomas remains a mystery to all*, there's no secret whatsoever to First Touch Soccer's success. Exient's franchise reboot stepped onto the iPhone turf barely a week ago, and impressed Andrew from kick-off to the final whistle, netting a fabulous 5 out of 5 rating. But like any good management team, Exient haven’t rested on their laurels during the post-season, for they've already refreshed their First Touch Soccer squad via an update. The biggest addition to the First Touch Soccer team is unquestionably the universal build feature, meaning that iPad players can enjoy an experi…
Simigo Set Bumpy Road's Wheels In Motion
Swedish two-man indie team Simogo made their debut on iPhone with the beautifully drawn arcader Kosmo Spin just before Christmas. Brilliantly for us – and indeed you - it’s only taken Simon and Magnus five months to follow that AppSpy 4* game up. Bumpy Road is described by its creators as a ‘love story on four wheels’, with the romantic leads played by an elderly couple in a vintage motor. By tapping on the touchscreen, you ‘bump’ the side-scrolling senior citizens over platforms, collecting bits and bobs along the voyage. Game Center leaderboards and achievements are integrated into Bumpy Road, while Retina display support delivers an extra visual sparkle to owners of an iPh…
Multiplayer Mode Strikes Infinity Blade On 19th May
Hackers 'n' slashers of this world: put down your weapons and gather round... Multiplayer mode is about to be unsheathed in Infinity Blade!! Yes, it’s true, it’s true (screenshots below are proof, if you don’t believe me). ChAIR Entertainment’s – ahem - epic tale of revenge, bloodlines, heroism, and God Kings will receive its hugely anticipated update tomorrow (19th May). Alongside the multiplayer Arena mode, which consists of best-of-seven clashes between a fearless knight and a bloody great monster, Infinity Blade’s latest refresh includes a new Survivor mode. Somewhat inevitably given its title, this single player fare challenges you to last as long as you humanly can in a…
