Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Andrew Nesvadba'
Castle Fantasy Review
Castle Fantasy by Croquis is a great new release for action-platformers on the App Store. While its controls still leave a lot to be desired, almost everything else is polished and kept simple making this a perfect addition to any hardcore gamer's collection. As with most standard side-scrollers the controls make use of virtual buttons to move side-to-side, jump, attack or shoot. Quirks such as only being about to double-jump while jumping up can throw off experienced platformer fans,…
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Flare Elite Review
With some controls taking over most of the screen to ensure they're accurate it's nice to see that Flare Elite, a new vertical shoot'em-up by Firi Games has tried to solve the problem of quick responding, natural controls with their unique setup. Flare Elite is a modern take on the shoot'em-up, giving players the option to upgrade weapons outside of combat and the choice of what weapon they take in to battle once they're unlocked. Avoiding enemies and incoming fire is a snap with thei…
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PuzzleManiak Review
I'll confess, it's not often that I truly enjoy a puzzle game because I honestly prefer my games to be more... 'gamey'. Puzzle Maniak by Alexandre Minard is an assorted collection of borrowed puzzle ideas with some unique ones thrown in that keeps you pulled in through its sheer polish and clever online features. Instead of being a hodge-podge of half-finished games Puzzle Maniak manages to implement each puzzle completely along with customizable difficulty levels. You're almost guara…
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Dinosaur Slayer Review
Dinosaur Slayer by Project Soul wants nothing more than to crush you. Players will find this game quite literally hit-or-miss. Bow-defense fans will get a great new challenge while new players to the genre will find the controls much more forgiving to learn. For most levels there's not a lot out of the ordinary from a standard bow-defense game. Each 'stage' consists of wave after wave of enemies, each with their own quirk to defend against. Arrows are fired by touching the screen to s…
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Speaking of 'Chaos Rings' - First Trailer Released!
I guess Square Enix isn't fooling around with this release. A few weeks after posting new staff at game studio Media.Vision, Final Fantasy Ring picked up on the news and Famitsu got a hold on the game's name, 'Chaos Rings'. Youtube Trailer: Personally I'm blown away by just how good this game looks - easily comparable (if not better) than Final Fantasy 8 on the Playstation. Touch Arcade forum member GDSage has provided more details - and English trailer and screenshots are apparently on the near horizon. News via New Square Enix RPG - Chaos Ring @ Touch Arcade forums.…
ZombieSmash Review
Sure, you could keep throwing knights and goblins and other creepy crawlies in to pits of fire or feed them to your pet dragon, but why do that when you could be enjoying ZombieSmash! by German developer Gamedoctors? With all the charm of games like Plants vs. Zombies and physics inspired mayhem straight out of Home Alone, it's a game that keeps on giving well after you're done with the campaign. In a bid to separate itself from other flick-based castle defense games, ZombieSmash! sho…
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Aftermath Review
If you want to take a more artsy view on 'zombies' in media, you could say that they've been used to represent everything from "man's inhumanity to man" to "convenient comedy sidekick". Aftermath by TwoHeads isn't your average twin-stick zombie shooter, it's almost art. Despite being so short, it's an atmospheric experience that'll remind you just why zombies are so scary. The missions follow a tiny story arc that about your survivor's attempts to navigate through and eventually escap…
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FFXIII Image Gallery - Rockefeller Edition?
Critics and fans are polarized about just how good Final Fantasy XIII is as the latest major entry in the Final Fantasy series. Square Enix is no stranger to merchandising their products and if you're a fan of their RPGs you might be used to having your wallet gouged, but would you be willing to pay $8.99 for images on your iPhone? Final Fantasy XIII: Larger-than-Life Gallery is just that - a unique collection of artwork and calendars featuring characters from the game. So just how does a set of images (that will no doubt find their way to fan-created sites and forums anyway) end up costing so much? The images are in fact high-definition and can be zoomed in and out of to explore the deta…
'74-Days Of The Smartphone' or 'Just How Well Did They Sell?'
So which smartphone is leading the market? Just how do you judge who's "winning" in this competitive mobile-gadget arena? After compiling sales for the first 74 days of each major smartphone's release, mobile phone analysis firm Flurry has revealed that the Droid sold 50,000 more units than the iPhone in the same period. Flurry blogger Peter Farago provides some insight as to how Motorola might have managed to eke out more sales than Apple for their product (incidentally, 74 days is how long it took Apple to reach 1 million sales from the the iPhone 1G's launch). "Motorola Droid launched over 2.5 years after the iPhone 1G. (Nov 2009 vs. July 2007). When the iPhone launched, consumers' conc…
'Chaos Ring' by Square Enix and Media.Vision Out This Year?
French fansite Final Fantasy Ring has picked up that Media.Vision has started advertising for positions to work on their new RPG for the iPhone called "Chaos Ring". The positions went up a few weeks ago, but a title for the project wasn't revealed until this week at Famitsu. There's little else known about the upcoming title so there's not a lot to talk about, but it's still great news for RPG fans. News via Chaos Ring : un nouveau RPG sur iPhone @ Final Fantasy Ring…
ZombieSmash Out Soon!
What would a man with an unhealthy amount of stockpiled weaponry do if he was stuck in his farm house during a zombie plague? Why he'd set some traps and defend his land "gosh darn' it!". ZombieSmash!, the self dubbed "Survival Comedy" game is scheduled for release soon for fans of creative physics and castle-defense survival games. Youtube Game Trailer: The game features tonnes of interesting weaponry to cause generalised chaos to the undead, all in the name of defending your home. And if that's not enough to get you going, famed game composer Chris Hülsbeck - noteable for his work on the C64, Amiga and recent Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series - has been working on Zom…
Creepy ARG On Its Way To Haunt Your iPhone Soon
Ghostwire, a creepy ghost-hunting ARG by developers 'A Different Game' has just been announced for release on the iPhone and will have you wandering your neighbourhood like the good little ghostbuster you are. Captured video is mixed with a slick interface to turn your mobile gaming device in to a portable ghost detector and promises to get your heart racing. Youtube Preview Trailer (Supernatural themes, may not be appropriate for children): If that's not interesting enough, Ghostwire puts you in the place of a ghost-hunter attempting to appease ghosts that are troubling people (or if all else fails, capture them). The game was inspired by 'reality' shows like Most Haunted and w…
Dark Shrine Review
It has been a while since I've had the pleasure of driving a cocky son-of-a-demon through a manic and strange RPG-world. Despite some surface similarities to the world of Disgaea, Dark Shrine by Devsisters and Hotdog is a great new action-RPG for the App Store that's only marginally diminished by its temperamental controls. The story and gameplay is linear, but broken up in to accessible bite-sized chunks of individual levels that are quick and easy enjoy. One the main features is its…
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Project "Thor" Review
Project Thor by Jury Shortki is a bit of an odd-ball when it comes to classification. Strictly speaking it's another castle-defense game, but replace castle with planet and defense with Arkanoid. If nothing else, Project Thor demands attention for being so genuinely unique. It's hard to describe the gameplay, but it goes a little something like this: While defending a new planet for humanity, you control a giant shield that reflects incoming attacks while building a large temporary "o…
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Game Preview: WordSearch Rush
Word search games aren't exactly the most popular games available on the App Store. They tend to be more for a niche crowd of puzzle lovers with super-human eyesight. I mean honestly... those grids can be HUGE. And on such a tiny screen? Not a great combo. YouTube Preview: WordSearch Rush by UK developers We Are Colin aims to not only make word search games playable, but genuinely fun. Their twist on the gameplay involves time-based combo bonuses for quickly finding words in a 7x7 (or occasionally 8x8) grid and extra points for selecting the words backwards. Unlike some word search games a list of words isn't provided for you, but instead each level gives a topic from which 7 wor…
