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Payback² HD - The Battle Sandbox Review
For gamers like myself, the idea of a truly open-ended experience can be daunting - it’s not that I can’t set myself goals and then achieve them, but that I kind of expect that sort of input from the people who made them game. As such the genre has never really appealed; at least not for an extended period of time. Thankfully there’s always Payback^2 by Apex Design, a resurrected iOS GTA-a-like classic that concentrates on bite-sized action-packed missions while still…
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challengeGlu Mobile releases trailer for Deathdome
Glu Mobile has released the first trailer for its upcoming Infinity Blade style hack, slash, and blocker, Deathdome, and it's looking pretty impressive indeed. The trailer shows off a gritty, post apocalyptic wasteland that owes more than a little to 2K's Borderlands, and a little bit more than that to Mad Max 2. It looks like you're job is going to be pulverising mutant gladiators in the titular Deathdome, using touch screen swipes and taps to attack and dodge. The game is set to release for iOS and Android devices in the not too distant future, and you can check out the entertainingly violent trailer embedded below. Via Phandroid…
MechWarrior: Tactical Command iPad Review
The release of MechWarrior: Tactical Command on the iOS platform may seem like a somewhat archaic franchise to resurrect for the modern gamer, but with MechWarrior Tactics pulling in old fans it was going to be now or never. Modeled after the real-time tactical wing of the MechWarrior franchise (MechCommander), Personae Studios manages to capture many of the detailed points from the series, while stumbling over everything else, including the controls, presentation and storyline. Summa…
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The Last Express Review
In the world of Adventure titles, The Last Express is a sort of right-of-passage, especially as it puts a spin on the usual tropes of the genre by packing them in to a mystery-thriller that plays out in real-time. It should be no surprise that such a concept sprang from the mind of Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, and despite its relative age it remains a shining example of how deeply gameplay and storytelling can be intertwined. You play as Robert Cath, a young doctor thrown…
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Hotel Transylvania Dash Deluxe Review
Playfirst Inc are the creators of Diner Dash, and Cooking Dash, and Hotel Dash... so when they had the license for a game based off the newly released movie Hotel Transylvania, it probably wasn't too much of a leap to expect the release of Hotel Transylvania Dash. This is iPhone sim-management at its simplest, and depending on how you like your mobile management simulators, this could be either a good or a bad thing. If you've played one, you've played em all, but for the uninitiated,…
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Hack and smash with Wraithborne from Alpha Dog Games
There's nothing wrong with hankering after a bit of Unreal Engine powered iOS dungeon crawling, but with Infinity Blade Dungeons still a little way off, where does one turn to sate their violent, looty lust? Alpha Dog Games and Crescent Moon are hoping that you'll choose Wraithborne, a touch controlled fantasy that's dripping with the sort of violence and magic that true adventurers crave. The game looks set to include some intuitive touch screen features, such as tracing Runes with a finger to unleash your magical spells, and the environments you're going to be stomping around in look absolutely gorgeous. We've included a trailer below to give you a taste of what the game has in store fo…
JAM: Jets Aliens Missiles Review
There are some genres that are pretty difficult to adjust an iPhone control scheme to, and one of these is the shoot'em-up and its sibling, the side scrolling shooter (maybe we should call these triple S games). The biggest challenges are moving your craft without your finger obscuring vision, and how to tackle the design of shooting enemies from your craft. Now there are many entries in the App Store that have solved these problems adequately enough to create an enjoyable experience,…
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Crescent Moon Games releases a trailer for Ravensword: Shadowlands
If you like your fantasy high and your games epic, then Crescent Moond Games's new iOS RPG Ravensword: Shadowlands is set to tick your boxes in ways you might not have thought possible. You might remember we reviewed the original Ravensword game, The Fallen King, many moons ago. It got a perfect score. And it looks like this sequel has improved on pretty much everything its predecessor had to offer. There's more than an air of Skyrim in the first trailer for the game, which you can check out below, and it will apparently sport more than 40 hours of play time for anyone who wants to see everything it has to offer. The game is slated for a release sometime before the end of the ye…
Electric Tentacle Review
Sometimes you feel ridiculous repeating the premises of some iPhone titles, but at least a lot of them seem to make sense, at least in their own strange universe. With Electric Tentacle, even its universe is an oddity. Animals shrunk to microscopic size, using electricity to travel through the highways and bi-ways of where ever you've been stuck, trying to escape the evil nanomachines. Keep in mind that this is a high score game based around seeing how far you can get before you head t…
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Super Monsters Ate My Condo! Review
Though it's mostly gone out of fashion, one of the defining characteristics on the Super Nintendo was that most sequels (and even some original games) had the word 'super' in front of them. It was meant to invoke the image of just not any sequel, but an upgrade to everything that had come before. More revolution than evolution. In the case of Super Monsters ate my Condo, sadly it's the latter and not the former. Not that it's a bad release, but it falls a little short of the expectatio…
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The Devil is in the Details
Devil's Attorney is hard to pin down. It pulls art influences from the 80s, the premise suggests Phoenix Wright, but in execution it's more RPG than adventure game. Have a look at the trailer and see what we mean. The game is out on October 11th and will cost you $3 USD. More info can be found on the homepage.[Devil's Attorney]…
Mistwalker releases Blade Guardian
Mistwalker, the studio set up by legendary Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, has released its second iOS game, a tower defence title caled Blade Guardian. The game certainly looks impressive, with blobby cartoon monsters, and plenty of levels for you to sink your defensive real time strategy teeth into. It's certainly a more conventional game than Mistwalker's first attempt at an App Store title, Party Wave, which drew on Sakaguchi's love of surfing to create a strange mix of dolphin poking and big wave catching. Blade Guardian should be available from the App Store right now, and it'll cost you $0.69 to find out if Mistwalker's magic touch with the JRPG can transfer to the some…
App Wrap Up (Weekend Edition, 1st October 2012)
The weekend is over. The month of September is over. It's time for another edition of the App Wrap Up! As always we're looking at some games that may have merit based on their trailers. If you have played these, or choose to play them based on what you see here, please let us know what you think in the comments! And now, the games... Aliens Incursion (Northmanni) Part Asteroids, part twin-stick shooter. Solid visuals, though not too sure about the controls from the look of things. Still, a rather solid looking game that looks to have fallen under the radar (and by that i mean we haven't covered it yet).[App Store Link] Pin Tiki Ball (Tore Hansen) Not the most riveting pibal…
Ikaruga meets Canabalt
Slated for an October 11th release, Polara is looking like a solid entry into the free-running genre, adding Ikaruga style colour switching, but also breaking the running into stages with boss battles as punctuation. We're looking forward to this release and will keep you posted.…
Recess Riot Review
If you're going to use an art style reminiscent of the 80s in all its eight-bit glory, and the game is based around recess, you best do your research about the games of the time. I mean yes, I’m showing my age here, and there was jump rope and dodge ball, but we also played four square and wall ball! Well there is a 'coming soon' icon in the game, so hopefully this can be addressed in a future update. All kidding aside, Recess Riot is a collection of two arcade based mini-games…
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