Karting games, once only really the dominion of Mario and friends, are starting to get better. If you were going to make a racing game for your franchise, the chances were that it'd end up more South Park and less Crash Bandicoot. But as time has gone by, racing tie-ins have generally got better. Sonic's All Star outings are the perfect example of that.
The problem with Dungeons & Dragons was that it could only be played with a group. Desktop PCs in the 80s had a few text adventure games that mimicked the D&D experience as a single-player adventure, but PC's were rare and pricey back then. A cheap, portable alternative were Gamebooks that used printed text and images to replace a live dungeon master. They also had simplified D&D style rules to govern variable ...
MyGPTeam is a Grand Prix title with a difference. Available on the Google Play store via Android mobile devices, it gives you the chance to win races against people from all over the world without needing to hold your phone like a steering wheel or get used to any complicated controls. It's an online casual free-to-play driving title that challenges you to keep up with your opponents, and in terms of ...
It’s hard to judge a sequel without comparing it to the original. Broken Sword: Director’s Cut set the standard for the series, which I praised in my review. Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror - Remastered is a decent game, however, it simply does not measure up to the original in most categories.
Sudoku is one of the most popular puzzle games on earth, with endless amounts of variations, apps, books and even competitions dedicated to the "ancient" mindbender. FlowDoku hopes to stand out amongst them, offering a simple variation that uses shapes instead of numbers.
If you're a young person, you might not remember what a point-and-click adventure game is. Well, it's a game where you have to point, sometimes even click, and the story takes you on an adventure! They fell out of fashion sometime in the late 90s, but with the advent of portable touchscreen devices, which fit in your pocket, they've seen something of a revival. With this revival comes the remastering of a ...
As one of the larger publishers in the App Store, Gameloft's recent descent into free-to-play monstrosities or thrown-together movie tie-ins been quite disappointing, especially when signature franchises take a turn for the worst (I'm looking at you, Dungeon Hunter 4). So when Gameloft announced Asphalt 8: Airborne a few months back, it was hard not to be hesitant - after all, who wants to install another racing ...
The combination of endless runner and driving game seems like a natural fit: put someone behind the wheel, and throw them into some gravel-flavored mayhem, upgrading cars and purchasing new rides along the way. It seems so simple: but as Muscle Run proves, a great idea does not a great game make. Despite a few interesting features and an intriguing gameplay design, Muscle Run never quite fills its potential; a ...
You have no idea how difficult it is to be a snail. There are traps everywhere - hammers, spikes, pins, deadly drops - and that's before you even begin to think of falling rocks and the hot sun. It's not easy to be a snail, and so it helps to have someone around to strategically throw you around, protect you with pencils and help you avoid things that may just kill you.
Cook, Serve, Delicious is not just about preparing food, but serving it in a timely manner. You are re-opening a restaurant, conveniently named Cook, Serve, Delicious, that was once a five star restaurant in the SherriSoda Tower. It is your job to restore it into the famous restaurant it used to be.
So let's say you're a knight. Sweet gig, huh? You own your own land, have a squire to attend to all of the boring and trivial nonsense that you don't feel like dealing with, and all those medieval ladies think that you're just the cat's pajamas. But what do you do when some disgusting monster grabs all of the local Princesses and relocates them to some giant monster infested tower?
If you follow mobile games at all, you'll probably have heard of The Drowning. It's the latest first-person shooter to be brought to iOS and the one that the developers have promised us will revolutionize the control scheme for shooters on touch screens. On top of that, it's a game about some sort of crazy water zombies coming from the ocean to drown all human life.
There's a reason that Plants Vs Zombies 2 has the subtitle "It's About Time." It's become a global phenomenon, encompassing multiple platforms, books, figurines, plushies and more. That all of this has comes from a single game is remarkable, especially since it's not especially long, nor does it have some great RPG-like depth to it. It's just simple good fun.
Dubai, like many places in the east, is a city of opposites. Wholly modern but with tradition and history spanning millennia, it's one of those places that almost everybody has heard of, but many wouldn't be able to place on a map. It's a beautiful city but one that is often understood (partly thanks to strict control of their image), and that's partly why the developers behind Dubai Delivery decided to make ...
Le Vamp is another in a seemingly endless run of endless runner games on the App Store. Where many games put you in direct control of a character who has to run, jump, and/or fight for as long as possible, Le Vamp has you acting as the tiny vampire's protector, removing obstacles from his path as he runs from a crowd of angry villagers.
On its surface, the idea of making a 2D car combat game seems.... odd. The beauty of combat racers is the feel of being inside a course, smashing against walls and flying around corners on the way to victory. As a side-scrolling, 2D racer, you'd think Delta-V Racing wouldn't be able to capture the kinetic, drift-induced frenzies that its 3D counterparts are. But thanks to some smart level design and interesting ...
Have you ever wanted to manage a company of interstellar mercenaries? Sure, who hasn't? Have you ever wanted to distill the act of managing that company of interstellar mercenaries down to a card game, complete with blind booster packs and rare cards? That...might be a harder sell. However, Rivals at War: 2084 does just that, and manages to be quite fun and engaging for a game that you don't actually play.
Upon releasing Mikey Shorts in 2012, BeaverTap Games suddenly found themselves at the forefront of handheld platforming, perfecting the speed run formula with impeccably-designed levels and controls in their debut iOS tit It was hands down one of the best iOS releases of the year - and as I often do these days with games and movies, I prayed the inevitable sequel didn't ruin my fond memories.
It can be easy to find fault with some of the Square Enix iOS releases: whether its laughably bad pricing models (Final Fantasy: All the Bravest, Demons' Score) or overpriced re-releases (the Final Fantasy re-releases), there are times where it feels like Square's reaching a little too far into the wallets of gamers. But there's no denying their support for mobile platforms: with over two dozen releases under ...
When Riptide GP arrived on iOS in late 2011, it brought with it a flood of beautiful memories from the early days of 3D and polygons. It was like a mix of Jet Moto and Hydro Thunder, a balls-to-the-wall aquatic racer with impressive wave physics and a fantastic sense of speed. It wasn't perfect - a little too lean on content, missing any kind of online/Bluetooth-enabled multiplayer option - but it brought back a ...
Bet you never thought a mobile game could have you grinning, cursing at your phone and trying to get inside the mind of a player on the other side of the world. Turtlestrike requires more thought and cunning than the average mobile title, but the excitement and satisfaction it brings towers above the average match-3 or endless-runner.
Eternal Descent: Heavy Metal Heroes is yet another in a long line of endless runner games that have come to iOS. It's s bit of a stale genre at this point, but everyone is trying to liven it up and find the magic formula to keep gamers coming back for one more go. Eternal Descent tries to hook people in with a screaming heavy metal soundtrack and a number of real metal musicians. Is that enough to hook people ...
The words "console quality" get thrown around way too often in the mobile game-o-sphere. I've been guilty of it, too: desperately clamoring for a bar-raising iOS game, we've been all too-willing to slap a AAA-tag on whatever good-looking and somewhat entertaining title and laud it as redefining what a mobile game is. Deus Ex: The Fall is the latest game to enter this conversation, a recently-announced FPS with ...
One of the most well-received games of 2010, Limbo was one of the signature XBLA releases that established it as a legitimate digital platform. Quiet and haunting, Limbo's puzzles and ethereal setting challenged gamers to find their own way, devoid of traditional storytelling devices and control tutorials. The game's experience was about dark wonder and discovery: and this week, Playdead's first title found its ...
Every spoiled little rich kid has wanted to grab a slingshot and destroy his house while shooting at all the members of his family, right? Okay, so I guess I have no idea. The creators of Naughty Boy decided that this seemed like a decent premise for an iOS game, and they went for it. It's completely ridiculous, but who doesn't want to destroy a mansion armed with only a slingshot?
Contra Evolution Introduction Remakes are a finicky endeavor; nostalgic gamers might enjoy updated graphics and sound with their favorite old titles, but messing with classic gameplay elements is a big no-no. For others, remakes are an opportunity to make an old game better, taking the framework and name of the original and dressing it up with modern game mechanics. Contra: Evolution – which finally ...
Garfield has eaten too much - as always - and has decided that he needs to take a nap - as always. He's not likely to get an easy sleep, however, because as soon as his head hits the pillow, he's transported to a mysterious dream world where he can fly by flapping his arms, collect flying lasagne, dodge UFOs and pay exuberant prices for costumes that don't actually matter. Welcome to Garfield's Wild Ride.
It would be hard to argue that Magic: the Gathering was not the most popular CCG on the planet. It's been going strong for 20 years now because of the excellent tactical gameplay. While many card games end up being pay-to-win affairs, Magic is balanced in such a way that a good player will nearly always beat a player who has simply spent more money on good cards.
Never a fan of torturous hardcore platformers, Ravenous Games' League of Evil stole my heart in 2011 with its magnificent controls and pixelated graphic style. Not only did it kick off the well-loved (and hated) "retro" trend that captured the App Store for the next year or so, but it also showed that iOS was a serious gaming platform, one capable of precise controls and infectious, original ideas. After ...
Poor design choices and a fundamentally broken experience leave a queasiness-inducing taste, making this a game should have been tested behind closed doors and never released to the public.
