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As far as premises go, two dogs that are tied together by the tongue is a bit of an oddity. But on a platform that regularly sees us flinging birds at pigs or feeding candy to monsters, it’s best not to ask too many questions. Besides, Tongue Tied’s [$1.99] adorably vacant duo Mick and Ralph are so much better together than they could be apart.

Their predicament sets them up for all sorts of physics-based platforming challenges. You can slingshot them off each other, or send them flying in circles. One can hang by the tongue and swing below while the other walks. It’s your job to shoot them over hazards or into tasty bones and keep them from harm, because they’ll just keep on walking inexorably to their deaths. These dogs are really, really dumb. The game’s developer Mojo Bones, on the other hand, is a very smart team. They’ve created a game that’s both charming and challenging, packed it with replayability and promised a year’s worth of free updates. Hard to say no to that.

Updates or no, Tongue Tied is already a complete package. It includes 50 levels, 30 extra challenges, 16 Game Center achievements and one leaderboard. It’s a lot to go through, and it throws a lot of difficulty into the midst. The game uses the ubiquitous three-tier rating system — a bronze is a pass, a silver is for great performance, and a gold is for going beyond even perfection.

You see, each level of Tongue Tied has bones to collect. You might get a silver if you manage to collect them all, but that isn’t easy. You’ll have to purposefully dive into danger and take risks that should otherwise be avoided if you want to pick up every single bone. Crossing a bridge that will crumble if you pull too hard on Mick or Ralph? There will be a bag of bones hanging over it. If you slingshot just right, you might manage to hit it, clear the bridge, and not fall to your death. But since the doggies will stop for no man, you’ll have to do it without hesitation.

But like I said, that will probably only net you a silver. Want a gold? Teach your dogs some new tricks. You earn extra points for smooth moves, like swiping them around in a full circle, swinging into bags of bones hard enough to burst them, hopping over danger instead of avoiding it, swiping your way over gaps — more complicated maneuvers than are usually necessary. To earn gold you have to play with style.

As you’ve probably sussed out, Tongue Tied involves quite a lot of swiping. The controls are intuitive, for the most part. Pull back to launch the dogs, Angry Birds style, if you want get some air time. Swipe a hanging dog back or forth to swing him around. Tap to leave a dog hanging. That’s all there is to it.

This doesn’t always work out perfectly, though. There are times you need to swipe upwards to stick the dog’s head deep in mud (one of many funny visuals this game has to offer), letting his buddy swing freely. Many of the times I tried to pull this off, I skimmed the pause button in the upper right, bringing the game to an awkward halt. Occasionally, the game also doesn’t behave quite like you’d expect — where you might expect to have to tap to drop a dog, he’ll fall on his own, and your tap will knock his buddy down too.

And the game can move just a little too fast. When you’re trying to line up a precision shot to a small platform or tire, having the screen sneak up behind you and block your angle is a huge pain. Sometimes the dogs will get ahead of the game, too, leaving you jumping them into the void ahead of the screen to keep them from falling off a platform at its far edge. These things are rough on Tongue Tied’s difficulty curve, because the levels Mobo Bones expects to be simple can sometimes prove unforgiving.

This becomes frustrating at times. Mobo Bones has taken the excellent step of having deaths restart the level instantly, without even a break in the music. Trying again doesn’t feel like a chore, and the levels are short. But when you get stuck, you’re stuck, and if it happens because the game isn’t cooperating you won’t be pleased. There are times when I’d have killed (or paid) for a level skip, because making no progress over a dozen restarts gets old pretty fast.

Those are occasional problems in an otherwise excellent game, though. The atmosphere is excellent, with gorgeous backdrops, funny character animations, and a lighthearted cartoon soundtrack. The Doghouse unlockables add even more humor to an already charming game, and give players a good reason to go back and try to complete the challenges. It’s enough to smooth over the rough patches. All together, Tongue Tied is a solid package and a fantastic value. Spend some time with Mick and Ralph, then chime in at our discussion thread.

TouchArcade Rating:

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During GDC this year, Team Phobic released Undead Ocean [$1.99], an action platforming title built from their experience with the excellent Bounce On series and a healthy nod to classic action platformers from the bygone 16-bit era. We liked Undead Ocean quite a bit when it initially launched, especially due to the fantastic level designs and copious amounts of hidden areas. It really felt like the kind of game I would have gobbled up back in the day on my SNES.

Originally, Undead Ocean was built with expansion in mind by way of adding additional islands with new levels via updates. It might have taken a while, but the first major addition to Undead Ocean has hit the App Store. This update includes a new island with 15 brand new levels, new enemy types and boss fights, new powerup items, new story cutscenes, and of course something that any good island adventure needs: a huge volcano. You can see most of these new goodies in the following trailer:

Undead Ocean is one of the better action platformers available on iOS, and today’s update practically doubles the amount of content from the original release. If you’re looking to try before you buy, you can grab Undead Ocean Dojo [Free], a free spinoff title that features an intro level not contained in the regular game which should give you more than a good idea whether or not you’ll be interested in the full, and is a pretty cool game on its own merits as well.

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This week on The TouchArcade Show, we power through topics like Jack LaLanne’s juicer to bring you the latest, hottest, and radicalest in iOS gaming. At the top, we discuss the upcoming iTunes Connect freeze. Later, we dig into new games such as Sin or Win, Sonic CD, and Kinectimals, and much later, we give a few lucky fan e-mailers their moment in the spotlight. Overall, this was a wicked show to do, so we hope you love it.

If you’d like to give us a listen, do so via the handy-dandy links below. If you like what you heard, consider subscribing to us — The TouchArcade Show is on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace for your convenience. Want our shows the second they hit the net? This is how to go about that, folks.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-030.mp3, 42MB

Here’s your show notes:

GAMES

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WOW! This week, or actually, the last two weeks have been insane. We’ve been pulling some crazy hours here getting everything up, and as a result, the front page of TouchArcade has been moving at about mach 3. I’m pretty sure Brad, Jared, and I all Tebowed at one point this week in hopes that the emails would stop coming.

Anyway, here’s a reverse chronological recap of the stories really worth checking out over the past couple of weeks, in case you missed anything! If you’ve already read everything I’m linking here, congratulations, you just earned your TouchArcade holiday season merit badge.

Best iOS Games November 2011

Our ratings for games we reviewed in November are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.

The ‘Time Ducks’ Trailer Will Melt Your Brain

A couple of weeks ago, Tough Guy Studios released their first iOS game called Time Ducks [$1.99], and I’m going to be honest, I bought it based solely on the fact that it was called Time Ducks. I figured with a name like that, there was no way I could go wrong. As it turned out, Time Ducks ended up being a pretty fun and unique take on line drawing games, and it sort of sat on the back burner as something I’d been planning on writing about.

Controller Update: More on the GameBone, A Bluetooth 4.0 Revelation

iPhone controller accessories have been generating a good bit of news, here lately. More and more existing iOS titles are gaining physical control options via updates, and just last week we detailed the upcoming Gametel Bluetooth controller that will soon become a game-enhancing iOS controller option, alongside the iCade and iControlPad. The more the merrier, true, but long time readers may recall yet another controller we covered over a year ago that has been off the radar ever since. Does anyone remember the GameBone?

Microsoft Releases Official Xbox Live App

Microsoft, via Xbox Live evangelist Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, has just announced the immediate release of the company’s first Xbox Live iOS app, My Xbox Live [Free]. It’s a free app that basically acts as a mobile companion to some of the more important aspects of the service. You can read and send messages to anyone on your Friend’s List, manage that list or invite new people onto it, edit your profile, gander at all of your hard-earned achievements, or even mess with your Avatar’s apparel.

The OnLive iOS Client is Finally Arriving

At E3 back in June of this year, we got an impressive hands-on demo of the OnLive service running and playable on the iPad. In case you’re not familiar, OnLive is the cloud-based gaming service that allows you to play from a fairly large selection of console and PC games by way of streaming them to an OnLive client running on your computer or a specially designed set-top box that connects to your TV. In simpler terms, it’s a lot like instantly streaming movies over NetFlix, except it’s video games, and you get to actually play them in real time with minimal lag if you’re internet speeds are up to snuff.

Out Now: ‘Batman Arkham City Lockdown’, ‘Mini Motor Racing’, ‘Six Guns’, ‘TXT Fighter HD’, and More

Holy jeez! We’re pretty used to the typical Wednesday onslaught of new releases in the App Store, but today has been a truly insane undertaking. Between Batman making a surprise drop from the shadows and into the App Store with Arkham City Lockdown, the exciting OnLive iOS client finally seeing the light of day (soon anyway), and the normal barrage of new releases we usually see every week, it’s been a wild roller coaster ride of iOS craziness. To top it off, Eli is out in Finland hobnobbing with The Mighty Eagle, ensuring that Brad and I are up to our ear balls in busy work.

Dragon Shout: A Great ‘Skyrim’ Map App

Dragon Shout [Free] has cleared the certification hurdle and it’s available now at the low, low price of $0. What it does, it does well, and it proves a point. Games as deep as Skyrim should be embracing mobile companion apps across the board. Dragon Shout is an app that not only makes Skyrim better, but down the road, it might add an entirely new layer to the experience: social.

‘Chrono Trigger’ Hits the App Store

Hey guys! Here’s a surprise, Chrono Trigger [$9.99] just came out of nowhere. Well, not entirely out of nowhere, since Square Enix had mentioned that it was coming this month… But after the rampant delays that Final Fantasy Tactics saw, my hopes that they’d hit this release window could be best described as “cautiously optimistic.”

Apple’s “App Store Rewind 2011″ Features ‘Tiny Tower’ and ‘Dead Space for iPad’ as Games of the Year

If you’re new to iOS devices, or haven’t been following the scene as closely as you should have been over the last year, Apple’s year end feature App Store Rewind 2011 has an incredible amount of must-have games and apps that, in my opinion, you can basically just blindly download as they did a great job of picking out the cream of the crop.

‘WildChords’ is One of the Coolest Things I’ve Seen the iPad Do

Easily one of my most anticipated games this year, and I’m sure many of yours out there as well, is Warballoon Games‘ Star Command.

‘Kinectimals’ Review – Making Connections

Kinectimals on Kinect is an experiential game that does a solid job of luring its users into forming an emotional bond with its assortment of on-screen, rascally pets.

Out Now: ‘Bug Princess’, ‘Ice Rage’, ‘Marathon 2′, ‘Sonic CD’, ‘Trenches II’ and TONS More

If you’ve been sitting on a massive emergency food supply waiting for the right occasion to open the first gallon sized can of preserved potato chunks, this might be it.

‘Sonic CD’ Review – Absolutely Incredible and Redefines Expectations of iOS Ports

The only way I can start this review is with a little history lesson, both for people who aren’t familiar with Sonic CD, as well as those of you who might not have been reading TouchArcade since the summer of 2009. Let’s start at the beginning, so everyone can truly appreciate just how wonderful the very existence of this game is.

‘Grand Theft Auto III’ Review – Ten Years Later, Still a Great Game

Prior to Grand Theft Auto III I’d say I had fun messing around in Grand Theft Auto games, but never really enjoyed myself. The top-down view felt incredibly claustrophobic, and, at least for me, made getting immersed into the game world incredibly difficult. I don’t think it’s hyperbole at all to say that GTA 3 changed everything.

Carcassonne’ Update Adds Expansion, Baby Mode

Remember when we wrote about the fact that Carcassonne [$9.99] will receive expansion support in the future? It has that right now.

‘Mad Dog McCree’ Coming To iPhone Next Week

American Laser Games’s so-awful-it-ends-up-being-good FMV shooter, Mad Dog McCree, is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch this December 20, according to caretaker Digital Leisure. This is a port of the original arcade release of the game, so don’t expect anything too fancy, however the team is noting that it has converted the game’s silly footage for phones and even added an “all new casual mode” for those without hardcore gunslinging skills.

‘Bug Princess’ Review – Unsurprisingly, CAVE’s Latest Bullet Hell Shooter is Another Winner

In April of last year, iOS gamers scored big when longtime Japanese developer CAVE decided to task their mobile division with bringing some of their classic shooter titles to the Apple App Store. All of these games – Espgaluda II, Dodonpachi Resurrection, and Deathsmiles – received critical acclaim from media and gamers alike, and set the benchmark for what we should expect from our bullet hell shmups on the App Store.

I told you it has been a crazy couple of weeks! I only cherry picked the really good stuff that we posted for this list too! Now, it’s time for a beer and a weekend away from my inbox…!

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Controversial is probably the best word for War on Terror [$1.99]. Originally a board game conceived by Terror Bull Games in 2003, War on Terror has precipitated everything from bans to death threats – true story, I swear. As you can imagine, when the iOS version was released, there was significant concern about it being forcibly annulled from the App Store. It wasn’t, and I’m damn well glad for that because War on Terror is the sort of game you should at least play once.

Fans of the title should be forewarned, however. The iOS version is significantly watered down compared to the original. There is no Axis of Evil. There are no off-board negotiations or dealings. Defeated players do not become terrorist nations. You don’t even get situational cards. Nonetheless, that doesn’t change the fact that War on Terror is surprisingly fun and, once you’ve realized the genius behind it, devilishly clever.

But we’re moving a little too fast. Let’s take a few steps back and take a look at how the game actually plays. When you first start the game, you’ll be asked to select your avatar (this is purely cosmetic, by the way) and the number of players you wish to play against. After that, you’ll be dropped into a world map with a few nations under your control. To win, you must accumulate a certain amount of liberty points. How do you do that? By taking over continents (each continent rewards you with a certain amount of points). I’m totally serious about this.

If you cringed at that, you should probably stop reading now because it gets a lot worse. Did you know that the total annihilation of a player in War on Terror is usually accompanied with fanfare and a declaration that the aforementioned individual has been liberated. Ahem. Moving on.

The actual gameplay itself is relatively straightforward. During each turn, a set of dice is rolled and countries with the corresponding number will reward its owner with a certain amount of money. You’ll also be able to do things like establish alliances (these seldom seem to help), declare war on others, develop the countries under your ownership (the better developed the country, the greater the revenue you receive from them), indulge in a spot of terrorism (they’re surprisingly effective), build defenses (protect a country against radioactive assaults or common-place rabble; it’s your choice) and even initiate nuclear attacks (exactly what you think it is).

Complex as all that might sound, it’s not. War happens when you click on an adjacent nation and select the appropriate option. Victory is even less hands-on; a win is determined by whether or not your dice rolls are above a five.

Such is the case for everything else as well; it’s all a matter of pointing and clicking. However, what makes War on Terror shine is the way the game enforces the need for proper accountancy. For example, you can wage war as much as you like – just make sure you have a minimum of forty million in your bank. Want to call a nuclear strike? Sure. Have five hundred million in reserve. No one ever said it was easy to be a world leader. If anything, it’s bloody expensive. Guerrilla warfare, on the other hand, is not.

In fact, compared to everything else, terrorism is almost mind-bogglingly cheap. You’ll only need to spend ten million in order to send your incendiaries anywhere in the world. As an added bonus, you won’t have to worry about weathering retaliation either – radicals in this game are rather close-mouthed about their affiliations.

For the sake of decorum, I’m going to forgo discussing the political aspects of the game. You can come to your own conclusions yourself. However, I will have to say that War on Terror is rather compelling. Once you’ve gotten into the swing of things, it’s easy to get caught up in the act of expansion, in worrying about the next oil turn and whether you will be a prince or a pauper. Do you play nice with your neighbors or do you move for the kill? Do you spread like a venereal disease or do you focus on building up the nations under your control?

Like any good iOS game, it’s simple but prone towards provoking ‘one more turn’ instincts. Graphics-wise, War on Terror will likely be a hit or a miss. If you enjoy the political cartoons in the newspaper, you’ll probably like it. If not, well, it’s not intolerable. It’s just not something to shout about.

As I’ve mentioned before, War on Terror is a game that you need to experience at least once. But only once. Re playability is a big issue here for me. After beating it once, I feel little imperative to do so again, an odd turn of circumstances given that War on Terror was derived from a board game. I imagine that this opinion might change once online multiplayer (hot seating could have worked brilliant too, guys) is introduced but for now, it is a problem. Still, if you’re willing to overlook that, War on Terror remains a rather brilliant if possibly misguided piece of political satire and a rather entertaining game to boot.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Remember when we wrote about the fact that Carcassonne [$9.99] will receive expansion support in the future? It has that right now. Developer The Coding Monkeys has released two of the more popular expansions to the board game, “The River” and “Inns and Cathedrals” at $.99 and $1.99 respectively. It’s also thrown out a new update, which offers the ability to pick and choose between these expansions, play a baby version of the game sans fields, and an option to disable tile placement overviews.

In a nutshell, River adds 12 “river” tiles that essentially serve as territorial wedges and divide the game in fascinating ways. Inns and Cathedrals adds 18 additional tiles, some of which double the value of roads or add a point to towns. The twist with the new buildings is that if a territory is incomplete, it loses its value completely. The Carcassonne page has the specifics on both of these new expansions. Our review, on the other hand, has the details on the game.

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One genre that seems to be overlooked a bit on the App Store is tank games. Sure, there’s certainly a ton of them available for download, but it always seems as if they contain the same boring gameplay, drab military-esque visuals, and awkward controls. Enter Tank Riders [$1.99], the latest title from Polarbit (maker of Reckless Getaway) which attempts to differentiate itself from the rest of the genre with vibrant visuals and objective-based campaign gameplay. Unfortunately, the lack of content, multiplayer issues and frustrating controls keep Tank Riders from reaching its true potential.

At its core, Tank Riders is a somewhat simplistic, top-down 3D tank driving game. Players run through approximately 25 colorful levels (with five additional tutorial levels) with the goal of either getting to the other end of the map or collecting items to advance to the next mission. At the completion of each level, players are scored via a number of categories (such as health and speed) and are ranked via a 3-star system.

Along the way are enemy tanks equipped with one of several weapons along with destructible walls that occasionally hide coins (which boost your score) or hearts (which recover your health). Most levels also feature barriers that require a switch to either be stepped on or shot at in order to proceed. If the core gameplay seems basic, that’s because it is; there is very little in terms of actual innovation. However, it’s important to note that what Tank Riders does offer is implemented pretty well, which can be a challenge in itself.

The controls in Tank Riders are one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. The primary control method has movement done via a virtual joystick on one side of the screen. Attacking, meanwhile, is done by touching whatever direction you want to aim around the tank. The core problem with aiming in this mode is that the tank is always centered in the middle of the screen, meaning that if you’re trying to attack on the side with your movement stick, you have to either stop moving and use that hand, or use your opposite fingers and work around your other hand (which is presumably controlling movement at the same time).

Thankfully, Tank Riders does offer an alternative ‘dual-stick’ mode, but you lose a lot of accuracy and speed when using this control option. Considering that some of the later missions require a lot of simultaneous shooting and dodging, the shortfalls in both control options are disappointing.

In addition to the short single-player campaign, Tank Riders also features multiplayer. Normally, I’d expect multiplayer in a tank game to be pretty fun, but unfortunately there are a few flaws in Tank Riders. For one, multiplayer requires registration in yet another online service, and there’s currently no support for Game Center. Even worse, it’s nearly impossible to find a match currently, much less a match with more than one opponent (which really isn’t all that much fun).

To add insult to injury, each match I tried had a certain amount of lag and hit detection issues, which made the matches even more unsatisfying. In addition, there doesn’t appear to be an option for local Wi-Fi matches, which would have been a decent alternative for players looking to play something.

If multiplayer was working properly, Tank Riders probably would have been a game worth checking out. The controls, while annoying, were workable, and the different types of weapons offered some variety in taking out opponents. Unfortunately, without multiplayer, all you’re left with is the too-short single player campaign which can be completed in a few hours and simply doesn’t have enough content to carry the whole game. If Polarbit were to perhaps expand on the single player, Tank Riders might be worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, as it currently stands, you may want to pass on this ride.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The only way I can start this review is with a little history lesson, both for people who aren’t familiar with Sonic CD, as well as those of you who might not have been reading TouchArcade since the summer of 2009. Let’s start at the beginning, so everyone can truly appreciate just how wonderful the very existence of this game is.

Sonic CD, or Sonic the Hedgehog CD was originally released in late 1993 for the Sega CD, Sega’s CD-ROM accessory for the Genesis console. Sega CD had actually come out earlier that year, and many gamers (myself included) couldn’t wait to get their hands on one as the promise of full motion video powered gaming seemed incredible. Unfortunately, both due to the many technical limitations of the system, as well as the games themselves just not being very good, the Sega CD never really took off quite how I imagined Sega wanted it to. (There’s actually a bunch of reasons I could also get into, but I digress.)

Sonic CD represented a blazing torch of promise that I had hoped was going to give the Sega CD the boost it needed, serving as that ever-important position as “system seller.” Again, unfortunately, the relative low popularity of the Sega CD accessory made Sonic CD a commercial failure, even though it was a critical success. In fact, I’d still say Sonic CD is the best Sonic game ever released. It was a particularly great Sega CD game, as it played to the strengths of the Genesis with familiar Sonic-style gameplay enhanced through a few tasteful full motion video scenes and some fantastic CD audio.

Fast forward nearly 16 years to a curious question that Sega posted to the iOS community. Previously, Sega’s efforts on the App Store were limited to decidedly mediocre games, centralizing almost entirely around emulated Genesis games wrapped in an emulator that really wasn’t that great, and still isn’t that great. They asked gamers what they’d like to see on the iPhone next, and literally a day later Christian Whitehead revealed his idea. Check out the video from 2009:

While that video might not be that entirely impressive now, remember at the time we were busy wagging our finger at Sega for continuing to release emulated Genesis ports that played poorly, performed even worse, and just weren’t any fun. Then Christian Whitehead comes along with not only a port of the best Sonic game, but also running at 60fps? The emulated Genesis games barely ran at a quarter of that. Our minds were beyond blown, but like all cool things utilizing IP of a larger company, we didn’t expect this fan-made Sonic CD project to wind up anywhere other than in a cease and desist letter fired off from Sega’s legal department.

We quickly got together with Whitehead, and conducted a fascinating interview where one thing started to become crystal clear: This is a project motivated solely by love for the game. Christian built an entire game engine specifically for porting retro classics, and he had aspirations of working with Sega to actually get his version of Sonic CD in gamers’ hands. Following that, things went dark. The fan-made Sonic CD web site vanished and the above video disappeared from YouTube. We assumed the worst, as it seemed reasonable that Sega’s legal hammer came down on the project.

Jump ahead another two years, and out of nowhere that Sonic CD was coming to iOS. We quickly confirmed that this was in fact Christian Whitehead’s Sonic CD, and we couldn’t have been happier. Sure, the particulars such as release date and other things like that weren’t in the open yet, but it was coming, and that was enough.

Tonight, Sonic CD is released to the world, based on the very same demonstration we saw back in 2009, which I suppose brings us to the actual “review” portion of this review. Sonic CD plays like every other Sonic game in that you run from the start to the finish, collecting rings, and fighting bosses every few levels. One radical addition to Sonic CD is the addition of the “Past” and “Future” system. Running past either a “Past” or “Future” sign sends Sonic time traveling to a slightly different version of the level. Initially, the future will be a “bad” future, overrun by robots. However, if you go into the past first, and destroy the robot generator, you’ll be able to enjoy the “good” future which significantly fewer enemies. Alternatively, you can just ignore time traveling all together, although I believe (If my memory serves me.) getting the best ending requires unlocking every “good” future.

In a word, Sonic CD is incredible. It redefines what gamers can expect out of retro iOS ports, while simultaneously making all of Sega’s existing ports look absolutely horrid in comparison. The on-screen controls work great, the game performs even better than the original, and they’ve included not only the Japanese soundtrack, but also the American one. (Note: It defaults to the Japanese soundtrack, so if you’re wondering where the familiar “Sonic Boom” song is, you’ll need to toggle it in the options.) It’s even Universal. I can’t think of a single thing that’s missing or lacking in any way, in fact, they’ve even added Tails, who wasn’t even present in the original.

I’m not sure what else to say. Here we have the best installment of one of the greatest gaming franchises, which received both flawless review scores and game of the year awards when it was originally released ported with complete perfection to iOS. This is a game you flat out need to buy if you even vaguely consider yourself an iOS gamer. Not only because it’s such an impeccable port of an important piece of gaming history, but because we need to vote with our wallets to tell Sega (and anyone else who might be watching) that this is the quality we demand out of retro games brought to the App Store.

International App Store Link: Sonic CD, $1.99

Note: Sonic CD will be available in the USA at 11:00 PM Eastern, it should be available everywhere else in the world right now though.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Bohemia Interactive, alongside Idea Games, have launched its interesting companion, er, experience to Arma 2 across iOS. Arma 2: Firing Range [Free] as it’s called, is a pretty strict weapon simulation game that tasks you with hitting targets with a dizzying range of guns equipped with a variety of mechanical compliments such as red dot sights.

It’s interesting because it’s so strict, which is basically why Arma 2 the full game has been receiving love despite its variety of technical issues. Firing Range’s connection to the full experience stops at the guns, but it’s notable that you can view them all with previews and even “study” the specifications of each.

Firing Range at $0 includes a single firing range and three weapons. With an IAP of $1.99, you’ll get access to all the current crop of weapons and challenges. We’ve been told that more guns and firing ranges will be added later.

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