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Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99] already has a ton of content to explore, but it’ll be offering even more fat loot and monsters this coming Thursday when Chair unleashes a new expansion dubbed Vault of Tears. It’s free and set to “delve further into the Infinity Blade story” via a brand new dungeon to dive. Expect to get around 50 new items to collect, level up, and utilize and expect to see a handful of new foes.

Interestingly, Chair is plugging in a few fresh mechanics to play around with. Of the most note, it’s adding a treasure map that marks treasure locations. Also, ClashMob is being expanded to allow anyone to participate in fights via Twitter or Facebook — no game required. Weird, right?

Again, Vault of Tears hits later this Thursday. These assets should hold you over until then, we’d hope.

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, Eli and I try to persuade Jared to buy Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3. We also dive into what makes the game click with us comment on how its release has ground the gaming industry to a stop. Later, we manage to dive into iPhone and iPad. In our games section, we discuss Cuboid and Extinction Squad. In our front page section, we talk about how traditional industry guys never seem to have success on the App Store and get out our mallets for a proper legal discussion.

If you’d like to listen, awesome! Click one of the links below. Additionally, you can subscribe to The TouchArcade Show on iTunes and Zune Marketplace. Those links are just below, too. The latter is the easiest way to listen to us, as you’ll get new episodes the second they’re released.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-052.mp3, 36.8MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Cuboid Free [Free]
• Extinction Squad [$.99]
• Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 [$6.99]

FRONT PAGE

• Q Entertainment Vets Release So-So Mobile Game
• Dragon Shout Creator Hit With Copyright Infringement Notice
• ‘Whale Trail’ Is Going F2P
• Wow, Look at This ‘Sworcery’ Jam Stuff!

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Usually when we call a game a sandbox, we’re referring to some kind of open world game where you can wander, free of restraints, and do anything you can think of. The Sandbox [ Free ] isn’t quite that kind of game. Instead it straddles the border between game and art project, rewarding players for creativity while giving them near-infinite possibilities.

You don’t play a character in The Sandbox, you play a god. You can paint with pixels of stone, draw towers of earth and set them to grow. You can draw just about any non-living thing you can imagine, paint it into a scene, and then bring it to life with the forces at your command. You have electricity at your fingertips, steam and oil in your grasp, and much more. It’s less a sandbox than a blank canvas, waiting to be filled.

There are two ways to play (with) The Sandbox: Free Mode and Story Mode. Story Mode is misnamed; there is no story, just a complex, goal-driven training ground. The game walks you through each element so you can learn how it interacts with the others, teaching you tricks like how to use heat and electricity to boil water, or how to grow a forest using soil, seeds and rain.

A disproportionate amount of Story Mode is spent on working out the finer details of the freemium model, unfortunately. The elements can be unlocked via IAP or mana earned in game, but the latter option is complicated. The Sandbox doesn’t give out enough mana in Story Mode to unlock the elements when you need them, but if you switch over to Free Mode and earn some achievements you’ll be awarded more. It seems like it might be possible to unlock all the elements for free with enough careful planning and time. Otherwise you can purchase mana, or a launch pack with everything for $6.99. It’s an unnecessarily complicated system that draws attention to the man behind the curtain when you should be focused on learning the ropes.

However you do it, once you work through all 24 Story Mode levels you’ll have the full stable of elements and climate options at your command. That’s when things get really fun, when you move into Free Mode and start creating. You can essentially paint any sort of pixel environment you want, with a huge selection of unlockable backdrops and the freedom to combine elements to do just about anything. Players are only just starting to explore the potential of the game—if you want to be inspired you can paw through the gallery of shared worlds and play with any that you like.

All this freedom comes at a cost, though. The game has a few bugs, like level conditions that trigger incorrectly and Game Center achievements that don’t seem to work. But the part that counts, the ways the elements interact with one another, that part works beautifully. The elements may not always have the properties you might expect, but they can do quite a lot. It would be a dream come true to play a game with this complexity in worlds like those of Minecraft, where you could work some serious feats of 3D engineering.

The Sandbox isn’t that kind of sandbox, sadly, but it’s still fun to play in just two dimensions. Build a world, populate it with flowers and trees, then burn it to the ground. Experiment with the debilitating effects of acid rain. Or build complex Rube Goldberg machines that really work. The sky isn’t quite the limit, but The Sandbox is well on the way. And with a planned Universal update in the works, its canvas is set to grow. So go, make something amazing—then stop by our discussion thread to share your creation with the world.

TouchArcade Rating:

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I love the App Store. On a single platform, I can draw from a well of my favorite classics like Doom [ $4.99 ], and try out thousands games like N.O.V.A. 3 [ $6.99 ] that take their inspiration from popular console and PC games but offer an experience tailor-made for tablets and smartphones. But what I enjoy most about the App Store is the chance to drop a buck or two on quirky titles you don’t see on any other platform. Take Rocket Fox [ Free ], for example, a new puzzle/platformer game starring a fox named Guy who loves fireworks. He loves them so much that he’s not content to admire them from afar like your average Fourth-of-July party-goer. No, Guy likes to hop aboard rockets before they blast off and ride them skyward. Of course, what goes up must come down, and that’s where you come in.

Each level begins with Guy slipping inside a large flower while a counter ticks down from three. Once the clock strikes zero, the camera flips to an overhead view, the flower bursts open, and Guy, mounted on a rocket, shoots up to the clouds. Seconds later, his rocket blows apart in a torrent of colors, and Guy begins to freefall. From here, you tilt your iPhone to guide Guy away from the hard earth and watery depths, and toward trampoline-like flower pads. Flower pads come in different colors and designs that denote their functions. Red flowers give you a slight boost, blue ones throw you up even higher, and yellow pads give a breathtaking view of surrounding topography. Flowers can only be used once before withering away, leaving you to find the next one by the time Guy starts hurtling back down once again.

Because flower pads sit on lands of different heights and distances, you have to choose which flower pads to land on and in which order. Do you use a yellow pad first, which will send you soaring high and afford a breathtaking view of the sprawling topography? Or should you leave it and bop around the red pads first, since those ones won’t lend enough momentum to cross the water to the other isle where more flowers await? Other levels ask you to fly high enough to drop through flower rings, find and land on a level-winning finale flower, use flower rockets that fire off explosives on impact, and more.

The appearance of rocket flowers brought about a distinct and pleasant shift in Rocket Fox’s pace. Rocket flowers don’t shoot arbitrarily; an arrow blinking in one corner reveals which direction the rocket will fly when you land. Rockets destroy the first flower they come into contact with, but they also cause closed flowers to blossom into new launching pads. Figuring out which flowers to clear away so rockets wouldn’t blast them into charred petals en route to closed pads I needed to crack open, coupled with making split-second decisions during brief airborne periods and the addition of new elements like rockets that send you shooting forward, shifted the game’s pace from soporific to an intense brainteaser that rewards quick thinking and skill.

Upping the tension and satisfaction of a good plan coming to fruition are a few risk-reward factors thrown into the mix on each level. Players are graded according to factors such as the time they took to finish a level. As you grow in skill, you’ll find yourself tempted to make use of the dive button in the lower-right corner of the screen. With a touch, Guy stiffens like an arrow and streaks toward the ground headfirst, giving you no further chance to alter his direction but shaving several seconds off your record once you grow comfortable enough to use it from great heights. That, and it just reeks of style.

Another temptation comes in the form of Fox Fire, colored flames that spit out of flower pads each time you collide with one, swirling around Guy like leaves caught up in a gust of wind. You can tap flames to collect them, then use them to buy items that slow your descent, increase your buoyancy, and grant you a second chance should you accidentally take a nosedive into earth or sea. But, each item lasts only a single turn. Whether you win on your next turn or slip up and have to try again, you lose your power-ups. More importantly, collecting flames means tearing your eyes away from pressing concerns like landing on flowers instead of carving fox-shaped holes in the ground.

Fortunately, flames don’t disappear, so you can wait until you have more airtime than usual (say, after hitting a yellow pad) to frantically claw at your screen then give your attention back to Guy’s disagreements with gravity. And, although items do help, I never once felt like I needed one, even on the more trying stages. The only significant mark against Rocket Fox is that most levels must be solved in a particular way. Perform one move out of order and you’ll likely run out of flower pads and end up back at the retry screen. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the game takes several seconds to load between attempts, then makes you sit through Guy’s three-second launch countdown, totaling to almost ten seconds of downtime between each gaffe. You’re bound to play later levels many, many times before completing them, so keeping relevant data loaded in memory to expedite attempts would have been welcome.

Don’t think twice about tagging along with Guy as he journeys to and from the stars in a journey crafted from charming storybook graphics and a unique twist on puzzle games that only a platform as diverse as the App Store can provide. Rocket Fox is free with a single $1.99 unlock, but by the time you hit that pay wall you’ll know for sure whether or want you go the rest of the way. I think you will.

TouchArcade Rating:

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It was back in October of 2010 that Sega first released Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I [$3.99 / $4.99 (HD)], a direct sequel to the original 16-bit Sonic trilogy on Genesis and the much ballyhooed return to its classic 2D roots after more than a decade of mostly mediocre Sonic games. While we did enjoy Episode I in our review, I don’t think it exactly lived up to the expectations set by the rabid Sonic fan base (could anything, though?).

In short, Sonic 4 Episode I brought modern visuals, great level designs, and a Sonic experience that was decidedly better than the majority of recent entries in the series. However, it didn’t quite feel like the Sonic games of old. Sonic’s movement in-game felt both slippery and sluggish, and it seemed much too easy to lose momentum and speed while playing, which isn’t a good thing for a character that has made his name by blasting through levels in a blue blur. Still, with the right expectations Sonic 4 Episode I was a pretty darn fun platformer that worked well on the touch screen, and was a huge step in the right direction for a faltering Sonic franchise.

Then, for the next year or so, Sega seemed happy to almost forget that Sonic 4 even happened as they hyped the impending release of an enhanced port of Sonic CD for iOS and other major platforms. And, last December, Sonic CD [ $4.99 ] finally hit and it was simply phenomenal. Since a lot of people might have missed out on Sonic CD the first time around back in the ‘90s, in a way it was almost like the new Sonic game that fans had been clamoring for for years, and really served to highlight just how much Sonic 4 Episode I missed that mark.

But, Sonic 4 wasn’t terrible by any means, and it wasn’t quite through just yet. Just a couple of weeks after Sonic CD’s release, Sega announced that Sonic 4 Episode II was slated for 2012. They would be using a new game engine for this latest episode in order to provide better visuals and address the complaints from fans over the wonky “feel” of Sonic’s movement.

So, with the convoluted backstory of Sonic 4’s rocky development road out of the way, this week finally saw Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II [ $6.99 ] hit all the major platforms. And, just like Episode I, it makes many great strides forward for the series, but some hiccups keep it from being the second coming of the original Sonic games that everybody hoped it would be.

Sonic 4 Episode II will look very familiar if you’ve played Episode I. There are 4 worlds to explore, each with 3 stages and a boss fight, and you can again play every stage in the default Score attack mode or a speed run-focused Time Attack mode with Game Center leaderboard support. This is all pretty much right in line with how the first game works, except that all levels aren’t available right off the bat which gives the game a much better sense of progression.

Additionally, in the same way that Episode I drew a ton of inspiration from the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode II draws a similar inspiration from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Many of the level elements and themes will seem quite familiar, the bonus stages are similar 3rd-person half-pipe coin-grabbing runs (which are incredibly fun I might add), and of course Episode II also contains Tails as a semi-controllable secondary character. You can even connect locally with another device and a second player who can control Tails while you control Sonic, just like back in the Genesis days.

During solo play Tails is controlled by the AI and just follows you around like a puppy dog, but you can also use him to pull off some team moves like him lifting you through the air using his helicopter-like tails, or a powerful combined spin dash move that will blast through enemies and obstacles like butter. These team-up moves are designed to be necessary to pass certain parts of the game, and add some nice variety to the platforming.

Speaking of level designs, I felt that the levels in Episode II weren’t quite up to snuff with what was in Episode I. The general flow of a level is often ground to a halt due to an oddly placed dead end, and there are far too many underwater sections which really slow down the pace. That’s not to say there aren’t any bright spots, and in fact there are a lot of really fantastic interactive elements in the environments – like bouncing back and forth between the foreground and background, or snowboarding down a snowy mountain – that really break up the action nicely. Overall though, the levels really feel more choppy and slower than you’d like a Sonic game to feel.

One majorly cool addition to Episode II is the inclusion of the bonus Episode Metal content that will unlock if you have Episode I installed on your device along with Episode II. Episode Metal shows how Metal Sonic rises from the ashes after being defeated in Sonic CD, and follows his adventures through 4 reworked levels from Episode I leading up to his reintroduction in the story of Episode II. These levels are short, but it’s incredibly fun to play as Metal Sonic and see just how he rises back to prominence to team up with Dr. Robotnik.

Another real bright spot for Sonic 4 Episode II is its visuals. It’s an absolutely huge upgrade from Episode I, which despite not supporting Retina Displays was still a very good looking game. However, Episode II blows it out of the water. From the fantastic lighting effects to the parallax scrolling to the incredible water effects, around every bend some sort of new visual treat is waiting for you in Episode II. And, at long last, this includes support for Retina Displays on iPhone and iPod touch, though sadly not for the new iPad (though it still looks great on that device).

Much like Sonic 4 Episode I, Episode II is an overall enjoyable platformer with a few relatively minor quirks that hold it back from greatness. No, it’s not going to replace any of the original trilogy’s games as the greatest of all time, and it doesn’t even approach the high level of quality of Sonic CD on iOS. But at this point, I think those are unrealistic expectations. The bottom line is that Sonic 4 Episode II is a great modern day 2D Sonic game, and I’d love to see a third episode that is inspired by Sonic 3 in the same way the previous Sonic 4 episodes were inspired by the original two games.

If you’re a Sonic fan that can deal with the differences from Sonic’s ’90s greatness, or if you just like fun platformers in general, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II has a lot to offer and is a worthy entry in this new era of classically-inspired Sonic games.

TouchArcade Rating:

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It seems my favorite board games are about the end of the world. We’ve talked about my love of Elder Sign [$3.99 / $6.99 (HD)], the game about stopping (or failing to stop) the rise of the ancient ones. And now I have a new sweetheart: Yggdrasil [ $5.99 (HD)], a game about stopping the forces of evil from destroying the world tree and changing the fate of Ragnarok. While it has a decidedly more Norse spirit than its eldritch cousin, Yggdrasil is more familiar than it first looks.

That first look might be a killer, though. Like so many board games before it, Yggdrasil makes the mistake of data dumping all over the player on the first glance, which left me completely confused about what lightning strikes had to do with anything, how elves were even involved, and why on earth I’d want to take anything from the World of the Dead. But it’s not nearly as confusing as it seems. One game’s worth of flailing around Yggdrasil was more than enough for me to learn how to play—from there on out, it was all about learning how to win.

Let’s not break this down too far. If the game designers can’t explain it clearly, I don’t expect to have much more luck. But here are the basics: you begin with your choice of up to six Norse gods—you know, Thor, Odin, Freyja and the like. You can play any combination yourself or you can split them up for a cooperative pass-and-play experience; there is no online multiplayer so far. The more gods you add the longer you’ll need to survive. If that’s not enough of a challenge you can also throw yourself a few extra handicaps.

Good and evil take turns. On your god’s turn, you have to complete three actions (though some gods have unique talents that alter that total). Each of those actions must be done while visiting a different world, any of the nine that can be reached from Yggdrasil. In Asgard, for example, you’ll fight your enemies and push them back. In Midgard you recruit more vikings to die for your cause, and so on.

After each god takes his or her turn, one of the evil gods takes one too. One is drawn from the deck, be it Loki, Hel, Fenrir or any of the others, six in total. That one moves forward in Asgard, getting one step closer to Odin’s stronghold and the end of the game. Each enemy also takes a single action as determine by its card—Jormungand, for instance, destroys one of the islands where your Valkyries collect viking souls, and Fenrir requires you spend actions to calm him. Asgard has three lines of defense. If five of your enemies pass the first line, three pass the second, or one passes the third, you’ll only have one final turn to push back back or lose. This is complicated by the substantial strength they gain as they trek across the board.

All this together makes for an intensely strategic experience. Since the enemy is moving inexorably forward, every time you fail to push one back you’re losing ground permanently. So each turn you have to plan your three actions carefully. Elves and vikings can help guarantee your success in combat by lowering the number you need to hit on your dice rolls, but they’re a semi-limited resource and recruiting them costs actions. Weapons are similarly necessary and similarly costly. Early on you might be able to get away with a few full turns spent building up your strength, but if you don’t dig in and hold back the advance you’ll lose before you know it.

There’s quite a bit more to it. You have to manage the flow of viking souls, and move your valkyries across islands to recruit them. You have to defeat Loki’s ice giants as he summons them or they’ll cut you off from whole worlds. And at every step, you’re at the mercy of the cards and dice. Will Fenrir get drawn multiple turns in a row, eating away your actions? Will the dice give you the numbers you need to defeat your enemies? And do you have a backup plan? You’re definitely going to need one.

For all its tension, Yggdrasil isn’t actually extremely difficult to win. Putting together a good team and using their godly powers to their limits isn’t a guarantee, but it improves your odds substantially. And ultimately all you really need to do is survive long enough to wear down the enemy and empty its deck. Once you do succeed, there’s a single Game Center leaderboard to compete on, but no achievements. You’ll be well-rewarded for good performance nonetheless—as you win more games by wider margins you unlock new gods and new Ragnarok scenarios. These can increase the game’s difficulty substantially, so you can customize the game to your skill level.

For the most part, I’m impressed. The Norse theme comes through with surprising depth as each element of the game takes its place in the overall story of Ragnarok. And despite a slightly slow start, the game gets immensely tense. If you’re passing the iPad around to play, expect long discussions about strategy. The evil gods come on like a tide, impossible to hold back forever. Carelessness can mean a loss before you have any idea that you’re failing.

There are a few small quirks of the iPad adaptation, which has some errors in the text and instructions that seem to be written for the physical board game. On the technical side, it’s a bummer that the game isn’t Retina-ready. It multitasks, thankfully, but it doesn’t have any longer-term saving. Longevity might be a problem, too; it seems that once you get a good strategy down it will be up to you to push for harder scenarios.

Those things aside, Yggdrasil is giving Elder Sign a serious run for its money in the field of board games I most like to play solo. It plays beautifully on iPad, and looks nearly as good as it plays. Most of all, I enjoy Ygdrassil because it’s a game that gives me a good measure of control over my fate, and the fate of the world by extension. You’ve gotta be lucky, but the game rides on much more than luck. Board game fans would do well to pick this one up, and maybe pop in to our discussion thread for some tips when you do.

TouchArcade Rating:

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we actually have to turn the car around in order to say something off-topic. At top, we discuss the arrival of the TouchArcade app [ Free ] and touch on its upcoming Universal-ness. Later, we dive into the latest, the best, and the hottest in iOS. From NOVA 3 to Pocket Planes, we’ve got your steamy games discussion covered. And in our front page section, we spend a good amount of time on Rovio’s latest moves and Team Meat’s latest stream of gripes.

If you’d like to give us a listen, go ahead and do so. Just hit up one of the handy links below. Additionally, you can subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune to get our latest episodes the second they hit the ‘net.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-051.mp3, 31.0MB

A couple of house-cleaning notes before the show notes: we fixed our audio issue from last week, so feel free to keep your iPod at a normal volume all the way through. Also, our official Minecraft server is a real thing. E-mail the podcast if you want in, and I’ll hit you back.

GAMES

• Pocket Planes
• NOVA 3 [$6.99]
• Penny Time [$.99]

FRONT PAGE

• Rovio Confirms That It Has Acquired ‘Casey’s Contraptions’
• Team Meat Goes Full Blast On F2P

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On the iOS platform, nobody has done as much for the 2D scrolling arcade shooter genre than Japanese developer Cave. For the past 2 years, they have consistently delivered high quality ports of their stellar back catalog of games to the App Store. They have yet to really have a misstep either, providing you have an especially unquenchable thirst for bullet hell-style shooters.

Cave’s iOS games come with several hallmarks, like touch controls that are arguably even better than physical controls, plenty of variety in scoring techniques, and a staggering amount of screen-filling explosions and interesting enemies and bosses. Their latest release Bug Princess 2 [$6.99 / Free ], which hit early last month, is no exception. It’s the sequel to last December’s Bug Princess [$4.99 / Free ] and you might also know it by its original name Mushihimesama Futari. It is widely considered by fans to be the best and most challenging entry in the Mushihimesama series.

If you played Bug Princess on iOS before, then things will seem incredibly familiar to you with Bug Princess 2. The menus and UI are largely the same, you have the same options for screen sizes and button placement, and of course the same great touch controls. Also like the original, the meat of the game comes in a 5 level campaign which can either be played straight through in one go or individually by level in a score attack mode.

You have the option of 2 ship types to play as, each with their own firing style, and on top of that you can choose what kind of shot type you want: Normal or Abnormal. Normal keeps your satellite helper ships tightly beside you, while Abnormal has them moving more tactically independently from your own ship movement. Finally, you have a choice of 4 difficulty options – Novice, Normal, Hard and Hell – which do a great job of tailoring the game’s challenge to suit practically any type of player.

Bug Princess 2 retains another feature from its iOS predecessor (am I sounding like a broken record yet?) which is 3 types of gameplay modes: Original, Maniac, and Ultra. In Original mode you build up a multiplier counter in the corner of the screen by collecting gems dropped by defeated enemies. You’ll need to switch back and forth between normal bullets and lasers depending on the color of the counter, adding a layer of strategy as opposed to just blasting away at every enemy willy-nilly. Ultra mode uses the same scoring system but with arranged enemies and bullet patterns.

Maniac mode, however, is where Bug Princess 2 really shows its brilliance. Here you build up your multiplier meter using regular shots, and once it’s hit a certain point, you switch to laser to cash it all in. Using either regular shots or laser shots will produce different types of gems from fallen enemies too. This makes Maniac mode the most strategic in terms of variety of scoring ways, and in turn makes it the most interesting mode.

So there you have it. Bug Princess 2 shares a ton in common with the original Bug Princess, but thanks to some key differences in scoring and completely new stages it really stands out on its own. And like Bug Princess it’s also not overly complex like some later Cave titles, so for shooter newbies it remains a strong entry point to the genre. If you’ve had your fill of bullet-hell shooters then Bug Princess 2 probably won’t do anything to change your mind, but if you’re a leaderboard competitor or a Cave fanatic then you’ll find plenty of value in picking it up or at least checking out the lite version.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Say what you will about Gameloft, the developer occasionally does a good job of filling the App Store void with iOS versions of console staples. N.O.V.A. 3 [ $6.99 ], the third game in the company’s perennial FPS series is one such title.  Capitalizing on the success of the previous two titles, as well as offering full support for the latest and greatest in Apple hardware, N.O.V.A. 3 offers a great action-packed single player experience complete with some very impressive visuals.

Following the never-ending trials and tribulations of Kal Warden, N.O.V.A. 3 continues the story as Warden is yet again recalled into action, this time to the ruins of San Francisco to aid an old friend. From there, you’ll travel to several more planets, a derelict ship, and even the home planet of the Volterites. I’ll save the spoilers for those of you that care about the story, but suffice to Kal gets tasked with saving the human race (again) from certain doom and will go through humans, Volterites and Judgers alike to accomplish that feat.

You’ll be saving humanity via gameplay that should be largely familiar for genre veterans. Like its predecessor, N.O.V.A. 3 has you exploring a wide variety of locales while battling enemy archetypes and hitting objective-marker based goals that shouldn’t offer much in terms of surprise. Also, you can expect the occasional break from the on-foot battle heroics by piloting Mechs, manning the weaponry on top of AI driven trucks and serving as sniper support for other NPCs. By now, it should be apparent that Gameloft has uncovered the formula for a successful FPS, and while N.O.V.A. 3 doesn’t offer much in terms of revolutionary gameplay, it certainly succeeds in what it does implement.

One interesting inclusion is an in-game store that offers unique weapons and upgrades that takes currency you earn by completing single player levels. It’s nice to see a system that actually provides rewards proportionally to how well you complete a level run. Unfortunately, the inclusion of IAP to bypass said currency collection lessens experience somewhat.

A well-done FPS is in some ways far more reliant on its controls than other genres. Thankfully, N.O.V.A. 3 works within its limitations to provide a competent scheme for a touch screen. The standard dual-stick controls are available, as well as generous use of a swipe gestures for swapping weapons and powers. I was particularly a fan of the gyroscope inclusion, as proper use of that option goes a long way towards making the game’s aiming accurate and fun.

N.O.V.A. 3 plays well on the iPhone, but I found the screen to be a bit cramped compared to the roomy iPad controls. Either way, a host of options such as auto-aim, attempt to help even touch-screen novices blast away with ease. While I imagine there are some folks that will never get used to touchscreen controls for an FPS, the fact remains that N.O.V.A. 3’s control schemes do a decent job of letting you take out baddies and navigate the environments with ease.

By the way, those environments you’ll be traversing across look absolutely gorgeous. N.O.V.A. 3 takes full advantage of the hardware offerings of the iPhone 4S and new iPad, which leads to one of the most visually impressive FPS titles I’ve played on iOS. The textures, weather and visual effects – even the shadows are all well done and simply stunning.

As nice as the game looks on the small scree, N.O.V.A. 3 begs to be played on a new iPad. The larger retina-display of the tablet lets you truly appreciate just how far the visuals have come in the series. The fact that the game manages to look this good while successfully running (for the most part) at a decent framerate is probably the most impressive accomplishment. Granted, there were a few mishaps with the graphics engine, such as a few instances of falling through environments, the occasional slowdown when there’s a lot of action on the screen and the unusually lengthy loading screens (that occasionally make you think the game crashed), but these do little to detract from what is an otherwise impressive visual system.

It would be easy to simply classify N.O.V.A. 3 as impressive eye candy and leave it at that, but Gameloft deserves credit for continuing the trend of creating a well-rounded FPS experience complete with a full story-driven campaign, a plethora of control and gameplay options and a balanced gameplay experience. We sometimes talk about games that possess that certain something that make them ideal for showcasing the might of iOS. I’d argue that, while N.O.V.A. 3 may not necessarily be at the top of that shortlist, it has enough going for it to warrant being close to such a classification.

This is part one of our two-part N.O.V.A. 3 review. In previous N.O.V.A. games, multiplayer played a very large component of how much our community enjoyed the game. With our early review copy, there obviously wasn’t anyone to be found to play with online. As soon as the game is released, and we can spend some quality time with the multiplayer we’ll post a follow-up focusing on the multiplayer aspects of N.O.V.A. 3.

TouchArcade Rating:

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