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Crashing into things and making them explode almost never gets old, and that’s exactly what Bravo Games was banking on when it released Crash Mayhem [ Free ]. Luckily, this game lives up to its name and is just as fun as it may sound.

The thing about Crash Mayhem that immediately sucks you in is the lure of making as big of a crash as possible, racking up repair bills just as high as you can in the process. If this concept sounds familiar, that’s because the Burnout series was basically built on this same premise, even up to the iOS release of Burnout Crash [ $4.99 ].

Let’s preface this by saying that Burnout Crash is a pretty good addition to the Burnout series, and only debuted about a month ago on the App Store. The control style in Crash Mayhem is similar, the camera view is similar, the drivers are still incredibly stupid, and the scoring system is basically the same, too. Now that you know that, you should also know that Mayhem might even improve on Burnout’s formula a bit.

Besides the obvious advantage of Crash Mayhem being free, you can complete other goals that aren’t just blowing up everything in sight, causing catastrophic damage in the process. Instead, this non-stop action is broken up by objectives you’ll find across the game’s open world. Being able to actually explore around a world is quite a nice refresher after spending so much time strictly making things explode.

As previously mentioned, Crash Mayhem is indeed free and as with most free games, it does have some sort of in-app purchase for you to buy if you wish. This game’s pricing scheme is an example of IAP done right because you’ll only have to buy it if you don’t want ads or if you want some extra levels. As it is, the base free game gives you fifteen levels that you unlock as you play, with five more included with purchase.

The ads are persistent throughout the game, not just in menus and such, so if a banner blocking part of the screen will drive you crazy then forking over the 99¢ IAP to remove them will probably be high on your list of things to do. Still, having a game with as much content as Crash Mayhem available for free to try before you buy is a welcome thing.

The visuals in the game tend to be a bit drab and lacking in punch, but are satisfying enough to not be too much of a bother. Variety would have helped out a bit in this area, as you play in the same open world throughout every stage of the game. For the audio, the main theme playing on the main menu is very catchy, and the sound effects do just fine and capture the action happening on screen well.

Game Center integration is a definite advantage that Crash Mayhem has over Burnout, as you won’t have to sign up for another silly account (Origin) just to share your high scores with your friends. Being Universal also helps, so that you can compare with your friends regardless of iOS device.

While it may be easy to say Crash Mayhem is a simple copy-and-paste job of the Burnout series by looking at screenshots, you’d be entirely wrong. Crash Mayhem is certainly derivative of Burnout (and especially Crash), but adds its own flavor and features that make it stand out on its own. With a price tag of free, you’d probably be doing yourself a disservice by passing this one up.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Honestly, there’s not much a rhythm game has to do in order to make me happy. A nice selection of tap-friendly tunes, decent UI, and adequate replayability features are the extent of my wishlist. For its part, O2Jam U [ Free ] manages to satisfy two of those three criteria, making it a satisfactory addition to the genre in my book. More importantly, O2Jam U manages to unveil a new wrinkle with the inclusion of freemium elements, a somewhat unique addition to song-based rhythm games.

If you’ve ever played a rhythm/music title on iOS you should be familiar with the gameplay in O2Jam U. Simply put, select one of the 16 currently available songs and earn the highest score possible by tapping out notes coming down the screen. Play results are scored on a grading scale and gems are awarded which can be used to purchase different tile patterns for each song. The tile patterns are a nice way to extend the life of each song, but I didn’t like the fact that patterns weren’t one-time purchases for songs.

Song-wise, you can expect a lot of K-Pop and other similar beat-heavy tunes. Obviously, musical preferences vary greatly, but I thought the song selections were definitely appropriate and lent themselves to a fun experience. Thankfully, folks can simply download the app for free in order to check out the musical variety.

O2Jam U also offers a multitude of standard options in addition to pattern changes. For example, each song has three difficulty settings, as well as the option of playing with 2, 4, or 5 rows of scrolling notes. There’s also a speed option, for those wanting a bit more hectic experience. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking as far as features, but it’s nice to see all the different options consolidated in one game, even if the overall UI seems to be a little peculiar (I imagine due to something being lost in the English translation).

While the UI’s quirkiness can somewhat be looked past, what’s less acceptable is the poor optimization that seems to permeate across all iOS devices. Selecting songs and navigating through menus almost always leads to slowdown and/or temporary screen freezes. I assume this has to do with the online infrastructure that the app hooks into (the game is a straight port of a PC title). Regardless, the performance issues put a significant damper on the overall experience, especially when it occurs mid-game (although some slowdown appears deliberate and not necessarily performance-based). Another significant side effect of the online system is a requirement to have an internet connection in order to play.

Seeing how O2Jam U is a free title, folks may be wondering about the freemium/IAP situation. Surprisingly, the system is quite fair. Upon first launching the game, you’ll be given 100 points which are used to play “paid” songs. Selection-wise, 8 of the 16 available tunes are free with the other half cost 3 points each. As you can imagine, the 100 points will go a long way towards replaying those 8 songs and when your point total eventually declines, you will slowly regenerate a limited number of points over time (the IAP for additional points is also reasonably priced).

Slowdown issues aside, I found O2Jam U to be a fun little music game. There are enough initial points to sample all the songs, and the decent amount of options ensures some replayability. Song selection may be a bit sparse, but that can easily be fixed with future support. There are some folks that will find the network requirement and performance issues to be deal breakers, but for everyone else, O2Jam U is worth at least a try.

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This morning Subatomic Studios unveiled that it has been doing something other than pounding out updates for Fieldrunners on iPhone and iPad. It’s been working on a big budget sequel to that 2008 original. In fact, Subatomic has been building Fieldrunners 2 since Fieldrunner’s initial release, carefully toying around with new concepts while also playing around with other prototypes. So, yeah, this one did take awhile.

It’s true that this sequel ushers in the usual, not-so-exciting follow-up fare: new enemies, new towers, new modes, new progression systems, and new maps. But it’s also doing something great and pure. It’s introducing new mechanics that change up the core experience. These tweaks and changes are radical enough that they had Subatomic floating the idea of calling the game something else.

Jamie Gotch, the CEO of Subatomic Studios, chatted with us this afternoon about some of the game’s biggest changes. He also gave us a brief history lesson on how Subatomic got its start, and how important Fieldrunners is to the studio.

“We formed back in 2008. When we first established, we were virtual. We were just some dudes who were working on this game part-time on the side,” Gotch says. “We saw an opportunity on the iPhone and we went for it. We had this game idea, which was Fieldrunners, and we figured that — this was before any games were released when the iPhone was in its beta phase and we thought tower defense game would be great to put on a mobile device. There wasn’t much of that out at the time. I don’t know if there were any games that were in that genre. We saw it as a great opportunity. We worked really hard and got the game out and it did really, really well.”

Gotch paints an overall picture that has us thinking that Subatomic wouldn’t exist in its current full-time staffed form without Fieldrunners. Subatomic almost … owes that game, and it needs to produce a sequel that feels as honest and hip, but also just as new as Fieldrunners felt at the time.

“We were really fortunate,” Gotch tell us when we ask about how many people were buying into the original. “As you know, there’s so many iPhone games out there. It’s very hard to release a game on a huge budget because it’s a huge risk. Fieldrunners has done well and it allowed us the ability to build this team and the game we wanted to build.”

One of the things the studio wanted to build for Fieldrunners 2 is better AI. It did, and it’s a game-changer. It’s smarter. It’s now aware of itself and the world it inhabits. Enemies can bump into each other at choke points and push to find safer pathways. They can also scramble over and under each other. The original game was as mechanical as other tower defense games. Enemies just plowed straight ahead, totally oblivious to everything around them — no behaviors, no awareness, no brains.

“In Fieldrunners 2 what we did, we actually have this very elaborate swarming behavior,” Gotch says. “Units behave like they would on a real battlefield. If you were to throw hundreds of units on-screen they would all swarm in and take control of the battlefield. Like an army you would see in Braveheart … They actually influence one another. You can build mazes and congest the [pipes you build]. And the guys behind [other enemies] are affected by the guys in the forefront.

Gotch excitedly tells us about other new stuff. Bridges and tunnels are being introduced in addition to environmental hazards and mini-bosses. A really neat sounding collectible card mini-game is in the works, too. As you earn achievements in the game’s modes, you receive cards.

Several of you noted earlier today that the game looks great. It does, and that’s thanks to Fieldrunner 2’s re-written engine, which is what makes all of the game’s new, much more unpredictable action possible. We’ve got a couple of new screens in the article, so give the game a look as you’re reading.

The new engine and the new AI behaviors combine to make a pretty different game, which is what prompted the debate Subatomic had about the Fieldrunner 2’s name. In the App Store world, putting a number instead of a subtitle in a sequel’s name is often said to be sales suicide because people quit buying the original game. Subatomic doesn’t care about this. It thinks it created a better game and if it loses sales, whatever. It wants this to stand proudly on its own.

Fieldrunners 2 is due out this June on iPhone and an iPad version will then follow. We talked with Gotch and the game’s lead designer Sergei Gourski on this week’s episode of our bonus podcast. We’ll blast the audio to your earholes tomorrow.

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We’ve been hotly anticipating Nimblebit’s follow-up to their massively popular Tiny Tower [ Free ], called Pocket Planes, since it was first unveiled at GDC in March. We took a close look at its Flight Crew Challenges in a hands-on preview last month, and we dug deep into the Nimblebit way of making games free-to-play the right way in an in-depth article earlier this month. Finally, we talked about our early impressions of the game on our podcast a couple of weeks back. See? Told you we’re hotly anticipating it.

Today, Nimblebit has released the first trailer for Pocket Planes giving everybody their first glimpse at the game in action.

As you can see from the video, and what we’ve known for a while now, is that Pocket Planes is looking to be a fantastic follow-up to Tiny Tower. It’s really been the current obsession around the TouchArcade headquarters since we’ve had our hands all over early versions, and we can’t wait for everyone else to get their hands on the game too. Unfortunately, Pocket Planes still doesn’t have a firm release date but it’s certainly close on the horizon, and once we find out when it hits for sure we’ll be letting you know.

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Neuroshima Hex [$2.99] received all sorts of new features and content this morning courtesy a brand new update to the core game. The coolest addition by far is the introduction of asynchronous online play, which is something the game’s developer Big Daddy’s Creations has been thinking about doing for quite some time. Other neat features in today’s update include new iPad retina support, player profiles, a stronger tutorial, and redesigned UI elements across the board — stores, menus, and even in-game.

We haven’t talked about Neuroshima in a while, so allow us to re-introduce you to the brain busting game with this tidbit from our comprehensive review:

Like many strategy games with unique rulesets, Neuroshima Hex is fairly complicated. Playing the game involves selecting one of the four factions, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then playing with a 35 tile “deck”. Players start by placing their headquarters on the game board, and the rest of the game revolves around attacking the enemy HQ while defending your own utilizing the tiles you draw at the start of your turn. Your deck of tiles consists of three different types, tiles that contain different types of units, modules which buff those units, and instant action tiles that do things like destroy or slide a unit, or even initiate combat.

In celebration of the release of this update, Big Daddy has dropped the price of the game to $2.99 from its usual $4.99. Our full review is available here, if you’d like to read up on the game if you’re thinking about taking the plunge. Spoiler: the game’s learning curve is a little steep.

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You should get to know Cuboid [Free]. It’s a chill, isometric puzzle game that tasks you with sliding and positioning rectangular pegs so they can fit into square holes. It hit PSN back in 2008, and now a free take on the experience is available on iPhone and iPad as of this morning. It looks just as good as the original, and in some ways, feels better, but it’s also not as atmospheric thanks to bolted on free-to-play functionality.

We’ve only spent a few minutes thus far, but we’ve noticed horrible low-resolution ads and peeped the title’s in-game currency, which you can use to progress. You can turn off the ads, but it appears as though you’re stuck with the currency.

We’ll have a lot more on Cuboid at a later date, but our qualm with the game stems from the fact that Cuboid was a better game without this stuff. F2P systems just don’t gel with it mechanically, and they also get in the way of the game’s laid-back atmosphere, which was a big draw in the original version.

But since its free and all, go ahead and give it a look if you have the time. The puzzle action is still as stellar as ever, despite the new system surrounding it. Who knows. It might hook you long enough to see the expansions developer HeroCraft plans to release for it.

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Joystiq just posted a brand new gameplay video of the upcoming Infinity Blade Dungeons. If Diablo III has you itchin’ for some similar dungeon crawling action on the iPad, you’ll want to watch this video right now:

Also in the video is a curious looking blacksmithing mini game, and if you watch what seems to be a boss fight of some kind towards the end you’ll notice what looks like a gesture-based attack to throw your weapon around. Unfortunately, no other details are available just yet, but I’ve got a good feeling about this. Something tells me if videos like this are dribbling out, we might be closer to a release than we may realize. (Or, at least, that’s what I want to believe.)

[Via Joystiq]

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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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Punch Hero’s [ Free ] moment of brilliance occurs when it has you against the ropes. You’ll come to a point during the game’s eighteen-bout arcade mode where progression seems well-nigh impossible. Down to a trickle of health, you will think about throwing the towel in, taking an uppercut to the chin so you can earn some gold and turn the thing off.

But you won’t. Instead, you weave under a vicious right hook and in cinematic slow motion land your own devastating punch. Your opponent is dazed. Jab, jab, jab. Right in his big, stupid face. He comes to, and, mad as hell, throws an uppercut. You weave under it and this time, in similarly cinematic slow motion you throw a left hook. The knockout punch. “Oh my God,” you’ll probably say while your cats look on in shame.

This game’s comeback KO is one of the most gratifying skill-oriented moments the iOS platform has to offer. It is akin to the feeling one gets when cracking a thousand on Super Crate Box’s [ $1.99 ] Construction Yard, or killing your first Big Purple Freak in ZiGGURAT [ $0.99 ]. And while the skill ceilings of those games look down upon Punch Hero’s from high above, high-fiving each other in the Exosphere of Amazing, it does not matter one bit. That moment makes you feel as if you are awesome, thus, you are awesome.

It’s a glimpse of the boxing game the App Store deserves. A glimpse because for that highest of highs, it is a ridiculously vertiginous ascent from the usual grind the game tries so hard to put the player through. Remember the aforementioned “eighteen-bout arcade mode?” If you want to see that through without succumbing to in-app purchases, you are going to have to replay most those fights again and again, ad infinitum.

Despite vague aesthetic similarities and a similar, mostly innocent (more on this later) propensity for racial stereotyping, Punch Hero is nothing like Punch-Out!! Whereas Punch-Out!! is a timing-based puzzle game, Punch Hero is, hey, a boxing game.

Opponents have no patterns as far as I can tell, so you are left with the game’s very simple tap-and-swipe controls, along with the knowledge that the next opponent you face is going to hit harder and have a larger pool of health. Which would be fine if all it took to trudge your way to the top was your wits and reflexes, but it’s not.

No matter your skill, you are going to get hit so hard, will face opponents so resilient, that you will need to upgrade your skills and gear using the gold doled out to you at the end of a match, or via IAP. Most items that actually buff your stats are nearly unattainable without spending actual money, while attribute upgrades the average player will need to complete the arcade mode take dozens upon dozens of monotonous hours grinding out gold to acquire. Or, you know, you could just buy them.

When microtransactions and in-app purchases became the monetization method of choice for many social and mobile developers, the worry was that “pay-to-win” would become the norm. Punch Hero utilizes a “pay-to-compete” system so unfair as to require an unfun punishment should the player not want to spend actual money.

A bit of a non-controversy occurred when another outlet’s reviewer noticed that, among all of the cultural stereotypes presented in Punch Hero, the African American fighters were portrayed most offensively. The writer’s casual description of the “full-lipped, wide-eyed ‘Sambo’ look” even fails to mention that the standard “black male” face is also called “Full Lips” in the game’s shop.

Punch Hero developer Johnny Oh, who seems like a really sweet guy, replied to the review, asking for feedback on how to change the black fighters to make them less offensive. It was an honest response to the kind of inadvertent racism that really can only be replied to with a sigh and a shake of the head. It’s a product of cultural detachment, rather than anything mean-spirited. By contrast, Punch Hero’s invisible paywall feels terribly mean-spirited.

It’s an unfortunate decision that’s marred what is otherwise a pretty good game of boxing. Groundwork for iteration, then, rather than something I’d recommend this go-round. That’s fine. As for me, I think I’ll go ahead and delete the game from my phone, hanging onto the memory of that one wonderful high.

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.

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