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I admit without shame that I was a huge Poké-nerd back in Pikachu’s heyday. The explosion of Pokémon’s popularity coincided with my sophomore year of high school, and being nerdy enough to know my cool-kid rep was in the negatives even before I started lugging around a Pokédex with my textbooks, I wore Pokémon t-shirts and evangelized the games and cartoon without a care. I also saw new Pokémon movies on opening night and, surrounded by squirmy kiddles and their irritated parents, broke out in wild applause and cheers when the Nintendo logo appeared on the screen, which prompted all the kids to whoop and holler along with me (and the parents to stare at me with such loathing that I wanted to crawl into the nearest Poke-ball).

There is, however, one immediately noticeable difference between MonTowers ~Legend of Summoners’~ [ Free ] critters and Nintendo’s kid-friendly goldmine. Amid the fantasy- and horror-themed creatures you will amass, you’ll also accumulate anime girls so scantily clad and busty they make Lara Croft look like a teenie bopper who has only just started to blossom. Fortunately, unlike the milky-white flesh of your personal monster-hunting assistant (and what soft, creamy, heaving flesh it is), there is much more to MonTowers than meets the eye.

Like Pokémon, MonTowers is a monster-hunting game where you pit monsters against each other and, ideally, add defeated opponents to your ensemble. Your goal is to clear a series of towers by defeating the monster on each floor and moving up to the next challenge. There’s a cursory story outlined at the start of the adventure, but really, it’s all about climbing monster towers and fighting deadlier and deadlier opponents.

At the beginning of each brawl, you get a chance to attack first by completing a touchscreen minigame. During your attack phase, your monsters automatically step up one by one to deal their damage. Should you botch your first-strike opportunity, the opposing monster gets its licks in before your group. The cycle rinses and repeats until your team or the enemy drops dead.

When you defeat an opponent, they either combust in a flash of light, or shrink into a coin. Earning a monster’s coin adds that monster to your collection. From the moment I received my first coin, I felt that old Poké-compulsion come flooding back–not only the burning desire to “catch em all,” but to form posses made up of different abilities that dominated the competition.

As our forum users can attest, there’s no real rhyme or reason to capturing a monster. Sometimes you’ll bag it, but more often than you’d like, you just won’t. Not to worry; there are other ways to expand your portfolio. As the game unfolds, you’ll learn recipes that reveal monsters you can breed to create new types. When you run out of monsters to hook up, you can spend the tokens you earn from leveling up on Gachamon, a gambling-type minigame where a payment of five tokens cooks up a random monster. Most monsters created through Gachamon are stronger than many of the ones you’ll encounter as you ascend monster towers floor by floor, making it an expensive addiction I was willing to indulge.

To build your team, you unlock monster slots that allow you to beam in monsters from your coin collection. Each monster comes with a summoning cost divided among five colored gems you harvest during the game, and you can use those same gems to buy upgrades. The catch is, you can’t take all your monsters into a fight. Instead you assemble a small squad from your pool of summoned fighters, picking and choosing ones with lots of health, attack power, and special abilities like health regeneration.

As you progress, you’ll eventually have to un-summon older, weaker monsters to fill your finite amount of monster slots with new blood you recruit along the way. Un-summoning a monster frees up its slot, but costs you all the time and gems you spent decking out your monster with enhanced powers.

I actually found myself growing attached to battle-scarred veterans, and it’s a shame that most battles end quickly if you bring in your heaviest hitters, rendering many older monsters obsolete. Ah, progress. You are a cruel mistress. (Although you can reminisce on old times by visiting the gallery, where you can view all your summoned monsters past and present, and in the various stages of undress brought about by any upgrades you purchased for them. Believe me, once you capture and fully upgrade the Nymph and Succubus, you’ll be spending a lot of time “reminiscing” with them.)

As with any collecting game, obsessing over filling every blank spot in your monster collection is the star of the show. A good thing, too, since MonTowers‘ battle system is pretty simplistic. Aside from exercising slight control over who attacks first and pouring healing potions down the throats of injured monsters (lose them in battle and all their upgrades go with them), you mostly just sit back and watch. To be fair, I found the battle system just as complex as it needs to be. The real strategy lies in upgrading your bestiary, building dream teams, watching them annihilate the biggest and baddest the game has to throw at you, taming them, and continuing your journey upward.

Even your strongest team of monster slayers doesn’t stand a chance against the game’s most powerful adversary: Father Time. Similar to other freemium games like Tiny Tower [ Free ], many functions in MonTowers require real-time minutes or hours to complete. Lowly monsters only need a few seconds or minutes to pop up, but more advanced minions will keep you waiting for hours. The upgrade gems you harvest cost one energy apiece, and you replenish one energy every three minutes. Not so long, but to the impatient, waiting is waiting.

You can expedite certain time restrictions depending on the girth of your wallet. Tired of waiting for a summoned monster to warp in or apply researched upgrades? Slip it some tokens and it will appear instantly. Don’t want to wait for your wounded monsters to regenerate one health per second? Feed them potions, but be prepared to spend tokens on more once you run out, as you’ll rely on them in battle once you enter the third tower and beyond.

In many ways, the game’s time restrictions feel designed to make you either watch the clock and wait for assorted activities to wrap up in their own time, or break down and spend money–in-game or real–to get things moving. But, just like with Tiny Tower, the time restrictions never bothered me. There’s usually something to do while your timers tick down. Return to monsters you haven’t captured, take on new foes, consult your recipes to arrange blind dates for two lucky monsters, spend your savings on Gachamon, grind or purchase IAP tokens to instantly finish summons and upgrades–or, God forbid, put the game down and do something else for a while. Maybe gather some friends and LARP MonTowers in the woods or salivate over your sexier acquisitions.

And speaking of sexy (the game asks you to confirm that you’re at least 17 before installing it), the amount of skin it shows is good for a chuckle, but is no more than window dressing designed to attract horny 15-year-olds. Case in point: your female monsters actually remove clothing with every upgrade rather than adding on more for protection. Silly logic. But don’t let MonTowers‘ cheap bids for attention fool you. Look beyond all the thongs and pasties and you’ll find an engaging, if somewhat simplified, monster-hunting experience.

TouchArcade Rating:

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New Finnish game studio Breach Entertainment is in the final stages of their upcoming iOS title Shardlands, and have just released the first trailer. Breach is made up of just 4 individuals and was founded at the beginning of the year, but Shardlands has actually been in development for more than a year and is reaching the final crunch phase. It’s a puzzle-adventure game with a fantasy/science fiction motif, and the new trailer shows off some of the great looking environments in the game.

Also of note is that one member of Breach, Aarni Gratseff, is a long-time supporter of our TouchArcade Show podcast, and was the first to create a theme song for the now defunct Kitty Korner segment (direct all hate towards Mr. Nicholson for that, by the way). He’ll be composing all the music for Shardlands, and given the epic-ness of the Kitty Korner theme, I think all of our collective ears will be in for a treat. Stay tuned for more on Shardlands as it nears release in the coming months.

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There are great mysteries buried beneath the surface of the alien world of Gene Effect [ $4.99 ], mysteries your small team has been sent to uncover. As you immerse yourself in the atmosphere of those distant tunnels, you’ll encounter alien life, hostile and beautiful, and the remnants of a civilization both ancient and powerful.

You pilot the exploration ship Triton. It’s almost ludicrously vulnerable, destroyed with equal ease by careless piloting, aggressive plant life and man-made defenses. But that doesn’t change the facts: you’re the only one who can unlock the secrets of this cavern and its alien masters. Unarmed but for your repulsors, you travel ever deeper.

This journey isn’t one of lengthy maze-like exploration. Gene Effect is broken up into levels, and most of those levels are fairly straightforward. There will be a task or for the Triton to complete, maybe collecting a certain amount of koronite resources from the environment, finding DNA samples or powering up ancient reactors. You might need to use your repulsors to clear away loose rocks in your path, or locate and use the occasional drone to clear a path. Once those things are done, it’s just a matter of finding the warp gate and moving on.

There are subtasks that might impede your progress, though. The path is often blocked with gates that need opening in some way—finding the right triggers tucked away in the tunnels, collecting enough of a resource or turning on (or off) the lights. On their own these things are usually fairly simple—or at least they would be if not for the presence of so many walls.

Walls are the Triton’s natural enemy. While you’re still getting comfortable piloting you might find yourself bumping into them. Do so for more than a moment and you’ll blow your ship up. The controls are well-designed, with a responsive joystick that controls movement, so crashing shouldn’t be a big problem for long. It’s when you’re comfortable that the game brings in mines and plant life that will smash you into walls if you’re not ever-so-careful.

Once you have survival sorted out, you can start to enjoy the real meat of Gene Effect. It’s a completionist’s dream, with level trophies for speed, careful navigation, and overall score. And then there are the relicts and artifacts. Nearly every level has a hidden relict or two tucked away somewhere. They’re often hidden in the walls, revealed with a lucky ping of your sonar and a well-placed blast from Triton’s repulsor. Sometimes they’re hidden more deeply, in temples opened with camouflaged triggers or rooms tucked away behind seemingly solid walls. Some, the most hidden of all, aren’t even listed on the level score breakdown, so you won’t know they’re present until you find them. Those are the alien artifacts, and if you find enough pieces you’ll be able to strap them on to Triton to upgrade its capabilities.

While all of this is going on, the game slowly unfolds an intriguing story. It tends toward telling over showing, as it’s revealed far more in static text feeds at the end of each level than within the gameplay itself. There are also a few too many errors in the text for comfort. But the story has some great hooks, and it should string you along quite effectively while you’re out exploring.

Gene Effect is ambitious, and long—accounting for deaths, I’ve put in quite a few hours without finding everything that’s out there to discover. But that length also highlights the game’s flaws. For example, the caves, while gorgeous, all look fairly similar to one another, and while the levels grow more difficult they don’t really get all that complex. On its own this would start to feel a bit repetitious, and pixel-hunting your way to new artifacts doesn’t really help.

The game’s difficulty level varies between hard and stupidly frustrating. Some of the later levels are long, and meander between traveling through long, mostly harmless tunnels and facing down sudden bursts of danger. Long periods of boredom followed by short-lived struggles aren’t really what I look for in entertainment. Take it easy when you choose your difficulty—Gene Effect is harder than it looks, and you can’t really change difficulty modes mid-stream.

All of this leaves Gene Effect something of a tough call. On one hand it’s gorgeous, with a well-crafted story and loads of content. On the other hand, that content ventures into boredom or frustration a little too often. Ultimately, though, it’s a game worth playing, a story worth experiencing. And it will leave you wanting more, so let’s hope there’s more on the way soon.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The TouchArcade App [ Free ] has been out for a couple weeks now, and it seems like everyone is really digging it. Currently we’re working on a quick 1.1 update which will address some tweaks, fixes, and suggestions that have been posted in our forums. After that, it’s full-steam ahead on releasing a universal update. Spoilers: I’ve already got a beta version of it on my iPad, and it’s going to be really nice.

But anyway, one of the best features you might not be using in the TouchArcade app is setting up watch lists to stay on top of upcoming games we’ve posted about. Flipping the little binoculars switch on these games will add them to your watch list, and you’ll be notified when we post additional articles on them as well as when they’re actually released. Going back through historical stories to fill up your watch list is a bit of a hassle, so here’s a list of games I’m looking forward to that you could think about adding.

All you’ve got to do is tap each link, and then flip the binocular toggle on top:

Audiosuft Air – The Audiosurf series of games were a huge hit on the PC, and it seems like a natural fit on the iPhone. It’s currently scheduled to be released sometime this year.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition – If you listen to the podcast, you’ll know we’re always going on about how much we want old school RPGs on our iPads, and there’s few finer old school RPGs than Baldur’s Gate- Especially a totally touch-centric port.

Bladeslinger – A “western-themed Infinity Blade” as it’s known around my house. The game has been delayed like crazy, but last we heard is still supposed to be released this month.

Defender Chronicles II – The original Defender Chronicles was a huge hit in our community, so naturally, folks are incredibly excited about the upcoming sequel. (Including me, I can’t wait.)

Drifter – Space trading games and me go together like peas and carrots. Drifter is looking really promising.

Galactic Keep – I feel like Gilded Skull Games has been teasing us with this game for eternity, and last we heard, it’s still coming. I’m still loving the art style and dice-centric gameplay ideas.

Infinity Blade Dungeons – It’s the new Infinity Blade, there’s no way this game won’t be huge, especially with the recent release of Diablo III and Dungeons’ dungeon crawling gameplay.

Linux Tycoon – There have been tons of “tycoon” style games released over the years, but none are as delightfully nerdy as Linux Tycoon. Last we heard, it’s coming very soon.

Penny Arcade On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode Three – Sadly, I don’t hold out much hope for the first two episodes, but I’m more than happy for the third installment to be hitting iOS devices.

Pocket Heroes – Dungeons and Dragons combined with Words With Friends style asynchronous multiplayer? That “Take My Money” meme is totally appropriate here.

RealMyst – I’m still blown away that this exists. 20-ish years ago, my computer could barely play the pre-rendered version of Myst. Soon we’ll be playing it rendered in real time on our phones.

Star Command – Kairosoft-style simulation combined with a gloriously Star-Trek-y setting. They’ve also released the best trailer I’ve seen recently, which is embedded above.

The Other Brothers – An adventure game with platforming elements and some really awesome pixel art. We can’t wait.

WarGames – I’m a massive fan of Dungeon Raid [$2.99 / Free ] and WarGames is designed with vaguely similar gameplay in mind. Oh, and it’s dripping with WarGames style from the actual movie.

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How do you feel about endangered species? Does your heart ache for the poor creatures that, through no fault of their own, are being driven to extinction? If so, you might want to join up with Adult Swim and PikPok’s Extinction Squad [ $0.99 ], the bloodiest game about conservation I’ve ever seen.

As the story goes, the surprisingly well-preserved Chuck Darwin, father of evolution, has found a lost colony of dodos. Seems like a miracle, but then the terrible truth is revealed: the scent of dodos causes other animals to jump to their deaths. Animals are killing themselves by the thousands, so Chuck pulls together his extinction squad to save ‘em. Running back and forth with a jump net, the squad bounces the suicidal animals to safety, earning points, coins and the occasional surprise in the process.

All you need to do is swipe your finger back and forth along the bottom of the screen, directing the squad back and forth. You need to position them under falling animals, beneath coins and powerups, and away from falling bombs—a single encounter with a bomb means game over. Adventure mode is all about survival, and Countdown mode is a time trial, but both just ask you to swipe back and forth, nothing more. This makes for a very simple game, but it isn’t the sort of simple that gets boring quickl. PikPok is pretty great at making crazy-fun simple games, the kind that Adult Swim likes to publish, and Extinction Squad is no exception.

There’s the absurdity, for one. You travel around the world with these adorably designed and well-animated people and animals. Every animal you miss splatters into bloody chunks on the ground. Sometimes you juggle pandas, and sometimes you need to bounce a whale. Simply put, this game is over-the-top in all the best ways. With bright colors everywhere and a ton of Australianisms, the whole game commits to a level of absurdity that most developers can’t match.

Then there’s the compulsion. Every time you play, you’re not only saving animals (fun in and of itself) and working on high scores, you’re also collecting. As in Jetpack Joyride [ Free ], there are coins to collect and tokens for the post-game lucky spin. Also familiar is the selection of three meta-goals you’re faced with each time you play, like reaching certain scores in a single streak or saving all the animals that fall within a certain span of time. These elements give players a lot of reasons to just keep playing, with that one last turn turning into a dozen.

The coins you collect can go toward upgrading your powerups and unlocking new, higher-scoring areas. As the game normally plays, you need to save 30 animals in one area without dying, then 40 in the next, then 45 in the one after that, and so on. When you go through all the available areas the game loops but the goal keeps rising. Having access to the later areas means higher overall scores, though the game takes just as long to get obscenely difficult.

A word about IAP in Extinction Squad before we continue: yes, you can absolutely do everything without ever spending an additional dime. With lucky spins and occasional coin powerups and the awards you get from completing goals, you’ll unlock all the areas pretty quickly. If you buy coins, however, you’ll be able to unlock them more quickly, level up your powerups sooner, and—most damningly—extend your plays further. You can pay coins to continue after dying, and that coin value increases each time you use it in a single run. Pay the toll and you can pick up from the start of the current stage with your score intact. So yes, IAP can give you an advantage on the leaderboards, a sad addition to an otherwise excellent game.

If you’re not fussed about IAP, there is so much to love here. Skill can play a huge part in your success, with bonuses for accuracy and with the serious reflexes needed to dodge bombs as the game goes on. There are random events that add a lot of variety, and stats to keep track of just how good you are at saving animals. And the game just oozes character.

Everything considered, Extinction Squad is a ridiculously fun diversion, a great way to while away the minutes. I wouldn’t put too much effort into climbing the leaderboards, knowing that someone with deeper pockets could easily outmatch me with less skill, but just for fun? Sure, I’m happy to give this game my time. If fun, charm and character are all that matter to you, then you should definitely pick it up. And bounce by our discussion thread to let us know what you think when you do.

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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As much as we may not want to admit it, a game’s style goes a long way—especially in a market as crowded as the App Store. With so many games from so many developers, the right icon and the right visual presentation are often the be all and end all of standing out from the pack. And while those of us who love games know that graphics don’t make for a good game, it’s hard to ignore the allure of stylish games.

That’s why I jumped on Brandnew Boy [ $3.99 ], the latest action RPG from Oozoo. Sporting the Unreal Engine and a beautiful cel-shaded art style rich in color, the game is instantly stunning—especially in motion, where the smooth framerate and fast action prove to make an already-attractive game even more gorgeous. Much of the attention the game has received is because of its presentation.

Thankfully, unlike some pretty-yet-disappointing games out there, Brandnew Boy manages to delight in terms of gameplay, as well. It’s certainly not the best action RPG on the platform, but its unique combat controls and hearty adventure make it worth a spot on your home screen.

The game puts you into the shoes of a mysterious man known only as the “Rookie” as he finds himself lost in a strange, egg-filled world. Through a set of bite-sized standalone missions and countless objective-tweaked variants, you’ll come to learn more about Rookie and his quest, the world around him, and the creatures within it. During your adventure, you’ll venture forth to fight increasingly-tough battles and increasingly-gigantic bosses.

It’s the game’s take on combat and not its story, though, that makes it worth checking out. Through some intuitive touch controls and the introduction of a simple timing mechanic, combat in Brandnew Boy is transformed from the standard “hammer buttons to attack” into something a little more elegant and entertaining.

To initiate an attack on an enemy, you tap on it. To continue to attack, you can continue to tap. It’s simple, straightforward, and effective. Where things get interesting, though, is in the game’s combo system. As long as you can maintain steady attacks within a brief window, you will maintain a combo that makes you increasingly powerful. To do so, though, you need to time your attacks with a small timer bar. Pressing too soon or too late in succession, or failing to dodge an enemy attack with a swipe in the desired direction, will lead to your combo being broken.

In practice, combat starts to feel like a strange hybrid of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There’s a certain rhythm and candor to Brandnew Boy’s combat; Rookie’s graceful jumping and twirling between enemies and across the battlefield in a single combo seamlessly will be startlingly familiar if you’ve played the Dark Knight’s recent console outings.

Stringing long combos together is and stays incredibly satisfying throughout, and it evolves as you add more skills to your arsenal which allow you to prolong your combos even further. All told, combat is fast, fluid, and fun—especially when combined with the game’s focus bonus “time trial” medals, which push you to finish levels as fast as possible while maintaining a high combo and doing no damage.

Filling out the roster of requisite action RPG features is a complete upgrade system for the game’s main character and a summon system of sorts. Skills and equipment can be purchased and upgraded with a fairly straightforward if not uninspired progressions system, and you can earn the ability to summon unique pets by defeating the game’s handful of bosses.

Sadly, for all the framework wrapped around the game’s combat system, Brandnew Boy does come off as a bit of a one-note tune. Combat itself is satisfying, but it also lacks variety or depth in the long run, and the game’s story and progression systems do little to stave off fatigue should you play the game for hours on end.

Should the developers infuse the game’s core combat with a little more variety and flesh out the game’s other systems (skill trees for character development and more gear), a sequel to Brandnew Boy could find its place at the top of “best iOS RPGs” in short order. That said, the game you can buy today is a solid one in its own right, even if only for its unique, rhythmic combat.

Color me curious about what this developer does next.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Like the bad boy that every girl finds impossible to resist, Frontier Developments‘ sequel to their platform-adventure LostWinds [ $3.99 ] from last year isn’t always easy to control. Precision is not LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias’ [ $3.99 ] best feature. With the sheer amount of things that LostWinds2 can occasionally demand of its players, this would normally be almost unforgivable but much like the hypothetical rapscallion, LostWinds2 is just too charming to give up.

Set shortly after the events of the first game, LostWinds2 follows the continuing adventures of the chubby-cheeked Toku, a brave and impossibly adorable young boy, and his companion Enril The Wind Spirit. After a brief introductory sequence, one that features a number of piscine-looking critters, you find yourself in control of Toku. His mother Magdi has somehow gone absent and it is your duty to go look for her. This eventually segues into an exploration of some phenomenally gorgeous places, the acquaintanceship of some new friends and an encounter with old evils.

Have I mentioned the fact that LostWinds2 is absolutely stunning? Yes? The music, the character design, the visuals – they all come together to make LostWinds2 beautiful with a capital B. The lush visuals are informed with such attention to detail, they would probably bring a tear to Walt Disney’s eyes were he still alive. Every swipe of a finger will cause grass to bend and petals to cascade from trees. When Toku slides across icy terrain, he bobs and sways, looking for all the world like the wide-eyed child that he is. Even the parallax backgrounds are more than magnificent-but-static pieces of eyecandy. Here, the backgrounds are rife with stuff like the occasional lurking enemy and behemothic reformed villains out to make our life easier. (You’ll understand in the first five minutes. Trust me on this.)

Shameless, wanton gushing aside, LostWinds2 is, I’m happy to say, more than a pretty face. For those unfamiliar with the original, much of Toku’s herculean tasks are, in fact, accomplished by the intangible Enril. Being a rather formidable Wind Spirit, Enril is kinda awesome at doing things like guiding flames from a torch into an icy wall, smashing Gloops into hard surfaces, relaying Toku from one ledge to another and snowballs. Not much is needed to accomplish these feats. Most of the time, all the game will require from you is a careful swipe of a finger or a well-timed pinch. Control of Toku works on a similar premise. In order to move him from one end of the map to another, you simply tap on the corresponding side. It’s that simple. Mostly.

Eight times out of ten, you will be able to hit that switch, drag that torrent of flame into that wall of brambles, flip Toku across the ravine and beat down that Gloop all in one glorious show of hand-eye coordination. Those other two times? You’re going to have to pick yourself up and try and try again. Toku will inexplicably float along with an updraft that you manufactured in spite of the fact he should be too far away to be affected. A hard swipe will occasionally cause an enemy to sit on the wall instead of exploding into blob-like bits. From time to time, things will just go wrong. There’s no better explanation for it. Fortunately, however, it’s an infrequent occurrence. So long as you’re willing to deal with the initial learning curve, your experience with LostWinds2 will be mostly favorable. That is, of course, if you are willing to brave this final caveat.

If you want to play LostWinds 2, you should probably be okay with a little bit of Metroid in your life. Frontier Development’s sequel to the original is not a game that exemplifies instant gratification. Backtracking will happen. Those who must simply acquire every collectible (a lot of the tale is told through scrolls that have been scattered across this lovely world) will find themselves wandering the game’s many nooks and crannies. If you can’t stand the idea of revisiting locations repeatedly (never mind the fact that you can change the seasons on whim, something that helps alleviates the tedium), you may want to consider giving this one a miss.

Everybody else? Buy it. You won’t regret it. LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias is a beautifully presented bit of childlike magic and irrefutable proof that wholesomeness does not necessarily have to be boring.

TouchArcade Rating:

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When we first found out about Kotomon [ $2.99 ] recently, I was excited for the possibilities especially considering that some of the developers at Monstars consisted of folks from Q Entertainment (Lumines, Rez). Unfortunately, reputation alone is not enough to carry this simple music platformer with iffy controls.

Kotomon follows the adventures of a cute red monster of the same name as he searches the world for other monsters. Gameplay is divided into levels and has you navigating Kotomon and his companions across the terrain, battling monsters of various strengths until you reach a campfire, signifying the end of the level. A three-star system grades your completion with points awarded for faster completion, combos, and the amount of food your companion eat (littered across each level).

As you progress, Kotomon will meet new monsters (which are hatched by finding eggs), each with their own abilities and attributes. While the help menu provides small blurbs in each monster, i still found it a but vague for trying to figure out the differences of some of them. Regardless there’s enough there for strategy in later levels when you have the choice of choosing who to bring with you in a level.

The platforming itself is enjoyable for being a simplistic title. Levels are usually divided into battle royales with tons of combat or terrain based missions with obstacles that can block or kill your companions. There’s an interesting dynamic of keeping tabs of your companions while simultaneously using them as weapons of destruction. The difficulty also cranks up in the latter half of the game for gamers that enjoy a challenge.

One of Kotomon’s features is a dynamic soundtrack affected by the actions of your Kotomon. For example, launch a monster at some baddies and the beat picks up temporarily for each enemy dispatched. Extras notes are also added when taking on more powerful bosses.

Other than those little nuances, I didn’t really find anything particularly special about the music features. True, watching the enemies and your monsters dance to the beats of the song is quite adorable, but it’s hardly game-changing. If anything, the emphasis on a dynamic soundtrack means that you’ll be hearing a lot of simple tunes until you get into the thick of the action.

By far, the biggest issue I encountered with Kotomon dealt with its frustrating control scheme. Kotomon utilizes a floating, non-static virtual joystick for movement, which means that movement is always relative and can lead to the joystick sliding all over the screen. Compounding the problems are the shooting mechanics, which are solely based on the direction of your character and just feels unintuitive. For me, this lead to a lot of misplaced shots primarily due to the controls which range from frustrating to level-ending (especially with levels that contain lava which can instantly kill your companions).

The control issue feels amplified when you start to get to later levels with enemies that actively seek you out. Since aiming is based on the direction of Kotomon, you’ll find yourself in a constant predicament of running away while trying to turn around to launch a shot before turning back to avoid dying.

Other facets of Kotomon simply felt average. The visuals were a mix of cell-shade for the characters coupled with bland backdrops and a heavy dose of particle effects. Meanwhile, content felt a bit light once you get past the star ranking system.

Maybe it’s just a case of irrational expectations, but I was a bit disappointed in the overall package of Kotomon. It feels less like a music/rhythm adventure and more of a simplified platformer with frustrating controls and little in terms of variety. The cute monsters and somewhat catchy music are sure to appeal to some but folks looking for the next great platformer may want to pass.

TouchArcade Rating:

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