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In the midst of the two year anniversary celebration of Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free ] which includes a huge new update hitting the App Store sometime tomorrow, the Australian developer hasn’t forgotten about their five o’clock shadow-wearing bad ass Barry Steakfries, star of such iOS titles as Monster Dash [ $0.99 ], Age of Zombies [$0.99 / Free ], and Jetpack Joyride [ Free ]. They’ve just released a new trailer revealing Flash the dog, a helpful sidekick for Barry who is coming to Jetpack Joyride in a future update.

As you can see, Flash is a helpful pup, grabbing coins for Barry and riding along in his own doggy versions of the various vehicles in the game. Also part of this update is the new gadget the Dezapinator, which will cause some of the zappers in the game to fizzle out and fail, and the Turbo Boost which will drop rings that explosively propel your forward. Finally, new DJ Headphones are available in the shop and offer up a remixed techno version of the game’s music.

The only bummer is we don’t know just when this update for Jetpack Joyride is going to hit, but we imagine it will be really soon, and in the meantime you can get back to trying to teach your dog how to use a jetpack.

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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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The success of the digital version of a physical board game hinges on three things: the quality of the base game, the accuracy of the representation of said game and if both of these things are pulled off well enough to sustain a community long after you’ve tired of getting beaten by friends and family. With that in mind, is Scotland Yard [ $4.99 ] a successful iOS port of a classic board game? No, but it could be.

It’s not as if Ravensburger’s Scotland Yard, the 1983 Spiel des Jahres recipient, isn’t fundamentally sound. One player is Mr. X, terribly creative criminal mastermind, stealthily darting about London in an attempt to avoid the grasp of five Scotland Yard investigators, represented by the other players. Players move about via ticket cards allowing access to modes of transportation around the game map: taxis, buses, boats or the London Underground.

The goal of the game is for Mr. X to ultimately evade captivity, while the investigators have twenty-two moves in which to capture him by either landing on whatever space he occupies, or trapping him so that he is unable to take another move. The catch is that Mr. X is invisible… for a time. Every few turns Mr. X’s position is revealed to the rest of the group, and though his movements remain otherwise hidden, the method of transportation he uses each turn is not. So, knowing his general location, it’s up to the investigators to use the limited number of ticket cards divvied up before the start of the game to coordinate with each other and entrap him.

It’s fast-paced and encourages teamwork, ironically the iOS version’s fundamental flaw thanks to weak computer AI and broken matchmaking. The game, while designed to have six pieces on the board at all times, can be played with as little as two people, seeing a single player control up to five investigators. This is actually hugely advantageous, as it allows the single player to focus the efforts of each piece, sending investigators out to flank and herd, or assigning different methods of transportation, or routes, to individual investigators. Play like this, one-on-one, also happens to get very boring very quickly.

A shame then that the AI is so little fun. Most of my games against the AI as Mr. X saw me shuffling in a triangle in the corner of London before escaping up the sides, or using the Tube to steal away to another portion of the map. Problematically, these are the same buffoons you’re stuck with should you just want to play a quick game with some AI partners against Mr. X. It’s really aggravating when you’re certain a fellow investigator is sitting a mere space away from Mr. X, only to see the dude travel in the opposite direction, across the Thames, to what I can only assume is his favorite kebab stand.

At the time of this writing, Game Center auto-match play is broken. That means you’ll either be playing the dim AI, your Game Center friends that have room in their lives for another board game or your loved ones. Local pass-and-play along with basic Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality seem to work, but borked matchmaking is just one of several annoying technical and usability issues the game has including an updated game board that’s a strain on the eyes, 3D architecture that obscures important information, unresponsive clickables, crashes and an overly pithy rulebook.

Having done a bit of research, I was pretty excited to play Scotland Yard. Given its heritage, I envisioned a future with it as a permanent fixture on my phone, alongside the likes of Carcassonne [ $9.99 ] and Ascension [ $0.99 ] But it doesn’t have the heft of a good iOS board game. The comforting simulation of tactility, of texture, of weight; the aesthetic cohesion. Or the capacity to sustain a community. So no, ultimately Scotland Yard is not a success, but something to be shelved in the hope that Ravensburger soon revisits it.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The iOS platform is hardly lacking for games that allow you to send living things to their inevitable death, and Gratuitous Space Battles [ $9.99 (HD)] satisfies the tactical itch with a capital T, while managing to bring some big eye candy and a light sense of humor to compensate you for all your hours spent constructing.

When you first launch the app, you’re driven towards a fairly anemic tutorial, which hardly deserves the name. A game like GSB has a lot of meat, layered on top of more meat, with a crust of meat at the center – a simple text-driven tutorial cannot even begin to prepare you for how many numbers there are to be crunched, how many configurations possible, and how many men are ready to die in your service. Inexperienced strategy gamers are going to be overwhelmed with the complexity, and while the tutorial does a competent job of getting you into the cockpit of the starter-ships, it does little to prepare you for the amount of ship-building you’ll be doing.

Ultimately, that’s what this game is about – building. Unlike a traditional tower defense game, you don’t fight off waves of enemies while upgrading in-between. Instead, you’re given a “historical” battle to participate in, and are given all of the enemy troops’ positions, ship-types, etc. Once you initiate the battle, your control of the fight is over – the ships will play out the battle based on a configuration of orders and equipment that you assigned beforehand, and your job becomes that of a silent watcher. Your real goal, and where the game completely shines, is to build and outfit your ships, and arrange them tactically to obliterate the alien host.

Most of the time spent with the game is spent customizing out your various ship-types with gear from a pool of upgrades that you’ve unlocked using the “honor” that you’ve won from battles. In a twist on standard tower defense games, you’re not only rewarded for winning, you’re rewarded for winning with honor. What this means is that while anyone can swing in with a massive Cruiser army and obliterate the alien force, the payout will leave much to be desired. More honor is paid out to the cautious commander, and the fewer ships you field and win with, the more honor you’ll earn to spend on unlocking upgrades, new hulls, and alien races to play as.

Visually, the game is beautiful, filled with detailed backdrops rich with stars, nebula, and distant worlds. Ships are highly detailed and beautiful to look at, and the constant hail of missiles, plasma beams, and scrambled clusters of fighters ensure that the game never gets boring to watch. Thundering music and the sounds of combat are decent, if a little drawn out over the length of the fight.

Being a port of a game that was designed for PC, GSB comes with touch controls that are generic but passable with nothing that really stands out. Pinch-to-zoom works on the combat map, but frustratingly caps out at a maximum zoom that feels too small – especially given the enormous size of the maps. Tapping on the various statistics during the building phase yields crucial information about each, but trying to pinpoint the miniature numbers can prove to be frustrating for the more sausage-fingered couch-commander.

Small touches add a sense of extra value to the game, such as the top panel during combat which plays out messages being sent by your crew, ranging from the tragic to the wry. It’s an unnecessary addition but a fun one, and injects a bit of humor to an otherwise dark and brooding atmosphere. Survival mode brings the endless-wave fun of traditional tower defense, but without the ability to upgrade on the fly. The result is a test for how well you’ve outfitted your fleet, and the only reward is bragging rights to your friends. A fairly in-depth (though extremely text-dense) manual is also included, to flesh out any areas of curiosity a new player might have.

Players who crave a little more direct control over their operatic space-genocide may find themselves bored or underwhelmed, but for the true tactician, there’s a lot to love here. While the $9.99 asking price may seem a bit steep, this is the sort of game that could have easily gone the route of IAP currency, and didn’t. Ten bucks is practically a steal for the tactical war game fan, though a lite version for the unsure to try out would be a really good idea. Additionally, the lack of ability to try matching your fleet against a friend’s fleet isn’t game-breaking, but it would be nice to try your hand against Game Center friends.

Overall, Gratuitous Space Battles is worth obsessing over if you love numbers, tactics, collecting and crafting. It is easy to get lost for hours in the menus within menus, outfitting and saving custom ships, and learning what works and what doesn’t work through trial and error battles against the alien horde. It’s a worthy addition to an already-stellar list of deeply tactical games on iOS, and is well worth a look for strategy fans.

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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.

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Simplistic controls are a staple in creating a competent iOS game these days, seeing as how Angry Birds [ $0.99 ] soared to heights never expected, in part due to its easy pick-up and play format that anyone can enjoy.

While This Could Hurt [ $0.99 ] capitalizes on this trend, it’s nearly to a fault to where the game is almost too much on autopilot, leaving you yearning for more control of your fate in the long run.

In This Could Hurt, your main goal is to get to the end of a winding path, avoiding any and all of the obstacles along the way. You’ll have to dodge spikes, fire holes, shooting darts and more. Your only control when it comes to not being hit by these obstacles is when your character stops, as he will continue on down the path automatically otherwise.

This automatic control, only allowing you to control when the character stops, has both positive and negative connotations. It’s good because it doesn’t require any complex maneuvers and allows you to even play with just one hand, but it also weighs the game down a bit in a way that can be frustrating. Without having total control, your character will jump right into harm’s way, with much of it feeling totally out of your hands.

With more control over the character’s movement, you’d be able to turn, jump, or change direction to avoid the obstacles. The saving grace for the one-button approach is that it may allow you to achieve the time goals a bit easier, if you can somehow master it.

Spicing up the gameplay a bit are the power-ups you can buy in the in-game shop if you’re feeling up to it. These power-ups can be bought with acorns you can either earn by playing the levels, or (you guessed it) by purchasing them with real money. The acorns are definitely cheap enough if you choose to go that route, at least.

Unfortunately, the power-ups only last for one use, meaning you will have to buy them over and over if you want to keep using them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it does make the game a bit more challenging in a way that seems fair.

Despite its flaws, This Could Hurt looks absolutely stunning on any device you play it on (Universal apps continue to be fantastic). It also helps that there’s four different level themes to choose from (three must be unlocked), each with their own unique obstacles to overcome and conquer. The game also sounds great, with a full soundtrack to accompany each level and theme.

Leaderboards round out the feature set nicely, providing you additional incentive to use those acorns to boost your previous times and take on your friends.

This Could Hurt isn’t quite what we’d been hoping for when it comes to the next generation of iOS platformers. That said, the game still plays great and you could still get at least several hours of enjoyment out of it, just set your expectations accordingly.

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Dragons Odyssey Frane [ $11.99 ] has the distinction of being the only game that makes me want to reach out and pinch its metaphorical cheek. Not only is it kinda adorable, it’s also all sorts of loveable. Like the fawning, mud-encrusted niece that is never short of questions about unicorns, Exe-Create’s port of their PC-based action-RPG title has a way of making you tilt your head and go “D’awww”.

Actually, before we get any further, the whole ‘action-RPG’ bit needs to be clarified a bit. Those expecting an assembly of eccentric party members, a varied set of skills to manage and all of the other traditional tropes may be a touch disappointed. Dragons Odyssey Frane doesn’t actually have all that, per se. In some ways, the game bears more of a resemblance to a laid-back shoot ‘em up than anything else.

The protagonist, a tussled-haired boy by the name of Kunah, is in charge of all the melee stuff. With every tap of a button, he either swings a yoyo, flails with a dagger or beats on things with an element-driven punch. Those with a preference for ranged attack will have to rely on his loud female companion Riel. She’s the one who inunduates enemies with glowing projectiles every time you hit yet another button.

What’s interesting about all this is the fact that hitting the melee button will cause Kunah to lock onto targets within the screen, thereafter allowing Riel’s attacks with greater ease. Riel, while a separate character that can go into ‘Rage’ mood (when she loses it, she will, quite literally, bounce Kunah across the screen and clear it of enemies that way) if you permit her to be smacked around too many times, neither has a health bar nor real equipment slots of her own. The only customization you’re allowed with her (from what I’ve seen, at any rate) is the ability to change her attack.

Combat follows a similar theme. While there are a fair number of enemies that will just barrel dumbly into you, others will, well, shoot relatively blindly at you. The bosses have slightly more variety. From a trio of sisters to a monstrous, mirage-inducing sand worm, they’ll have you ducking away, chasing weak spots, dodging projectiles and flinging attacks of your own.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Dragons Odyssey Frane is considerably more story-driven than most of its brethren in the App Store. The gist of the tale is this: you play as a responsible, mildly perverted boy called Kunah. When his angelic mentor Escude goes missing, he and his friend Riel (both of whom are actually dragons) gain permission from God (Yes, with the capital G and beard and all) to go look for her. Once accorded that sacred duty, they descend onto the mortal plane and begin their quest. Pedestrian as it all sounds, it’s actually rather amusing.

For one, Kunah and Riel actually act their age. More often than not, they stumble and they stammer and they speak out of turn. Many of the denizens of the game treat them the way anyone would treat a precocious child. The God portrayed here is also far from dignified. In one memorable instance, he actually disguises himself as a rather… conspicuous piece of wooden furniture in an attempt to surprise our protagonists.

Unapologetically goofy, Dragons Odyssey Frane is filled with silliness. There are star-crossed feline lovers, a military man with a retinue of giant hamster-like things, and familiar stereotypes played to perfection. For those in search of a serious plot line, Dragons Odyssey Frane will not be your game. For those willing to accommodate its many eccentricities, though, this charming piece has a lot to offer.

Aside from the main storyline (things generally follow the usual ‘get quest, investigate dungeon, defeat big boss’ format), you’ll also be able to engage in more domestic duties. Unlike most RPG protagonists, our dynamic duo are not homeless itinerants. In the beginning, Kunah will actually build the two of them a rather cozy-looking abode and it is within the confines of their home that you will be able to tinker about in a makeshift workshop and mess about a kitchen.

While not particularly deep (it generally consists of combining two items together), the crafting system is oddly satisfying. I have a nagging suspicion that there’s no wrong way to do things here. If bread and rice can produce ‘bread sushi’ as opposed to a virtual eye-roll from the game, anything is possible.

(A nifty detail: people will slowly assemble a village around your heroes’ residence as time passes by. Eventually, you’ll be able to purchase rare equipment, plant vegetables and take part in a few random quests.)

While hardly cutting-edge, the visuals in Dragons Odyssey Frane are rather endearing. I’m not the biggest fan of their character portraits but the sprite work and the tiny, animated details (the game features one of the most attractive d-pads I’ve ever seen) are all things I can get behind. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the grating, cringe-inducing voice acting. By the end of the first spoken line, I had turned it off in mortification.

Aside from those small issues though, Dragons Odyssey Frane is rather hard to dislike. The characters and the world will slowly grow on you. Combat is brief and brutal, yet satisfying. Personally, I haven’t tried courting any of the characters just yet (it looks like it’s possible but I couldn’t bring myself to even ponder the idea given how young the protagonists look) but the option is present for those interested in such things. If you’re willing to put up with occasional stereotypes, loads of silliness and the relatively high price tag, I can’t recommend it enough for a weekend change of pace.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Season finales are undeniably difficult to pull off: they need to pull the disparate plots of the story together in a way that feels satisfying but not hackneyed, while still maintaining a sense of self-contained narrative. A serialized game like Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space carries the added weight of presenting us with the highest expression of the puzzles and mechanics its introduced thus far.

I’ve come to realize that the second half of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space — say, starting with “Night of the Raving Dead,” [$4.99] and continuing through the finale, “What’s New Beelzebub?” [$4.99] — are funnier and generally better than the first two episodes. This is largely because the last three episodes are more tightly connected, with each cliffhanger transitioning smoothly into the next episode. They feel cohesive, and that makes me feel invested.

But it’s also because, in contrast to the procedural feel of the first two entries in the series “Ice Station Santa” and “Moai Better Blues,” these latter episodes are a perfect fit for the point-and-click adventure genre.

“Beelzebub”’s only narrative blunder comes during the series’ antagonists’ big reveal, which is funny enough on its own, but is probably much better if you’ve played Sam & Max Save the World as well. (This is a recurring problem for Beyond Time and Space as a whole, especially since Save the World isn’t available on the App Store.) Every thing else in “Beelzebub”  – every piece of dialogue, every joke, every plot twist, every fan-service callback — feels earned, not only because it has the rest of the series supporting it, but also because the audience has had to work for it.

Steve Purcell’s writing doesn’t waste time with exposition or lengthy explanations, and players who haven’t been paying attention since “Ice Station Santa” probably won’t make sense of each villain’s plans or of the haphazard and absurd sequence of events that lead up to “Beelzebub.” The jokes, the dialogue, and even the over-arching plot of the series come tumbling out, rapid-fire, and only the quick-witted and observant will get much out of it. Beyond Time and Space hedges its bets, of course: even if you miss something ostensibly important, the games are light-hearted and silly enough to keep moving forward. Nevertheless, Sam & Max hews to point-and-click mechanics that prize attentiveness and lateral thinking, and “Beelzebub,” more than any other episode in the series provides a narrative structure and presentation to match.

Beyond Time and Space is at its best deconstructing horror tropes and, while I liked the time travel puzzles from “Chariots of the Dogs [$4.99],” “Beelzebub” and “Raving Dead” have the best settings and ambiance. The finale tasks the Freelance Police with scrambling between the well-worn block near their office, caught in the middle of the apocalypse, and a snarky, tongue-in-cheek version of Fortune 500 Hell. It’s clever and atmospheric, and it drives the games most interesting puzzles, which involve attempting to disrupt Hell’s operations long enough to free some damned souls.

“Beelzebub”’s narrative hook literalizes an abstract idea like the afterlife and reduces it to another explorable screen to interact with. In other words, there’s no difference between Hell and the “real” world for Sam and Max, in the same way that there’s no difference between 1967 and 2008, or between being alive and being a zombie. It’s right there in the title: Beyond Time and Space. Without intellectualizing too much, that’s a pretty sophisticated concept, but Sam & Max is charming and self-aware enough to keep it in check. Purcell doesn’t let metaphysics get in the way of Max’ fart humor, and the result is a series that allows for outlandish puzzles and silly in-game logic without sacrificing pithy dialogue or character interaction. It’s also why, for example, one of “Beelzebub”’s puzzles can call for the death of Jimmy Two-Teeth’s entire family, and no one really has to feel bad about it.

There’s a lot to admire about the way “Beelzebub” illuminates and caps off the various narrative and thematic threads running through a five-game series, but its puzzles generally lack punch, an unfortunate side-effect of following the preternaturally clever “Chariots of the Dogs.” Over the course of Beyond Time and Space, the best puzzles have challenged our perception of the game world, mutating and iterating on inventory-based puzzle design with portals, zombies, and time travel. “Beelzebub” has a few standout puzzles, including a fourth-wall-breaking language trick, but is generally less ambitious in its design than previous titles.

Telltale is, as a rule, well-versed in designing accessible, intuitive puzzle games and “Beelzebub” is generally no exception, despite featuring a few textbook examples of adventure game pratfalls: guess-what-the-developer-is-thinking crops up once or twice, as do scenarios that require thorough, exhaustive clicking and hunting instead of puzzle-solving. “Beelzebub”’s occasional clunkiness is somewhat mitigated by a retroactive appreciation of the funny in-game logic, but that’s to substitute for the thrill that accompanies solving Sam & Max‘ best puzzles.

While “Beelzebub” lacks the unified theme of “Chariots of the Dogs,” it’s no slouch. A few missteps aside, the puzzles — while of the traditional match-this-item-with-this-NPC sort — are clever and well-realized, even if they tend to be a little on the nose. It’s still one of the best in the series, funnier than “Moai Better Blues” and with clearer puzzle design than “Raving Dead.” If you haven’t played any of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, now’s a good time to start: “What’s New Beelzebub” is a fine capstone to a great series.

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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In an age where game studios are talking to behavioral psychologists and hiring retention experts and monetization specialists in a rush to juice the most out of free-to-player gamers, there’s at least one studio developing free-to-play games that doesn’t care about metrics, compulsion loops, and user acquisition. Game business never informs game design at NimbleBit. Fun is first, the mechanics of free-to-play are secondary.

Pocket Planes is the next big thing from the two-man studio, and it’s philosophically linked with its other titles. Without shaking a virtual change cup in your face, Pocket Planes gives you a vibrant and customizable world and ownership over it as you ferry a fleet of planes from one airport to the next. Designers David and Ian Marsh believe that these components will be enough to organically drive the free-to-play aspect. No business trickery is required.

The Art Of Good Free-To-Play

“[Our] philosophy is to consider monetization as little as possible during the design of the game,” Ian tells TouchArcade. “The in-game currencies are balanced to be a natural part of the game without the option to even purchase more during design and beta,” he points out. “Adding IAP and deciding how much to charge is always one of the last things we do before launch. We take care to make sure that everything in the game is accessible and achievable without every purchasing IAP.”

Ian and David proved that this approach works with Tiny Tower. The game made money even though monetization aspects weren’t a focal point. The game also did well with critics, earning all sorts of amazing reviews and even a Game of the Year nod in 2011 from the editorial team at Apple. Millions of people played Tiny Tower, too.

Pocket Planes is still deeply in beta, but I’m as hopelessly … hooked on it as I was Tiny Tower. Every ten or so minutes I pick up my phone and plan more flights. When I’m not playing, I spend time thinking about new planes and creative ways to expand my cash and transport flow. Should I grind in my current selection of airports until I can buy New York’s airport? Or should I keep expanding with much smaller airports to broaden my empire, and slowly build up the necessary resources to acquire international hubs? What if I converted all my fleet to four-seat airplanes? How much could I earn then?

These are the questions running through my head, in part because the simulation aspect of the experience is so good. But I’m also just straight-up invested in the world that I’m creating, and I want to keep making it bigger and better. There are so many small, yet beautiful touches in Pocket Planes that drive my mania. I can name all my planes and customize each of my pilots. My passengers post their thoughts on an in-app Facebook client called “BitBook.” I can buy any airport that I can afford, and I can also upgrade it to make it bigger and better. I can build my planes and when I watch them fly, I can collect the game’s two currencies randomly floating in the air. Pocket Planes also knows when I’m flying. The day and night cycle is synced to the real world. When I receive a Push notification, my phone emits a soft airplane cabin ding.

These are the aspects that David and Ian believe drive users to spend. These are the things it spends all of its time developing. There is no conversation about loops or feedback. The duo spend their time making games with character, real progression, and meaningful stuff. Their games have a soul.

“I’m not sure if there is some kind of secret sauce, but we definitely focus a lot of time on adding lots of things to our simulation games that make them feel like a functional little world inside,” David tells us. “I think the stronger the feeling that there is a buzzing simulation going on inside the game, the more fun it is to influence it and use your actions to mould and direct it.”

“I agree with Dave completely,” Ian says. “The more detail and emotion you put into these little worlds the more immersed players become and the more they enjoy spending time with it.”

“I think the customization has a lot to do with it as well,” he continues. “That isn’t just a plane flying in the game, it is your plane that you named yourself and spent time finding the perfect paint job for. In Tiny Tower, it isn’t just a generic bakery, it’s Brad’s Bread with interior decoration of his choosing and hand picked employees that took work for him to recruit.”

David explains that Tiny Tower and the feedback blowing up NimbleBit’s inbox is actively informing the development of Pocket Planes. Users are lauding their game design ideals and are actually thanking David and Ian for making a fun game first.

“I think we definitely are trying to strike the same balance and attitude in all our future free-to-play games because it resonates with players and matches the type of games we prefer to play ourselves,” David says. “The other thing we have learned from Tiny Tower and also Pocket Frogs is that the more we can stimulate players imaginations the better. The kind of fan art and fan communities that have grown around those games is amazing and that is a target we are always aiming for.”

Pocket Planes is shaping up to be a tremendous game and my praise is coming at a time when more and more new free-to-play games continue to feel like skinner boxes instead of fun things to play with. Ian and David are doing important work here, proving that free-to-play doesn’t need to inform fundamental game design.

“Even without spending a dime, players become heavily invested in these worlds because of their character and charm — not some carefully crafted compulsion loop. That is what keeps them coming back,” Ian says.

Fun doesn’t need to cost a penny, and that’s what NimbleBit strives to make a reality with each release.

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