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When I was growing up I lived right down the street from an R/C car racing track at the local park. I was pretty young during this time, and thus couldn’t afford the rather expensive professional grade radio controlled cars that folks would bring out to race. So I was relegated to just a spectator, but I still got such a thrill out of watching these miniature vehicles race and jump around the dirt track, all the while being controlled remotely by people who were standing right beside me on the sidelines.

Sadly, over the next few years the R/C track’s popularity dwindled and was eventually torn down in favor of a dog park. It probably goes without saying, but dog parks aren’t nearly as cool as R/C car tracks when you’re a kid. So when developer Sunlaris emailed a trailer for their upcoming game Model Auto Racing, I immediately got a nostalgic twinge of excitement. As you can see in the trailer, it looks to be a proper R/C racing title for folks like me who couldn’t afford to indulge in the hobby as a kid.

Model Auto Racing will contain 3 different vehicle categories drawn from the real-life R/C racing world: buggy, short course, and touring car. It will also give you the choice of a top-down camera view or a fixed-position from the sideline podium, just as if you were at the track yourself. Other features include Universal support, Retina graphics for the new iPad, Game Center with online multiplayer, 12 tracks and 48 event types, and upgradeable vehicles. Model Auto Racing is awaiting review from Apple and should be out before the end of the month.

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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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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.

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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.

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Details are still vague as they could possibly be regarding the upcoming Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalker 2013 coming to the iPad, but a new video just hit YouTube this afternoon that shows off some of the new cards included in the 2013 release. Give it a look:

It’s probably safe to assume that this is video of the PC (or console) version of the game, so it’ll be interesting to see how many of the various visual effects transfer over to the iPad. Either way, we’ll find out when the game finally hits sometime this summer. I can’t wait.

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After making a splash on the App Store earlier this year with their quirky and stylish skydiving title AaAaAA! (Force = Mass x Acceleration) [ $2.99 ], Dejobaan Games has hinted on their website at what their next mobile release is going to be.

Teaming up with Radial Games, the original creators of the Steambirds games on Flash, the new collaboration project is called Monster Loves You! and aims to be an engaging virtual pet-like experience with much more RPG-like depth than what’s currently available.

Dejobaan asked Radial Games’ Andy Moore a bit about Monster Loves You!, including why he was motivated to create a new Tamagotchi-style game: “I think the closest I’ve really come to playing an enjoyable ‘pet’ game is The Sims 2, which was an excellent title but just demands WAY too much of my time. I want a similar experience – something with all that drama, character development, and ups and downs… but that I can play on the toilet.”

That’s certainly something I can get behind, Andy. I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of carrying around a little virtual creature that lives on my device, and there’s been some neat efforts in this area on iOS but nothing that’s really grabbed me and drew me in. With Dejobaan’s fantastic sense of humor and Radial Games’ drive to create a meaningful experience, I’m definitely curious to see more from Monster Loves You! in the near future.

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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.

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It seems as if ever since the iOS remake of Death Rally [ $0.99 ] hit the scene over a year ago, we’ve had a resurgence of weapons-based racing titles gracing the platform. Deadmans Run [ $0.99 ] from Nightfall Interactive is another entry into the genre and attempts to model itself somewhat closely to Death Rally. While Deadmans Run does try to differentiate itself from the pack in some ways, you’re mostly left with a fairly average racer with controls that leave a bit to be desired.

Deadmans Run offers a somewhat comprehensive campaign that has you racing across nine different levels across three “difficulty” levels, earning both cash and notoriety (essentially experience points). The cash is used to purchase permanent (engine, weapons, and armor) and temporary upgrades for your vehicles while the notoriety acts as a level-wall that restricts upgrades and car purchases until you’ve hit a certain level. Overall, the system works well enough for replayability, although the strict level requirements for each purchase take away any sense of freedom, which is a bit disappointing.

Gameplay involves your standard race-to-the-finish with positional awards, although the inclusion of weapons makes it a bit more interesting. Cars all come equipped with machine guns and mines, with ammo refills (among other power-ups) randomly littered on the track. As you upgrade your cars, you’ll typically find yourself in races that end prematurely because everyone else (or you) has been destroyed. This typically leads to a very hectic racing experience, especially at the onset of the campaign since you’ll be losing a lot before you can earn enough cash and notoriety to build up a contending car.

One area that I thought Deadmans Run did well dealt with its dynamic generation of races. As mentioned above, there are three different difficulties in the campaign. Whenever you want to race, each difficulty will randomly choose the level and opponents (while usually keeping the purse winnings the same).

In addition, races will occasionally offer supplemental objectives, such as to take out a specific opponent before the race is over. The supplemental quests actually offer penalties if you fail, making the choice to accept it have actual repercussions. Unfortunately, while the dynamic missions are an interesting idea, you’ll quickly find that the two harder difficulties will be way too challenging to play for quite a while. One item of note is the complete lack of IAP, so all notoriety and cash will have to earned by (gasp!) playing the game. In addition to the campaign, a time trial mode also exists.

While everything above seems fairly decent, Deadmans’ controls are where the experience starts faltering. You are given the option of two control schemes: auto-acceleration and manual gas. Auto-acceleration is the default and my preferred control type as it allows you to focus mostly on turning and aiming. Unfortunately, this also leads to a lot of lost control when you’re making tight turns as you’ve effectively lost the ability to ‘ease up on the gas.’

Manual gas, meanwhile, just feels awful as the gas ‘button’ is right smack in the middle of the two turn portions, which feels extremely unintuitive for me.  Either way, additional miscues such as a very bouncy physics system and the occasional unresponsiveness of controls don’t help the experience, either. Other facets of Deadmans Run, such as the visuals, felt mostly average and don’t add or detract from the rest of the game.

If you can get past the spotty controls, Deadmans Run is an adequate racer with enough meat in its campaign to offer genre fans something to try. There are gamers out there that are simply looking for the next ‘rat race’ to race through, and this game can certainly provide that. However, the overall rough presentation and spotty controls are enough to detract all but the diehard combat racing enthusiasts.

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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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Wings of Valor [ $1.99 ], the “Wings of Fury” spiritual remake by Idea Spoon, is a rare gem in the app store – a game that might not sell you on its screenshots alone, but is an automatic purchase for gamers “in the know.”  Based on a classic game for the Amiga/PC/Apple II, Wings of Valor has a familiar, nostalgic feel to it, with all the best parts of an arcade shooter and a surprisingly complex strategy sim.

The base gameplay is straightforward and simplistic, as illustrated by the image-only help file.  Take off from your carrier, and destroy your targets. Targets range from islands, to other planes, to ships, and you’re given an entire (unlockable) arsenal for dealing with the threats. For people such as myself, who never played the original, it may take you a few tries to even get off the ground. For instance: mashing the engine button over and over to get it started (just like a real old plane!), or trying to fly off the right side of the carrier and taking a bath instead. Missions are relatively quick, and can easily be squeezed into a bus ride, a work break, or any spare 5-10 minute period of time.

Once you get in the air, the game plays like a dream. Lovingly handcrafted visuals and spot on controls make you wonder why the side-scrolling fighter pilot genre died off so long ago. Aerial combat is a joy, pure and simple: the banks, the arcs, the turns, it all manages to feel “simulationy” and “arcadey” at the same time. Touch controls suffer somewhat from the usual lack of physical feedback, but not as much as you would think with this sort of game.

Dogfighting lacks a bit of challenge, as the enemy AI seems all too easily confused when you turn around directly behind them and light up their tail. Strafing runs are exciting, and can prove to be a test on resources – are you more of a T-16 piloting, womp-rat bullseyeing sharpshooter, or a light-up-the-jungle, empty the plane sort of carpet-bomber? The game plays into both strategies, but the latter sort will have to get very used to landings/takeoffs while they return to their ships to replenish their arsenal.

The camera work is spot on, zooming in as you approach the ground, adding to the feeling of speed. The music is old-timey, “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!” radio static fanfare, and adds to the retro feel. Sound effects are sufficiently explodey and ratatatty, and the particle effects are excellent, whether it’s planes smoking and plummeting to the earth or water kicking up as you bring death to dozens of unseen ocean critters. It is incredibly difficult to believe that the entire game was put together by a single person.

With plenty of challenges, unlockables, an upcoming iPad version, and promised updates to the visuals and AI, Wings of Valor makes for a very attractive package at $1.99. For people who have boldly proclaimed the death of classic gaming at the hands of iOS, I can only gesture wildly in this direction – here is a game with no IAP, no freemium model, just classic, old-school gameplay at its finest.  Whether you’re a fan of the genre or completely new to this style of game, here is a something that is very worth your time.

The first time you have a bogey on your six, you tear off straight upward at top speed, and see the stars for just a second before stalling out, turning back towards your prey, spitting hot death, you’ll get it. Get it?

TouchArcade Rating:

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