TouchArcade.ru

The name Spiderweb Software is a bit misleading, after all, it's mostly the work of one man, Jeff Vogel, who has for almost twenty years given us some of the most intricate RPGs on PC and Mac. Until now, at least, these were often an inclusive, old-schooler affair. But Avadon: The Black Fortress HD [$9.99] is one of the first to be easily approachable — it's also the first to hit the iPad.

You'd be forgiven if you've glanced at screenshots and balked at the idea of playing Avadon, it's not a pretty game. Visually, it falls somewhere in the '90s, pre-CD-ROM drive, which is to say it's an isometric RPG akin to something like Baldur's Gate, Ultima or even Fallout. It's filled with old-fashioned tilesets, hardly animated sprites and a locked camera that doesn't allow you to zoom nor rotate. While I'm getting things out of the way, I should probably also mention there is no musical score. The sound, when it does exist is hardly worth paying attention to and the amount of modern day polish slathered on here lays somewhere between murky and non-existent.

But none of that has anything to do with what makes Avadon a good game, because it's good based solely on the actual game, not the flair.

Avadon isn't as hardcore of an RPG as it might look on first glance and it's also considerably more approachable than Vogel's earlier games. You start the game by picking one of four pre-built classes and typing in a name. No complex stat sheets, no guessing what abilities you'll need and what you won't. You'll meet other adventurers along your journey who will join your party. You'll level up through your adventure, but it's done mostly through a small skill tree, not a vast collection of unknown abilities leading to more unknown abilities.

Combat is turn-based and works well, provided you enjoy turn-based combat. If you don't, consider this an ample warning. Depending on the difficulty level you chose, you'll need to concentrate on your strategy in different ways. There is, quiet literally, something for everyone here. A complete RPG-virgin can pick it up and walk through the game with little trouble on Casual, but the higher levels should provide adequate challenge for players of all backgrounds. Naturally, you'll pick up loot, outfit your team with different equipment and change around your stats. For the most part, this is all relatively self-explanatory, although the menus don't make things easy if you're swapping items between party members.

It's the story that really matters here more than anything else, it's what's going to keep you going through the night. That story bends to your will and your actions and like the best RPGs, you're not always aware of it when it's happening. The core of the narrative comes from you enlisting as a Hand to the Pact, a high-horse power created by a group of nations bent on protecting the good of itself and its people from a fortress called Avadon. This doesn't just mean they protect the borders, it also means they'll burn down villages, kill helpless creatures and lock people into prisons.

As with most of Vogel's games, the writing in Avadon is well done and sprinkled with enough wit and humor that you don't feel oppressed by the seriousness of it all. Within a few hours you'll have a good grasp on the Avadon's structure, the religions, your fellow fighters and a number of the NPC groups. You'll also start getting the sneaking suspicion the Pact and Avadon aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As you play through the game's 20-30 hour campaign, you'll start to notice how your actions are affecting the larger story, from minor quips in dialogue or descriptions to fully-fledged moments that couldn't have existed had you not done something earlier. The dialogue options aren’t the color-coded morally simple choices of modern RPGs, nearly every time you need to respond to a situation it will sit somewhere on a gray scale between good and evil and you'll never know for sure if you're making the right choice. The plotline is basically linear, save for a fair share of side quests, but you still feel like you're having an affect on the world, for better or worse.

The translation to iPad is relatively fluid. I had a few crashes and memory errors while playing, but nothing that set me back too much. The touch screen works well for this type game, although you'll occasionally accidently move your characters around when you mean to fight because you'll tap on the wrong part of the grid. The item screen, as mentioned earlier, is a bit unwieldy with a touch screen and requires an excessive number of taps to get to business, but you'll get used to it. If you've played Spiderweb's RPGs before, you'll know what to expect, but Avadon is considerably more linear and less open than much of its previous work. That's not a bad thing in this case; it's a good entry point into a deeper RPG for iPad players and a great throwback to people who've been playing for a long time. It's streamlined, yes, but not to the point where you feel like you have no control. You still have to read signs to get directions, take note of what people say and remember (in your head, not in an objective screen) where you're going and why you're going there.

Avadon: The Black Fortress HD might take a little while to sink in, but if you get enmeshed in the narrative and the world, it's hard to walk away from it. It's been a long while since I accidently stayed up all night with a game, but Avadon managed to do that without even bothering with fancy visuals or voiced dialogue. It's not going to be a game for everybody, but if you're weary of spending the completely fair price of $10 on the iPad version, I'd suggest checking out the demo for the PC or Mac versions. The experience is similar, although the iPad version will occasionally run into some frame rate drops and has a lower resolution. If you're a fan of '90s RPGs and have been craving something that doesn't hold your hand or guide you along on the iPad, this is the perfect game for you.

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I love technology, so when I discover a severed robot head, my first instinct is to place it back on its body. This makes me ideally suited for the physics puzzler  D-Capitatrax [99¢/HD] from developer Gamesmold. The background story is simple: a machine known as the "Golden Mistress" became jealous of the new advanced models of female robot, so she decapitated them all. However, she didn't realize the new-and-improved sexy robo-girls possessed wormhole generating capabilities, which would enable them to teleport their severed robotic heads back towards their curvaceous artificial bodies.

This game requires a combination of tilt and touch controls. Tilting your device to the left or right causes a severed robot head, and other objects in the level, to roll about. There are also two portals which you can touch and relocate, to establish a wormhole. Once the two portals are in position, you roll the head into one portal so it teleports to the strategically chosen destination. The goal is to navigate the level, collect three battery packs, then reunite the head with the body. If you've played the popular Portal series, then you'll be familiar with the concept of strategically placing portals. The developer acknowledges that D-Capitatrix is "a kind of 2D interpretation of the Portal gameplay".

To make things interesting, a number of obstacles are placed in your path, including fire, electricity, balls, bombs, concrete barriers, weight-activated platforms and nasty head-crushing wall-traps. There's also the risk of teleporting somewhere without an exit, which leaves you stranded and forced to restart the level. And if you're not gentle with your tilting, objects like bombs may slide unintentionally into your wormhole, with explosive consequences.

Some puzzles require the robot head to build up speed to travel further. This is achieved by placing the two portals in-line with each other, forming an endless loop. The teleported object will move faster and faster through the wormhole, accompanied by a satisfying acceleration sound. When you suddenly move one portal to a new location, the teleported object shoots out at warp speed. This speed burst helps the head move further or, if your bomb supply is depleted, can smash a concrete barrier. You can't tilt your device completely upside down, so instead portals are used to jump into the air.

The robot graphics are retina and lovely. The level graphics are minimalistic which is appropriate, however the fire effect does look a bit average in comparison to the quality lady-bots. Did I mention the robots in this game are sexy electronic she-bots? I can only assume that "D-Capitatrix" is a play on the words "decapitated" and "dominatrix", because once you complete a level her head spins into place and she turns and struts off with a fierce Beyonce-style, hip-waggling sashay. She also talks in an appropriately sexy computerized monotone. And the music matches the futuristic setting perfectly.

There's 30 levels to solve in total. Most levels require some thought to solve, but nothing too strenuous on the brain so far. Unfortunately, efficient gameplay is not really rewarded. There's no time-limits or move-counters, nor any three star rating system, so there's no incentive to optimize your solution or replay for better scores. In fact, there are no scores or achievements, just the satisfaction of unlocking each level and helping the cyborg sisterhood. The original release did experience some crashes, but the latest update appears to have resolved these. There's also a slight delay at times, while levels are loaded.

D-Capitatrix is a strategic puzzler that's engaging and entertaining. Who can resist unique gameplay, appealing graphics, good music and hot bots, for a buck? Not me. This is one of those games which flies slightly under the radar, but is definitely worth checking out.

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Space is a pretty lonely place, something you'll discover in Jonathan Mulcahy's A Long Way Home [99¢]. Stranded a hundred light years away from Earth after a catastrophic ship explosion, the game's astronaut hero has to find a way home. He travels from galaxy to galaxy alone, with just a haunting piano soundtrack and an occasionally chatty wrist computer to accompany him.

To find his way home, he needs to jump from asteroid to asteroid, collecting enough dark matter to open a wormhole and travel another light year toward Earth. The asteroids rotate slowly, and its your job to pick the right moment to jump. Time it well and aim correctly, and he'll fly in a straight line toward your next target, or near enough to get picked up in its gravity. Aim poorly and he'll fly straight off into the endless void of space. Not a good way to go.

I found it challenging enough to survive many of the game's 100 levels, because jumping across large chasms of space from tiny, rotating asteroids takes a lot of precision. Even if you've got great aim, the challenge ramps up as you're introduced to debris fields, asteroids that limit your jumps, teleporting dark matter and other obstacles. But despite all the potential chaos this is a slow, thoughtful game. Occasionally you'll need to act fast, but for most of the game you'll be waiting for the perfect jump.

A Long Way Home rewards patience, while impatience usually gets you killed. You can walk around the asteroids using your choice of on-screen, accelerometer or hot zone controls, and that speeds things up a bit, but if you jump too soon you'll have to wait until you've drifted away and then start the whole level over again. If that sounds like something that would make you want to smash your iPad over your knee after a few tries, this isn't your game.

Even with the patience of a saint, you may run into a few frustrating spots. You can die unfairly in some levels, skimming the edge of the screen or getting a little too close to a debris field. I also ran into one bug that nearly broke the game, letting me skip a few levels and making my computerized companion wander off for the start of a new galaxy. A reset fixed it, but a major error like that makes me a bit more cautious about recommending the game.

If you can look past those few bugs, though, A Long Way Home is a game worth experiencing. With my headphones in and the music on, the feeling of loneliness was so visceral that I found myself actually missing my chats with the wrist computer. It can really hold up its end of a conversation, but it's only around to introduce new game mechanics. The rest of the time, it's just you and the universe. I wouldn't blame anyone who found that dull, but with a few fixes this could be a real indie darling. If you're up for patient, thoughtful gameplay that makes for an evocative experience, you should give A Long Way Home a shot.

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In this week’s episode of TAS we discuss WWDC and The Bearded Ones’ adventures at the San Francisco-based event. We also gab about Super Goblin War Machine, Red Ball 3, and the next sensation to sweep the world, Techno Kitten Adventure. As if that wasn’t enough, we also cover some of the more profound stories from the front page.

If you’re into us — and, really, who isn’t at this point — you can grab us on the iTunes as well as the Zune Marketplace. We’re also into streaming and you can do that just below via this little link thing:

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-004.mp3, 51.3MB

A couple of notes this week before the official show notes. At the top of the show, we ask that you all rate us on iTunes and shoot us written reviews. If you haven’t done that yet, I forgive you and allow you this second chance to do so. Also, a bunch of audio interviews with some people you know are coming down the pipe. We’ll bust these out separately to listen at your leisure. Hope you enjoy them as much as we will.

Now for the REAL notes:

Games

• Super Goblin War Machine [Free]
• Red Ball 3 [$1.99]
• Techno Kitten Adventure [Free]

Music for this episode was provided by the super talented Jim Guthrie. The song is "Audio Pepsi" off the album A Thousand Songs. You can buy the entire album or stream all the songs at his Web site. Guthrie is also responsible for the Sword & Sworcery [$4.99] soundtrack. Cool stuff.

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Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off the week of the 2011 World Wide Developer Conference here in San Francisco with his keynote presentation that outlined three major technologies the company will soon be rolling out: Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and the iCloud service.

Mac OS X Lion

Jobs and company began running through several of the 250 new features that will arrive with the forthcoming major update to Mac OS X, Lion (version 10.7). Among the many advances it will bring are deeper support for multitouch gestures, facilities to allow easy creation and management of fullscreen applications, and the LaunchPad system that makes for easier browsing and launching of apps — all of which bring Mac OS X's look and feel closer that of iOS.

Mac OS X Lion will be available sometime in July, exclusively through the Mac App Store as a 4GB download at a price of $29.99.

iOS 5

Jobs then moved on to iOS 5, beginning with a look at where we are. Since the original iPhone's 2007 debut, over 200 million iOS devices have been sold, in all, 25 million of which are iPads. There are presently 425,000 apps in the App Store, 90,000 of which were designed specifically for the iPad. And, since its debut less than three years ago, 14 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, generating a total developer payout of over $2.5 billion.

Apple intends to grow those already impressive numbers with the release of iOS 5, a major update to operating system driving the company's mobile devices. This new release will bring over 1,500 new APIs for developers to work with and over 200 new features.

Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage to detail ten of the more notable features that iOS 5 will bring.

1. Notification Center is a new component of iOS that acts as a central notification hub that can be swiped into view, presenting a list of recent notifications and the ability to jump to the application associated with each. Additionally, notifications will no longer pop disruptively onto the screen, but will appear at the top of the screen, taking the user to the originating app with a tap or fading out entirely if ignored. The iOS lock screen will also display a list of the most recent notifications, with a swipe across each taking you to the originating application.

2. Newsstand gathers the many disparate digital magazines and newspapers available on the App Store into one place and allows easy browsing and purchasing. Chosen items will be downloaded into the News Rack, which features an iBooks-like interface that shows the current front page as the item's icon. Background downloads will allow subscribed items to updated themselves for easy pick-up reading.

3. Twitter support has been integrated into iOS, providing single sign-on (no need to re-enter password every time an app wants to access your Twitter account) and a pop-up Tweet Sheet for applications that support the new components. Those with immediate support include Camera, Photos, Safari, Maps, and Contact, the last of which can pull twitter user photos and import them into iOS contacts to put simplify the task of putting a name with a face.

4. Mobile Safari is the most popular mobile web browser in use today; nearly 2/3 of all mobile browsing is done with it. New to Mobile Safari is Reader, which provides a clean, unified rendering of multi-page stories, generated from RSS information. Reading List is an Instapaper-like system that allows webpages to be saved to a list for later reading. And, finally, tabbed browsing support will allow for easier management of multiple sites at the same time.

5. Reminders is a type of active to-do list system that can setup a "geofence" and trigger reminders based on your geographic location.

6. Camera is getting an update that will bring optional grid lines for better framing, on-device editing like cropping and rotating plus red-eye reduction. The volume up button can also be set to trigger the shutter. Additionally, a camera icon will appear on the lock screen allowing photos to be taken quickly without unlocking the device.

7. Mail under iOS will be enhanced to allow draggable addresses, indentation control, message flagging, full-message search, left / right swipe to / from inbox to message, an integrated dictionary, and support for the newly expanded iOS keyboard that can be slid upwards to split out into two thumboards.

8. "PC Free" changes have been made to iOS to allow it, for the first time, to be fully used without the need to sync to any PC or Mac. Upon first power-on, iOS devices will display a Welcome screen, as opposed to a sync notice. Software updates will now take place over the air via WiFi, and incremental "delta updates" will allow more efficient system updates.

9. Game Center has received several enhancements in this next version of iOS. Forstall indicates that there are over 100,000 game and entertainment titles in the App Store and, in an effort to further iOS as a game platform, Game Center has been expanded include user photos, achievement points, access to friends of friends, friend recommendations, game recommendations from Apple, and game downloads direct to Game Center. A framework for handling the behind-the-scenes back-and-forth needed by turn-based games has been provided as well, to eliminate the need for developers of such titles to handle everything on their own.

It was noted that in just nine months, there are 50 million Game Center users, while Xbox Live currently has about 30 million users after nine years of up-time, as a comparison.

10. iMessage lets iPad users get in on iPhone-style Message app texting. It's 3G and WiFi based, supports rich media, and works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The system includes optional delivery and read receipts with messages pushed to all of your devices.

It was also mentioned that iOS 5 will support wireless mirroring of an iPad 2 screen to an Apple TV display, WiFi-based syncing with iTunes, and will bring all of the resources of Mac OS X's Core Image subsystem to iOS developers.

iCloud

The third piece of today's keynote puzzle is iCloud, Apple's long-rumored online data storage / retrieval system that's designed to make life much simpler for users of all Apple devices.

"Some people think a cloud is just a hard disk in the sky," Steve told the crowd. "We think it's way more than that." iCloud stores content (think contacts, calendar, photos, music), with wireless push to all devices. But the kicker is, it's completely integrated with apps. Everything happens automatically, invisibly. "It just works."

iCloud replaces MobileMe and its core apps — Contact, Mail, Calendar — with completely rewritten version made to store data remotely and sync it with all Apple devices, Mac OS X or iOS-based. But those are just three of the nine total apps that make up the iCloud system. The App Store app has been updated to show your full purchase history from any device, with a download from cloud button that allows such apps to be redownloaded on different devices without any additional charge. Moving forward, any app purchased on any device gets pushed out to all other iOS devices. The iBooks app now works in the same fashion, as well.

A Backup application wirelessly backs up all data on an iOS device to the cloud via WiFi — user data, camera roll photos, videos, books, apps, and music. If you purchase a new iPhone to replace an old, all data from the old device will sync down to the new unit.

Documents in the Cloud is Apple's solution to the complex and unnecessary nature of the filesystem on modern systems. As Jobs indicated, it "completes the iOS document storage story." This component of the iCould system allows applications to manage their own documents, syncing them to the cloud and down to all other devices. Support for Documents in the Cloud is already present in the latest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote. iCloud developer APIs are forthcoming that will allow storage of full documents as well as simple key value data. Documents in the Cloud supports all iOS devices, Macs, and PCs, too.

Photo Stream brings photos to the cloud. Take a photo on any iOS device or import a photo into iTunes on a Mac and it is automatically moved to the cloud and synced with all other Apple devices, and the Pictures folder on Windows PCs. This allows viewing of your Photo Stream on any iOS device — including the Apple TV — or Mac or PC. Photo Stream photos are all stored permanently on Macs and PCs, with the most recent 1,000 stored on iOS devices. Photos will be stored in the cloud for 30 days, long enough for them to make their way to all of your connected devices.

iTunes in the Cloud brings easy syncing of your music across all devices. Any previously purchased music can be downloaded without additional cost on any Mac, PC, or iOS device. Any future music purchase automatically gets pushed out to all connected devices. For music not purchased through iTunes, but ripped from CD or gathered elsewhere, the iTunes Match service will scan your library and allow you to download tracks that are found, at 256 Kbit AAC quality. Any tracks that were not matched can be uploaded to the cloud for access from any device. The cost for maintaining iTunes Match titles in your iCloud library is $24.99 per year.

MobileMe, which was a $99 per year, subscription service is now dead. iCloud replaces it as a free service that provides all of the aforementioned along with a me.com email address and 5GB of document storage, not counting photos, videos, music, apps, or books.

Developers can download a beta of iOS 5 with iCloud support today, and the system will roll out publicly in the fall.

Apple has placed a video of this morning's complete keynote event online.

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It was just last week that Illusion Labs released Touchgrind BMX [$4.99], the bicycle-themed semi-sequel to their fabulous little skateboarding game Touchgrind [$4.99/HD]. We really loved Touchgrind BMX in our review, as it retained the essence of the first Touchgrind while also adding many new features and improvements. One thing we didn’t really like, though, was the rough edges on the visuals. The game looked quite nice overall, but some of the textures were a bit pixelated and edges were noticeably jagged.

Illusion Labs is taking a stab at rectifying this with a new update that adds Retina Display support. This is exciting news on the surface but comes with a huge caveat: in order to push the larger high resolution assets the frame rate in the game takes a huge nosedive. It’s far from unplayable, but if you’re used to the silky smooth performance the game currently has then you’ll find the frame rate pretty unacceptable.

You can click on the before (left) and after (right) in-game screens below to scrutinize the difference between standard versus Retina Display resolutions yourself:

While the difference is small, the Retina Display support does add some needed crispness and clarity to the game. Unfortunately, the trade-off is a poor frame rate, and that’s a sacrifice I’m not willing to make. Thankfully Illusion Labs had the foresight to allow the Retina support to be turned on or off in the game options in the Settings app. Hopefully performance can be improved over time, but until then I’ll just stick with the regular graphics. It does kind of suck though, seeing how good the game could look and having to go back to something less. Touchgrind BMX is still a beautiful game, and in this particular case it really is the gameplay that matters most anyway.

If the Retina Display graphics were mandatory, I’d probably advise avoiding this update to Touchgrind BMX. But since it’s merely optional, you might as well grab it. It does contain a fix for startup crashes that some users were experiencing too, and the higher resolution graphics haven’t appeared to increase the file size of the game.

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It seems fitting that the logo for Donut Games involves a cup of coffee, because these guys seem so busy that I doubt they find much time for sleep. Between releasing new games at a steady clip, and updating their old titles with new features, they are constantly putting out quality stuff for the iOS platform on the cheap. They’ve just released their newest game Mexiball [99¢], and like practically every one of their previous games it’s another solid offering.

Mexiball is a puzzle game with a focus on matching colored balls and clearing them from a board. You’re given a puzzle board with a series of slots that contain multiple colors of balls, and you can tap and drag any of these balls to move them around the board. You must figure out how to move the balls in such a way as to group all of the like-colored ones together to cause them to disappear, and you’re graded up to 3 stars based on how few moves it takes you to do so.

It’s a really simple idea, and one that works quite well with the touch screen. Just completing a level is generally easy enough if you use a lot of moves, but the real challenge is using the least amount of moves so you can earn 3 stars on a level. Some of the solutions that only require 1 or 2 moves are simply brilliant, and it’s a testament to just how well designed the game is. There are other factors like teleporters and hazards to spice things up, and the "aha!" moment of figuring out the most efficient solution to a puzzle is hugely satisfying.

As is commonplace for Donut Games as of late, Mexiball comes equipped with Retina Display support, Game Center, and universal iPad support. Unfortunately, this is another of their games that doesn’t utilize the entire iPad screen. It’s not a huge issue, and the game looks and plays fantastic on the iPad, but the border around the edge of the screen is a tad annoying.

Minor gripe aside, you get a ton of bang for your buck with Mexiball, which has basically become synonymous with all of Donut Games’ releases. There are plenty of positive impressions in our forums too, and if you’re looking for a clever and colorful new challenge for your brain then give Mexiball a look.

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Back in November of 2008, Illusion Labs’ Touchgrind [$4.99/HD] was a remarkable display of what was possible on iOS devices. It had fantastic 3D graphics, a great physics system, and excellent multi-touch controls that let you interact with a skateboard in a way unlike any game before it. Now Illusion Labs is back with a new entry in the series called Touchgrind BMX [$4.99] that takes the formula into the world of trick biking.

All of the major traits that made Touchgrind so good carry over to Touchgrind BMX, and it even comes with many welcome improvements. But it’s also missing a few features that I would expect in a game like this, and the multi-touch controls come with a steep learning curve much the same way Touchgrind’s did. Such is the cost of innovation though, and Touchgrind BMX is definitely innovative. It’s also a ton of fun once you get the hang of things, and those who persist in the ways of Touchgrind BMX will be rewarded with a truly unique experience.

Like Touchgrind before it, Touchgrind BMX only requires two fingers to play. One finger controls the handlebars of the bike, and the other controls the frame. Using an assortment of different gestures, you can get your bike to perform just about anything you can think of. The gesture control is really organic, and moves are pulled off just how you’d expect them to be, like flicking the handlebars to spin them around while you’re airborne.

A simple 3 part tutorial walks you through everything you need to know about controlling your bike, and it’s all incredibly easy to understand. The challenge comes when actually trying to perform tricks in practice. It takes fast reactions and precise finger coordination to pull off the elaborate tricks and combos that will earn you the most points. It took me a few hours to actually feel pretty comfortable and start performing some more complex tricks, but looking at the developer high score challenges I know I still have quite a ways to go. It’s a lot of fun though, and improving my skills is what keeps drawing me back into the game.

One major change from the original game is the perspective. Touchgrind was strictly top-down, whereas Touchgrind BMX is more of a third-person perspective. This works beautifully, and really opens up the environments in the game and allows you to actually see where you are going, which is nice because the background visuals are beautiful in Touchgrind BMX and are a huge step up from the sterile skatepark in the first Touchgrind.

The 5 courses in Touchgrind BMX are quite varied from one another, offering an assortment of terrain that runs the gamut from very realistic to borderline fantasy settings. There are some jagged edges in the graphics that could use a dose of anti-aliasing, but by and large Touchgrind BMX is gorgeous to look at and runs at an incredibly smooth frame rate.

Another huge change is rather than having a sandbox environment where you’re able to move about freely, the levels in Touchgrind BMX are linear courses with deliberately placed jumps and obstacles. You still have a small range of movement within the width of each track, and you control your forward movement, but you aren’t allowed to stray off course and explore or go back to specific obstacles.

I actually think this design decision is for the best, as there is always a defined finish line to work towards and you must learn to maximize the scoring potential of every object in a level before you reach it. It’s more goal-oriented in this way, and each level is filled with tasks to complete that will slowly unlock new features, like different bikes, paint jobs, and new levels.

The progression in Touchgrind BMX is balanced really well, and it seems like there’s always some new reward or challenge waiting for you. It feels very much like the old Tony Hawk Pro Skater games in this way, which is definitely a good thing. The scoring system is also done really well, with a nice multiplier that rewards you for landing high value tricks, mixing up your variety of tricks, and not bailing. One glaring omission though is Game Center integration to coincide with the in-game achievements and high scores, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see that added in the future.

While the linear nature of the game makes for a better overall experience, I definitely think there should be a sandbox level where you’re allowed to ride around as you please. Part of the fun of Touchgrind was jumping into a free skate session and experimenting to your heart’s content, and this aspect is missing from Touchgrind BMX.

One of the coolest features in Touchgrind BMX is the replay system. After crossing the finish line of any level, you have the ability to watch a replay of your entire run. The game automatically presents the replay from several different camera angles for maximum dramatic effect. You can also choose to save any replay to a list that's accessed from the main menu. From there you can choose to create a video file of that replay and either export it directly to YouTube from within the app or transfer it to your computer by way of the File Sharing option in iTunes when your device is connected. The whole process is simple and works extremely well.

While it’s easy to point out some of the minor flaws, it’s impossible to ignore just how excellent a game Touchgrind BMX is as a whole. Illusion Labs has taken the concept of multi-touch manipulation of an object to the next level, and has fleshed out a great gaming experience around it. It takes a lot of practice for the controls to click, but that process is also part of the fun. There is many hours worth of content to play through, with new levels already planned for updates, so it should keep you busy for a while.

Players in our forums are definitely loving this one, and whether you were a fan of the first game or you're just interested in a challenging and completely unique type of game, then Touchgrind BMX really delivers.

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Last year, ThinkGeek may have outdone themselves on April Fools' day by announcing the iCade, a miniature, upright arcade cabinet complete with joystick, buttons, and a coin slot. You just slip your iPad into it and — wham — it's game time! It was well done joke, but it got a huge response from readers and that got the awesome folks at ThinkGeek thinking. And before long, we heard the epic news that the net's best geek-toy vendor was teaming up with ION Audio to bring that little box of goodness to market — for real — and with Atari as a games partner. (Like they did with their 2007 8-bit Tie. Those guys are unstoppable.)

Yesterday, after leaping to pre-order and waiting a long and anxious month, the iCade was delivered unto my door. Readers that follow us on Twitter might have seen the informal and rapid unboxing and assembly photos I took along my hopeful journey to arcade bliss. So, now that I've spent some real time with the unit — was it worth the wait?

The iCade comes packaged unassembled. The box contains the main control unit, two side panels, a back panel, a handy flip-up top panel with instructions printed on the inside face, a lovely red joystick knob, screws, batteries, and a set of instructions. Getting the unit together with the help of the illustrated assembly sheet is about 5 to 10 minutes' work. Once assembled, the first thing you'll notice is that the iCade is heaver than you might have imagined. The unit's panels appear to be vinyl-coated particle board, which accounts for much of the weight. The control unit is housed in a plastic shell and the sides of the cabinet are nicely illustrated. The assembled cabinet has a very solid feel with an impressive overall fit and finish. The weight of the unit combined with four rubber foot pads keep it from budging while the joystick and buttons are being manhandled.

Speaking of the joystick and buttons, I'm happy to report that it's a quality situation going on at the control deck. The buttons — all eight of them — feel exactly like those that you'd find on an old Defender cabinet. The stick feels rugged and substantial, if somewhat less "stiff" than some you might find in an arcade. It has substantial directional travel and issues a tactile "click" with each movement, sounding quite like the old Epyx 500XJ that some of you may have used in the past. I might have preferred if the actual control panel were also coated particle board to give a more textured feel, but the plastic shell surface does the job.

Yes, I mentioned batteries. The iCade's control unit interfaces with the iPad wirelessly, via Bluetooth, and so power is required. Two AA batteries come with, and the light-up "coin slot" on the front of the cabinet flashes when the batteries are low. There is an AC adapter jack built into the unit that can be used with a power adapter sold by ION, if changing batteries sounds like a nuisance. (I've not had the unit in my hands long enough to speak of battery life, unfortunately.) There's no power switch; after the initial Bluetooth pairing process, any stick movement will wake both the iCade and the iPad, and after a period of inactivity, the iCade's control system will go into sleep mode awaiting the next tug. I wish the iCade did sport a power switch, though, as it presents itself to the iPad as a Bluetooth keyboard, and so when it's awake and paired with the iPad, any attempt to do text entry on the unit in the vicinity of the iCade results in no onscreen keyboard. You need to disconnect the iCade in Settings to break free, which is a nuisance.

Ok, we're six paragraphs in and no mention of the games — how does it play?! Glad you asked.

When ThinkGeek announced the iCade, they mentioned that Atari was partnering, to provide support for the device in "a huge suite" of classic games. When the excellent Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store] landed, featuring up to 100 games, we assumed that this was the iCade's magic bullet app — and we were right. Nearly every game in the collection supports the iCade's controls, without even having to update the app. (Sentinel for the 2600, for example, does not, as it's a "light gun" game with a virtual tap screen area.) A control legend sheet comes with the iCade that shows how the various arcade and 2600 titles in Atari's collection map out on the unit's eight buttons.

I found tearing through these classic games on the iCade to be everything I'd hoped it to be. On the whole, it's just an awesome experience. Holding the stick in your hand, hearing the switches click open and shut, and mashing the fire buttons is absolutely the way these classic games were meant to be played. A proper stick in your hand beats a virtual D-pad every time.

But Atari's Greatest Hits implements many other control systems as well. There's the "roller" used in Tempest. The trackball found in Centipede and Missile Command. The "thrust rotation thing" used in Asteroids. For almost all of these games, I prefer the tactile experience that the iCade provides over the onscreen controls. The only exceptions might be certain virtual trackball-based games where the "momentum" of the virtual ball feels pretty right. Centipede and Millipede are good examples of this. Of course, you're still mashing a virtual button which doesn't compare to the real thing. (And yes, it is possible to lay the iPad down on the table and go "half and half" on the onscreen and iCade button controls — if you're flexible.)

Some of the control configurations are pretty interesting. As can be seen in the video above, Black Widow is a dual stick game that utilizes the iCade's joystick for movement and an inverted-T arrangement of buttons for aiming / firing. It sounds quite obscure, but works well.

The iCade has obviously been designed with a portrait orientation of the iPad in mind. And most of the games in the Atari collection are so oriented. To setup for these games you just flip up the cabinet lid and set the ipad down in a dock-like stand that has a hole in the bottom for a charging cable. A few of the Atari titles are landscape, however, and for these the iPad can be removed from the portrait area and placed in a groove that runs the width of the control deck, leaning it back against the angled front edge of the side panels. The landscape arrangement does look a bit precarious, but testing the balance of the iPad so fitted, I've no concerns of it tipping out. The whole thing just looks more tidy with the iPad in a portrait arrangement, which has the added bonus of significantly amplifying the volume of the fairly boxed-in iPad, thanks to audio reflection.

iOS devices with their multitouch displays, accelerometers, and gyroscopes have brought a wonderful array of fresh and innovative games to the world. But some games just want a joystick and proper buttons. The iCade delivers all that, and with an epic dose of retro arcade styling. And with an API on the way to allow other game developers to jump on board (Manomio has already confirmed upcoming support for C64), the goodness here is just going to grow.

As far as I'm concerned, the iCade (along with Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store]) is an absolute must-have iPad accessory for the serious retro gamer.

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Earlier this year, Playground State, a small five-man indie development studio headed up by two brothers, announced plans to release a set of serial FPS games under the umbrella of a franchise called “Knights.” A bit of buzz followed. The series had all the makings of a promising one, but after funding fell through, we’re left wondering if there is a slice of hope for the first game in the series, Knights: Spiral Islands.

Spiral Islands was the first of two known serials in Knights. The other was being called Humming Bell Station, though that was being put on the backburner until Spiral Islands was complete.

In both, you would have been given the reigns of a space knight who had to best the evil was thrown at you. In an interesting twist, Knights wasn’t just going to be a standard shooter; the studio had plans to break up the games into bite-sized chunks, each of which would present a different style of play. A co-op, a narrative-led single-player, and a competitive component were all mentioned at the time of announcement.

The catch with Spiral Islands is that it needed funding. Playground State started up one of those trendy Kickstarter project pages asking for $10,000. It also threw around the number $25,000, and even talked about what it would do with $70,000 or above in the video.

As you can see, Spiral Islands had a cool crab monster. Also, it was a UDK-powered game that would, potentially, see releases on the NGP, iOS, and the PC.

One of the core design ideas that Playground floated to potential sponsors was that the game would be “infinitely expandable.” Playground would have continued to scale Spiral Islands alongside new hardware revisions on any platform and pledged to release a lot of new content that would fit snug with the older stuff.

“The scenarios are as variable as we can stretch our imaginations, and the same applies to gameplay and art style,” the page reads.

“Ranging from single player narratives to multiplayer arenas, co-op play, and everything in between; cutting edge graphics or 8 bit — Knights is intended to be like a music playlist that goes on and on in endless variety.”

The bad news is that Sprial Knights didn’t reach its $25,000 content-complete, or even its much smaller $10,000 dollar, goals. The cut-off was April 12, 2011. The end sum of the cash collected as $1,500.

Oddly, Playground State went silent well before the cut-off date. Its last updates hover around the March 10-11 timeframe on all its media — its Twitter, its Facebook, its Web site, and its Kickstarter page. We’re not sure happened here, but if Playground did somehow get money from a publisher that might go to explain the complete radio silence.

Regardless, Knights: Spiral Islands looked awesome and did receive some support. I reached out to Playground State to get an update, see what the silence was about, and if there are still plans to release the title. I’ll let you know when I know.

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