TouchArcade.ru

Emotional Robot’s FPS, Warm Gun, has received a notable update that aims to fix a lot of what owners have been rightfully grumbling about since the title’s release. According to the game’s latest patch notes, this update increases performance “across all devices by roughly 40%”, which should help a lot of folks with frame rate woes. It also adds in more control schemes, improves the AI and UI, and resolves what Emotional Robot calls “random crashes.” Yikes, that’s a lot tweaks and fixes for a release game!

There’s some content mixed into this update, too — specifically, an all new map called “Coldshot” has been added to the multiplayer rotation. In celebration of all of this, Warm Gun’s price has been dropped to $1.99 until the end of this month. But regardless of price, you definitely want to check in with our forums before diving into this one. You know, just to be safe.

[source]

The only way I can start this review is with a little history lesson, both for people who aren’t familiar with Sonic CD, as well as those of you who might not have been reading TouchArcade since the summer of 2009. Let’s start at the beginning, so everyone can truly appreciate just how wonderful the very existence of this game is.

Sonic CD, or Sonic the Hedgehog CD was originally released in late 1993 for the Sega CD, Sega’s CD-ROM accessory for the Genesis console. Sega CD had actually come out earlier that year, and many gamers (myself included) couldn’t wait to get their hands on one as the promise of full motion video powered gaming seemed incredible. Unfortunately, both due to the many technical limitations of the system, as well as the games themselves just not being very good, the Sega CD never really took off quite how I imagined Sega wanted it to. (There’s actually a bunch of reasons I could also get into, but I digress.)

Sonic CD represented a blazing torch of promise that I had hoped was going to give the Sega CD the boost it needed, serving as that ever-important position as “system seller.” Again, unfortunately, the relative low popularity of the Sega CD accessory made Sonic CD a commercial failure, even though it was a critical success. In fact, I’d still say Sonic CD is the best Sonic game ever released. It was a particularly great Sega CD game, as it played to the strengths of the Genesis with familiar Sonic-style gameplay enhanced through a few tasteful full motion video scenes and some fantastic CD audio.

Fast forward nearly 16 years to a curious question that Sega posted to the iOS community. Previously, Sega’s efforts on the App Store were limited to decidedly mediocre games, centralizing almost entirely around emulated Genesis games wrapped in an emulator that really wasn’t that great, and still isn’t that great. They asked gamers what they’d like to see on the iPhone next, and literally a day later Christian Whitehead revealed his idea. Check out the video from 2009:

While that video might not be that entirely impressive now, remember at the time we were busy wagging our finger at Sega for continuing to release emulated Genesis ports that played poorly, performed even worse, and just weren’t any fun. Then Christian Whitehead comes along with not only a port of the best Sonic game, but also running at 60fps? The emulated Genesis games barely ran at a quarter of that. Our minds were beyond blown, but like all cool things utilizing IP of a larger company, we didn’t expect this fan-made Sonic CD project to wind up anywhere other than in a cease and desist letter fired off from Sega’s legal department.

We quickly got together with Whitehead, and conducted a fascinating interview where one thing started to become crystal clear: This is a project motivated solely by love for the game. Christian built an entire game engine specifically for porting retro classics, and he had aspirations of working with Sega to actually get his version of Sonic CD in gamers’ hands. Following that, things went dark. The fan-made Sonic CD web site vanished and the above video disappeared from YouTube. We assumed the worst, as it seemed reasonable that Sega’s legal hammer came down on the project.

Jump ahead another two years, and out of nowhere that Sonic CD was coming to iOS. We quickly confirmed that this was in fact Christian Whitehead’s Sonic CD, and we couldn’t have been happier. Sure, the particulars such as release date and other things like that weren’t in the open yet, but it was coming, and that was enough.

Tonight, Sonic CD is released to the world, based on the very same demonstration we saw back in 2009, which I suppose brings us to the actual “review” portion of this review. Sonic CD plays like every other Sonic game in that you run from the start to the finish, collecting rings, and fighting bosses every few levels. One radical addition to Sonic CD is the addition of the “Past” and “Future” system. Running past either a “Past” or “Future” sign sends Sonic time traveling to a slightly different version of the level. Initially, the future will be a “bad” future, overrun by robots. However, if you go into the past first, and destroy the robot generator, you’ll be able to enjoy the “good” future which significantly fewer enemies. Alternatively, you can just ignore time traveling all together, although I believe (If my memory serves me.) getting the best ending requires unlocking every “good” future.

In a word, Sonic CD is incredible. It redefines what gamers can expect out of retro iOS ports, while simultaneously making all of Sega’s existing ports look absolutely horrid in comparison. The on-screen controls work great, the game performs even better than the original, and they’ve included not only the Japanese soundtrack, but also the American one. (Note: It defaults to the Japanese soundtrack, so if you’re wondering where the familiar “Sonic Boom” song is, you’ll need to toggle it in the options.) It’s even Universal. I can’t think of a single thing that’s missing or lacking in any way, in fact, they’ve even added Tails, who wasn’t even present in the original.

I’m not sure what else to say. Here we have the best installment of one of the greatest gaming franchises, which received both flawless review scores and game of the year awards when it was originally released ported with complete perfection to iOS. This is a game you flat out need to buy if you even vaguely consider yourself an iOS gamer. Not only because it’s such an impeccable port of an important piece of gaming history, but because we need to vote with our wallets to tell Sega (and anyone else who might be watching) that this is the quality we demand out of retro games brought to the App Store.

International App Store Link: Sonic CD, $1.99

Note: Sonic CD will be available in the USA at 11:00 PM Eastern, it should be available everywhere else in the world right now though.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

In early February of this year, we learned that a rogue developer named Daniel Blezek was spending his spare few minutes in-between a full time job and a full time family life toiling away at bringing Bungie’s seminal FPS Marathon to Apple’s iPad. The port was in progress at the time and looking great, but there was still a bit of uncertainty whether or not a release of Marathon would completely jive with some of the rules of App Store and the open source licensing of the codebase.

Then in June, Bungie sort of shocked everyone by announcing that they had picked up the project and would be officially supporting its release. Just a couple of weeks later, on Bungie Day no less, Marathon 1 [Free] launched for the iPad and we thought it was pretty dang awesome. Perhaps the best part was the choice of business model, as the entirety of Marathon 1 was available for free, with the ability to purchase hi-res assets or a cheat mode as optional IAP. While having the entire first entry in the Marathon trilogy literally at my fingertips was fantastic in its own right, we still couldn’t help but wonder if the second and third entries in the series would make it to the App Store too.

Today we know the answer to that, as we’ve learned that the second game in the trilogy, Marathon 2: Durandal, has already been approved by Apple and will be launching this Thursday (or more specifically Wednesday night) along with the onslaught of other heavy hitting titles slated for release. And, Marathon 2 will be launching with a whole set of new features.

First, it will be a Universal app with full support for Retina Display devices, and actually it uses the same assets as the Xbox Live HD release of the game. There will be Game Center integration with achievements and leaderboards, as well as Joypad [Free] support with specific enhancements for the Fling Joystick controller. Finally, the menu interface throughout the game has been dramatically improved. Want to know the ultra secret special bit of extra news about all this? An update will also hit this week for Marathon 1, adding in all of these same new features from Marathon 2 that I’ve just discussed.

It looks like Marathon 2: Durandal will follow in the footsteps of its predecessor and launch for free, with in-app purchases available for high-resolution textures, the Master Chief Mode cheat options, and a new custom reticule pack, if you feel like throwing some money to support the effort and snag a few non-essential features. As another exciting tidbit of news, several screens from the final entry in the trilogy, Marathon Infinity, were mixed in amongst those from the first two games. So it sounds like we’ll be getting the entire trilogy on iOS before too long. If you had told my fifteen year old self that I’d one day be playing the Marathon trilogy in portable form with all sorts of added features and enhancements, it would have blown my tiny mind.

We will of course be grabbing Marathon 2 just as soon as it’s available in the App Store tomorrow evening, and until then you can join in the discussion thread in our forums.

[source]

Fasten your time-travellings belts and turn off your electronic devices. Back in August, we checked out Toxic Blob’s Sin Or Win for the first time. We came away impressed, and were stoked to see it that coming September. The game didn’t make it out. In fact, it still isn’t out and won’t be until … this week.

Toxic Blob’s Jamie McCarter dropped us an e-mail saying that he’s been using the delay time, which he’s written about extensively on his studio’s blog, to focus on tweaking and refining the entire experience. The final, retail build of Sin Or Win you’ll play this coming December 15 has new fiends, better load times, a “solid” 60 FPS, and even an in-app hint system.

We’ve had a long, long time since initially seeing this game to figure out how the heck to categorize Sin Or Win. No luck — we’ll continue to let McCarter pitch it, and also use his words as a way to convienently remind you about what it is.

“In the game, the cavemen come from either side, and following the Grim Reapers’ command, leap into the abyss,” McCarter told us awhile back. From here, you’ll get the choice to either save cavemen (winning) by flicking them into clouds or kill them by letting them dive into the pit and burn to death (sinning).”

December is going to be crazy busy with releases, but we’re definitely going to give this the official look closer to release. Also, with the game finished, McCarter has moved on to a content update for the game: version 1.1 will “expand” the play, as well as add in Game Center. Neat!

[source]

Most gamers are probably familiar with The Behemoth from their Flash game turned console game turned HD remake XBLA title Alien Hominid, and their subsequent XBLA release Castle Crashers. You might even remember that earlier this year they released a game for the App Store called Super Soviet Missile Mastar [Free], which was a strange and humorous mini game straight out of Alien Hominid that was turned into a standalone iOS game that we thought was pretty cool.

Well, The Behemoth is back in the iOS space with their latest offering called Alien Hominid: PDA Games [Free], which as the title suggests is a compilation of the PDA mini games that you could play in Alien Hominid. It’s basically a simplistic platforming game where  the goal is to collect the gems and kill the enemies in each level, which will unlock the door to the next level. It has a pretty cute grey and white color scheme which is a throwback to the PDA devices of yesteryear, and some well designed levels that will occasionally rough up your brain as you determine how best to complete them.

As Behemoth points out on their developer blog, the iOS version of PDA Games has been redrawn to be in HD, Game Center has been added with 23 achievements, and the game runs at a solid 60fps. Best of all, the game is totally free to download and comes with 15 levels for you to try out, and if you end up digging it, you can unlock an additional 500+ (!) levels for a 99¢ in-app purchase. I found the virtual controls to be decent enough, but the main character feels like he moves a bit too slowly, which has messed up my timing at certain points. But, I’m slowly getting used to it, and I’m actually finding myself quite enjoying Alien Hominid: PDA Games.

Behemoth also hints that PDA Games has had a subtle influence on their new upcoming XBLA title BattleBlock Theatre, which looks pretty interesting. But the bottom line is that Alien Hominid: PDA Games is free for you to check out, so you might as well go ahead and do so. And if we can show The Behemoth proper love on the App Store, then perhaps sometime in the future they’ll consider actually bringing their awesome full games to the iOS platform. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

[source]

With the proliferation of camera-equipped smartphones that also double as mobile gaming systems in the last few years, the amount of augmented reality apps and games has surged. While there are a ton of ingenious non-gaming ways to use AR on your smartphone, the vast majority of the games that used the technology boiled down to slapping some graphical assets onto your device’s camera view and calling it a game, with little regard for how the augmented reality portion actually affected or enhanced the gameplay.

One title that bucked that trend and changed how I feel about most AR games was last year’s ARDefender [99¢] from French developer Int 13. ARDefender had you printing out a special diagram from the ARDefender website (or as we’ve come to find, just displaying the diagram on a separate device or computer screen) which would then be read by the game using the camera on your iPhone or iPod touch. The game would create a tower on top of this diagram, making it appear that it was actually there in the space where your camera was pointed. Then enemies would come after this tower in waves, and you’d use an assortment of weaponry affixed to the top of your tower to fend them off.

Essentially, ARDefender was nothing more than a tower defense game at the most basic level, but the augmented reality portion was so convincing and the technology worked so well that it really became quite a little showpiece for what was possible on an iOS device. Plus, while simplistic, the actual gameplay involved was also pretty darn fun, which didn’t hurt either.

Now, just a little over a year after release, and ARDefender has received a fairly substantial update just in time for Halloween. First of all, the AR engine used in the game has been upgraded, and ARDefender now runs at a solid 60fps on an iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Also, it now has high resolution graphical assets for the iPad and Retina Display devices. The game looks incredibly sharp and ultra smooth now, as these improvements have really made a big difference.

Additionally, in celebration of the holiday today, ARDefender now has an entire Halloween theme. Your tower structure now looks more like a sibling of the Bates Motel and the enemies who will be swarming the tower include skeletons, pumpkin heads, laser-shooting Frankenstein’s monsters, witches, and more. It’s all quite well done, but if Halloween isn’t your thing then you can easily switch back to the classic theme if you want.

Besides the technical upgrades and Halloween theme, ARDefender also received some other really nice improvements in this latest update. There are now new towers to unlock and use, as well as a couple of new upgrades like a defense drone that will fly around the battlefield and assist you by blasting away at approaching enemies. You can now save your game’s progress, and there are also 22 achievements to unlock, but unfortunately they are just in-game and not tied into Game Center. Finally, a host of smaller gameplay tweaks and optimizations rounds out the update.

ARDefender is definitely my top augmented reality game for the iPhone. It would be nice if the developers expanded on the solid foundation with more game modes or some sort of campaign, but what’s here now is still a lot of fun. With this new update it’s an even better experience overall, and if you own at least a 3rd generation device or higher that’s equipped with a camera then ARDefender is a dollar well spent for both a fun gaming distraction and something cool to show your friends.

[source]

Yesterday in Unexpected and Weird News, Ubisoft announced plans for an Assassin’s Creed board game for the iPad. According to a press release Kotaku obtained, Assassin’s Creed Recollection is a real-time strategy “political battle” board game that combines characters and locations from Assassin’s Creed 2 and its sequel AC: Brotherhood. Ubisoft says it’ll pack in an 8-10 hour campaign, as well as multiplayer upon its release this holiday.

You definitely aren’t alone if you’re confused by this move or wondering what exactly this thing is. All we have to go on at the moment aside from the vague press release boilerplate are images of the game’s cards. My gut tells me that this will be a simple line-up and battle kind of game, like the one featured INSIDE of id’s FPS Rage. Could be totally wrong, though.

What a weird announcement and idea, right? Also, wouldn’t it be weird if Ubisoft just stopped here with these board game tie-ins? Then again, I don’t make the big money decisions at these publishers who want iOS tie-ins or cross-overs.

[Via Kotaku]

[source]

The mobile division of Nexon Co. is readying an iOS version of their popular free-to-play online first-person shooter Combat Arms. Known as Combat Arms: Zombies, the title has been developed using Unreal Engine 3 and is based off of the zombie themed cooperative Fireteam Mode from the original game. There aren't many details regarding Combat Arms: Zombies at the moment, but Nexon Mobile hints that they are interested in supporting the game post-release until it almost equals the full scale of the original Combat Arms online game.

I've never played Combat Arms, but this Zombies edition sounds like a cooperative survival mode similar to the popular Call of Duty: Zombies [$4.99/HD] that's been a pretty big hit on iOS the past couple of years. The first trailer for the game looks pretty darn impressive, and although it doesn't appear to show any actual gameplay, it does seem that the entire video was rendered using an in-game engine.

Combat Arms: Zombies will first be unveiled in playable form at the G-Star 2011 expo in South Korea on November 10th. The release date is expected sometime shortly after, though nothing specific has been confirmed. We'll of course be keeping our eye out for Combat Arms: Zombies as it gets closer to release, and bring you any new information or media as we get it.

[source]

We sat down with EA at yesterday's Naughty or Nice games event in New York and had a look at a number of upcoming iOS titles, one of which should put a smile on the faces of all the real-world FPS fans out there. Coming this winter, for iOS only, is a spin-off of the imminent, big-news home console title Battlefield 3, entitled Battlefield 3 Aftershock, which we first covered back in August.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is a single- and multi-player FPS that will feature a range of battlefield locations around globe. The early demo version I played with was set  in Iraq (only) and the additional play locations have not yet be revealed.

Single player mode, EA explained, is being built around powerful 3D visuals, great gameplay, ragdoll physics and a wave system of enemy attacks designed to provide the best mobile wargame possible — with an emphasis on mobile. The combat system is built around incoming hordes of enemies — 150 waves per map — designed to deliver relentless FPS action that can, on the go, be played just one wave at a time in 3-4 minute sessions.

There are four different character classes with heavy weapons variation (over 50 in all) and a high degree of player customization options. The multi-player game is expected to support matches with up to 10 players and character experience gained in single-player mode will translate over to multi-player, allowing for solo build-sessions between matches.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is controlled via two on-screen "sticks," movement on the left and aiming on the right. There is also an aim-assist button on the right that helps lock down targeting for those wanting a bit of help with the headshots. A few minutes of gameplay showed an impressive degree of detail and action on the demo iPad's screen. In this early build of the game, there's still room for some shader work, it seemed, but striking visuals are on EA's list of priorities for the final release, so I expect that will get tightened up before release. Even still, as is, it's one of the best looking iOS shooters I've seen.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock will arrive as a universal application (for iPhone and iPad) in late '11 or early '12 and will feature integration with EA's own Origin online network. You can count on a review of the title, closer in.

[source]

We’ve been looking forward to Emotional Robots debut iOS release Warm Gun since we first caught wind of it way back in January of this year. Then this past July, the anticipation was kicked up a big ol' notch with the release of a proper trailer showcasing Warm Gun running on iOS hardware, and it was an impressive sight.

While the release of that trailer optimistically labeled August as the intended release window, that month promptly came and went with no sign of the game. Emotional Robots did however keep their promise of submitting the game before summer’s end, getting it sent off to Apple on September 22nd. Since then we’ve been waiting to hear of the game’s approval and a proper release date, and now we finally have that.

A representative from Emotional Robots has stated in our forums that Warm Gun has been approved by Apple and is scheduled for release next Tuesday, October 11th to coincide with the release of iOS 5. But that’s not all, as there will actually be two versions of the game launching next week. There will of course be Warm Gun proper, which will focus on the online multiplayer aspect of the game and will initially ship with 5 maps and 4 player classes, with more of each planned for future updates. Here’s another look at the Warm Gun iOS trailer to refresh your memory:

In addition to the full Warm Gun game that will be selling for $4.99, there is also a spinoff of sorts called Warm Gun: Carnival of Bullets. This standalone game will launch for free alongside the full Warm Gun game and will feature some offline single player things to do like mini-games, shooting galleries, and other surprises.

Carnival of Bullets will essentially function as a lite version of the game, allowing you to see how the game looks and how the controls handle before you plunk down the dough on the real thing. But, given its unique environment of an abandoned carnival and a healthy list of different things to do, Carnival of Bullets should be a pretty compelling offering in its own right, especially for free. You can check out the trailer for Warm Gun: Carnival of Bullets right here:

So there you have it, now you have the low-down on all things Warm Gun related. It feels like it’s been an incredibly long journey from when we first heard of Warm Gun until it’s impending release next week. Back in January, it was still somewhat new for developers to be using the Unreal Engine in their games, and just that fact alone made a game noteworthy. Since that time, there have been plenty of Unreal games released (not all of them good, mind you) and the Unity engine has really stepped in and shown that it’s more than capable of showcasing jaw-dropping graphics on par or better than what we’ve seen with Unreal.

Just releasing a game with shiny graphics no longer cuts the mustard, as everyone is quite aware that iOS devices are capable of some truly impressive visuals. No, nowadays your game needs substance beyond just eye candy, and we’ll be eager to see how Warm Gun measures up to this task when it hits next Tuesday.

[source]