TouchArcade.ru

Rozgo's Metroid inspired physics sidescroller has finally arrived for iPhone. We covered the game first back in October when it didn't even have a name. Inspired by the positive response, the developer redoubled his efforts and added new additional team members to take the game to the next level.

The game finally arrived yesterday on the App Store with a new launch video:

First impressions are being recorded in our discussion thread. So far, the response seems pretty positive, but with some rough edges. I've added the game to my list of games to try on my flight to WWDC.

[source]

The 2D side-scrolling brawler is a fairly popular genre on the App Store, with games like OMG Pirates!, The Simpsons Arcade, and most recently Pride and Prejudice and Zombies bringing arcade-style action to our touch screens. Adding another solid entry to the list is a collaborative effort from developers UltiZen and MoStar called Princess Fury. We previewed the game just a few days ago, and were impressed with the visual style and the idea of adding strategic elements to what is typically a simplistic button-mashing genre. With Princess Fury now available, we're happy to say that it has largely succeeded in bringing a new take to a tried and true formula, but doesn't delve deeply enough into the strategic areas and has a frustratingly imbalanced pace. It remains a graphically appealing experience that's chock full of action, and will reward players who are prepared to endure its faults.

You play as a young purple-haired Princess, wielding a sword larger than your entire body, laying waste to enemies across 20 different stages. Each stage is broken down into multiple sub-stages, and instead of being structured with a beginning and an end like most games of this type the levels in Princess Fury are more along the lines of elongated arenas. The goal of each sub-stage can vary, and this is what really sets it apart from your average brawler. Some challenges are as simple as defeating every enemy, or killing a boss. But others mix things up nicely. You might have to escort a character from one side of the level to the other, while fighting off enemy attacks and keeping that character alive. A similar version of this task gives you a stationary crystal which you must defend and keep alive for a predetermined amount of time.

My favorite of these challenges works similarly to a territories game type. Five crystals are spread evenly across the map. Your group starts on one side, and a group of enemies on the other. Emptying each crystal's life meter “owns” it for your team. The enemies can also control crystals, and it's a fight to see who can own all 5 at the same time. It can become a pretty heated battle as crystals are constantly changing ownership. This game type in particular really is a lot of fun, but all the different game variations work well and add welcome variety to the beat 'em up style genre.

The other big wrinkle in the traditional gameplay is the addition of a leveling system and computer controlled allies that fight alongside the Princess. You gain experience while playing, even if you die and fail a mission. Unfortunately, there's no type of meter letting you know when you'll level up next, it just sort of happens. As you level up, more troops become available to you, up to a total of 8. There's various types of soldiers, like archers or swordsman, that you can configure in your party and are able to earn experience and level up as well. You can decide whether your group sticks with the Princess and protects her, or acts more aggressively and searches out enemies on their own. This is about the extent of the real-time strategy the game boasts about, and while not adding a tremendous impact on the gameplay it's a fun little addition.

The Princess is naturally much stronger than any of her supporting crew, and she is capable of some unique magical attacks in addition to her humongous and powerful sword. New attacks are unlocked as you level up, and you can have up to 3 active at a time while playing. They range from raining down lightning to throwing tornadoes to advanced techniques using your sword. Each one takes time to recharge in between uses. There can be a ton of enemies onscreen at once, which can be good and bad. It's good because there's always a lot of action happening, but can slow the framerate down some on older devices. Also, your character can get lost amongst that huge crowd, and sometimes you don't get a good view of what's going on. These are pretty minor issues though, and in general the combat gameplay is really fun.

Where the road starts to get bumpy is in terms of balance. The game gives you a helpful tip that there's the option of replaying any level for additional XP, but essentially this is required. Even the boss of the very first stage is too hard to defeat without replaying some of the levels you just played in order to level up your characters more. In some instances this can simply be due to you not utilizing the proper strategy for a level. For example, during an escort mission you may want to forge ahead and dispatch of any threats that lay waiting. And sometimes you'll want to stick with the person being escorted, and defeat enemies as they come to you. But the majority of the time if you can't beat a level it's due to an unfair difficulty. The enemies level scales along with yours, making the inconsistent difficulty all the more annoying.

Still, for most people the good will outweigh the bad, and Princess Fury packs quite a punch for just a couple of dollars. There's a ton of levels, attacks to learn, and soldiers to add to your party making for a unique twist on the typical brawler gameplay. There's also something to be said for dishing out a world of hurt as an adorable Princess. If you're looking for a game with a lot of action that's likely going to last you quite a while, give Princess Fury a look.

[source]

Irish animation studio Straandlooper is really pushing the suggestive limits of the App Store with the first installment of their episodic adult adventure game, Hector: Badge of Carnage [$3.99]. This point and click adventure game (or, more accurately, point and tap I suppose) puts players in charge of Hector, a police officer from the town of Clappers Wreake. The game opens with a fantastically drawn and voiced over animated cut scene which really sets the bar for the rest of the game.

In the first episode, Hector is called in to do some hostage negotiation at a building being guarded by a sniper who has been picking off any policemen who enter his line of sight. Progressing through the game, like any similar adventure game, involves analyzing your environment, picking up items, and combining or using them in creative ways to overcome obstacles. For instance, getting out of the room you start in will require clever use of a old shoe, a spoon, a condom, and a paperclip.

The rest of the game continues in this manner, and aside from manipulating objects you will also need to interact with various characters in game through extensive dialog trees. The first instance of this requires Hector to talk his way in to making a young thug locked up at the police station to quite literally give him his pants. All of this dialog both pops up as text on screen and is accompanied by a voiceover, and the voice work is actually quite enjoyable.

I'm reluctant to mention much more of what happens in the game since so much of these kind of adventure games can be spoiled by mentioning future items or situations you'll find yourself in, what I will say is that Hector: Badge of Carnage will be a joy for any fan of adventure games or suggestive humor to play through. The writing is funny, the things you have to do and the actions required to do them are often hilarious, and the cut scenes are fantastic.

Really, the only down side to Hector: Badge of Carnage is the lack of an easy to use in-game hint system. Playing through the game I sometimes found myself flat out stumped as to what to do next, resorting to just tapping everything imaginable on screen, attempting to combine every item, and/or using every item on every nearby object. I suppose I'm spoiled by The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition [$7.99] which comes with a hint system that starts out very vague in attempt to point you in the right direction with additional hints that eventually just flat out tell you what to do– A much better alternative than puzzling hints given to you by your partner Lambert who you need to get to first before you can get any assistance.

The first episode of Hector: Badge of Carnage will likely only take you a few hours to play through, or substantially less if you're constantly looking up what to do next online. Beware, it ends in a cliffhanger, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

[source]

Rocketcat Games' much anticipated successor to Hook Champ has just been submitted to the App Store. The final version of the game has reportedly changed significantly since we first saw it in April. According to Kepa Auwaue:

17 levels that involve exploring for treasure and secrets. There's unlockable levels and equipment for beating these levels as fast as you can. And there's still a very in-depth Endless Survival mode, where you run from a crushing Avalanche. There's 60 different sections for Avalanche Mode alone, many of which have secret alternate paths. Avalanche Mode alone has more content than most games that are just a single-level pick up and play mode. All this, and the fun stuff from Hook Champ is still there, such as upgrades, extensive leaderboards, ghost races, and so on.

First day buyers will get two exclusive hats and an early buyer's discount. Here's the latest gameplay video:

Here are some of the latest screenshots:

[source]

Gamevil's Soccer Superstars [$4.99] recently hit the App Store, bringing the same classic sprite based graphics, gameplay that will take you back to the Super Nintendo days, and RPG style progression of super players that will have you saying "just one more game" long after you should have stopped playing. Much like Baseball Superstars 2010 [$4.99 / Free], this extra layer of depth provided by the RPG elements inside the game somehow manage to make the Superstars games incredibly appealing even to those of us who don't normally get that involved in sports games.

So far reactions in our forums have been positive, with some people having issues with the controls. In Soccer Superstars, the movement of your player is controlled using an analog stick of sorts, but to keep you from constantly needing to keep your left thumb on the screen your player will just keep running in whatever direction you touched last. It seems like once you wrap your head around this somewhat unconventional control scheme, Soccer Superstars is just as much fun as Baseball Superstars, a personal favorite of mine.

We're going to be taking a closer look at this game in the near future, but in the meantime, Soccer Superstars is a safe purchase for anyone who likes arcade style soccer games and/or endlessly filling experience and stat bars to advance a roster of characters.

[source]

Board gamers will be pleased to learn that the hit German tile-based game, Carcassonne has finally arrived in the App Store. The official port includes original artwork, 8 different AI players, and even internet multiplayer with push notifications.

Build a medieval landscape, tile by tile, claim landmarks with your followers and score points. As a winner of the prestigious "Spiel des Jahres" award in 2001, the game allows for a plethora of play styles and strategies.

The game comes as an iPhone-only verison, but a universal iPad version is on the way. The iPad universal will be a free update to existing owners of the game, and the game will reportedly go up in price at that time. First impressions are rolling in our forums.

[source]

Activision recently released a pseudo-sequel to the surprisingly popular Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies [$9.99], a first person zombie defense shooter made famous by its online four player coop multiplayer modes that we were very impressed by in our review. Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies II [$9.99], aside from having a title that's an even bigger mouthful than the first, comes loaded with the new Shi No Numa map. Shi No Numa is a very large swamp filled with buildings, new weapons, monsters, and zombie traps that fans of the original game will no doubt quickly fall in love with.

What's odd about this "sequel" is that the only thing different it has over the first, which is little more than the new map and everything in it, is available via a DLC purchase in the original. Also, Zombies II has Verruckt and Nacht Der Untoten (the two old maps from Zombies) available as optional DLC. Basically, it doesn't matter which game you have, as each one has the content of the other available in DLC packs.

If you've enjoyed Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies, be sure to check out the in-game store to give this new map a try. So far, the thread on our forums is filled with people who are having a great time with it, so if you have yet to pick up the game it might not be a bad idea to dive directly in to the sequel to have the newest map which most people will likely be playing. You can always pick the others up later.

[source]

Last month Konami made a cryptic announcement about an iPhone exclusive Castlevania game in the works. Billed as a "action-puzzle RPG", we weren't really sure what to expect of the game. Well, a trailer was posted on IGN today that shows quite a bit of gameplay, but I'm still left scratching my head as to why Konami is utilizing the Castlevania IP by releasing a block matching game instead of… anything else.

With gameplay very similar to Capcom's Puzzle Fighter games, players will make their way through a puzzle adaptation of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, battling monsters with split screen block battles. I'm anxious to take a look at this game when it's finally released on the App Store, and doubt I'm alone in hoping that there's more to Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night than a tired matching mechanic with heaps of Castlevania fan service.

[source]

In our current fast-paced internet age, oftentimes classical arts and literature take a back seat to silly YouTube clips and 30-second Flash games. In times like these, just how do you get a generation prone to short attention spans and low-brow humor interested in a two hundred year old classic novel? Simple, you add zombies. And ninjas. This is precisely what author Seth Grahame-Smith has done with Jane Austen's critically acclaimed work Pride and Prejudice with the aptly titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Taking the original text, he interjects his own bits of zombie and kung-fu fiction to come up with an alternate telling of the story. The results are borderline brilliant. Austen's quintessential tale of life as a young woman in late 1700's/early 1800's aristocratic English society juxtaposed with campy B-movie style zombie and ninja undertones makes for incredibly humorous storytelling. Others seem to agree as well, as the mash-up novel rose to #3 on New York Times bestseller list following it's release in April 2009.

Now, the fine folks at Freeverse have teamed up with the publisher of the novel Quirk Classics to bring the video game iteration of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [$2.99] to the iPhone. It's a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up similar to Final Fight, Streets of Rage, or TMNT Arcade of years past. The presentation of the game is a total success, both visually appealing and rife with bizarre humor. Unfortunately the gameplay itself isn't quite as strong, and feels somewhat shallow and repetitive. Surprisingly, this doesn't hamper the overall experience of the game that much, as the story is hilarious and remains a lot of fun to play through.

The graphics in PPZ look appropriate to the era, with sketch-style illustrations comprising the smoothly animated characters and backgrounds. It looks like a storybook come to life. The game is broken into 12 separate chapters from the book. The level of description in the game is obviously not as thorough as Austen's original novel, although it does hit on all the major plot-points. You are the second oldest of five daughters, Elizabeth Bennet, struggling to find love and social acceptance in England at the turn of the 19^th century. You are also the most skilled warrior in your family. Your mother wants nothing more than to see you married to a wealthy gentleman and secure your future. You want nothing more than to worry about your own future, and marry for true love rather than money. You'll do anything to defend your family's honor from public opinion while defending their lives from the constant threat of zombie infection.

What works so incredibly well and makes the game so funny is how nonchalantly the zombie aspect is integrated into the story. Take the very first chapter for example. One minute you're attending a hoity-toity ball discussing with your sisters which male guests would make suitable husbands, the next you're fighting off an onslaught of the undead who've decided to crash the party. The game then delves into the awesomely absurd when you are channeled by your Shaolin Master and reminded to “remember your training” as you're guided through the controls. At the end of the level, even more inexplicably, the five sisters combine powers Voltron lion-style to attack a large mob of zombies. Then, just as quickly as the madness breaks out, it's right back to the topic of marriage like nothing even happened. It's this kind of sharp contrast in events and cavalier attitude towards the zombie infestation that made the book such a success, and it translates to the visual extremely well in the iPhone game.

As mentioned, the gameplay is of the classic beat 'em up style. Enemies will attack from every angle as you progress from left to right through the various levels. A small control stick controls Elizabeth's movement and a single screen tap executes a basic attack with her katana sword. There's also an impressive advanced move set that uses simple swipe gestures to allow for many different special maneuvers. Swiping diagonally upwards performs an uppercut slash, or swiping diagonally downwards performs a sliding kick, as examples. There's a lot of depth to the moves you can pull off with such simple commands, and each one is upgradeable after completing a level (in what is amusingly named the Dojo).

It sounds really great on paper, but falters a bit in execution. Some of these special moves are unwieldy to use in the heat of battle, and the majority of the time your best offense is your basic katana slash. This degrades the gameplay into furious button-mashing. My finger literally got sore from all the tapping. This isn't entirely surprising, as that is historically the nature of this type of game. It's a shame though, because the upgrade system and arsenal of moves are interesting and well designed, they just aren't that useful. When I did try to get fancy with my attacks, it often cost me more damage than if I had just kept on spamming my katana. The couple of exceptions to this are an Earth-shaking move (swipe up to jump and quickly swipe down while in the air to pound the ground) and a spinning katana slash (swipe down while on the ground to spin with your blade à la Baraka from Mortal Kombat II). These two moves proved to be the most functional for me out of the whole arsenal.

Monotonous gameplay aside, I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It does enough right presentation and story-wise to hold your interest, and is filled with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. It's a fairly short ride, and is definitely on the easy side, but has some replayability in the form of going back and attaining medals for every level. You are scored on how quickly you beat a level, how much life you have left, and on your style, which is how much variety you put into your attack patterns with special moves. Plus+ integration offers achievements and leaderboards to round out the package, giving even more incentive to go back and replay. Still, PPZ works even as just a one-off experience, and for the fraction of the cost of going to the movies you can spend a few hours engrossed in this odd tale on your iPhone.

[source]

This afternoon I chatted with Brian Howard, founder of InMotion Software, who explained that the next iteration of the I Dig It series was submitted to the App Store today. After downloading a preview build of the game and installing it on my iPad, I can say with utmost confidence that iPad-owning fans of the I Dig It games are going to be in for a treat.

If this is the first you've heard of these games, here's what you've been missing: Around the time of WWDC last year, the original I Dig It [99¢] hit the App Store, and if it wasn't for a surprising amount of people talking about the game at the event, it likely would have never even appeared on our radar at all. In the game, you pilot a retrofitted farm tractor turned subterranean digger in attempts to raise $100,000 to save the family farm. Luckily, the ground under said farm is absolutely chock full of valuable things to dig up, and gameplay amounts to drilling tunnels, collecting diggin's, and selling your spoils to purchase various upgrades for your digger.

I Dig It was a huge success, topping the iTunes sales charts in a number of countries including the United States, so a sequel was only natural. I Dig It Expeditions [$2.99 / Free came next, expanding on the original gameplay of I Dig It as you take your digger on the road and search for archeological treasures in exotic locations such as the Antarctic tundra, the South American Amazon, and even under the ocean.

We loved both games in our reviews (I Dig It, I Dig It Expeditions) and lite version of Expeditions is on my short list of games I automatically recommend to anyone with a new iPhone asking me what games to try. So what's new with the iPad HD edition? Well, first off like many iPad adaptations of iPhone games, you can see substantially more of the game's environment. Also, your digger's radar has been moved from a completely separate screen to a mini-map that is always in the top left corner. These two things alone really improve the game, as being able to see more of your elaborate tunnel system and not needing to page back and forth between the radar makes for a much better overall experience.

The content of I Dig It HD is similar to Expeditions, although not exactly; so even if you've made it all the way through Expeditions, the HD version should still be worth playing. Also, there are new iPad-only challenges not found in the other games. However, the absolute coolest addition to I Dig It HD is the included level editor which fully utilizes the iPad document handling system to allow you to create, share, and import custom levels made by other people.

According to InMotion Software, the editor is what they're calling a beta, and is a little rough around the edges. Regardless, it still works well enough. Much like the document handling of the iWork suite, you can import/export custom levels via iTunes or by either emailing or clicking a link to a .idigit file. Even in its current state, it seems like there is quite a bit of potential if the level sharing community takes off– Something InMotion Software is waiting on to determine how much more development effort to invest in the level sharing and creation system.

As mentioned previously, I Dig It HD has already been submitted to the App Store, and barring any unforeseen rejections or other issues, should be available very soon. As far as how many of these enhancements will make their way to the iPhone, according to Brian Howard, the ability to import community created levels is a "real possibility" but due to differences in screen size they don't see a level editor on the iPhone.

[source]