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Does the name Remedy ring a bell? They’re the Finnish developers behind Alan Wake and Max Payne, but before all that, they released a top-down combat-centric MS-DOS Racer called Death Rally. (Oh, and, Max Payne [ $2.99 ] is also now available on the App Store, check out our review.) Anyway, a little over a year ago the greatly enhanced iOS remake of Death Rally hit the App Store.

To create the game, Remedy partnered up with Mountain Sheep, who is likely best known around these parts for Minigore [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)]. Minigore saw tons of updates, so, I’m not sure anyone was surprised when Death Rally got similar treatment. Since its initial release and our original review, they’ve added all sorts of unlockables, character tie-ins (such as a guest appearance from the one and only Duke Nukem) and even full online multiplayer.

Yes, the game has been free before, and one could argue that it’s only “free” with air quotes as there’s a variety of optional IAP to be had. Regardless, if you missed the last Death Rally promotion, be sure to hop on this one. Even if all you do is tool around in a few single player races, it’s still totally worth the download.

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Does the idea of yet another farming game sound exciting to you whatsoever? Your answer would likely be a resounding no, unless you’ve seen that there are still plenty of seeds to plant with Tractor Trails [ $0.99 ], the farming game that is not only fun and exciting but plays more like a puzzle game rather than the next FarmVille [ Free ] clone.

You see, Red is a tractor that needs to plant seeds on his maze-like farm so he can grow fruit trees. Your (and Red’s) goal is to earn a three star rating at the end of the level by planting as many trees as possible (filling the entire board if you can), collecting the groundhog, and doing it all in the fastest amount of time you can. Earning stars allows you to unlock more level sets, with five in all. Controlling Red is incredibly easy, only requiring that you swipe where he needs to go on the farm so he can plant trees and collect the groundhog along the way.

While controlling Red may be easy, the challenge does ramp up quickly meaning you’ll need to learn fast to stay ahead. The initial levels are pretty much on auto-pilot with little or no chance for error, while more advanced levels will all but require plenty of plotting ahead to make sure you’re going to be able to plant as many trees as possible. In fact, a stage not too far into the game left me puzzled for more than fifteen minutes before coming up with a working solution.

The real challenge in each stage is trying to determine where exactly to send Red without screwing up. Sending him down the wrong path means you have to start over, so planning ahead is best when coming up with solutions. Combine that with the time bonus that’s riding on each stage, and you’re in for a brain buster if you’re not in the correct mindset. The more you play though, the more the mechanics begin to click, and you’ll find yourself having fun without too much trouble. On top of that, the payoff of finishing each stage is satisfying, rewarding you with much-needed stars and achievements for completing stages as efficiently as possible.

Spicing up the gameplay in Tractor Trails are the power-ups you can purchase with the corn you collect (or purchase through IAP). You can buy upgrades such as a queuing system, which is a bit of a saving grace to the gameplay (which can be a bit slow once you get the hang of it). Other power-ups include undo and speed upgrades. These don’t do as much to change the gameplay but can help out if you’re finding some stages a bit too challenging. The problem (albeit minor) with these upgrades lies in the pricing system, as you will have to continually purchase most of these items over and over again with increasing prices after each purchase.

Each set of levels does appear to have its own distinct theme, with its own color scheme to go with it. For instance, the first set of levels has a distinct shade of green, meant to represent a sunny, summer style. In the second set, you’ll be seeing a lot of brown as the theme is meant to represent autumn. After spending a good amount of time in each level set, your eyes will welcome the change of scenery each time it happens. The graphical tone seems to borrow a bit from Triple Town [ Free ] but there was never a vibe of ripping off, although the similarities are clear.

Where Tractor Trails really nails the fun factor is in its simplistic, yet rewarding gameplay. A game that you can pick-up and play for a few minutes or up to a few hours is still rare, so it’s nice to see that Tractor Trails stays as fun as it should long after you’ve started.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Today marks the next big step in TouchArcade history, as with the help of Flexbits and Bartelme Design the official TouchArcade App [ Free ] is now available for download on the App Store. We dug deep into all the features of the app last month, so give that a once over while you’re waiting for the app to download.

We’ve put a ton of effort into the development of this app, and aside from providing an incredibly iPhone-friendly version of all the content TouchArcade has to offer, you’ll be able to see a list of the hottest games updated in real time. This list really aids in game discovery, as unlike the Apple featuring process where you’ll see a new crop of games every week, our hot games list is in constant flux and will include new games, old games with recent updates, games with price drops, and tons of other relevant titles.

So give it a download and let us know what you think, and what you’d like to see changed or tweaked in future versions. Also, while this initial launch currently is not universal, we’ve got plans for that on the horizon and the universal version looks incredible on the iPad.

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It’s been over a year and a half since we last covered the boy wizard and his Lego debut on iOS. Now, after much waiting the adventure is finally ready to be concluded with Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 [ $4.99 ]. While most Potter diehards will likely flock to this version and have a decent time, a few annoying missteps keep the title from having a wider appeal.

As was the case for the previous Lego Potter game, Years 5-7 is a port of an already existing portable game for the 3DS and more recently, PlayStation Vita. This means that you’re going to have (for the most part) a fully-featured game with a wealth of content. You’ll play through the final four movies of the series reimagined in the now-typical Lego way, each with its own chapters and sub-chapters. In addition, there are tons of unlockable characters as well as collectables. Suffice to say, there shouldn’t be any worries about getting your money’s worth with this title.

Gameplay is standard for what you’d expect from a Lego game at this point. You’ll spend the majority of the game engaged in simple exploration and puzzle solving, with some occasional combat thrown in for good measure. And, of course, you’ll spend a lot of time collecting studs which can be used to unlock new characters who have abilities that can open up previously locked areas. One new element added to the mix is the inclusion of Wizard Duels, which pits your character against another wizard in what is essentially a rock-paper-scissors battle for wand supremacy. While I didn’t think it added much to the overall gameplay, it was still a welcome sight for variety’s sake.

It feels strange saying this, but I was impressed with the visuals in Years 5-7. There was a certain clarity and visual sheen surrounding the in-game environments and character models on the iPhone 4S which put the game on par (or even better than) its portable console brethren. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the movie cutscenes, which were incredibly compressed. The audio suffers from a similar fate with annoying artifacts which simply feel out of place.

An interesting side effect is the fact that Years 5-7 will drain your iPhone’s battery very quickly. It seems like an obvious statement to make when you’re dealing with graphically-rich games, but I was still surprised at the how fast it drained (60-70% in about two hours of play). Just keep this in mind if you plan on a heavy gaming session away from a power source.

One of the areas we enjoyed in the previous Lego Harry Potter game was its intuitive control scheme, which used a more touch-centric (tap to move, swipes, etc.) method for controlling your character vice a virtual control pad. Unfortunately, Years 5-7 moves away from that style and settles firmly on a virtual joypad complete with various action buttons. While a virtual gamepad scheme is nothing new, the implementation feels off with small buttons that aren’t clearly labeled and the occasional non-register of a tap. Other actions, like specifically selecting a spell, become exercises in redundancy with the current control setup.

There are also a few nagging issues on top of the controls that just bring the experience down. The camera angle occasionally put you in a position where it’s hard to see pitfalls and other insta-death elements, causing sudden death if you’re not careful. I also encountered several situations where it was possible for your character to just get trapped on objects and just hang. Thankfully, the game will mercifully kill you after being this way for a while, but these sorts of bugs just shouldn’t be happening.

I’m happy to see that the Lego Harry Potter series finally completed on iOS. However, I’m not sure why it took so long for this port to land on the platform. Sure, Years 5-7 looks good visually, but the switch to a virtual gamepad along with the issues mentioned above deter the game from being better. As it is, the Lego gameplay is intact, meaning that fans of the series should continue to enjoy it. However, you can do better if you’re simply looking for the next great action/platform game.

TouchArcade Rating:

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If you’re like me and have been anxiously awaiting Get Set Games’ Mega Run, the follow-up to their hugely successful Mega Jump [ Free ], then I’ve got some good news for you: Mega Run now has a confirmed release date of May 30th.

I was able to take Mega Run for a test drive at GDC in March, and was really impressed by the game even in its early state. It takes the auto-running Canabalt formula and adds colorful graphics, multiple pathways, tons of secrets and plenty of special items and powerups. Check out this new batch of screens sent over by Get Set, which are looking fabulous.

Since GDC the team has added an entire new world, bringing the total up to 4 worlds each with 16 stages to complete. Mega Run will also launch as a Universal app with Retina Display support. Be sure to check out the previously released trailer and mark May 30th down on your calendar if you’ve been looking forward to Mega Run.

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Aby Escape [ Free ] is the newest freemium title from BulkyPix and Pixel Ratio, and a 3D spin on the iphone’s popular runner genre. Instead of dashing full speed to the left or right sidescroller style, the game plants the camera just behind Aby’s back and leaves it to you to guide the terrified raccoon down paths cluttered with rocks, cars, animal herds, beer-bellied hicks who lie in wait until you approach, and other obstacles.

To keep your unstoppable force from running smack-dab into immovable objects, you tilt your phone to weave side to side, swipe your thumb up the screen to jump, and swipe downwards to drop to your knees and pull off a Catwoman-in-Arkham-City slide, minus revealing cleavage. (Yeah, I know. Can’t have it all, though.) The core gameplay idea is reminiscent of Temple Run [ Free ], but Aby Escape does a nice job at iterating on the formula with some new ideas and some variety.

The game features two game modes: Story, and Unlimited. In Unlimited, your goal is to stay alive for as long as possible. You accomplish that feat by weaving in and out of danger to pick up shoes that keep your perpetually draining energy meter topped off. Aby gradually picks up speed the longer you survive, making extended play an exercise requiring absolute focus and twitch reflexes. Besides shoes, you can grab coins with which to purchase power-ups, characters, new Unlimited levels, and other unlockables.

And that’s where the trouble begins. The first time you load up Aby Escape, only one Unlimited level, Greystone Park, is available. Two other Unlimited stages are available from the in-game store, but at a cost of more than 3000 coins each. Want to try Story mode? That’ll run you 7500. You can unlock these modes in one of two ways: grind Greystone Park and pinch your pennies for hours on end, or shell out real money for IAP coin bundles.

The unbalanced economy pervades in other ways. Besides new stages, the shop also sells items like speed boosts that blast you forward and render you impervious to harm. The problem is, every item carries an exorbitant price tag. Each item can be upgraded up to five times. The first upgrade for each item costs 400, the next 1200, then 3000, and so on. Handy, but a major cut into your savings when you’re stuck with only one level to play. Playable characters and different types of feet like hairy Hobbit toes go for between 2000 to more than 4000, but don’t alter the game in any way; they’re purely for aesthetics. I hate to harp on this point, but with only one level to play, I simply considered all other purchases a waste until I’d invested in at least one change of scenery to spice up my time with the game.

Unlimited levels feature challenges that reward you with coins, but some of them just don’t make “cents.” Buy two upgrades at 400 coins apiece, get 50 coins back for completing the challenge. Uh, no thanks. I bought an IAP item that gives me two coins for every one I picked up, but that only increased my income from a drip-drop to a steady trickle. Eventually I shelled out five bucks for 20,000 coins—not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. It was either that or more grinding. I unlocked the last two Unlimited levels before diving into Story, a sprawl of levels spread across Greystone Park and two new areas, the same ones you’ll play in Unlimited if/when you fork over the coins.

Story tasks you with racking up a high score by staying alive as long as possible and collecting every pair of shoes on each stage. Running into obstacles knocks points off your score and sets you back at a checkpoint. Most checkpoints set you so far back that you’ll have forgotten earlier terrain in your effort to remember what to do in the area that tripped you up, which amounts to a lot of frustrating memorization and trial and error.

Technical issues also abound. The frame rate chugs sporadically, spelling certain death in trap-heavy regions. Also, since you spend the game running forward into the distance, terrain you pass slides backwards as you run along but some of it slides too slowly, clogging the screen and blocking your view of the next hurdles. More seriously, though, was a store calculation error—I had more than the 400 coins I needed for an upgrade, but the transaction somehow took my wallet down to -97, which shouldn’t even be allowed to happen—and a crash bug that dumped me back to the home screen every time I tried to load an Unlimited level.

With so many strikes against it, what could possibly convince you to help Aby Escape? Because I’ll be darned if it isn’t fun. Grinding grew monotonous only because, really, who wants to look at the same environment over and over in any game? Actually <em>playing</em> the game is quite enjoyable. There’s a feeling of satisfaction and skill in any runner game that comes from guiding your scurrying lemming over, under, and around obstacles, marveling at your response time, dexterity, and lasting for as long as possible before inevitably slamming into something that reduces your bones to a fine powder.

Collecting coins, shoes, and power-ups requires near dead-on collision to register, but aside from the somewhat sluggish tilt-controlled weaving that doesn’t always keep up with the game’s gradually accelerating pace, the controls usually responded sharply enough that I felt encouraged to veer into danger and risk another visit to the Retry screen if it meant snatching an out-of-the-way coin placed in front of a trap. The game also plays fair by giving you a chance to shoulder past obstacles like cars and rocks unless you strike them dead on, which made me even more willing to dash in front of dangerous objects and grab goodies.

Three strong redeeming qualities ultimately saved Aby Escape from outright deletion. It’s fun, it’s deep (you’ve still got all the challenges and your personal records to break even after you’ve opened everything up), and it’s free. If this were a paid game, I’d knock a star off the grade, and fairly. The game really should offer activities from the get go or at least mark down the fee for additional content, but what is there provides loads of entertainment.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Despite the majority of the gaming world wishing otherwise, Nintendo seems pretty dead-set in not bringing any of their beloved properties to other platforms. Which means, if you’re standing in line at the bank and get a sudden hankering for some Mario Kart, you’re mostly out of luck if you aren’t sporting Nintendo hardware.

However, video games are an iterative pastime, and Mario Kart is far from the only kart racer around. On the iOS platform, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing [ $1.99 ] is widely considered to be the finest answer to Mario Kart currently available, and we’d tend to agree. It pits a cast of Sega characters against each other in the power-sliding, weapon-laden, arcade-style racing we’ve come to expect from a kart racer, and it does it extremely well.

Throw in fantastic course designs, a full single-player campaign and challenge mode, and both local and online multiplayer options and you have a seriously good kart racer, even with the lack of everyone’s favorite plumber.

Over the weekend, Sonic All-Stars Racing got just that much better with its first significant content update since being released in June of last year. The big ticket items in this update are two brand new characters: Shadow the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna. These are two extremely popular characters from the Sonic universe and are a great inclusion here. In addition to the two new characters there is also a brand new track to race on.

The other big feature in this latest update to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is native video-out support either wirelessly using AirPlay or through an HDMI hookup. I checked out this feature back at GDC and can say that his game in particular scales up to the TV screen extremely well. Finally, iCloud progress saving has been implemented as well as some UI changes including character faces on the mini-map during single player and Game Center avatars for when playing online.

If you’ve got kart fever on-the-go and don’t have a spare copy of Mario Kart handy, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing should do the trick and is an even better game now thanks to the latest update.

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From the very first time I launched Pandemic 2.5 [ $0.99 ], I was out to obliterate humanity. My implement of destruction was a virus I called “Iloveyou”—named for a classic. Iloveyou started its life in South Africa, a humble disease with a single carrier. He probably didn’t even know he was sick. At first, we were asymptomatic.

Iloveyou had room to evolve, with 8 EvoPoints to grow into. I spent them carefully. I enhanced our heat capacity, so we wouldn’t die out in the desert. I developed our first symptom: rhinorrhea, the runny nose. A little mucus can go a long way toward spreading a cold, I reckoned. I hoped to spread out to insects, but we weren’t yet advanced enough. I threw in dysuria and photophobia for good measure—not enough to kill our hosts by far, but enough to cause a little discomfort and hopefully improve our spread.

Then we began. The number of infected grew quickly, then stalled out. I had a few more EvoPoints to work with at this point, so we brought in our insect friends. Even with a few more symptoms, Iloveyou didn’t make it much further than that; we were too slow and our infection vectors just sort of got better. But I learned from that first experience. On our next outing we made it to the next tier of symptoms, picking up a cough. Then our victims began to suffer fevers. We lost a few of the infected early on, but we were finally on our way.

And so it went. At first we refrained from killing our victims. Hosts are more important than corpses. We spread across borders before anyone knew to shut them, took out hospitals before anyone knew what was going on. Once most of the world was within our grasp we took the next step and became fatal.

When people started dying, they knew they had a problem on their hands. They mobilized quickly, developed a vaccine almost before we could react. It was too late for most of them, but it was also too late for us: the people that were left were cured, and we would never see our dream of total global destruction come true. Granted, it was quite the morbid dream. It made me a bit queasy to see the number of living humans dwindle, sure. But it’s never nice to lose.

If all this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve played Pandemic 2. The Flash game has been around for years—it even has its own popular meme. Pandemic 2.5 is a complete overhaul for the mobile crowd. With a new interface and a few improvements, it’s decent port of the desktop classic.

Decent, mind you, but certainly not great. There are little problems, like awkward text fields and introductory text that flows right off the screen. Bigger issues include things like a complete lack of tutorial, and a news ticker that flies by too quickly to read if the game is in anything but full-on sloth mode.

The biggest issue of all is that the game can be agonizingly slow. It’s simply not ideal for a mobile platform in its current state. Playing Pandemic involves a lot of waiting, especially if you’ve already lost the ability to win and just want to get your final score. Normally I’d pull out my phone while the slow parts passed, but, well, you can see the problem with that.

Here’s the thing, though: Pandemic in this form is just as compelling as it’s ever been. Some of the bigger problems with the Flash game have even been worked out. The meme is outdated, as Madagascar is no longer ludicrously paranoid unless you’re playing at the top tier of difficulty. There are also traits (and associated achievements) you can unlock by completing hidden requirements, something that builds a sense of overall progression. If you can ignore the interface problems, this is the best take on the subject matter yet.

So consider this a cautious recommendation. If you can stomach the mild horror of obliterating humanity, if you can handle a somewhat clunky port, it’s pretty great to have Pandemic on the go. It sounds as though Dark Realm Studios is already working on fixing some of the game’s problems, too. Me, I’m working on a new strategy. With luck, we’ll take the island nations, wipe ‘em all out before they know what hit them. Awful to contemplate? Sure. But Pandemic makes a convincing argument: isn’t it time we gave the bugs their turn?

TouchArcade Rating:

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Any gamer who has been at it for as many years as myself certainly has a shortlist of particular standout favorites that set themselves apart for one reason or another, having indelibly left their mark upon his or her twitchy gamer brain. One such game that can be found on my list / burned into my brain is the Apple II title Wings of Fury, written by Steve Waldo and published by Broderbund in 1987. It’s a side-scrolling, carrier based aerial shooter set in the Pacific during World War II. The mission of the game is to use your Hellcat’s canons, bombs, rockets, and torpedoes to wipe out island installations, enemy ships, and defend your carrier against aerial attacks. It’s a lot of fun and is particularly challenging due to the somewhat realistic flight mechanics and the need to delicately land on the carrier to refuel / rearm.

Others out there who, reading this, fondly recall Wings of Fury (it also made it to the Amiga [video], C64, DOS, etc.) will be pleased to know that a rather well-done iOS remake has been put together by Korean studio Idea Spoon Games and released into the App Store.

Wings of Valor [App Store] is an iPhone title that pretty much captures the experience of the original — it looks like it’s all there, with simple, clean graphics. Of course, for a game like this, the onscreen analog stick is no match for the real-world, analog Apple II joystick with which I piloted my Hellcat in decades past, but the Wings of Valor controls work well enough.

In a chat this afternoon, author JY Kim of Idea Spoon explained that he is a huge fan of the original game and, lamenting the lack of App Store titles of the particular sort, decided seven months ago to bring the game, himself. Kim is a one-man operation and, as such, has rolled everything on his own, including the 2000 images that were drawn to bring the game together, the physics and particle system, and the camera / zoom system. He takes particular pride in the last, which he felt needed to be close to perfect in order to make the game work. He plans to soon bring improved visuals, better dogfight AI, and iPad support to the title.

Folks in our forums are having a pretty good time with Wings of Valor, so far.

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TouchArcade has gone a round with Bar Oasis before, back in 2010 when the first installment came out. However, I was completely unfamiliar with the game when I got word of Bar Oasis 1.5 [Free], which promises to bridge the gap between the first game and the sequel. I wasn’t sure what the difference was exactly until I read the fine print: the second game will give you access to tons of extra content, so we’re just getting a taste here. But the taste I got left me ready for much, more more.

For those of you who never played the first game in the series, Bar Oasis 1.5 offers an experience much like that of the Phoenix Wright series and other text-heavy games. In reality, it resembles a visual novel more than the Phoenix Wright series does, so if you don’t like lots of dialogue, don’t download this one. However, if witty banter and great mini-games appeal to you, you’re going to adore this. It also feels a bit like playing a really good anime, which is the ticket straight to my heart with no stops inbetween.

In Bar Oasis 1.5, you play the role of an attractive girl named Carla who loses her job and finds herself at Bar Oasis much by accident. Despite your relative lack of experience, you quickly find out from the head bartender that the guy they usually count on (Vincent, from the first game) has gone running off to China after some elusive woman. And so, they’re desperate for help. You get drafted into his old spot, with lots of characters waiting to get to know you as you learn how to be a great bartender.

Bar Oasis 1.5 has two main modes: story and making drinks. The game utilizes motion, so you will actually tilt the phone to pour and shake it when you use the mixer. One of my only complaints about the game was trying to master the timing (but I think that’s part of the point). Sometimes it seems like timing is the key, as there is a timer in the top right corner that tells you how well you are doing.

It says “Pro” if you’re fast enough, and will eventually tick down to “Amateur” if you take way too long. Making the mix drinks also means memorizing the backbar and where things are, which will come naturally after you’ve made enough preliminary drinks. The game is very smart about this as you serve a whole lot of bottled beer and whisky shots before you get down to more varied orders.

One really cool thing about the game is that all the drink recipes are accurate, so as you unlock them all, you’re also getting a handy recipe app to make cocktails with in the process. It’s when you notice little details like that that you start to realize how clever this game’s entire concept really is. You also have a drink making mode available right from the menu, so you can access the recipes easily and also practice making the drinks. This comes in really handy if you are struggling with getting the drinks right in story mode.

Bar Oasis 1.5 is easily the best title I’ve played on my phone in ages, but that’s also a matter of personal taste. I’m a huge fan of innovative concepts, and in a sea of physics puzzlers, you really notice when something swims to the forefront. The character development is clearly the focus of this game, and it’s nicely balanced with the drink making mechanic.

There are only 20 drinks available in this limited free teaser version, but the developers promise 100 in the upcoming Bar Oasis 2. Frankly, I would have come back just to spend more time with the characters, but I’ll take more drinks to learn as a backup excuse. Don’t miss this one. It might be free, but I’d have easily paid for a title as interesting as this and am eagerly looking forward to Bar Oasis 2.

TouchArcade Rating:

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