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In the wake of the free to play movement on the App Store, Ubisoft has recently released an iPad client for their free browser game, Might & Magic Heroes Kingdoms. Currently only available in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Might & Magic Heroes Kingdoms puts players to the task of managing their kingdom, bossing around their heroes, and do the typical MMO-style resource gathering and management by capturing mines.

After your kingdom is booming, you'll be able to wage battles which Ubisoft is describing as "epic" with other players by creating or joining alliances to conquer new territory in attempt to control the entire in-game world of Ashan.

If you're an iPad owner in Germany, France, or the UK, give the free iPad client a spin and see what you think. Since it is free to download, if you're outside of those three countries and you really want to get a jump on the game before it hits the US App Store, it shouldn't be too hard to create an international account to snag the game.

United Kingdom App Store Link: Might & Magic Heroes Kingdoms, Free

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When you look at the lineup of iPhone games in the App Store you will notice a few genres that seem a little crowded. One of these is castle defense type games, so I was kind of surprised to see a developer working on one to join the ranks of the many other castle defenders such as the highly detailed 2D Knights Onrush [99¢] and Gameloft's 3D Castle Frenzy [99¢].

Gamedoctors, an independent developer form Germany, is hard at work putting on the finishing touches on a game they call, ZombieSmash! In an effort to have their game standout they’re using the strangely popular (and arguably overdone) theme of zombie killing to draw gamers in.

After watching the trailer you can see the game has cartoony look and some amusing killing methods. ZombieSmash! also includes something they're calling the "splatter engine" that is powering the zombie ragdoll physics and excessive amounts of blood spewing everywhere. Gamedoctors is trying to get people to call it a survival comedy, but we’ll have to wait and see if that sticks.

The game should hit the App Store in March for $1.99.

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As we reported late last month, Touch Arcade had the opportunity to visit Gameloft's Manhattan offices and spend a bit of hands-on time with their upcoming WWII-based first person shooter, Brother in Arms 2: Global Front. Tonight the game landed in the App Store and, after spending a few days with this final build, we have some thoughts to share on Gameloft's latest.

When the first Brothers in Arms title for the iPhone landed in the App Store back in November 2008, it was a highly notable release and almost certainly the most complex 3D game to be released for the platform at the time. It was (and is) a well executed iPhone take on an extremely popular console / PC franchise, wowing most but drawing criticism for a "difficult" control system.

Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front, designed from the ground up specifically for the iPhone, comes to us over a year later.  So what has a year brought us in the sequel to such a bold initial platform release? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Brothers in Arms 2, weighing in at over three times the filesize of its predecessor, brings to the iPhone a much larger game experience. This time around it's a first person affair, as opposed to the third-person, over-the-shoulder experience that is the first title. Actually, when in duck-and-cover mode, BIA2 does jump out to third person — and that's something you'll see often, as using crates, walls, and tanks for cover is pretty much par for the course in this title. That is, when you're not sprinting across the battlefield, manning the turret in a jeep or tank, or piloting a "glider" through heavy flack. Yea, it's pretty intense.

BIA2 drops you neatly into WWII as the young American soldier David Wilson on a mission to push back the Germans and Japanese and get the backs of his brothers in arms in the thick of battle. But, before long, an ominous bit of correspondence reveals that his actual brother, Eric, has been killed and was given the medal of honor — but that medal was revoked due to uncertain circumstances. It's Wilson's additional mission to get to the bottom of the mystery and clear his brother's good name. Pretty heavy stuff, really.

The tools of the trade are many. Available weapons include bazookas, fixed machine guns, flame throwers, Thompson submachine guns, and grenades. (The default play mode offers targeting assistance, which I find helpful, but it can be disabled.) There are three different modes of play, in all, to choose from. The default is a mission to mission progression through 13 levels across five different locales: Pacific, Sicily, Normandy, Germany, and North Africa. Any unlocked locale can also be chosen for quick play in Campaign mode. And, finally, local network play is possible by way of either WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity.

The game's control system feels a bit more workable than that of the original iPhone release. This is due, in part, to the various refined methods of multitouch, onscreen controls offered, but also to the fact that, during the year that's gone by since the originals release, we've come to know a great many 3D shooters utilizing dual-stick (and the like) controls. We're just far more used to this iPhone control mechanic than we were back in November 2008. Whatever the precise combination of reasons, you're going to find BIA2 to feel more comfortable than did the original release.

While BIA brought impressive visuals when it made its debut, so too does BIA2, and that's said taking into account the significant raising of the bar that's taken place over the past year. The environment models have indeed grown in complexity, but more impressive are the subtle visual touches that BIA2 brings. Shafts of light through the trees, HDR blooms (there's an options toggle there) — it all comes together to make for a pretty amazing looking game, very "modern console"-like (on my 3GS).

The game features various trophies that are granted based upon particularly savvy battlefield performance, as well as for finding as many "Kilroy was here" tags as possible. Performance is tracked by way of the integrated Gameloft LIVE network.

And, while the game offers excellent action, often at a frantic pace, it does have a few shortcomings. Framerate is generally quite high on the iPhone 3GS, but occasional (loading?) lags do occur, causing brief pauses in the action and studders to the audio at times. As well, in an apparent glitch where I went off the expected story line, I entered a room and wiped out everything alive, exited the room, only to find it once again full of enemies upon revisiting said room — though this was an isolated occurrence.

And, about that room full of soldiers, or soldiers anywhere in the game, really — the enemy AI that commands them is quite basic. If you're re-playing a scenario after having died, the enemy does the exact same thing the second time around, making it quite easy to wipe out the lot. A little more complex / varied AI would certainly add depth to the battle experience.

See Gameloft's recent trailer video for a look at a variety of in-game scenarios.

That I can pick a few nits in the title does not mark Brothers in Arms 2 a game to avoid. On the contrary, it is a highly enjoyable, action-packed shooter that offers some of the most intense battle sequences you'll find on the iPhone, making this latest from Gameloft a gaming experience that's rather hard to pass up.

App Store Link: Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front, $7.99

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Fans of first person shooters are going to be in for a treat this Monday when the sequel to Brothers In Arms: Hour of Heroes, Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front launches. Last month we took a trip to the Gameloft offices to get an early look at the game:

The game features six different play environments — the Pacific, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, Germany, and Ardennes — across 16 levels, each of which offers 25-30 minutes of playtime (6+ hours total, estimated), basically double that of the iPhone original. While much of the combat is carried out running, dodging, and ducking through the various environs on foot, airplanes, motorcycles, and tanks are also thrown into the mix.

Gameloft just released a pretty cool trailer that shows quite a bit of gameplay:

NOVA is going to be a tough act to follow, but so far Brothers in Arms 2 looks very promising. We'll have a full review following the release of the game.

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Brothers In Arms 1

Touch Arcade recently had the opportunity to visit Gameloft's Manhattan offices to preview a number of forthcoming iPhone titles. Among them was the sequel to the studio's late-2008 iPhone release, Brothers In Arms: Hour of Heroes.

Set to make its App Store debut in the next week and a half or so, Brothers In Arms 2 is a title developed specifically for the iPhone that is designed to run smoothly on all iPhone platform devices. Unlike its iPhone predecessor, which featured an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective, Brothers in Arms 2 delivers a first-person shooter experience.

The game features six different play environments — the Pacific, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, Germany, and Ardennes — across 16 levels, each of which offers 25-30 minutes of playtime (6+ hours total, estimated), basically double that of the iPhone original. While much of the combat is carried out running, dodging, and ducking through the various environs on foot, airplanes, motorcycles, and tanks are also thrown into the mix.

I spent a brief period with the game in the studio, playing through the test build's early stages and found it to be a rather well done, graphically impressive work that ran glass smooth on the 3G iPod touch demo unit. And, while I only put the initial weapons through their paces, the game offers much in the way of munitions. The list includes a bazooka, fixed minigun, iron bar (–whack–), flame thrower, a Thompson, sub machine gun, and grenades.

Coming from Gameloft, a comparison to the studio's highly popular space-based FPS N.O.V.A. [App Store] is inevitable. While the core controls between the two games are are similarly arranged and responsive, Brothers in Arms 2 definitely has more of a duck-and-cover mechanic to it than N.O.V.A., which feels a bit more "brute force" / barrel through the enemy. And, while both are quite visually impressive, due to the nature of the environments, Brothers in Arms 2 probably gets to strut its stuff a bit more, as far as laying down distant polygons in vast surroundings.

If the campaign gameplay grows tiresome, there's a local WiFi multiplayer option available that features an in-game text chat system (to help dole out the smack). The option to override the in-game audio track with music from your iTunes library has been provided, as well.

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