TouchArcade.ru

It’s been over six months since Final Fantasy Tactics [$15.99] hit the iOS scene, and while the port largely survived the move to the iPhone we noted some issues that kept the game back from a universal recommendation. Even worse, the iPad version that we thought was on the horizon disappeared from the radar, leaving the small screen as the only avenue for playing the game for quite some time (iPad 2x mode notwithstanding). Now with Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad [$17.99] here, we can finally see if that half a year waiting period was worth it. While the port certainly improves in a variety of different areas (mainly due to the increased screen space), it’s still far from perfect.

For folks new to Final Fantasy Tactics, I recommend that you read our original review of the iPhone version (along with the recommendation to just check around the internet for the multitude of views on this classic). For everyone else, this is the same War of the Lions version found on the iPhone/iPod touch and Sony PSP (except for the multiplayer in the PSP version). It’s still the same, extremely deep strategy RPG that has kept its appeal even over a decade later.

One of our primary issues with the iPhone version of Final Fantasy Tactics dealt with an inherent limitation of the device. Specifically, the screen just felt too small for the amount of information displayed. Thankfully, the iPad version rectifies some of those concerns. The text is a lot less blurry (something that had been fixed in an update to the iPhone version since our original review), the added buttons and menus feel more spaced out, and the game just plays more comfortably in long gaming sessions. Unfortunately, the larger screen size also leads to a clearer view of just how pixelated most of the visuals are. However, I doubt most veterans of FFT are going to care about pixelated sprites.

Gameplay slowdown, another nagging issue that detracted from the iPhone experience (and has been somewhat addressed in recent updates) has improved in the iPad port. Strangely enough, not all abilities/spells seem to benefit from the additional quickness. For example, jump into the prologue and you’ll see that Agrias’ Holy Sword abilities (as well as Summoner spells later on) are greatly sped up. However, Squire Fundaments, as well as some black mage spells, still seem to suffer from noticeable slowdown. This inconsistency seems to exist across a variety of abilities, although the slowdown seems to affect far less abilities than previously. It’s important to note that despite the speed improvements, there’s still a disappointing lack of smoothness which continues to detract from the experience.

Gamers holding out hope that Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad features a revamping of controls are in for a disappointment. The touch controls, along with the general interface, continue to be a mixed-bag. The larger screen space of the iPad means things are generally easier to read and navigate, but there are still too many button presses, confirmation windows, and virtual buttons to be considered streamlined. Still, with enough playtime to get used to the controls I found the iPad version to be far preferable than the cramped iPhone/iPod touch screen.

Other elements, like sound quality and music, make the transition to the iPad with little change. MIDI effects still continue to occasionally sound odd, most likely due to the porting process. The music, meanwhile, is still one of the strongest suits of Final Fantasy Tactics, and remains one of my favorite gaming soundtracks to date.

When all is said and done, the iPad port of Final Fantasy Tactics can be summed up in two statements. First, this iPad port, while long overdue, is superior to the iPhone version (primarily due to larger screen) and should be considered the preferred iOS experience (assuming you have an iPad 2). Second, while the iPad version makes improvements, it still doesn’t match the feel of the original PSX version, which has yet to be duplicated on any platform.

For previous fans that haven’t checked Final Fantasy Tactics on iOS yet, your enjoyment will be based on how well you can check your nostalgia and overlook the nuances of porting. For everyone else, it’s safe to say that you should try this classic turn-based RPG any way you can, iOS or otherwise.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

Besides Illusion Labs’ Touchgrind [$4.99/HD] and a fairly solid port of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 [99¢], the skateboarding genre hasn’t seen a whole lot of love on the App Store. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some decent skateboarding games released, but nothing that ever felt like it gave you a full on experience like what you would be able to get on a home console. Jet Car Stunts [$1.99/Lite] developer True Axis is hoping to change that with there just-announced True Skate game which is heading to the App Store soon. Check out the first rendered artwork for True Skate below.

There aren’t a lot of details for True Skate just yet, but True Axis explains that the game is similar to Touchgrind but uses a pulled back perspective so you can actually see where you’re going. I love Touchgrind a lot, but its strictly top-down perspective made it pretty awkward to effectively put together strings of tricks or adequately aim for the various obstacles in the skate park. True Skate is also said to boast more realistic physics, and should be “much easier” to pull off lots of different tricks, according to True Axis.

True Skate will launch with the one level which you can see in the screens above, presumably with more planned for future updates. It will be coming out later this year for “cheap” on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. We’re extremely eager to check it out and will have some more details soon, and until then you can check out some discussion of True Skate in our forums.

[source]

We don’t talk about Nintendo much. The publisher does its best to pretend that the App Store doesn’t exist. On the rare occasions when it does acknowledge the existence of iPod Touches and iPhones, it’s just either to (a) re-state that it isn’t interested in moving into the mobile space or (b) take a shot at the App Store’s pricing model.

On the other hand, you can’t have a conversation about an unofficial Pokemon app without at least referencing the company. On Friday, a clone of Pokemon Yellow hit the App Store, and even though it doesn’t work at all, people have been scrambling over the thousand or so one-star reviews in order to give it a spin. It’s the number three paid app, in fact.

Undoubtedly, most people downloading this know that this game isn’t official. But, this isn’t stopping them from giving it a spin. Bigger picture, this is a great example of how many consumers want Nintendo games on their phones, and how they’ll try to get it anyway they can. Usually, we talk about this in the context of people going nuts over a highly derivative title, like a 2D platformer with plumbers and squishy monsters. This scenario is different.

To be clear, Pokemon Yellow is beating out Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, and the world’s latest darling, Clear. Money is being made here, and it’s the significant variety. Oh, how we wish this could be used to lure the Big N to the Store. We wish we could just scream, “Hey, guys, look at this, you could be making this instead of some guy who couldn’t even release a clone correctly! Let’s do this!”

That’s dreaming crazy dreams. This won’t persuade it to join mobile. It’s too married to hardware, too convinced that continuing to release new platforms and supporting them with the Zelda, Pokemon, and Mario are the only way to be profitable. It’s a bummer, really.

Nintendo or the Pokemon Company doesn’t seem to be too concerned with pulling Pokemon apps, by the way. There are more than a handful on the store, all unsanctioned, and from what we can tell, unchanged since their initial appearances. The chart positioning is ultimately going to get Apple’s attention, however. We expect Pokemon Yellow to disappear within hours of this posting.

Pokemon Yellow on Gameboy.

We gave this a download, and can happily report that it crashes out immediately after its splash screen crops up. Users in its reviews have reported that it crashes on every device under the sun, so please don’t even try this out.

We actually wouldn’t be too surprised to learn if the game’s code even had anything to it beyond that splash screen and a buggy bit of UI. It makes more sense, if you know that you’re going to get your app pulled, to spend as little time as possible on it. Why bother with more than a splash screen?

We’ll keep our eyes on Pokemon Yellow and the game’s developer, who has a blog right here and has a history of publishing broken apps pitched as clones, as evidenced by its publisher page on iTunes.

Again, though, don’t download this, or hey, even the other Pokemon app that cropped up recently. These people are preying on you, and when you download these blindly or in some silly hope that they’ll magically work, they win.

[source]

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: we’re pretty big fans of SpellTower [$1.99], the clever iOS word game from Zach Gage. Actually, that’s not really a secret at all now that I think about it. We gave SpellTower a full 5 stars in our review when the game launched in November, and an update the following month added Universal support and Game Center achievements, making an already great thing even greater. In fact, we thought so much of SpellTower that we included it in our Game of the Year picks for 2011.

So yeah, it’s no secret that SpellTower is pretty good and stuff. About the only thing the game is missing is some sort of multiplayer mode, but over the weekend Zach Gage posted a quick teaser video showing just that: a local competitive multiplayer mode. Matching words will send letter blocks over to your competitor’s screen, and the grey shading in the backgrounds shows where the other person’s current tile stack is at.

This particular multiplayer mode works over Bluetooth and can be played on any combination of iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad devices. Meaning, iPad players can get down with iPhone or iPod touch players. Zach also teases that this is just one aspect of the planned forthcoming update, and that there are other non-multiplayer new modes in the works too. When talking about new game modes, Zach cheerily states “Expect a few choices when the update hits.” There’s no solid release date for the SpellTower update just yet, but we’ll be sure to let you know when it hits.

[source]

Tim Tebow is a starting NFL quarterback who throws just about as well with his hands as he does with his feet. But he wins games, and he wins them in some of the most dramatic ways you’ll ever see on a football field. His fourth quarter heroics resonate with people. USA Today correctly called him a “one-man cultural blitz” this season.

He also does this thing called “Tebowing,” which probably has a larger hand his cultural blitz-dom than his game-winning drives. Basically, whenever Tebow accomplishes something awesome like, cap off a game-winning touchdown drive or successfully put Gatorade in his mouth, he gets on one knee and bows his head. It’s turning into the new planking, basically.

Since Tebow is so hot and so different at the same time, we suppose it’s only natural that he’s now been further immortalized in an iPhone and iPod Touch game. Developers Ethan Dunlap and Kenneth Kunkel recently debuted Tebit Time [$.99], a game that seeks to capture the essence of Tebow with four in-game mechanics or less.

Yep.

It’s an endless runner that stars a Tebow look-a-like and prominently features a looping 8-bit rendition of the FOX Football theme. With a touch on the screen you can hurdle over an object or opposing player, stiff-arm, or even take a moment to Tebow on the field. Doing this at specific times adds a modifier to your overall score. There is no throwing mechanic, which is probably a good thing.

This is an exceedingly simple game played entirely on a cutesy lo-fi field with a seemingly infinite amount of opposing players and NFL junk to jump over. Scoring revolves around yardage; the more you get, the better. Our best score is 128.

In a lot of ways, this seems like more of a gag than a game. But in a conversation with us, Dunlap seemed genuine about his admiration for Tebow when we asked, simply, why Tebit Time is a game on the App Store.

“I have been in athletics for a great portion of my childhood, football in specific,” Dunlap told TouchArcade. “Despite being on a rather good team, we never managed to win a championship. We made it every year, but always suffered a heartbreaking loss. Even now in my college years a close group of childhood friends and I play in a flag football league and struggle to achieve success, our record is currently 0-8.”

“At first I didn’t buy into the whole Tim Tebow buzz, but after watching a few of his comebacks he started to appeal to me. I saw a player struggling to be successful, but his desire kept him going. After watching him beat Pittsburg on the first play in over time, I knew that I wanted to do something to pay tribute to him.”

“And that is pretty much where the idea came from. I was already working on a runner and just needed to switch a few things and get the graphics in place. Besides, who wouldn’t want to “Tebow” in a video game?”

Who wouldn’t? Whether this was its purpose or not, Tebit Time is worth your time for the laughs alone. On the other hand, it’s also not so great in the most important places; the hit boxes on players and on-field obstacles need some work, and the menus freeze randomly. Buy knowing this.

Also, we can’t shake the feeling that this project is probably destined to earn Dunlap and Kunkel a cease and desist notice. Here’s to Tebit Time flying under the radar in a very un-Tebow-like fashion.

[source]

Munch Time HD is another heart meltingly cute game headed for the iPad “soon,” according to the game’s developer, Gamistry. From what we gather, Munch Time is a family-friendly puzzle game split across 40 levels, all of which will task you with swinging on multi-colored flowers with the game’s protagonist, Munch the chameleons’, Gene Simmons-esque tongue.

Different flower types “react” differently to being tongued. But also, each flower color will require the chameleon to match it by finding “special” color-turning flies. This is what the puzzle part of the game hinges around, though to be frank, it looks like Munch will be heavily weighted towards kids. Don’t expect Braid here.

The “HD” part of the titling convention has convinced us that this will also see a release across iPhone and iPod Touch, too. While we investigate the pricing model check out a real-time video of the game in action:

[source]

Diggin’ Dogs [99¢] from Soap Creative and Chillingo is already being compared to Disney’s popular release Where’s My Water? [99¢],  since both games use the same “swipe-to-dig” mechanism. But the inspiration for Diggin’ Dogs actually came from Soap Creative’s online Flash game Truffle Hunter, which you can try on your computer. Personally, I didn’t think much of that Flash game, but I’m diggin’ Diggin Dogs with its noisy little puppies.

The easy-to-use controls involve a mix of swiping, tapping and tilting. You drag to dig burrows for the dogs to clamber down and swipe to make the dogs jump. Tap to activate and deactivate objects (such as changing gravity orientation), and tilt to make the dogs, coins and various in-game items slide left or right. If you’re not a huge fan of tilt controls (like me), don’t worry your fingers do most of the work.

To keep the dogs safe (and alive) you must make sure they avoid various enemies and objects, like wailing pirate ghosts, wasps, bats, poisonous toadstools, icicles and – perhaps most harshly – steel gin-traps with sharp teeth. You can also use the traps against your nasty enemies as you clear a path downwards. But don’t dig too enthusiastically, because once the screen scrolls downwards it never scrolls back up, so any objects you leave behind are unreachable.

Power-ups come in the form of hats with special powers. Like a magnet-hat that attracts coins through walls, a mushroom hat which transforms toadstools into collectible coins or a spray-can hat for easy pest eradication. Sometimes the dog with a specific hat must assist the other dogs to pass through a level, so you’ll need to split the dogs into their own tunnels.

The five chapters (Forest, Snow, Junkyard, Jungle and Volcano) are unlocked by collecting enough bones, and they deliver 60 levels in total. Each setting has different graphics, sound effects, cinematic music and enemies. Alternatively, you can purchase the “golden bone” as an optional in-app purchase to unlock all levels.

Scoring is based on the number of dogs that remain alive when you reach the golden boot at the bottom of the level, plus the number of golden coins collected. Your score is converted into a gold, silver or bronze medal and can be stored in Chillingo’s Crystal rankings, but there’s no Game Center integration provided this time.

Chillingo have a track record of publishing cute and entertaining casual games and with Diggin’ Dogs they’ve done it again. Although surprisingly, it’s not Universal and there’s currently no iPad native version (but you can play it in 2x mode). For iPhone and iPod touch owners though, Diggin’ Dogs is as entertaining as Where’s My Water?, which is a pretty big compliment.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

Bacon. Cat videos. Zombies. There are some things in popular culture that just don’t get enough attention. Luckily for us, however, the undead are getting a second life thanks to Zxh Games’ Shoot Many Zombies [Free].

Shoot Many Zombies is pretty much exactly like it sounds. In this side-scrolling shooter, you shoot zombies. A lot of zombies. It’s mindless, attractive zombie-killing mayhem, at a perfect pace: not too fast a pace to be frustrating, not so slow that you’ll try to strategize your way through it.

You have your choice of three characters to play as, which mainly depends on your playstyle. You can go damage-heavy but slow, damage-light but quick, or a balance between the two. Once you begin, you have your basic weapon which can be upgraded as you work your way through the game. You can also buy new weapons altogether, so you can customize your zombie-killin’ experience.

For a pretty straightforward concept, some things are needlessly complicated. Upgrading weapons is a necessity, but the menu doesn’t make it easy. For example, you don’t know the price of a particular upgrade unless you tap “buy,” so if you don’t have enough cash to tap “buy” in the first place to receive the confirmation, you’re not going to know approximately how much money to save up in order to get the upgrade later.

Things are repetitive and sometimes annoying. For example, there are various objects and safe rooms you tap in order to get items. It’s pretty dull popping into safe rooms in order to grab stuff, whatever it is – on an iPhone or iPod touch, the screen is too small to easily read what you’re picking up – and you have to do it a lot. There are other things that feel off too, like annoying sound effects (just wait for the shopkeep/gangster dude when you first start a new game and the “eeeeeee” noise upon reading a new diary entry) and sometimes piecemeal-feeling graphics.

Fighting specialty zombies feels a bit cheap in the sense that you need to have upgraded your weapons several times in order to have a chance. Of course, you can easily upgrade your weapons via in-app purchase (was there any doubt?), but you can also go back and replay levels to pick up more money and items.

Normally, the idea of repeating levels in order to progress would make me pretty miffed, but since every level is basically the same mindless zombie-shooting anyway, it pretty much just extends the gameplay. Additionally, I found that the in-app purchases were pretty much unnecessary because the random loot from killing zombies and exploring was often pretty good, and I never seemed to run out of cash too easily. If you feel like purchasing, however, the options aren’t bad, ranging from unlimited ammo to special (though not necessary) weapons.

There are lots of little added touches that are a nice surprise. When you upgrade a weapon, it actually changes the appearance of the weapon in-game. There are diary entries to pick up (though if you’re looking for Shakespeare, you’re going to be disappointed) that add to the overall story of the game, and it’s nice being able to choose which character best fits your style.

If you want to mindlessly mow down wave after wave of the undead, Shoot Many Zombies is a great option with enough good points to outweigh the bad. If future updates were to include Game Center, cat videos, and/or bacon, my friends, we might even have a bona-fide hit on our hands.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

Rebuild [$2.99] for iPhone and iPod Touch is actually happening — and soon. Tomorrow will see the debut of the post-apocalyptic strategy title on smaller devices, courtesy a big-time Universal update for the iPad versions of the game. Developer Northway tells that the update will also roll in retina support, too.

This is easily one of our favorite strategy games on the App Store this side of Civ Rev [$6.99 / HD], and we’re stoked that a “maybe” porting scenario as of a couple of months ago has become a reality. If you haven’t read anything about Rebuild check out our review. Or just pick it up on the App Store at its sale price of $.99 starting tomorrow through this Sunday.

[source]

So, Mass Effect is returning to the iPhone. At a recent EA event, the publisher passed around a pamphlet announcing Mass Effect Infiltrator for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. In a nutshell, it’s a third-person shooter featuring universe’s trimmings, and it will apparently tie into Mass Effect 3’s Galaxy At War component.

EA also announced a companion app called Mass Effect Datapad, but revealed nothing about it except its platform: iPad.

On to what we know then. In Infiltrator , you’ll “help free prisoners from a hostile Cerberus base” and receive rewards as you gather evidence of Cerberus’ crimes. All your rescues and your discoveries will feed into Galaxy At War’s ”Galactic Readiness rating,” which informs events in the game’s single-player.

As if the latter wasn’t enough to get you to check it out, the app will also offer users exclusive weapons to use in ME3.

Infiltrator’s announcement is pretty hot off the presses, so the details are pretty vague. On the other hand, it seems like it is passing through certification as we write this — if EA is using the term “soon” in regards to its release traditionally — so, the wait to see what’s actually going on should actually end shortly.

UPDATE: Fun fact: this is being developed by Dead Space iOS devs Iron Monkey Studios. This can only be a good thing, we think.

UPDATE 2: IGN has nabbed the first screenshots for Mass Effect Infiltrator:

[Via Shacknews, Joystiq, IGN]

[source]