Archive for the ‘preview’ tag
‘Tehra Dark Warrior’ 3D Hack ‘n Slasher Arrives
Storm Basic has released their hack and slash game Tehra Dark Warrior which we previewed just a couple of weeks ago.
Early feedback is our forums noting high production values with a core hack 'n slash gameplay mechanic. From :
Having played for about half an hour, I can't disagree with the gist of Gabrien's impressions. That said, I'm probably enjoying more than he is. It's a middle-of-the road hack 'n slash action game in a platform that has very few of them. The production values are very high, the controls are nearly flawless, there's a real story (nothing new, but it does give some context) and the addition of spells does add some variety to the gameplay. There are some nice environments to explore (without a Gameloft-style arrow telling you exactly where you need to go) and as far as I can tell right now, there's quite a bit of content.
The game features both magic and combat skills, leveling up, and even special visual effects on supported 3rd generation hardware:
We'll take a more in depth look in time.
App Store Link: Tehra Dark Warrior, $3.99
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Upcoming Deathmatch Space Shooter ‘NovaRift Arena’ Shows Promise
, creators of Ignite [$1.99 / Free], recently sent us an early preview build of their upcoming space shooter, NovaRift Arena. Right now the state of the game seems like little more than a framework for something that could really turn in to a cool multiplayer game built around a physics engine that takes in to account the different functions of your ship's components and as you take damage your ship will perform and handle differently.
For instance, lose a thruster in the heat of battle and you're going to have problems steering. If one of your gun takes too much damage, you'll have to hope some of your other offensive abilities are still intact. Included in game are four different types of ships to choose from, each of which both perform differently and come with different weapon load outs. In the build of the game I've been playing, online multiplayer doesn't seem to be working yet, but the local arcade mode is a lot of fun, especially as you get to the more difficult waves of enemy drones.
On its initial release, NovaRift is said to include an online deathmatch mode where players will face off in a timed deathmatch to see who can get the most kills. In the future, Monster Gila plans on maintaining the game through content updates, adding team deathmatch modes and additional ships. Designed to be easily expandable, new players are said to be able to expect "a lot of new content" after the game's release.
The developers plan on launching the game with two different versions, a free one where players can play for 30 minutes online or try out most or all of the single player arcade levels as well as a paid version that offers unlimited online play. NovaRift is still in development, but I can see a lot of potential for a great online multiplayer game if the community picks up following the game's release.
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‘Brothers In Arms 2′ Details – A First Person Shooter
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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3D Shooter ‘Vampire Origins’: New Screens, Preview Video
We've been tracking Chillingo's forthcoming 3D adventure shooter Vampire Origins since April of last year. The studio has just given us word that the game is approaching its App Store debut — though no solid date has been set — and has provided a series of screenshots along with a new demo video to help whet the appetite.
Vampire Origins should appeal to fans of Gothic adventures. It pits Dracula's arch-nemesis Van Helsing against a vast horde of underworld creatures. The game features a Diablo-like battle system, dispensing with more complicated inventory and weaponry systems in the name of fast-paced action. Chillingo indicates that, while puzzles and exploration of the game's vast Gothic environs are part of the mix, the focus first and foremost is on action and killing enemies.
We'll bring further information about this upcoming title as we get it.
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Sega’s ‘Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games’ Released
Late last month we got a sneak peek at Sega's Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games [App Store] and its official release this afternoon seems to be very similar, if not the exact same game we played in December. You can compete as Sonic or any of his included friends in four events: Skeleton, curling, figure skating, and snowboard cross. However, with only four events the game feels like a stripped down version of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games for the Nintendo DS, which not only has many more events to compete in, but also Nintendo characters.
Skeleton is a basic tilt-based pipe racing game of sorts where you pick up rings and hit areas on the track to gain speed. Figure skating plays a lot like a very slow-paced version of Elite Beat Agents with areas to tap and drag along with the music. Snowboard cross is a very basic snowboarding game, that also feels way too slow.
The best event in the entire game is curling. From our preview:
Curling is a team game where two teams of four players take turns sliding polished stones down a stretch of ice towards a target. Two sweepers walk in front of the stone sweeping the ice to change its direction and speed. It seems that curling has gained a curious amount of popularity in recent winter games, but if you haven't heard of it before I recommend reading , as it downright crazy how complicated such a seemingly simple game can be.
The implementation of curling is really quite good, and it works well with the touch screen controls to control your throw as well as the sweepers. Curling can be seen in the following gameplay video:
Overall, Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games does little more than remind me of how great any game with Sonic in the title used to be, and how bad recent Sonic games have been. If you're not interested in curling, there really isn't much reason to pick this game up, as the other three events aren't much fun at all.
App Store Link: Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, $4.99
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iPad Hands-On First Impressions Rolling In
Media who attended the Apple keynote are now being allowed some hands-on time with the iPad, and so far the first impressions make the device sound pretty awesome. describes the iPad as "…substantial but surprisingly light. Easy to grip. Beautiful. Rigid. Starkly designed. The glass is a little rubbery but it could be my sweaty hands. And it's fasssstttt." While confirms the speed of the CPU, they described the iPad as "…not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand."
provides some details on gaming with the device. The iPad features a "2X" button which scales any iPhone app to full screen, but of course this comes at a graphical cost. Much like upscaling Gameboy Advance games on the Nintendo DS, or Sony PSone classics on the PSP, games are said to look noticeably upscaled. They felt that Need for Speed: Shift actually controlled better with the larget screen, as tilting the device had less of an effect on the screen.
Also, as we expected, the sheer size of the device makes it impossible for your thumbs to obscure most of the screen as you're playing games like NOVA. According to an Apple representative at the event, iPad-optimized games will have their own section on the App Store, although the SDK allows for apps which will run equally well on both devices.
With the SDK for the iPad available today, we expect to hear quite a bit from developers. We've already heard from the people at OpenFeint who are pledging their full support to the platform, and Firemint just dropped us an email announcing an optimized version of Flight Control for the device. They are also "working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch."
Jon Kromrey, GM of the Apple games divison of Namco network also dropped us a note saying how excited they are to create AAA games for the device and feel "the iPad will play a significant part of our goal to reach any player, anywhere at any time."
Photo courtesy of
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‘C64 for iPhone’ Gets Global Network, New Games Spotted
Early last week we reported that the C64 for iPhone emulator [App Store] would soon be getting global leaderboards and achievements for in-library games via the OpenFeint network. These features were rolled out yesterday as part of the v1.4 update.
The final list of these updates is as follows:
- Jupiter Lander: leaderboards and achievements
- Lemans: leaderboards and achievements
- Arctic Shipwreck: leaderboards
- Uridium: leaderboards
- Nebulus: leaderboards
- Paradroid: leaderboards and achievements when you own the 999 droid
- NOTE: High scores are recorded only when trainer is OFF
As the in-app games themselves were changed to facilitate these enhancements, they must be "purchased" again from within the application before the global network features can be utilized (at no additional cost to the user). The developer also indicates that the emulator environment received certain performance enhancements that allow iPhone 3GS and 3G iPod touch units to run all games at a solid 50fps for smoother gameplay.
Manomio indicates that the upcoming v1.5 update will be focused on usability and playability; controls and the UI will get some work. Details on these will be forthcoming on the developer's blog.
Another very interesting bit of news comes from forum reader killy billy who listed in the C64 in-app shop yesterday but, as yet, unavailable for purchase. The list of games he saw follows.
We grabbed the update and took at look at the app's game shop, but the indicated games were not listed, presumably pulled until available for actual purchase. Let's hope they reappear with full global network integreation — and soon. What a superb list of titles it seems Manomio has in store for us. All are highly playable, but Archer MacLean's International Karate, a C64 favorite, and David Braben and Ian Bell's seminal space trader Elite, considered the best game ever written by many critics, are particularly welcome.
We'll let readers know when these games appear for purchase within the app and will pass on further news and information surrounding this great emulator as we get it.
App Store Link: C64 for iPhone, $4.99
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‘Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut’ – A Point-and-Click Classic Made Even Better
From Revolution Software, the same people who brought the iPhone the fantastic remake of Beneath a Steel Sky, comes Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars: The Director's Cut [$6.99], a remake of a point-and-click adventure from '96 that many consider to be one of the greatest games within its genre. As we covered in our preview two different versions of this remake were already published on the DS and Wii in March of 2009, and the new iPhone version is a bit of a mixture of the two, adding full voice acting and other features that the DS version lacked.
Broken Sword, which was renamed Circle of Blood for its release in the USA, has been given a significant facelift. Whereas the original version of the game focused almost solely on the male character, George Stobbart, The Director's Cut does a better job of fleshing out the back story of the game's female protagonist, Nicole Collard. The game opens as Nicole prepares for an interview that unexpectedly becomes a murder investigation when the man she was set to interview is shot by a mysterious mime. Other modifications to the game include new puzzles that are specific to the iPhone platform and new art and animation from Dave Gibbons, who you might be familiar with through his work on Watchmen.
The story in Broken Sword, as in most point-and-click adventure games, is the most important element of the game, so those who haven't played a version of the game before will be pleased to find that Broken Sword's writing is excellent, and the story is quite gripping. I particularly enjoyed the self-depreciating sense of humor that Nicole occasionally displays with her commentary, and George is a comedic parody of an American from a European perspective, making him a fairly amusing character as well.
For a point-and-click adventure, Broken Sword does a lot to make itself easily accessible. In an intelligent move by the developers, a simple finger swipe will reveal everything that George or Nicole can interact within a single screen, preventing players from having to poke around the screen randomly until they find something that they can interact with. The game's many puzzles range from brain games wherein an abstract combination of collected items must be used to progress to a lock-picking game that's nearly identical to the iPhone's own Blocked to a ridiculously complex cypher that players must harness incredible code-breaking skills to crack.
Luckily, the game has a built-in walkthrough in the form of a hint system that can be easily accessed if players want to give up and find the answer to a puzzle. For each puzzle there are several hints, each one more explicit than the last, with the last one usually being a straight-up answer to the puzzle for players who just couldn't figure things out. The genius of both the "swipe-to-reveal" mechanic and the hint system is that it's possible to never use either if a player doesn't want to. Some of the hardcore fans of the original PC version of the game that're picking up the iPhone version will want a more "pure" experience, and that option is available to them, but softies like myself can still enjoy the game without having to resort to an online walkthrough.
Broken Sword's creative touch interface works like a charm on the iPhone screen, but it was the one-two punch of the game's fantastic soundtrack and art that really hooked me. The piano-heavy orchestral soundtrack is so good that I purchased it from the iTunes store so I could listen to it later, and the fact that every line of dialogue in the game is voiced makes this a game that must be experienced with headphones. Dave Gibbon's contribution to the art and animation was an invaluable addition, as the painted backgrounds and the fluid animation adds a certain appealing touch to the game.
Even though I've never been a huge fan of point-and-click adventure games, the story and all around high-quality production values of Broken Sword sucked me in like a good book. Whether you're an old fan of the original game, a newcomer to the series, or even someone who's never played a point-and-click adventure before, Broken Sword is a game with mass appeal that will draw you in.
App Store Link: Broken Sword: The Director's Cut, $6.99
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EA and Other Developers Producing Apple Tablet Games?
The Apple rumor mill has been going absolutely wild with speculation lately on what could be in store for us at Apple's event on the 27th where some form of Apple tablet is expected to be revealed. From a gaming perspective, there have been several hints that App Store gamers could be in for a treat, with the reporting that Apple has been working with EA to show off the gaming capabilities of the rumored tablet device.
Considering the mysterious delay in the release of Mirror's Edge, a game we got a preview of last month, with this recent news it may not be that far fetched to expect to see it as part of a demonstration of the tablet's array of games. Other developers have also been asked by Apple to produce versions of their games that are resolution independent, allowing them to seamlessly scale up to the presumably higher resolution display.
To make things even more interesting, and several other general gaming sites have also been invited to the event, along with representatives from quite a few popular iPhone game studios. Of course trying to discern what Apple is up to by reading between the lines of rumors and event invitations is open to all forms of interpretation, but it seems the stars are aligning to a serious gaming announcement on the 27th.
We will have live keynote coverage of the event, and if the Apple tablet does turn out to be a gaming device, you can expect to see reviews of any noteworthy tablet games to supplement our existing iPod touch and iPhone game focus.
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‘Riddim Ribbon’ Coming February 8th
today that their much anticipated musical racer will debut in the App Store on February 8th. They've also released a new teaser video featuring music from the Black Eyed Peas.
We first heard of Riddim Ribbon back in September when the game was previewed at Apple's media event.
The game puts you in the role of the DJ as you race down a ribbon. Your job is to follow the groove as best you can using tilt controls. You can choose to remix your songs by choosing different paths on the ribbon.
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