Archive for the ‘push’ tag
Best iOS Games January 2012
Our ratings for games we reviewed in January are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.
Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in January, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in January.
5 Stars
Super Crate Box, $1.99 – [Review] – [] – Vlambeer knocks it out of the park with this ultra-frantic crate collecting game. With great virtual controls, and gameplay that is great for pick up and play mobile gaming sessions, Super Crate Box is a game you shouldn’t miss.
4.5 Stars
Blockwick, Free – [Review] – [] – A really slick puzzle game that you can try for free. After that, level packs of increasing difficulty are sold in bundles of 60 for 99¢ a pop. Don’t let the initial pack it comes with turn you off, think of it more as a really long tutorial.
Hero Academy, Free – [Review] – [] – This multiplayer tactical game by Robot Entertainment has become incredibly popular amongst our community, and even was the topic of a . If you’re looking for people to play with, hit the forum link and you’ll find tons of people looking for a game.
Run Roo Run, $0.99 – [Review] – [] – From the creators of Scribblenauts comes this super-fun mini-level jumping game. Most levels will only take a few moments to complete, but thankfully, there’s a ton of them. Clearing a world unlocks some really difficult levels that’ll really put you to the test.
Smash Cops, $2.99 – [Review] – [] – Not only does Smash Cops have great graphics, but it also has a new control method that we haven’t seen before for controlling your cop car. You use your finger to “push” the car where you want to go. It sounds strange, but it works great.
Triple Town, Free – [Review] – [] – There’s a definite learning curve to Triple Town but once you get over that hump and come to grips with how the mechanics of the game works, you’ll be building amazing towns and cursing at bears in no time. Argh, those bears. They ruin everything.
Windosill, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This iPad exclusive puzzle game originally started its life as a Flash title. It’s aged incredibly well, and feels like a perfect fit for the iPad. Multitouch adds so much, even if you played the original, it’s worth trying again on the iPad.
The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.
As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.
For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer.
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New Update Marks the Finale for ‘Bean’s Quest’ Adding 22 New Levels, Final Boss Battle, and More
Bean’s Quest [$2.99] from launched in July of last year, and it was kind of awesome. Actually, it was kind of really awesome. It was just one of many platformers on the App Store that nailed the neo-retro aesthetic, harkening back to the days of 8 and 16 bits. However, there was one key element that separated it from other iOS platformers – you’re constantly bouncing. Picture a sideways Doodle Jump mixed with Super Mario Bros. 3 and you kind of get the idea.
The automatic nonstop bouncing was easy enough to get used to if you’re just trying to make it through the game, but the real brilliance of Bean’s Quest was that it kept track of the number of your bounces and tasked you with completing each level within a certain number of them to maximize your reward. Along with diamonds and a hidden toy creature that had to be collected, Bean’s Quest had come up with an excellent little system for maximizing replay value.
But, you can read all about this stuff in our original review of Bean’s Quest, and there you’ll also find our biggest issue with the game – its severe brevity. At release, Bean’s Quest was a mere eight levels long, all of which could be completed together in just a few minutes. Developer Kumobius had promised that more levels were planned for updates, and in fact seemed to have a pretty ambitious road map for where the game was heading. But as I’m sure many of you have experienced before, it can be dangerous buying a game based on promises of future updates.
However, an update the following month did appear, and added a whole new world with 9 new levels. Then the month after that another update hit adding yet another new world and 10 brand new levels. Bean’s Quest was finally starting to get fleshed out, but for the following several months things went quiet, with no new updates and an “Under Construction” banner in the level select screen teasing that the game still had yet to be finished.
Today, we found out just what Kumobius had been up to for so long as the final massive update to Bean’s Quest has hit the App Store. This time around, the game is getting two new worlds – Dusty Desert with 10 new levels and Wizard’s Lair with 12 new levels. There’s a new intro movie now too, which explains the all-to-frequent problem of having your girlfriend stolen by an evil dude, setting the stage for Bean to traverse the crazy levels and lands. At the end of it all, you’ll square off against the final boss, and then the credits roll, signaling the end of Bean’s Quest.
It’s sad seeing the end of such a fun game, but there’s a positive side to this as well. Bean’s Quest has done well enough that Kumobius is able to push forward with a new project, which I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about once the time is right. It’s crazy to think how far Bean’s Quest has come, initially offering a meager 8 levels and now with today’s update boasting 50 including the final boss fight. Aside from those major additions, this update also tightens up some UI elements and eases the difficulty of bounce requirements across the board, as well as lots of other minor tweaks and optimizations.
If you initially passed on Bean’s Quest because of its length, then I think it’s safe to say you’ve got nothing to worry about any more. It’s a fantastic platformer that puts a twist on the gameplay of more traditional platformers, while offering a huge amount of replay value and an overall stellar presentation. Definitely one that was high on the recommendation list before, and even more so with this new update.
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The TouchArcade Show – 36 – Clean Shaven Edition
On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we push through discussions about feral dogs, the Mindfreak, and accents in order to bring you the latest, hottest, and best-est in iOS game news and chit-chat. At the top, we dig into unreleased titles like Adventure Bar Story before we dive into more known quantities, like say, Triple Town. Post-break, we weigh in on heavy stuff like the Zynga vs. NimbleBit, uh, issue, and of course, get to a few of your listener questions.
Oh! We also had a special guest this week: Joseph Leray. If you’d like to give us a listen, go ahead and do so via the links below. Additionally, you could subscribe to our feeds at iTunes and Zune. All the cool kids do the latter.
iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-036.mp3, 33MB
Here are your show notes:
GAMES
- Adventure Bar Story
- End Night
- Ash II: Shadows [$2.99 Silver Edition / $4.99 Gold Edition]
- Triple Town [Free]
FRONT PAGE
- Zynga Rips Off ‘Tiny Tower’
- Unofficial ‘Dominion’ App Hits The Store
- Tweet-Land Has A Release Date
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‘Fantasy Chronicle’ Review – An Old-school JRPG That’s Light On Variety
JRPGs are a tough sell these days on iOS. Typically ports making their way from other systems, most seem characterized by substandard touch control integration and shoddy English translations. Fantasy Chronicle [$2.99] thankfully only suffers significantly from one of those two issues. While the translation is certainly lacking, the core gameplay and controls make this RPG an enjoyable experience, assuming you’re into a lot of grinding.
Fantasy Chronicle follows the story of Light, a mysterious youth adopted by a small village who begins his training to join Holos Over, the hero guild charged with ridding the world of evil. During his adventure, Light encounters strife, grief, revenge and nearly every other RPG cliché under the sun. While the story isn’t going to win any awards, it does just enough to advance the narrative and keep you playing, which is more than I can say for some of the other games in the genre.
One area that Fantasy Chronicle does a great job with is its battle system depth. Players control a maximum of three main characters at any time, and each of those characters can employ the aid of a guardian beast – monsters that have their own stats and special moves and can share the damage incurred by the character they are attached to. In addition, you can also set various tactics for your guardian beasts which impact the amount of damage they share with their companion.
I also enjoyed the material/crafting system that Fantasy Chronicle employs. Every enemy you defeat has a chance to drop some kind of raw material that you can later use to create or upgrade your weapons and armor. Upgrade your equipment enough and you have an opportunity to convert it into a different item entirely (assuming you find the crafting book for the new item). Soon after the intro, you also meet an NPC that’ll automatically find certain material for you depending on what locations you tell him to search. It’s a neat little addition that lets you supplement your materials to make the crafting experience a little less monotonous.
Control-wise, while I don’t think Fantasy Chronicle does a particularly good job with its touch controls, the virtual D-Pad controls are very responsive. I particularly liked the optional control toggle that lets you quickly switch between touch and D-Pad controls whenever you wish (this is particularly useful because the D-Pad is huge and blocks a lot of screen space). It’s a feature I think more games could use.
Like many other JRPGs on iOS, Fantasy Chronicle suffers from a mismanaged English translation. Casual conversations between characters feel disjointed, and there’s a lot of story (and non-story) related dialogs that are borderline incomprehensible. It’s never a good sign when I get to a story section and I find myself trying to speed through simply because I don’t really care too much. Granted, I’ve seen plenty of games with a more horrid translation than Fantasy Chronicle, but considering its RPG roots I’m always a bit more critical of an element I consider essential.
The biggest issue I think Fantasy Chronicle contends with is eventual tedium. Each region that you explore has a town acting as the central hub with quests, with a few surrounding areas inhabited by baddies. Typically, you’ll enter the town, get a few quests with mundane objectives usually involving kill nearby enemies, and then you return for more quests. Do enough and you’ll unlock a story-based quest that expands on the narrative. Eventually, you’ll get to progress to a new region with the quest hub and you get to do it all over again.
Because of this type of mission structure, Fantasy Chronicle tends to feature a great deal of grinding with not a lot of story reward. You’re going to grind for mission objectives, resources for crafting, and for experience (although the last one not so much). Missions typically take you back to the same areas again, and when you’ve found yourself over leveled for those areas, the experience becomes an exercise in how fast you can push the attack button during battles.
There are undoubtedly some JRPG fans out there that embrace this style of play. Considering that Fantasy Chronicle gets a lot of the underlying gameplay and controls right, I’d actually recommend it to those types of gamers as a title worth checking out. However, if you’re looking for something a bit less formulaic or a game with more emphasis on story quality, Fantasy Chronicle may not be the RPG you’re looking for.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Smash Cops’ Review – Pushing a Car Can Actually Be Fun
Smash Cops [$2.99] from reminds me of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, as the main objective is to take bad guys off the road by catching up with them and then ramming their vehicles until they catch fire and roll in slow-motion. Sounds good, right? In Smash Cops the police pursuit is set in an urban neighborhood more like Grand Theft Auto, so there’s heaps of intersections and front lawns to skid around.
The most distinctive feature of Smash Cops are the controls, which have become a talking point in our . The default touch controls involve placing one finger behind your police car and using it to “push” your vehicle along, like a toy car, with acceleration being automatic. This “push” mechanism has received mixed feedback, with some absolutely loving it and others loathing it and preferring the alternate virtual joystick option. Personally, I enjoyed the new push controls, but found the virtual joystick jerky and awkward for steering.
While driving, tapping the screen anywhere causes your police vehicle to lunge forward in a ramming maneuver. Smacking into the side or front of a fleeing vehicle is the most effective and can lead to the criminal’s car smashing, rolling and possibly catching fire. There’s no warnings, issuing tickets or police diplomacy, you just smash into the criminals as hard as possible each time your RAM meter has fully recharged.
Smash Cops has 22 missions to unlock, with each mission worth six stars. The missions include pursuits, emergency response calls and driving challenges. Pursuits involve racing alone or working with other cops to take down a suspect’s vehicle, like multiple sports cars, stolen security trucks or an ATV, before the criminals escape across the state line. However, the other cops are actually more of a hinderance as they drive badly, swerve around, get in your way and appear to purposely take you out. Basically they’re more frustrating than the bad guys and civilian drivers themselves.
Responding to emergency dispatch calls involves following a series of markers to the crime-scene within a time limit, speeding around the neighborhood while dodging traffic and bad guys. But the driving challenges proved hardest, like staying between the traffic cones – which is when you realize how poor your driving is. If only the goal was to knock down as many cones as possible! Completing a challenge mission earns you a “Super-Cop” vehicle power-up for one mission, to “Drive faster. Hit harder. Last longer”.
The game tries to sell you “Super Cop” upgrades as an in-app purchase, with IAP messages in the game over screen, upgrade notification screen, in the tips and on the main menu screen. And when you restart the game, a red “buy all” button appears. This felt a little pushy, however the IAP is not necessary as you can unlock everything without too much grinding. And when you do replay missions, it’s often with a new vehicle so it’s still fun.
The graphics are excellent, with the game presented as if being filmed from an overhead police chopper for a live television feed. Check out the trailer below, for a taste of the sweet graphics used for the vehicles and city setting. Smash Cops scores high marks for being visually appealing.
You start out as a new police cadet, in a regular police car, but by completing levels and earning stars you can unlock four other vehicles like the speedy ‘Interceptor’ or the aggressive ‘Brutus’. Vehicle upgrades make it easier to replay levels for more stars, plus because the mission routes don’t appear to change, you can learn the route and identify short-cuts for better ramming opportunities. This helps you gain promotions up the five ranks to “Captain.”
Smash Cops is a great-looking police-pursuit game, with an innovative “push” control system that’s a refreshing variation from regular car racing controls. Opinions on the push controls are polarized, but if they click with you they actually offer a simple and fun way to control the game. It’s nice to see developers using touch controls in new and innovative ways, especially when it involves car chases, 360 degree burn-outs, ramming, and slow motion vehicle smashes.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Dance Central 2′ Now Has An App
If you have a Kinect, you should probably own Dance Central 2. It’s one of the best and brightest games the hands-free motion tracking device has in its library. It’s also one of the few that actually shows off what the device can do well. If you need more a push, Microsoft might have just the thing: an app that pairs, loosely, what Harmonix did with VidRhythm [Free] to Dance Central 2. It’s a promotional preview app, basically, dubbed Dance Cam. [Free]
In it, users can record video performances of themselves dancing to a sampling of tracks from the Dance Central 2 proper soundtrack. Then, the app spits out a music video containing both. Pretty simple stuff, really.
Dance Cam also has social hooks that allows for sharing and even mash-up videos between friends. The below fleshes out some of the finer details:
Hard to believe this might turn someone onto Dance Central 2, so we’re kinda thinking about this more as a strange little toy than anything else. It’s free, so give it a spin — especially if VidRhythm is your thing.
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‘Jazz: Trump’s Journey’ Review – Perdido Street Platformer Blues
The world of Jazz: Trump’s Journey [$2.99] is a lush throwback to 1920’s New Orleans, brought to life with watercolor backdrops and great tunes. You take the stage in parades and theaters, prisons and sewers, all the way to the French Quarter as you run through the history of Trump’s success. You rise from a boy with dreams of making beautiful music to a man at the top of his game.
The game you play over the course of that journey is a platformer, with all your standard platforming elements: running, jumping, collecting widgets, and so on. Trump’s music has the power to stop people in their tracks – literally freeze time – which opens the way for a few clever puzzles and challenges. But imprecise controls and terrible translation keep Jazz from reaching the heights it deserves.
The translation is the worst offense, completely mangling what may be a touching story or may be a heavy-handed lesson on racism. It’s hard to tell when it’s presented with phrases like this:
“To be honest. I got prepared to that, but even tough I didn’t lost my hope because I knew my music affected her.”
We can overlook a few misspellings or grammatical errors, but this translation is inexcusably bad. Oh, and the “daring parallel with the real story of Louis Armstrong,” as mentioned in the app description? Ignore that. It’s a cute story, but pretty banal, and beyond the setting, the jazz and the color of their skin, Trump and Satchmo don’t have much in common at all.
The controls aren’t nearly as bad as the grammar, but they need to be fine-tuned. They’re laid out with movement on the left side, action on the right, but movement is split up into two sections (back and forth, up and down) and action is laid out so you can’t really do more than one thing at a time. If you need to, say, climb a ladder and jump or push a box and freeze time, it’s a finger-twister. The game seems to delight in making you do those sorts of things from time to time. Throw in occasionally sketchy physics and strange inconsistencies in the properties of objects and you have yourself a recipe for serious frustration.
If those problems get fixed up, Jazz will be an absolute gem. Every bit of it is gorgeous. You can clamber over the menu and credits, laid out in an elegant theater. The levels, silent movie cut scenes, and animations look fantastic from start to finish. The game is accompanied by a lovely jazz soundtrack that gets better and better as you put your band together and move toward the climax. It’s all downright beautiful.
Aside from the frustratingly floaty controls (and the lack of consideration the level design gives them), the platforming is quite cool. The ability to freeze time opens up interesting possibilities for puzzles, allowing you to manipulation sections of your environment and the people around you. Objects that can be frozen are visually distinct from those that can’t, but that doesn’t make solutions immediately obvious.
For difficulty, I’d stick Jazz at a comfortable middle of the road. It stays too easy for just long enough to get worrisome, but things ramp up apace once they start moving. There are eleven long levels, broken up into several sections that are filled to checkpoints, so you’ll never have to replay much unless you want to go back for collectables. Within those tiny bits between checkpoints, however, there are occasionally big-time challenges. Usually these difficulty spikes come at a welcome moment, but every once in a while they’re phone-throwingly frustrating.
I can’t recommend Jazz: Trump’s Journey wholeheartedly. It sells itself as a game with a unique and engaging story, and that’s something it simply doesn’t have. Setting aside the translation, the message of the game is still iffy at best and you’ll only find parallels to Louis Armstrong if you squint really hard. But it is, for the most part, a solid, fun platformer. And can you argue with the looks, or the sound? Let’s settle on a cautious recommendation, with a side of hoping for a significant patch-up sooner than later. If you decide to take a look, swing by our and let us know what you think.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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A Quick Look At ‘Puzzlejuice’
Our collective gut says that we’ll be talking a lot about ’s Puzzlejuice [$2.99] in 2012. That’s big praise considering it’s January and all, but it has that indescribable feel of a remarkable game. To its credit, it does a great job convincing you that it is, in fact, this good; it has an unparalleled swagger, presence, and charisma that crops up in almost every aspect of the title, including the UI and tutorials. It knows it’s hot.
We’re not sure if it knows how crazy it is, though. Puzzlejuice deftly pairs the block matching of a Tetris to a free-form spelling mechanic like the one used in last year’s stand-out, SpellTower [$1.99]. Basically, you create lines by rotating blocks of varying shapes and smashing them together at the bottom of the screen. Once you make a solid line, the matched blocks magically transform into letters that you then have to spell words with.
When you spell a word, the blocks disappear and allow for more matching action. This is especially vital since blocks are constantly tumbling from the top of the screen Tetris-style and threatening to end your session if they breach the top of the level. The push and pull of the action is beyond frantic, as you’ll need to keep your eye on everything at once. Puzzlejuice also tosses in challenges, like, say, “spell a five-letter word,” to the mix, which pushes your dexterity and mental fortitude to its limits.
There’s a lot of smaller mechanical treats within in the package, too: it has power-ups like bombs and total game freezes; it has color-specific hooks in the blocks that allow you to pop matching colors before side-to-side lines are formed; and it has two kinds of “core” scoring modes, one in which asks you to spell at least five-letter words for the maximum amount of block clearing.
Puzzlejuice keeps you on your heels and fighting against a whirlwind of blocks, colors, letters, and challenges. The franticness of the play is a nice change of general genre pacing, which is a big reason why we’re so behind the game. It’s also a looker, too. Check it out:
If you hate word games with a capital H, we can’t imagine that this will be an exception to your overall distaste. If you do enjoy these kinds of titles, Puzzlejuice is probably something you should check out. We’ll be giving this the official go for review shortly, but obviously our impression so far is, er… pretty good.
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Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft Releases ‘Caverns of Minos’ to the App Store
Video gaming icon and goat enthusiast Jeff Minter has just pushed out the latest offering from his development studio , called Caverns of Minos [$1.99], which has just gone live in the App Store. Caverns of Minos offers a similar brand of retro-inspired gameplay and psychedelic visuals, and, just in case you were worried, a hefty dose of minotaur rescuing.
Caverns of Minos is a mishmash of genres – part cave flyer similar to Lunar Lander, part rescue game sort of like Choplifter, and part vertical shmup like… well, about a million games since the dawn of time. Its biggest influence was an old Atari title called Caverns of Mars, which should be immediately apparent to those familiar with that game. Caverns of Minos boasts 4 different ships to pilot as well as 21 different caverns to explore and complete. You’re tasked with rescuing minotaurs as you explore each cavern looking for a special item which must then be delivered back to the mothership. Yep, this game has that great Jeff Minter craziness we all know and love.
Check out this developer gameplay video which shows Caverns of Minos being played on the iPad, and then about halfway through demonstrates its iCade compatibility:
Our resident retro expert and Minterologist Blake Patterson has already spent extensive time with Caverns of Minos, and the consensus seems to be that “the game is great.” We’ll be taking some time to write up a proper review beyond just those four words in the very near future, so definitely keep your eyes peeled for that. However, if you’re a fan of Llamasoft’s previous App Store offerings, or just a fan of retro-style arcade games in general, then it’s probably a pretty safe bet to just go ahead and pick up Caverns of Minos, and you can always head into our forums for even more on the game.
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‘Push Panic!’ Re-Released, Goes Free for a Short Time
Push Panic [Free] is a fast paced (and fun) puzzle game that up until recently was published by Appular. According to Push Panic’s developers , Appular is getting out of the publishing game and has taken all of their published titles off of the App Store. So, in response, Push Panic has been re-released and made free for a brief period of time.
Check out the trailer:
Keep in mind, if you ever downloaded Push Panic before, you’ll need to re-download it again during this freebie promotion. With Appular removing the original Push Panic from the App Store, you’ll effectively be locked out of any future updates and being able to re-download the game. Push Panic is a neat game too, so even if you didn’t own the original, you should download it while it’s free.
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