TouchArcade.ru

Restaurant games on iOS tend to follow a certain template. They’re time management titles, all about organizing customers and orders for maximum profits. Sometimes they’re freemium, sometimes not, but they all fall in line, and that line is getting a bit stale. They are certainly not about wildly flinging knives at customers to spear ingredients for their meals in midair. And yet here we find ourselves with Mad Chef [$0.99], a frantic, imaginative take on the restaurant gig from Foursaken Media, the folks behind the outstanding Bug Heroes series.

Mad Chef doesn’t quite meet the epic scale of Bug Heroes, being both far more casual and far less strategic, but it exhibits the same thoughtful design and attention to detail we’ve come to expect from Foursaken Media. The game centers around frantic tapping, so you’ll have to get behind that mechanic in a big way. Once you do there’s a boatload of entertaining content to work through.

I can’t be sure if this game is going for the stereotype of the slightly unhinged artist, or if you’re intended to be in charge of someone who poses a significant danger to others. As your customers (who hunger for dishes like Pigeon Pot Pie and Ratwurst) line up, your sous chef tosses out a huge assortment of ingredients. Your job is to tap the ingredients needed for each recipe and throw knives at them. If you miss, you stab your customers or sous chef instead. Is this where our craze for creative food carts has gotten us?

For the most part, though, your customers are into it. It’s a rough life building your way up in the restaurant scene with nothing but Roach Bran and willpower, but each time you play you make yourself a little more money and hopefully earn a bit more reputation.

Once you hit certain reputation milestones, you can open four more restaurants, each quicker and harder to play than the last. That doesn’t mean you’re done with the old ones, though. Managing a culinary empire requires a personal touch. But the more restaurants you have, the more money you earn while you’re away — a mechanic that translates nicely from the freemium market to this premium game.

Mad Chef takes another step into freemium-style with purchasable packs of cash and reputation. They’re not necessary, by any means. You can work your way through the game normally, playing at your own pace without ever making a purchase. But the early restaurants are easy, and earning enough rep to open the later, more difficult restaurants takes either a lot of grinding or reasonably large cash investment. I can’t help but feel like the difficulty curve would have been better had Foursaken Media not been planning for an IAP option.

Thankfully, this is balanced by an upgrade system that does a great job of making the grind feel a little less grindy. As you earn cash, you can invest it back into your restaurants. You unlock new recipes, an improved sous chef, and more. These improve your returns, and your customers grow more demanding. The food cart, for instance, starts off slow — one order to fill while ingredients meander their way across the screen. By the time you max it out, you’ll be managing four simultaneous orders with an ever-changing list of ingredients, and you’ll also have to watch out for spices that increase the bill. It’s frantic, and each restaurant gets more and more insane by the time you reach their top ends.

There’s only one problem with that — the time the knives take to fly to their targets, and the related trouble of hitting overlapping items. The game is generous about awarding you hits for the right item if it can choose between one right and one wrong, but if both options are valid you might end up tossing knives at multiple ingredients only to have the game choose something unexpected, messing up the other knives you have in the air. It’s only an occasional problem, but in a game that rewards perfection it’s a frustrating one.

If you want to mix things up a bit, you have options. The Take Out restaurant is always available, and it offers an endless mode that has you toss knives at ingredients by category. It’s a good way to earn a little cash in a hurry. Every so often, you’ll also get a rush of customers. For these Rush Hour specials, you can forget about recipes — it’s all about spearing every ingredient that flies across the screen for huge combos, and hoping you don’t end up spearing a customer.

Mad Chef is an immense game, once you settle in and look around a bit. It’s also lovingly crafted. Take a look at the in-game achievement system if you want to see why I say that: the Game Center achievements are presented as awards on the wall of your home, and the more you earn the nicer your digs get. It’s a little, unnecessary touch that makes progressing all that much more rewarding, and that’s reflected in the rest of the game. There is often unexpected charm to be found.

In the end Mad Chef lives or dies on the joy of tapping. It does a great job with its simple mechanic, veering away from simple spamming to something that takes a lot of thought and attention. And, you know, crazy-fast tapping. It’s a lot of game for your buck, so check it out. Then swing by our discussion thread to let us know what you think.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

In the world of iOS platformers, there are many games that pique my interest and might keep me entertained for a while, but there are few that end up remaining on my device for good. One of the ones that made the cut and has achieved that prestigious status on my iPhone is The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run [Free] by CB Labs.

We quite enjoyed The Adventures of Timmy when we reviewed it in October, and later that week it reached the pinnacle that all cat-related games strive to achieve when it was the Kitty Korner game of the week on our podcast.

For a limited time, you can grab all of this platforming, loosely cat-related goodness for the low price of free. Follow Timmy as he goes on an adventure (duh) and tries to rescue his crush who has been kidnapped by an evil bully. Timmy is normally a timid fellow, but when he dons his cat suit it gives him the courage to stand up for himself and get back his future main squeeze.

The Adventures of Timmy is so successful because it keeps the game mechanics simple and the controls nice and tight, but creates a wonderfully moody world to explore with the fantastic artwork and story. Speaking of tight controls, recently the game was updated with an option for fixed directional arrows in addition to the default analog stick. I still prefer the analog stick, but it’s always nice to have the option of both.

The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run is a great little platformer to add to your collection, and there’s really no better time to do that than right now while it’s free.

[source]

In BigBot Smash [99¢], the universal game from Ayopa, you get to totally smash up a city using a giant metallic robot.  You can demolish entire city blocks building-by-building by walking into, jumping at or shooting the 3D structures. Concurrently, you blast police cars from your antenna, stomp on the puny humans below, escape from tanks and generally create havoc in three different game modes.

The main campaign sends you to over 20 cities / levels (San Francisco Los Angeles, Mexico City, etc) to recover the parts of your robotic love-interest. She was shut-down, dismantled and scattered around the world by the nasty humans. Each level involves searching for and destroying the red buildings which contain her hardware (and the locations change if you replay the current level).  You can also smash up other buildings for points, parts and pure destructive pleasure. Meanwhile, the humans try to destroy you.

Once you complete a city level in Campaign mode, the next city level starts, however you’re unable to replay the completed levels, which is a shame because it stops you from gathering more parts to upgrade if you rushed through the early levels without collecting parts. Also, although each level in the campaign is set in a city , the levels all look very similar. However, on a positive note, the background music is specific to certain levels / cities, such as Australian didgeridoo music playing during the Sydney level.

In ‘Speed demolition’ mode the aim is to destroy a certain percentage of the buildings within a time limit, without being destroyed yourself.  While ‘Survival’ mode throws increasingly difficult waves of attack at you, to see how long you can last. Game Center is used for high scores and 48 achievements.

You can choose from three different robot chassis.  The blue “Blockbot” is slow, but tough. The “Grimbot” uses hover-jets to jump or fly, but is poor at stomping, while the “Cyclobot” rolls on one wheel, with extendable buzz-saws for hands. There are three game slots, so you can save your progress separately for each type of robot. And each robot handles quite differently.

There are 13 temporary power-ups to collect from the ruins of destroyed buildings. This includes repairs, extra energy, increased speed / jumps and bonuses for damage caused.  In addition to power-ups, you can collect parts from destroyed buildings to build hardware upgrades like: Anti-matter pulse weapons, death rays, fusion reactors and even 1-million hamsters on a giant wheel as an energy source.

The graphics are reasonable, but not breath-taking. When buildings collapse, they turn into unimpressive triangular debris. However I didn’t notice this too much as I was too busy destroying stuff. Some graphical clipping occurs, with the robot moving through intact buildings and some of the text messages display upside down (probably confused by the tilt controls).  And the humans are so small that sometimes they kill you before you notice them.

The two control options should have been named: “Reasonable touch controls” and “Nasty tilt controls”.  The touch controls are not typical controls, but work fairly well. You swipe the background to make the robot walk, tap the robot to jump, or swipe from the robot to jump in a particular direction. By tapping the screen, you can shoot your weapon at police cars, tanks, buildings or crowds of humans and a tutorial walks you through these basic controls. There’s a button to change the camera perspective, which is useful when you’re between buildings.

Whereas, the alternative tilt controls are not particularly intuitive. If you tilt your device left, the robot walks right which feels strange, but there’s no option to invert the controls. And if you want to turn, you must rotate your device orientation, which sometimes involves rotating it completely around. An option to change the camera angle by tilting is provided, but it’s awkward to use in conjunction with touch controls. The good news is that you can simply choose the touch controls to avoid the tilt controls altogether and then there’s no problem!

To recap: The gameplay, music, robot hardware upgrades, power-ups and touch controls are all good and destroying the city is fun, especially with a faster robot. However, the graphics are just okay and the tilt controls are not recommended. BigBot Smash was over-shadowed by some big-name releases, but the top-down urban robotic rampages offer destructive fun, especially if you love big bots (and smashing stuff up!)

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

When Call of Duty: Zombies hit the iOS app store way back when we praised it for what was, at the time, a great adaptation of the console secondary game mode. Now, over two years later, the zombies have finally returned with Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies [$6.99], the first true sequel to iOS CoD Zombies (strange psuedo-sequel notwithstanding). While Black Ops Zombies does succeed in providing improved visuals and extra variety in the addition of the excellent Dead-Ops mode, a frustrating selection of controls, spotty multiplayer, and a very limited map selection on the onset may make some fans hesitant to purchase now.

For the uninitiated, Black Ops Zombies is a first person shooter zombie survival game based off of the survival mode found on some console versions of Call of Duty. Zombies is map-based, with each map typically featuring numerous rooms and weapons that must be unlocked in order to provide the player with better weapons and defense. There are some small secondary objectives, but the primary goal of each play through is to simply survive as long as you can. Zombies come at you in waves, and you earn money for each one you take down, giving you the currency needed to unlock everything. There are also power-ups, such as extra ammo or double currency, which can randomly drop from the slain undead.

If you do a side-by-side comparison between Black Ops Zombie and its predecessor, you’ll see a definite upgrade in visual quality and presentation. The graphics look much better, especially on the most recent iOS devices. Even the menu system looks great and offers personality that isn’t normally found in something of that low a priority in game design. Granted, it’s certainly not the best looking game we’ve seen on iOS, but it’s an improvement nonetheless. Surprisingly, I did encounter the occasional slowdown on my 4S, which seemed odd.

One of the most important questions in my book in regards to first person shooters is its controls. Black Ops Zombies adds additional control functions, such as crouching and sprinting into the mix. In addition, Black Ops Zombies brings back the same three control options (joystick, swap, and tilt) from its predecessor. Each one offers some advantage over the other, but I never found any of them to fully satisfy my expectations and not make me feel like I was compensating for playing on a touch screen. Extras such as various difficulties and auto-aim try to alleviate the problem, but it doesn’t fix it all the way. Also there were some questionable design decisions, such as not having a fire button on the screen and forcing the players to double tap to fire. While this may work on paper, I can’t count the amount of times I wasn’t able to fire my gun when I wanted to.

Another design choice I really don’t understand is the limited map selection in Black Ops Zombies.  Basically, as of release, you have access to one map, Kino Der Toten. While it’s certainly a good map, the fact that players only have access to one map at the onset is a little ridiculous. We have confirmation that there is at least one more map coming in a future update to Black Ops Zombies, but until then, expect to get tired of Kino Der Toten until that happens.

Thankfully, some of the potential tedium is addressed with the inclusion of Dead-Ops Arcade mode, a top-down arcade shooter with dual stick controls. The premise is very simple in Dead-Ops: enter rooms, kill zombies, collect weapon upgrades and score enhancing gems, move into next room, repeat. Even still, I had a blast with Dead-Ops and thought it was a perfect game fit for iOS controls. The weapon variety, fast paced gameplay, and nice graphics all work in tandem to create an incredible experience. In fact, with some modifications, it probably could have survived just fine as a standalone release. Still, I appreciate that it was included with Black Ops Zombies, especially with the current lack of map variety.

Finally we get to the multiplayer, which really is the main draw for Call of Duty zombie games. Black Ops Zombies brings back four player coop mode and ups the ante with support for voice chat. When you manage to get a game going and everything is smooth, multiplayer simply increases the amount of fun exponentially and is well worth the ticket price. Unfortunately for me, I found the majority of my games to be filled with lag and frame rate jerkiness, even when lowering the detail slider. I know it has something to do with the net code, because as soon as my companions would inevitably drop out, the game would run fine. Lag on its own wouldn’t necessarily be a big deal, but when you combine it with the spotty controls, the problems just seem to compound. The included voice chat is nice, but in practice I’d usually end up muting my companions because I would just hear a lot of loud noise and static coming from their end. Dead-Ops multiplayer fared somewhat better, but I still encountered some significant lag, which is disappointing.

World at War Zombies was simply revolutionary for its time and, while Black Ops Zombies certainly improves on nearly every aspect of its predecessor, our expectations of what makes a great game have certainly changed. It’s not enough to simply add a new map and a better visual paintjob and call it a day. Yet, outside of Dead-Ops, that’s the sort of feeling I get while playing Black Ops Zombies. I think this feeling would have been far less prevalent if the game launched with just a bit more content than one map or if multiplayer wasn’t so laggy. In any case, if you were a fan of World at War Zombies, and you’re willing to be patient with content releases, you’ll love this sequel. For others looking for improvements in the general gameplay (or control schemes for that matter), you may want to wait for a content update or two.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

You know, I’ve got to hand it to EA. They’re really really good at making money. The latest cash cow they’ve set loose on the App Store pasture is the updated version of Tetris [99¢] which as we mentioned last night isn’t an update to the existing Tetris. Instead, it’s a new app that everyone will need to purchase, even owners of the original Tetris if they want access to the (admittedly really cool) new features.

Aside from a massive visual overhaul, Tetris now comes with a “one touch” control mode which greatly simplifies playing the game on iOS devices. When a new piece appears, you’re given all the locations that you could drop said piece, and instead of steering the piece into place yourself you just tap where you want it to land. It works great, and effectively puts an end to those annoying moments that every single Tetris player has experienced where you drop a piece one block off from where you wanted it, ruining your perfect line-clearing setup.

Unfortunately, for all the cool new additions to Tetris, which would have made the asking price of 99¢ for the upgrade fairly easy to stomach, EA decided to throw in a ridiculous amount of in-app purchase options which weren’t initially apparent when we previewed the game. Also, like seemingly everything these days, there’s an entirely superfluous leveling up system that rewards you with coins, and challenges that encourage you to round up as many of your friends as possible through Origin.

Coins can be spent on unlocking power-ups as well as new groupings of challenge levels. (Or, “planets” inside of the Tetris “galaxy” as the game refers to them.) Low on coins? No problemo! EA has your back, with bundles of coins that you can buy from 99¢ all the way up to $99.99.

But wait, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “You know, buying coins doesn’t really appeal to me, but what I always thought Tetris needed was some kind of vague Call of Duty Elite-like service I could subscribe to!” Well, we’re on the same page, and thankfully, EA is as well. It’s called the “T-Club”, and members can join for $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year. Doing so will reward you a permanent bonus of earning 15% more coins and lines in game, as long as your subscription is valid. EA has also made mention of “exclusive discounts and content” for T-Club members as well.

This just seems to be the near-perfect representation of everything that is wrong with gaming these days. Tetris is an absolute classic of the highest order, and throughout my lifetime I couldn’t even begin go estimate the hours days worth of play time I’ve sunk into the game. To take such a timeless game that has always (save a few spinoffs) been about simplicity and adding all of these extraneous systems to juice more money out of the player just feels incredibly wrong.

I guess the good news is that all of the IAP, as well as the Origin integration does seem fairly optional if all you want to do is play the classic game of Tetris, but still. This trend of taking a game, releasing a barebones version of it, and giving players the ability to spend an unlimited amount of money through IAP and now subscriptions is a trend that really, really needs to go away before it gets even further out of control.

[source]

In mid-November, True Axis finally released Space Tripper [$3.99] into the App Store. This was a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, Space Tripper was a straight up awesome indie shoot ‘em up that released a decade ago, and not only does it hold up extremely well today but it also makes a fantastic fit for the iOS platform. The second reason Space Tripper’s release was a big deal was that the development of the port hit just about every type of snag you can think of, and with what seemed like a black cloud looming over the game’s progress there was a strong possibility it would never see the light of day on the App Store.

However, determination won over, and even though it took more than 3 years True Axis completed their goal of releasing Space Tripper for iOS. And spoiler alert: it kicks major ass, as evidenced in our review. But it wasn’t all happy times and rainbows, as the one glaring omission from Space Tripper was any sort of option for touch controls. As it stood, the game only offered a tilt control scheme.

Now, I’m lukewarm at best towards tilt controls most of the time, but Space Tripper was different. The tilt controls feel wonderful, and by now I couldn’t imagine playing the game any other way. But I know that not everybody will have this sort of same epiphany, and there are other gamers who either are suffering through a control scheme that they don’t like or even worse have avoided Space Tripper altogether based solely on its tilt controls. True Axis knows this too, and that is why they have moved quickly to bring a relative touch control scheme to Space Tripper, which you can see demonstrated in the video below.

So there you go touch control enthusiasts, you’re finally getting your wish. If the lack of touch controls was preventing you from picking up Space Tripper, then soon enough you will have no excuse. Despite being a tilt control convert with this game, I myself am looking forward to giving the touch controls a try, just to see what they’re like. Also being wrapped up into this update is an auto calibration option for the tilt controls and a new Easy mode for the campaign. The 1.1 update for Space Tripper is currently submitted to Apple and is awaiting review, so you should keep your eye out for it to hit in the next week or two with any luck.

[source]

You’d think from the buzz that the gamification of daily life was a new thing. That we need expensive devices and fancy apps to build rewards into the tasks and chores that otherwise fail to motivate us. But as anyone who’s spent time bagging groceries knows, you can turn anything into a game if you try. Bagging groceries is like Tetris – and your goal is to fit everything into place just perfectly that the bag is full, the eggs are unbroken, and you can still lift the thing into your car.

Bag It! [$0.99 / Universal HD] puts those life skills to good use. Turns out bagging groceries is actually so much fun. Seriously. This little gem almost slipped by us, but I’m sure glad it didn’t. In Bag It! you’re tasked with bagging up a friendly collection of grocery items, like Sir Eggward and Sunshine the juice carton. Like their real counterparts, they have weight to them, and fragility. A carton of eggs is easily crushed, a watermelon less easily so.

In the early levels of Bag It! you take items off a conveyer belt and stack them into a brown paper bag. You can drag the items around and tap to rotate them, fitting them together like pieces of a puzzle. You’ll have to take care not to stack too much on an item — weight accumulates, and one burrito too far will leave you with spilt milk to cry about. As you complete each level, you’re ranked on a three-star scale. Sometimes this scale ranks you on your speed, other times it’s on the fullness of your bag or the number of items you can pack. The stars are required to unlock later levels.

There are also medals to earn, two for each level. These increase the challenge of the levels and often require a re-visitation or two. You might need to complete the level under a certain time, or with every item upright. But the best are the ones that give you a hint, like “Crusty Rivals,” and leave you to discover which items will create that combo when placed together.

The medals are used to unlock new game modes, and that’s where things start to get really fun. Udder Mayhem will engage those with an appetite for destruction, bringing in new 16 levels. Forget about carefully balancing your bag — these levels are about crushing everything with abandon. Fresh Squeeze takes the opposite track, with 16 levels that won’t let you break a single item.

There are also three endless modes to play that mix things up even further. Ultimate Bagger lets you bag to your heart’s content, filling bag after bag until you something gets crushed. Endless rampage gives you extra time on the clock for extreme acts of destruction. Power Surge mode is something completely different — items that go too far on the conveyer belt are destroyed, costing you time. It’s also the hardest to unlock at 75 medals, so only dedicated baggers will see it.

Not only do these modes offer a lot of variety, the unlocking mechanism encourages players to try new things, learn new combinations and do the best they can. It offers such a sense of accomplishment that I didn’t even notice the lack of Game Center integration. But if that’s a dealbreaker for you, never fear — Hidden Variable Studios says it’s coming soon.

It’s rare to find a puzzle game that feels so fresh but also so obvious. I’ve never played a game about bagging groceries before, but why not? It should be mandatory training for everyone who moves out on their own, never mind the folks who work at grocers. I have a quibble with the controls — it can be hard to rotate an item and move it to a new area at the same time — but otherwise it’s hard to complain about Bag It! It turns something that ought to be a chore into an absolute blast, and it does so with a huge, rich game. So check it out, and visit our discussion thread to share your impressions.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

Hey, here’s a thing: both Space Miner [Free] and Space Miner HD [Free] are totally free right now. Back in February of last year, Venan Entertainment released Space Miner to the masses and pretty much took everybody by surprise with the amount of depth, humor, personality, and most importantly stellar gameplay found within the title. It was almost as if they took the core mechanics of the classic Asteroids arcade game and built a fantastic, fully realized universe around it with copious amounts of RPG elements, space shooting, and a gripping storyline. In fact, that’s exactly what they did.

We loved Space Miner in our original review, and Venan kept the love flowing during 2010 with a huge update in April which enhanced the visuals for the then top-tier hardware and added a hardcore difficulty mode. With the arrival of Retina Display devices, Space Miner eventually jumped on board the high resolution gravy train and in December of last year an iPad native version of the game was released. All of this post-release attention didn’t go unnoticed either, as we chose Space Miner as our iPhone Game of the Year for 2010. In fact, if you ask Brad Nicholson, he’ll tell you that Space Miner is an even better game than Game Dev Story [$3.99/Lite]. That’s high praise!

Now, to celebrate the release of their latest title Book of Heroes [Free], Venan has gone and not only made the Space Miner games free through the weekend but have actually made their other games free as well. Don’t hesitate to jump all over Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! [Free/HD] while you’re busy mashing away at the download button on Space Miner.

The Space Miner games have seen several sales during their time on the App Store (and really what games haven’t), but this is the first time it’s ever gone completely free, although there is a free-to-play version called Space Miner Blast [Free] which is a more arcade-focused affair and is also totally worth a download as it offers a slightly different experience. But seriously, while you have the chance, grab the real-deal Space Miner for free during this weekend. I don’t want to sound like a jerk or anything, but if you don’t own Space Miner, we totally can’t be friends.

[source]

The week of PR shenanigans is still going strong, the latest of which involving a late-day surprise release of EA’s new iteration of Tetris [99¢] which we mentioned seeing at EA’s recent winter preview event. Here’s what The Bearded One had to say about it:

Basically everybody on the planet knows the falling blocks puzzle game Tetris, and we’ve had an iOS version of the game almost since the very beginning of the App Store. While that is a fun and totally decent version of the game, the touch screen controls left a bit to be desired. That’s where the new One-Touch mode comes in. Here, when blocks appear at the top of the screen you’re given an assortment of spots to automatically place the block at the bottom of the screen, represented by outlines of the block’s shape.

This seemed like a weird idea to me at first, but after actually playing this mode I was a believer. It’s such a simple change but it dramatically changes how you would typically play Tetris, almost transforming it into a different game and bypassing any imprecise control issues from the touch screen. There’s regular Marathon mode as well as a progressive level-based Rush mode in addition to One-Touch, so this version of Tetris should appeal to purists as well as those looking for a fresh take on the classic gameplay.

Unfortunately, it seems that this new version of Tetris has replaced the old version of Tetris on the App Store. So, this will be a new purchase for everyone instead of an update, and you might as well back up the old Tetris .ipa somewhere in case you ever want to re-sync it to your device.

[source]

You wanted it, and now it’s here: The Game Bakers’s beautiful real-time strategy RPG, Squids [$1.99], is now on the iPad. The team dropped the support as Universal, which means if you already own it, you can now play the game on iPad for $0. Otherwise, you can pick up the iPad and iPhone version for the usual $1.99.

During review, we got a chance to see Squids on the big screen, and even that non-optimized state, we were really impressed with how it looked and technically played. But here’s some things we didn’t get to see: the new 3D “anaglyph” version of the Halloween map, which has been rolled into this update on top of screen rotation functionality, new bug fixes, and new localizations including Russian, Japanese, and simplified Chinese.

If you’ve got some of those silly 3D glasses, give the Halloween map a spin and tell us what you think. We’re currently digging around in TouchArcade’s toy box, but we’ve been coming up empty.

[source]