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After spending some quality time with a preview version of Int13’s new bullet hell shooter Shogun: Rise of the Renegade [Free] last week, we were eager to get our hands on the final version to see how it all came together. And sure enough, earlier this week Shogun quietly snuck into the App Store.

It was interesting that Int13 was departing from their typical augmented reality based games, like ARDefender [Free], and trying their hand at an established and nuanced genre like arcade-style manic shoot ‘em ups, especially with veteran shmup developer Cave basically cornering the market with their stable of high-quality ports. However, Int13 has surprised me with just how right they got Shogun, and while it might fail to totally impress the more discerning bullet hell enthusiast, fans of shmups in general will find a lot of action and fun brimming from the game.

The very first thing that pops out at you about Shogun are its graphics. The environments are done up in 3D and give off a great feeling of depth as you’re scrolling by in your ship. It’s also Retina Display ready, meaning it’s razor sharp. Enemies are your standard alien-type of spacecrafts, and there are some rather interestingly designed mid-boss and end-boss fights that will give you a run for your money in terms of challenge. On the whole, gameplay in Shogun doesn’t divert too far from your typical bullet-hell shooter formula, but it executes the components of that formula extremely well.

However, Shogun does show some more innovative signs in a couple of areas. One is the method in which you change your weapons. Your ship comes with 3 weapon types: spread shot, laser, and homing. Whenever you lift your finger off the screen, the game slows down bullet-time style and a small menu pops up above your ship that lets you choose from the 3 weapon types, as well as trigger a screen-clearing EMP or choose to add small wingman ships for added firepower. It’s nice that the action slows down to allow you to concentrate on what weapon you need to pick, but you can still take damage in this mode so you’ll still need to stay alert.

The other thing in Shogun that I found very interesting is the system for filling and using your shield meter. You have the ability to scrape bullets that pass you by, which basically means getting your ship extremely close to them without actually getting hit. With each consecutive bullet you scrape, you build a multiplier, and this adds to your shield meter above which can go past the 100% full mark. Every time you fill up your life meter completely, it fills one of the 6 reserve tanks above the meter.

Now, these reserve tanks can be used for various things, like setting off the aforementioned EMP blast or adding one or more sets of the satellite helper ships to your own ship (which VASTLY increases your firepower, I might add). Also, when you do get hit by enemy fire, the game will automatically clear the screen of bullets and shield you for a brief moment while giving you a refilled meter, but it will cost you one of your reserves.

The scraping and usage of reserve tanks aren’t totally new ideas in the shmup world, but they’re done well and add a ton of strategy to how you go about being the most effective in Shogun. It’s in your benefit to scrape as much as possible and always strive to keep your reserves well stocked for particularly challenging sections and boss battles. But, you can’t concentrate too hard on just scraping, as inevitably that will lead you to take damage if you aren’t paying enough attention to killing the enemies as well.

While the graphics are gorgeous and the underlying mechanics are sound, about the only thing I don’t like about Shogun is that it’s pretty short. Featuring just 4 levels to play through, it comes to an end pretty quickly, but it’s a satisfying and challenging ride while it lasts. The pay model is also pretty accommodating, allowing you to download and play through the entire first level for free. The remaining 3 levels are accessible as well, but you can only play them for a brief minute – just long enough to get a taste. Each full level is then unlockable separately for 99¢ each, or $1.99 to unlock them all at once.

As a big fan of Cave’s shooters, I find it hard to really get into most of the other shooters on the App Store. They really did set the bar that high. But Shogun is a game that instantly drew me in with its visuals, and then backed it up with a ton of solid action. It even Universal and has iCade support, to truly complete the arcade experience. As a free download, there’s really no reason not to give Shogun a try for yourself.

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Kotaku is reporting that Crytek, the company behind the CryEngine technology and the Crysis series of visually high-end first-person shooters, is in advanced stages of a new social gaming network that they’re calling GFACE. Yes, GFACE. I’m as baffled as you about the name, “game+Facebook” maybe?

Anyway, what the service known as GFACE actually claims to do sounds pretty cool. It runs completely in the browser and lets you do all the sorts of social things you would expect from your Facebook, Google+ or Twitter – add friends, post about your interests, discover new people, and plenty more. You can also meet up with people online and enjoy media-type things together, sort of like how you can watch a movie with friends in an Xbox Live party.

And of course, you can partner up and play games together. But this is the surprising part – all the game’s are streamed from the cloud on GFACE’s end, similar to how the OnLive system works. There’s a drag and drop party creation system that Kotaku likens to Battlefield 3‘s Battlelog, and then everybody plugs into the game on GFACE’s servers from their individual locations.

The interesting bit is that the type of gameplay seems to scale depending on what device you’re using. Like the graphic above, someone can be playing a first-person shooter on their PC while other players are connected to the game via their mobile devices, but with secondary roles. The person on the iPad has a commander role from a top-down perspective and the person on the iPhone-lookalike is directing a support weapon.

It’s a pretty exciting prospect thinking about being able to play games with people online in this fashion, utilizing different devices and gameplay perspectives all in the same game. I need another social network like I need a hole in my head, but the other features of GFACE sound pretty interesting as well. That name, though. Yeesh.

You can see a video of GFACE in action at the original Kotaku article or the GFACE website. The UI is bananas, everything is so smooth and high-tech feeling. I’m actually eager to check it out. Right now GFACE is in closed beta, but whenever it finally launches it will be interesting to see if it’s able to make an impact in the fledgling streaming game market or the nearly-impossible-to-compete-in social network market.

[Via Kotaku]

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A couple of weeks back we told you that Cave was readying a release of Dodonpachi Blissful Death for iOS, a port of the Japanese shooter Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou and the fourth game in the Donpachi series of bullet hell shmups. Over the weekend, Cave released the first promo trailer for Blissful Death on iOS.

It sounds like Dodonpachi Blissful Death will follow the formula of their Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite] iOS port in that it will forgo a retooled Smartphone mode and will only have the arcade version of the game. It’s too bad, as I really enjoy the Smartphone modes in their previous iOS games, but it’s also not surprising given their recent poor sales results. It could be that they just can’t dump as many resources into iOS ports anymore.

The upside to that was that Bug Princess came in at a lower price than their other iOS shooters, but Cave has yet to release any pricing info for Blissful Death, or a firm release date beyond just February. Also, you’ll need at least 4th generation hardware or an iPad 2 for the game, and Cave is being a bit cheeky on Twitter regarding whether the game will be Universal or not. We’ll let you know if any more information surfaces, and you can bet we’ll be all over Dodonpachi Blissful Death when it launches next month.

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Surprise! RAGE HD [$1.99], id Software’s graphically off-the-walls tie-in shooter to RAGE, has been updated with two additional levels in a brand new update that also throws in higher resolution models, video output support, and various other enhancements and bug fixes. The house cleaning additions are free as always, but these levels, Kraken and Aqueduct, come at a cost: $.99, to be exact, via in-app purchase through the in-game Store.

We’ve spent a few minutes with each and can happily report that they are, indeed, levels that have been added to RAGE HD. One thing we didn’t expect, though, is to be floored all over again by this game’s look. Goodness, it’s gorgeous. Get the same feeling below by glancing at some of the new levels:

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Paris based developer Int13 are experts in the field of augmented reality on mobile devices. They showcased this on iOS in late 2010 with the release of ARDefender [99¢], an augmented reality tower defense game. In terms of content, ARDefender was a bit one note, though it did receive a nice update this past October that fleshed out some of the features. However, despite being a pretty simplistic game, the actual tech behind ARDefender was really solid and incorporated into the gameplay better than almost any other AR game I’ve played before. Also, it was just plain fun to play.

Now Int13 is taking a break from the augmented reality for their next iOS release in order to pay homage to a genre they enjoy: manic arcade shooters. A project that originally started back in 2010, Shogun: Rise of the Renegade is a bullet hell shooter in the same vein as the classic shmups that were prominent in arcades in the 90s, and like the ones CAVE has been so generous with porting over to the iOS platform. I’ve been playing a preview build of Shogun for the past week or so, and am super impressed with the title so far. You can check it out in motion with the developer’s trailer for Shogun below:

The game is absolutely gorgeous in person, the video doesn’t quite do it justice. The gameplay is also really solid, offering most of the bullet-hell conventions you would expect as well as a few twists on the formula to differentiate itself from the pack. Shogun is already submitted and awaiting approval from Apple, which means we could possibly see it as early as Friday but most likely it will be sometime next week. It will be free to download and contain the entire first level, with the remaining 3 levels unlockable through in-app purchase. Oh, and here’s something awesome: Shogun will have iCade support baked in, something people have been dying for with other shooters on the App Store.

If you’re a fan of shmups, keep your eyes glued to this space as we’ll have a review of Shogun: Rise of the Renegade whenever it ends up hitting the App Store sometime in the next week or so.

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Star Warfare: Alien Invasion [99¢] is a first-person arena-shooter from Freyr Games, which features wave after wave of relentless attacking alien creatures. The aliens emerge from holes in the wall and from underground, or come flying, bounding or waddling straight towards you from all sides. And once you’ve shot them, the next wave arrives immediately. It’s almost as if you don’t even need to explore, as the aliens will come straight for you.

The single player campaign includes five maps, each with six levels of increasing difficulty to unlock (30 levels in total). A progress bar indicates how many of the enemies have spawned and if you survive to the end, your reward is currency to spend in an in-game store. The sixth level of each map is a “survival” level.

In multiplayer mode, you can team with up to three players online (via Game Center) to engage in a co-op boss battle, or to play co-op on a map you’ve already unlocked. The incentive for fighting bosses is that you earn greater amounts of gold. Unfortunately, these bosses are not accessible in single player mode, although you can set-up a 1 player room online if you want. Playing co-op with teammates makes the boss battles easier, and so does upgrading via single player mode first since the gear you earn in single player mode is also available in multiplayer.

This is a dual stick shooter, with the left stick for movement, the right for aiming and shooting – and there’s no option to change this, although you can tweak sensitivity. The dual sticks are located one third of the way up the screen on each side and can’t be repositioned. To look around, or turn around, you swipe the background with your finger. You can also use the right (fire) stick to turn, but that’s slower and wastes bullets.

There are 26 weapons to unlock and purchase, including assault rifle, shotgun, laser gun and machine guns. The heavier weapons, like grenade launchers, decrease your speed while other powerful weapons like the RPG consume more energy. Each weapon has power, fire-rate and energy attributes and can be upgraded through 8 levels.

The catch is that some items are purchased with money earned in-game, but other weapons and bags (including the cooler ones) are purchased using a raw material named “mytheril” which seems to only be available through in-app purchases or for getting bonuses for playing online regularly. But aside from this premium currency, even the weapons sold for regular in-game currency get very expensive, making the weapon upgrading more difficult than it feels like it should be.

Also, If you run out of bullets, you end up running around the level unable to do anything as there’s currently no melee attack or ammo pick-ups. You just have to die or quit, having wasted the remainder of your bullets, which is frustrating, although the developers advise they may possibly introduce a weapon with no ammo cost. The in-game store also sells space suit parts (helmet, chest, hands and legs) which can improve your hit points, power and speed. Other available items include first aid items, forcefields and the ability to revive after death.

Star Warfare: Alien Invasion is a pretty good first-person shooter for a dollar, despite the expensive weapons, emphasis on IAP and need to buy bullets with in-game money. The developers are planning a minor update with new equipment and maps, and a major update with a brand new game mode. If they can also balance out the in-game currency systems in regards to weapon upgrading and ammunition usage, then Star Warfare might be able to extend beyond just being an average to above average shooter.

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Following the port of their 1993 arcade shooter RayForce [$11.99] to the App Store, Taito announced over the weekend that they’ll be bringing another shooter, Darius Burst: Second Prologue, to iOS in the future, according to Andriasang.

Darius Burst was originally a Sony PSP game released in late 2009, and was an official new entry in the fabled Darius series of shmups. An arcade version came a year later called Darius Burst Another Chronicle, and it was especially noteworthy due to its insanely wide screen and cabinet. Sadly, neither game was released outside of Japan.

It’s unknown whether the iOS version of Darius Burst is based off of either of the previous versions of the game, but my guess would be that it is an enhanced remake of the original that will have its own special iOS specific features. That’s just wishful speculation on my part, however.

Famitsu’s mobile gaming site originally broke this news and also managed to nab the first screens of Darius Burst: Second Prologue which you see here, but unfortunately there are no other details on the game – like pricing or release date – at this time. After the somewhat controversial launch price for what was a fairly standard port of RayForce, it will also be interesting to see what price Darius Burst clocks in at. Just as soon as we have more news on Darius Burst: Second Prologue, we’ll let you know.

[Via Andriasang]

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Bullet hell experts Cave have today announced their next forthcoming iOS shooter Dodonpachi Blissful Death. Known as Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou in Japan, it’s the fourth game in the Donpachi series and was followed up with Dodonpachi Dai Fukkatsu several years later, which we know as Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite] here on the US App Store.

There aren’t any details just yet for Dodonpachi Blissful Death, but based on Cave’s previous iOS releases I think it’s pretty safe to assume a few things. It will likely include an arcade mode that stays faithful to the original release as well as a special Smartphone mode that has been retooled for touch screens and given some additional features.

While most of Cave’s iOS releases follow this formula, they bucked that trend with their last release Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], which was more or less just a direct port of the arcade version. This wasn’t exactly a bad thing, as the arcade game was (and is) amazingly fun, but I’ve grown to really like the special Smartphone modes that Cave puts so much thought into. Hopefully we’ll see this in Dodonpachi Blissful Death.

Beyond that, you can expect multiple ship types, weapon augmenters called Element Dolls, insane combo scoring, and hidden loops and bosses. So basically, tons of Cave shmup goodness. Really great news too, considering Cave has been contemplating focusing more on less hardcore, more social games. Glad to see them still bringing great titles to iOS.

As soon as we have more information on Dodonpachi Blissful Death’s arrival on the App Store, like pricing and release date, we’ll be sure to let you know. For now though, it’s probably safe to hit up our forums and start drooling.

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Urban Crime [Free], the newest game from Gameloft, is the latest title attempting to take a traditional genre and infuse it with free-to-play elements. In this case, it’s the open world third-person shooter made popular by the likes of Grand Theft Auto III that gets the freemium makeover. Normally, these types of games are treated as forums discussing the merits of freemium and whether the gameplay and overall presentation outweighs whatever hooks are put into the game. In the case of Urban Crime, that discussion isn’t necessary as the game has so many issues (freemium and otherwise) that you really should just avoid it completely.

In Urban Crime, you’re thrown into a world run by a multitude of gangs and are told to conquer it territory by territory. You’ll accomplish this by running randomly generated missions until you fill up an arbitrary meter that allows you to take out a rival gang leader. Eliminate said leader and you earn a piece of territory and you start over again. Completing missions also earns money and experience which is used to level up and unlock random rewards. Missions are divided into standard subtypes ranging from assassinations to drag races to escort missions. While I didn’t particularly have any issues with the missions, I found them becoming repetitive rather quickly.

One of the big differences in Urban Crime compared to similar titles is its complete reliance on freemium. To put it bluntly, the switch to freemium is poorly implemented and gets in the way of a lot of elements that are staples for this genre. As an example, let’s take carjacking. Imagine running from the cops and spotting an awesome sports car to aid in your getaway. You get close, press the button to highjack, and get a message saying you don’t have a high enough level to steal this car. Of course, you can buy diamonds (the in-game premium currency) to let you steal it instantly, but that would be ridiculous. I could understand clothing, skillsets, and even weapons tied to the leveling system, but being able to steal certain cars? That’s just silly.

The above example is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to freemium. Gameloft’s notorious energy system also makes a return. It doesn’t go as far shutting the game down when you run out of energy, but if you do run out, you will not be able to play new missions until your energy recovers. You can do this by spending your premium currency to recharge, waiting awhile for it to naturally build up, or by gaining levels. Granted, the first hour or so of content seems to be relatively stable as far as energy is concerned (since you continue to gain levels and thus energy at a steady pace). However, once you get to the point where you have to do a lot of missions to even gain levels, you’re going to be bottlenecked very quickly.

Another area of Urban Crime that I’m disappointed in is the sacrifice of an overall story in favor of the strict mission based gameplay. Sure, Gangstar wasn’t particularly known for its epic storytelling, but at least there was an overarching tale that sought to bring you in. Urban Crime simply puts you in the city and tells you to take it over for no other reason other than that. Outside of the initial prompt at the start of the game, the only story found lies in the fragmented mission texts which offer nothing of value and are just an excuse to go out and cause more havoc. What’s worse, since this game reuses the assets of Gangstar: Miami Vindication, you won’t even have the pleasure (what little there is) of exploring a new world if you’ve played that game before.

There’re a few other elements within Urban Crime that I haven’t addressed yet, but might factor in your choice to check this out. The visuals look like they came from a game made a few years ago (which they are) and do not compare to any games recently released. Despite this, I still encountered a lot of obnoxious pop-up and frame rate issues, even on the most recent iOS devices. The controls are probably one of the few areas of the game that are adequate, with a few different schemes that give you the option of touch controls or the accelerometer. However, when you combine any control method with the poor frame rate, most gamers will probably be frustrated regardless.

I’m really not sure what Gameloft is trying to do with Urban Crime. Yes, it’s a freemium game and the whole point is to attract folks under the guise of free play and eventually get them to shell out with IAP. However, in order for that to work, you have to actually want to play the game in the first place before you even think about spending money in the game. With its complete lack of narrative, boring mission structure, antiquated visuals, spotty controls and monotonous gameplay, I don’t know who would want to play this, much less eventually spend money within it. If you’re looking for a free-roaming third-person shooter on your iOS device, go pick up GTA 3 [$5.99] if you haven’t already done so. Otherwise, just stay away from here.

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Here’s some unfortunate news. Eurogamer reports that Japanese developer CAVE is switching up its strategy following some disappointing earnings from the first half of their fiscal year, which for them starts on the first of June. As a result, they’ve downgraded their forecasts for the rest of the year, which runs until the end of May, and have reportedly put some of their current titles on hold to allocate more resources into “social games”, according to the company’s recently released earnings report summarized in English by Andriasang.

Now, us iOS gamers associate CAVE with their awesome App Store shooters like Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite], and Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite]. I don’t really like thinking about the developer of some of the most hardcore games around suddenly switching gears to the surging social/casual games space.

However, CAVE has a separate division focused on their mobile titles and I would imagine they are reasonably pleased with the performance of their games on iOS and Android. I think the problem lies more in getting people to buy a somewhat niche product like a bullet hell shooter on the home consoles for $60 or more. Their earnings report indicates that in the face of a stagnant retail gaming market, retailers are more hesitant to buy and stock as many games as CAVE had projected them to.

It’s not indicated which projects are being put on hold, and hopefully we’ll see CAVE continuing to bring their fantastic library of shooters to iOS, as well as more original titles like Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$6.99/Lite]. It will be interesting to see what direction CAVE moves in both the mobile and console space in 2012, and we’ll definitely be keeping our eye out for any new developments.

[Via Eurogamer and Andriasang]

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