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Games that tie in to major properties are sometimes, shall we say, a little lacking. So you might be tempted to think that Assassin’s Creed Recollection [99¢] is just your average cash-in, perhaps a standard collectable card game with images of franchise heroes Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze slapped on the cards. You can stop thinking that right about now, because this game is something far more interesting.

That’s not to say it’s without its problems — Ubisoft has been chasing down some big-time bugs since the game was released — but Assassin’s Creed Recollection is more than just another coat of paint on the traditional CCG. It takes the formula real time, pitting you and your opponent against the clock as well as each other.

Once you get past the game’s peculiar jargon (cards are Memories, decks are Sequences, creatures are Agents, mana is Gold — it’s all very Assassin’s Creed), you’ll find a CCG with several creative tweaks. Turns are gone, period. Instead, everything is measured by day. You get one new card in your hand each day, and summoning agents takes half a day. You and your opponent do everything simultaneously, something that would get messy in your average CCG but is handled elegantly here.

You see, you aren’t playing directly against your opponent, who has no health or tokens to speak of. You’re sending your agents out to campaign in regions that dominate the play field. To win, you need to control the majority of those regions at the same time. If one of your agents finishes a campaign in a region without being opposed, you earn that agent’s attack power in points. Ten points and you control the region. So off you go, slapping down agents, throwing them in front of your opponent’s agents and claiming regions until one of you is victorious.

There’s quite a bit more to it — you can place Sites on each region that earn points every day, and you can also throw down Actions, which are used to interrupt enemies or boost your own cards. And you have to control your income, the amount of gold you earn each day, because every card has a cost and most of those costs are steep. It’s a bit complex, but Assassin’s Creed Recollections does a great job of walking you through the basics with a thorough tutorial.

Unfortunately, you come out the other side of that tutorial and slam directly into a wall. The first real mission in the single-player campaign pulls exactly no punches, and your default deck is more than a little lackluster. So, in a move that should come as no surprise to CCG players, you’ll probably need to buy some boosters.

To Ubisoft’s credit, they don’t start you off with a paywall. You’ll have quite a few credits by the time you emerge from the tutorial, enough to buy quite a few packs if you’re thrifty. They don’t do such a good job of explaining the difference between the inexpensive Templar packs and the rather pricey Assassin’s packs. As it turns out, they give cards from separate pools, and the Assassin’s cards are not so much stronger as they are targeted to advanced play styles. So go for the Templar packs at first.

The cards you’ll receive from these booster packs are sure to delight any Assassin’s Creed fan. They, and the game’s story, are largely pulled from Assassin’s Creed 2, and they feature plenty of familiar faces. The cards cover everyone from Rosa the thief to Rodrigo Borgia and every Assassin, Templar, courtesan and scholar between. They’re separated into factions, and while each of your decks can only contain two factions and the unaffiliated gold cards, you’ll collect plenty of each in your booster purchases. You can’t currently complete your collection with single-card purchases, but the upcoming Auction House sounds like it will address that problem.

The single-player campaign, which has you winding your way through fair Italia as an inexperienced Templar, will take skilled players a couple hours, and CCG newbies a fair bit more. It has limited replayability since you can’t continuously earn extra credits or experience by replaying old missions. At that point, if not before, you’ll need to move into multiplayer, where you can stomp friends and strangers alike.

Overall, I’m more than satisfied with the core game. The rest of the trappings are a bit less impressive. The out-of-game interface is governed by a confusing mix of swipes and taps, which is compounded by a lack of responsiveness in certain menus. Miss the fact that you can access the menu at any point by swiping down with two fingers (mentioned once and otherwise never indicated) and you may end up wondering why there’s no way to pause or forfeit a match. There are Game Center achievements, several of them, specifically for buying credits with IAP.

More damningly, there seem to be issues with the purchase of booster packs. If the Ubisoft servers are down when you buy a booster, you may not be able to open it until they’re back up. According to some folks in our discussion thread, this may sometimes result in lost cards, though we haven’t been able to confirm the problem. I’m sure the server check-in cuts down on cheating, but it also cuts down on players’ ability to access the content they’ve purchased. Add to that a crash bug effecting existing players that was introduced in the current patch and I grow wary of recommending this game before these issues are ironed out, though a just-released patch looks to address some of this. Also, the game is currently on sale for 99¢, which might make it a worthwhile deal for putting up with some bumps in the road during post-release updating.

If you’re a CCG lover who also happens to be a fan of Assassin’s Creed, though, Recollection really is worth a look. It doesn’t add much to the mythos, but it makes great use of the IP. As a bonus, the short film Embers is included, along with a gallery of concept art for Uplay users. But Assassin’s Creed Recollection isn’t just for fanboys — it’s a genuinely engaging card game with a surprising depth of strategy. Hopefully Ubisoft will be prompt in fixing the bugs, but the core game is intact in the meantime. Just go easy on the IAP.

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The Mr. series by developer Ponos has been a favorite of casual gaming fans for several years now (and has been covered by us several times before). Mr. Oops!! [99¢], the latest title in the series, looks to continue the popularity of its predecessors by offering the same approachable controls, frenetic gameplay, and leaderboard-based competition that made previous games successful. As far as casual titles are concerned, Mr. Oops!! succeeds at preserving the fun we’ve had with earlier titles and is a game worthy of recommendation.

If you’ve never played a Mr. game before, each title centers around a simple premise, easy controls, and a difficulty curve that ramps up quickly. In the case of Mr. Oops!!, players must maneuver their Mr. stick figure across a checkerboard-like environment in the hopes of avoiding the weapons being launched down the grid. Also accompanying the game is a rocking musical score that sets the tone well for the game.

After a brief tutorial introducing each of the three weapons (rolling rocks, cannonballs, and lasers), players basically compete for top score honors on Game Center by playing each of the three stages until they get eventually caught in the crossfire, with your final score consisting of each the number of successful rounds for each stage multiplied together. The first few missions challenge the player to reach certain scores, but afterwards, the game becomes purely leaderboard motivated.

In addition, Mr. Oops!! offers a ‘Bloody Mode’ which can be purchased via IAP for 99¢ and adds three additional weapons. Bloody Mode doesn’t really change the gameplay, with the exception of the three new weapons leaving a gory mess of your Mr. on the floor when you get caught. I did, however, find the ‘bloody’ weapons to be a bit more difficult (as well as far more hilarious), and I’d recommend the IAP for anyone looking to get a little more out of this game.

As with previous games from Ponos, the mechanics and controls are very tight. A simple swipe in any direction moves your character with very little slowdown or room for misinterpretation. One of the best aspects of Mr. Oops!! is the fact that I never felt like a lost life was due to anything but my own misjudgment, an element that I find essential for casual games. In addition, Ponos does a great job with the difficulty curve, with each playthrough ramping up somewhat quickly but never truly becoming ‘impossible.’

Like previous Mr. games, you won’t find a large amount of gameplay depth, but I doubt that’s what Ponos is going for with this sort of casual game. Also, if you’re looking for a comparison between series titles, I preferred Mr. Oops!! to the previous games mainly due to its increased emphasis on reflex-oriented gameplay (as opposed to the other titles which require more emphasis on timing and planning). Regardless, if you’re a fan of competitive leaderboards, and you’re looking for a casual title to offer a few minutes of high intensive gameplay (or if you liked any of the Mr. titles), check out Mr. Oops!! as it certainly hits all the elements of a successful casual title.

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Earlier this week, Warner Bros. and Mortal Kombat developer NeatherRealm Studios surprised everybody by dropping Batman Arkham City Lockdown [$5.99], an iOS spinoff of the critically acclaimed console series, into the App Store. Batman Arkham City Lockdown is a streamlined take on its console big brother games, placing you in the role of Batman as he faces off against a stable of Gotham City’s infamous villains in one-on-one battles. The presentation and overall “Batman-ness” of the game are absolutely fantastic, and although the combat is a bit rigid and flat, Arkham City Lockdown offers a fun mobile version of The Dark Knight’s superhero escapades.

Immediately upon starting up the game, you’re thrust into a fight with one of the Joker’s thugs which acts as a tutorial in the ways of combat. The controls are fairly straightforward: Tapping the screen allows you to dodge an incoming blow, swiping the screen left or right throws those respective punches, swiping up does an uppercut, and swiping down just when an enemy is about to strike does a deflection move resulting in a dizzied opponent.

The responsiveness of the controls is pretty good, and it’s easy to piece together some nice combos using the swiping gestures. However, it really just feels like a second rate attempt at Infinity Blade-style combat. A couple of additional elements do spice things up though. There is a counterattack mechanic where tapping circles that pop up on your opponent’s body will result in Batman doing various types of counters, most of which look pretty sweet. The problem with this is that you feel very removed from these moves, as you sit back and merely watch these canned animations after simply tapping some circles. Enemies can also go into a “rage” where your offensive efforts do nothing, and instead you must concentrate on dodging their incoming attacks until they cool down and you can get back to pummeling them in the face.

My main issue with the fighting mechanics is that they really lack depth. Most fights can be easily won by simply timing a deflection, dizzying your opponent, and swiping back and forth furiously to unleash a combo on them. Of course, if you make the effort to mix things up by doing different combos, using your arsenal of special gadgets, and utilizing counterattacks, then you will be rewarded with a better rating and more experience points when the battle is over. But, if you’re stuck on a particularly hard fight, the motivation isn’t really there to prevent you from taking the cheap and formulaic route to a victory.

While the actual combat mechanics feel simplistic, Arkham City Lockdown does offer quite a bit in the way of content. After your first tutorial fight, you enter into the Batcave where you can access a map of Gotham City which allows you to choose from a selection of battles. Only a portion of the city is unlocked from the start, with a few entry level fights for you to choose from. Each fight contains multiple opponents that you’ll face off against one right after the other, utilizing the same health meter for all of them to add some challenge. When oh when will villainous thugs learn to all attack at the same time?

After completing each of these battles you’ll unlock the boss battle for that area, the first being Two Face. He’ll send some goons after you at first, and in between bouts a new gameplay element is introduced. When Two Face tries to pop a cap in your behind with his tommy gun, you toss out your trusted Batarang. Here you get a third-person view from right behind the Batarang and you actually control it by tilting, directing it into Two Face and knocking his aim off kilter. As gimmicky as this sounds, I actually thought it was a pretty cool little diversion from the regular fisticuff action. After tearing through the thugs and tossing a few Batarangs, you’ll square off against the man himself, Two Face.

The first boss battle with Two Face is tough, and he handily kicked my ass multiple times in a row. This brings me to another aspect to Arkham City Lockdown, the character progression of Batman. Beating up bad guys earns you experience which will level up Batman and his attributes. You can also earn what is called Waynetech points which can be poured into upgrading your various gadgets, armor, combat skills, and more. If you want to speed up the process, you can get additional Waynetech points via in-app purchase, though so far it seems like you’ll naturally earn enough to trick out your Batman adequately during the course of regular play.

Aside from the regular campaign missions and storyline, there’s also some cool extra stuff like unlockable character bios, Batman wallpapers, a viewer for checking out a selection of included Arkham City digital comics, and several additional skins to outfit your Batman in. These can be immediately unlocked via IAP (and they’re all pretty sweet), but unfortunately there’s no way to earn these alternate costumes through normal play, which would have been a cool incentive for playing through the game or accomplishing specific goals.

In the case of Batman Arkham City Lockdown, my feelings towards the game are mixed. I’m not terribly excited over the simplistic fighting mechanics, but I absolutely love the character progressions system and bonus unlockable items. Plus, the combat system did end up growing on me, and as long as you’re not expecting something at the level of Infinity Blade II [$6.99] then you might actually have a good amount of fun making your way through all the fighting missions. Also, the game’s visuals look absolutely fantastic, not surprising given the use of the Unreal Engine. It definitely feels like a very authentic mobile spinoff to the console titles.

Whether or not you should pick up Batman Arkham City Lockdown will likely boil down to what your expectations are from the game. If you want a comparable experience to the console titles that you can carry around in your pocket, then you will probably end up disappointed in this effort. If you want a gorgeous looking Batman title filled with all sorts of nice fan service and simple combat that won’t bust your brain with strategic depth, then Arkham City Lockdown delivers this really well.

It will be cool if the developers support the game post-release, as there are only a few bosses to battle in the game and it all goes by fairly quickly. It’s pretty fun replaying through the game though, especially if you don’t mind forking over some extra cash for the alternate costumes which add a bit of a different experience to additional playthroughs. Overall Batman Arkham City Lockdown is a really well made title that I’ve ended up enjoying more than I initially thought I would, and if you’re a big Batman fan and can accept some of the combat limitations, then it’s definitely worth a look.

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We’ve been keeping tabs on Paradox Interactive’s Defenders of Ardania [$4.99 / Free] since its initial unveiling way back in February. While Defenders boasts beautiful artwork and a decent amount of content (including multiplayer), the majority of attention is centered on its gameplay, which attempts to move beyond the typical tower defense experience with some new and interesting ideas. Overall, despite some minor concerns with the UI and other areas, Defenders of Ardania is an excellent addition to the tower defense genre and is a must-try for any fan.

One of the first things you’ll notice when playing are the gorgeous visuals. The artwork showcases a variety of fantastical locales and certainly looks as if the developers paid extra attention to setting the scene for the entirety of the campaign. The actual units and towers look a little out of place, but I think that’s mostly a credit to the attention paid to the backdrops. Of course, heightened visuals aren’t going to necessarily make or break a tower defense game, but well done efforts deserve credit nonetheless.

Gameplay-wise, take a glance at some of its screenshots and Defenders of Ardania may look like just another tower defense game. However, actually fire up the game and you’ll discover that it offers quite a bit more depth than most TD games. For starters, Defenders combines the gameplay elements of both the tower defense and real-time strategy genres.

Like tower defense, players must strategically place towers of various strengths and abilities onto the battlefield in order to take out the oncoming hordes of enemies looking to attack your base. There’s tower upgrades, resource management and a wide variety of enemies, including baddies that can fire at your towers and destroy them if you don’t repair in time. Taken simply with these gameplay elements, Defenders of Ardania would have been a standard, decent TD game.

Add in what we’re calling ‘Tower Offense’ elements, and Defenders quickly turns into a game about extensive resource management and striking the all-important balance between multitasking both offense and defense. In addition to guarding your own keep from the enemy throngs, you must also send out your own units against the enemy’s towers in order to take down the opposing strongholds.

Furthermore, the more units you send out, the more ‘experience’ that unit earns until it upgrades, giving it a nice stat boost. Later campaign missions up the ante with having multiple enemy keeps, forcing you to defend and attack on multiple fronts. Finally, Defenders also has a magic system allowing players to expend resources on spells ranging from defensive and offensive buffs to enemy unit slowdown.

All these gameplay elements lead to a lot of different strategies that can be employed while playing Defenders of Ardania. The goal of each mission is to destroy all the enemy forts, so obviously you’ll need to pay attention to your offensive forces and decide whether to attempt to brute force the enemy with tons of units or launch a varied team of units to try and stymie the opposing towers. However, the game ends if the enemy takes your own keep, so you’ll have to make sure your defensive towers are well placed and upgraded.

In addition, towers, units, and magic all use the same resource, so your biggest task will be balancing your allocation of currency. This all sounds like a lot of information to work with but Defenders does an excellent job managing all the pieces and tying it all together in a way that just works. In fact, the only complaint I could really foresee with this sort of gameplay is the length of time entrenched battles might take, but I think that’s just part of the strategy.

While the game does a lot of things right, Defenders of Ardania does have a few small issues, particularly with its UI and introductory segments. For example, I would have really liked an actual tutorial level, rather than the static help screens currently serving as the ‘tutorial.’ It certainly would have helped newcomers looking to jump in the game fast and having no idea what to do. In addition, the lack of difficulty options may stonewall some players as they get further into the campaign.

Also, while Defenders does feature a tower defense only gameplay mode, it lacks a lot of the niceties of most tower defense games, such as a fast forward button and difficulty levels, making the mode too easy and very slow. One last complaint is with Defenders’ Game Center oriented multiplayer mode which is pretty fun, assuming you can actually get a game started (I had quite a few errors trying to set up matches). Granted, most of these issues are relatively minor and don’t detract from the overall single player experience, and will more than likely get sorted out in future updates.

If you’re a fan of tower defense games (and have an iPad), you need to stop reading this review and just check out Defenders of Ardania. It’s simply a well done game that merges established gameplay elements with good new strategic twists all wrapped up in a visually appealing title. Even if you’re on the fence, you should at least check out the lite version and see if the tower offense pieces suit your fancy. Either way, it’s nice to see advancements made in the area of TD games, and I hope this is a sign of more innovation to come.

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Most gamers are probably familiar with The Behemoth from their Flash game turned console game turned HD remake XBLA title Alien Hominid, and their subsequent XBLA release Castle Crashers. You might even remember that earlier this year they released a game for the App Store called Super Soviet Missile Mastar [Free], which was a strange and humorous mini game straight out of Alien Hominid that was turned into a standalone iOS game that we thought was pretty cool.

Well, The Behemoth is back in the iOS space with their latest offering called Alien Hominid: PDA Games [Free], which as the title suggests is a compilation of the PDA mini games that you could play in Alien Hominid. It’s basically a simplistic platforming game where  the goal is to collect the gems and kill the enemies in each level, which will unlock the door to the next level. It has a pretty cute grey and white color scheme which is a throwback to the PDA devices of yesteryear, and some well designed levels that will occasionally rough up your brain as you determine how best to complete them.

As Behemoth points out on their developer blog, the iOS version of PDA Games has been redrawn to be in HD, Game Center has been added with 23 achievements, and the game runs at a solid 60fps. Best of all, the game is totally free to download and comes with 15 levels for you to try out, and if you end up digging it, you can unlock an additional 500+ (!) levels for a 99¢ in-app purchase. I found the virtual controls to be decent enough, but the main character feels like he moves a bit too slowly, which has messed up my timing at certain points. But, I’m slowly getting used to it, and I’m actually finding myself quite enjoying Alien Hominid: PDA Games.

Behemoth also hints that PDA Games has had a subtle influence on their new upcoming XBLA title BattleBlock Theatre, which looks pretty interesting. But the bottom line is that Alien Hominid: PDA Games is free for you to check out, so you might as well go ahead and do so. And if we can show The Behemoth proper love on the App Store, then perhaps sometime in the future they’ll consider actually bringing their awesome full games to the iOS platform. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

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At heart, Catball Eats It All [Free] does not have a unique premise. At all. At heart, all you do is battle physics with your thumbs to keep a fat cat rolling around big shapes and eating stuff. Sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it?

However, great execution is all about a clever take and excellent design, as fans of standout iOS titles will tell you. And if Catball Eats It All has anything nailed, it’s in presenting a title that looks so wacky that you can’t help but be drawn to its inherent weirdness and wonder what the gameplay will be like. It’s actually like someone chopped up a bunch of weird photos of animals on the internet and made playable levels out of them. And you get to play one too. You’re sold, right?

The game is very easy to pick up and play, with a basic tutorial that has you using your thumbs on the screen to move Catball left and right. Designed by Philadelphia artist NoseGo, the levels are surreal, each made up of what looks like a series of images cut out of a magazine and coddled together for the weirdest results. You will roll over the surface of this hodgepodge object, collecting items and bouncing about (a simple press with one thumb while holding down the other button will make Catball inflate and fly around).

As you proceed, a small icon in the top right corner of the world will show you how much time you have left and how much eating you’re doing. If you don’t eat fast enough, a giant dog will appear and try to eat you. It’s a lot of fun to maneuver around these unique levels, and my only complaint was that the game didn’t offer motion control as an option, as I found myself tilting the phone when I went rolling this way or that reflexively, as if it would help me make it to that next platform.

Once or twice, Catball got stuck in a narrow passage. Could be a bug, I’m not sure, but each time I had to restart the level as I couldn’t seem to move. Mostly, the controls seems just fine, but it’s worth noting that it may happen to you too.

Especially considering it’s a free download at the time of this review, I’d say this title is a must-get for fans of platformers or something that looks a bit different from all the other ultra-cute stuff on the App store. It has that Katamari Damacy feel to it when it comes to eating everything, and I love that. I had a great deal of fun with it, and the Facebook and Game Center compatibility are a plus if you like social sharing when it comes to your scores.

The developers promise us new levels in the future (called “Courses, heh), and I have to say I am looking forward to the chance to spend more time with this unique title.

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If you’re new to iOS devices, or haven’t been following the scene as closely as you should have been over the last year, Apple’s year end feature App Store Rewind 2011 has an incredible amount of must-have games and apps that, in my opinion, you can basically just blindly download as they did a great job of picking out the cream of the crop.

Apple’s iPhone game of the year is NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower [Free], a great free to play little tower building simulator that we loved in our review. If you haven’t tried it yet, you really should. Runners up to iPhone game of the year include Tiny Wings [99¢], which shockingly enough we also thought was great. Illusion Labs’ Touchgrind BMX [$4.99] also made the cut, and, believe it or not, we positively reviewed it as well.

On the iPad side of things, Dead Space for iPad [$4.99] took home the title of game of the year. We had some issues with the title when it first launched, which we mention in our review, but all those things were massaged away with subsequent updates. Keep in mind, even if you don’t have an iPad, Dead Space [$6.99] is also available for smaller screen devices, although I can’t really explain the price discrepancy.

Runners up include Contre Jour HD [$2.99], which we gave 4.5 stars to in our review. Contre Jour [99¢] also comes in a non-HD variety for non-iPad owners. Last, but certainly not least by any stretch of the imagination is Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [$4.99]. We’ve got an exhaustive review and if you don’t feel like springing for the universal version, you can save a couple bucks by grabbing Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP Micro [$2.99] which is only optimized for the iPhone and iPod touch.

We’ll be releasing our games of the year with out year-end roundup closer to the holidays, but needless to say, Apple has assembled a fine list of games here.

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At E3 back in June of this year, we got an impressive hands-on demo of the OnLive service running and playable on the iPad. In case you’re not familiar, OnLive is the cloud-based gaming service that allows you to play from a fairly large selection of console and PC games by way of streaming them to an OnLive client running on your computer or a specially designed set-top box that connects to your TV. In simpler terms, it’s a lot like instantly streaming movies over NetFlix, except it’s video games, and you get to actually play them in real time with minimal lag if you’re internet speeds are up to snuff.

Basically, the iPad demo at E3 showed off just how versatile the OnLive service is. They simply created a client for the iPad and it allows practically the exact same OnLive experience that you would get using the service on your computer or television. It really felt like the future, but today, the future is now! (Sorry, I’ve always wanted to say that). But on a serious note, the OnLive iPad client is scheduled to launch today, as in like right now, for FREE.

There is a catch, however, as the OnLive mobile app is currently only available in the US and UK. There’s no word yet on if or when the service may launch in other territories. As part of the mobile app’s support, more than 25 of the games available on OnLive have been outfitted with touch-specific controls, meaning they can be played directly on the device itself without any additional peripherals. Included in that lineup of 25 titles is Rockstar’s hugely successful LA Noire, as well as Lego Batman: The Videogame, which will actually be available for free for anybody to try out the service just by downloading the OnLive client.

The majority of OnLive’s nearly 200 other available titles will also be playable on iOS, but won’t have the virtual touch controls baked into them. For these games you can pair the Universal OnLive Wireless Controller with your device and play them just like you would on a traditional console, or as demonstrated in the E3 demo video. Not every title will be able to be played on every device, OnLive cautions, but it sounds like the vast majority of them will be fully playable using the controller or virtual button setup.

One cool thing about OnLive is that whether you purchase a game through their service on your iPad, computer, set-top unit, or whatever, it will be available on any of those devices, with full cloud-saving functionality. So, if you’re in the middle of an OnLive game on your TV, you can stop what you’re doing and seamlessly pick up where you left off on your iPad, for example. You’ll also have access to all the social features that are built into OnLive no matter which device you’re playing on.

While the OnLive iOS client hasn’t quite hit the App Store just yet, it is supposed to be arriving any time, and we’ll update this post with a link as soon as possible. Since it’s free and comes with a free game, there’s really no reason not to download it and check it out. If you’re interested in ordering a Universal OnLive Wireless Controller, those will be available sometime soon, and you’ll be able to get it in the US OnLive Store for $49.99 or the UK OnLive Store for £39.99.

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