Archive for the ‘test’ tag
‘Zombie Gunship’ Gets Another Expansion
Heads up: is continuing to build on Zombie Gunship [$.99] with the release of a third residential expansion this afternoon. The expectation is that it’ll expand on the fiction like the others, and hey, presumably give us another bodacious zombie-popping romp in the process, too. You can grab it now for the delicious price of $0.
Zombie Gunship is a little old by App Store standards, so here’s a little refresher for your mushy stuff. From our review:
If you’ve played Call of Duty, you may remember the levels where you fly in an AC-130 and target the enemies below in a fantastic display of aerial firepower. Well, Zombie Gunship is based on that idea.
In the game, you look down over an apocalyptic landscape and wait for enemies to appear on your radar. Suddenly, a solitary human figure rushes from the shadows, trying to escape from hoards of brain-loving zombies. This is where you step in to save the day. You must shoot the zombies below, before they eat the few remaining humans or reach the bunker. If one lifeless zombie reaches the bunker, it seals itself to avoid being breached and your mission is over.
We’re still loving this game, and judging from the response on the , it looks like its followers aren’t anywhere close to being done with it, either. That’s good. If the title continues to thrive, we’ll probably keep getting new content, too. Screens of the latest just below, by the way:
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‘Monster Wars’ Review – Legendary Wars, Remixed
We first checked out Liv Games over a year ago with Legendary Wars [$0.99 / HD], a great take on castle defense. Now the developers are back with Monster Wars [$0.99], the latest addition to the genre. Billed as a ‘follow-up’ to their previous game, Monster Wars succeeds at preserving the same great gameplay of its predecessor while tweaking elements and offering a new story complete with a load of new units.
For folks that played Legendary Wars, Monster Wars will feel very familiar. The majority of campaign missions still feature the same castle defense-style gameplay where you collect resources, build units, defend your own castle from the opposition while simultaneously moving forward attack units to take out the opposing fortress.
The campaign also brings back the side-scrolling ‘hack n’ slash’ levels from the previous game (for better or worse). Each successful mission rewards players with coins to spend on unit upgrades, with an occasional soulstone (premium currency that you can also purchase using IAP). Most importantly, the deep character customization also returns, giving gamers a ton of incentive to play the game as much as possible simply to level up your character stats.
Despite these similarities, Monster Wars does tweak some of the gameplay by adding new variations on the types of missions we’ve seen in the past. For example, there are a lot more escort quests that have you guarding a ‘Named’ ally or a catapult as you make your way towards the enemy castle. In the case of the catapult, you have to actually use it to take down supplemental castle defenses before you can even damage it. The side scrolling levels have also seen some additions, with endless runner and other objective-based missions being thrown into the mix. In general, these tweaks don’t really do much to change the core gameplay, but considering how well done it is, I don’t care too much.
While Monster Wars improves upon its predecessor in a variety of different ways, I think the aspect that folks will appreciate the most is the sheer amount of content available. The campaign is huge and takes an investment to complete. If you want to take a break from the main story, the game features several endless modes which put you right into the action for as long as you want. The fact that you earn gems and soulstones, which can be used to improve your units within the campaign, is a nice (and necessary) touch. Finally, once you’ve conquered everything you think Monster Wars has to offer, additional difficulties are ready to challenge you all over again.
Another great way Monster Wars differentiates itself is with the all-new cast of monsters that you command in your army. There are over 15 new creatures, from the lowly Skelly to the awesome Lich, with each offering different attacks, special moves, and stats to improve upon. Each of the base units also allow you to upgrade its tier, giving the unit new stats, a new look, and even occasionally new specials.
There is a ton of variety in Monster Wars, and considering you can only take a certain number of units into battle, there are a lot of different ways to plan and play. I was a little disappointed in the fact that ‘tier-upgrades,’ (along with the ability to unlock some units) required as many soulstones as they do. Considering Monster Wars doesn’t pass out soulstones as much as I would want, players will either have to shell out some cash or grind a bit in the endless levels in order to earn enough stones to see everything.
From a controls standpoint, Monster Wars does a decent job. Buttons at the top of the screen let you quickly set attack and retreat orders as well as set simple formations. I did find it particularly tough to specifically select units during the heat of battle as your characters all tend to bunch up while attacking. However, I can’t really think of a better way of implementing something within the confines of castle defense.
Monster Wars also continues the excellent overall presentation started with Legendary Wars. A great soundtrack sets the overall tone of the game while retina-quality visuals paint a vivid picture throughout the course of your adventures. The story, a tongue-in-cheek narrative telling the Legendary (pun intended) tale from the monsters’ perspective, feels a bit trite at times, but still does a good job keeping the player engaged. There were a few strange UI issues, like certain screen buttons not registering taps (almost as if the tap window was smaller than the actual buttons), but nothing detracting from the gameplay too much.
I imagine some folks may complain that Monster Wars feels too much like its precursor without much of a change to the core gameplay. I say, why mess with a good thing? While the game does feel like a re-skin at times, Monster Wars still does a great job taking the classic gameplay from Legendary and transplanting it in a new setting. Add in all the new content combined with the deep character customization and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be checking out Monster Wars.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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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, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This iPad exclusive puzzle game originally started its life as a Flash title. It’s aged incredibly well, and feels like a perfect fit for the iPad. Multitouch adds so much, even if you played the original, it’s worth trying again on the iPad.
The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.
As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.
For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer.
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‘Another World’ And ‘Scribblenauts’ Are On Sale
A couple of high-profile games are on sale on the App Store this morning. Warner Bros, in celebration of over a million sales and Valentine’s Day, has put Scribblenauts Remix [$.99] on the price-slash block. Down to $.99 from $1.99, the latest version of the game includes a new Valentine’s Day playground. The other notable, Another World [$1.99], is now just $1.99 instead of its usual $4.99. We’ve created the above epic image to mark the occasion of the meeting of these two games within a single blog post. Enjoy!
In all seriousness, both games are imaginative and lovingly rendered on iPhone and iPad. You can read more about Scribblenauts here and Another World here if you’d like, but let us save you a bit of time with this double-fisted spoiler: both games are, like, fantastically buy-it-now good. What are you waiting for, man?
Scribblenauts Remix, $1.99 (Universal)
Another World – 20th Anniversary, $1.99 (Universal)
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Wizards of the Coast Release Official Magic: The Gathering App
There are a ton of Magic: The Gathering utilities on the App Store to assist in playing the card game. I’ve always been partial to using a combination of TCG Buddy [$4.99] for game tracking and Orcish Librarian [Free] for checking card values. If the thought of dabbling in the third party Magic app market never appealed to you, you’re in luck, as Wizards of the Coast just launched Magic: The Gathering Toolbox [Free].
Wizards all the features, but it includes life counters, a card search, a deck builder, and even the ability to test your deck to see what a sample hand would look like– All with full card art. With everything though, there’s a catch. Magic: The Gathering Toolbox will initially be free, but as they release new sets of cards being able to access those cards for deck building inside of the app will require “a small fee to update the deck builder with the latest content.” No word yet on what that “small fee” will be.
As a Magic player, I’m totally stoked to see Wizards branching out to do a little bit more with the game. Now, Wizards, how about you take a look at the Magic Online client next, eh?
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Hands-On With ‘Eufloria,’ A Lean-Back RTS
It’s 2012, and I’ve had a few years to conjure a snappy explanation of what is and how it rolls. I haven’t. So, before I even get into how much I dig it on iPad, I’ll let my main man Rudolf Kremers — one of the — do the talking. In our latest “bonus” podcast, he cheekily broke it down like this:
“Eufloria is a game of space, conquest, and exploration based on themes of plant life and flowers rather than space marines and spaceships.”
That’s the thing about Eufloria: it’s an RTS that goes against the grain. It doesn’t have any big dudes in big armor smashing space orcs in the face with apartment-sized space maces. It also doesn’t subscribe to any particular feel or taste, or really, any action-y RTS conventions. It’s a minimalist strategy game that has some cool, laid-back creative touches, and it’s all wrapped up in a sensitive production overhead that conveys the game’s core design ideals and gentle pacing well.
This much has been proven in past iterations. And for the most part, what you’ve seen is what you’ll be getting Day Zero on iPad. Eufloria on iPad still looks gorgeous, it still runs as smooth as ever, and all the little technical touches on the movement, placement and execution phases of the game have made it over. But, on the other hand, I’m not seeing a major adjustment on anything anyone has complained about before — the balance appears to be still a little touch and go, and in some of the levels I’ve been playing, the pacing is brutally, brutally slow.
What the iPad port does bring, though, are new ways to interact more intimately with the experience. Pinch and zoom can be used liberally to explore every little nook and cranny of each level. Satisfying drag, hold, and swipe gestures take care of the rest. It’s all good stuff.
I asked Kremers after the show to explain what he was shooting for with this version’s controls. He said that the main idea was to strip “all barriers between playing the game and the device you play it on.” Mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned. This is appears to be as much of a lean-back experience as ever before, and delightfully so.
Here’s a breakdown for those of you just seeing Eufloria for the first time. This is a game about asteroids, trees, and tiny, winged seedlings. In almost every scenario, the goal is to take these seedlings to an asteroid, build a tree or two, and then usher even more seedlings on to other asteroids. The tech tree is simple: trees build seedlings and asteroids have one of three different effects on seedlings, either making them strong or fast or energetic. As trees age, they become more potent and harder to kill. Eventually you’ll see some variations on unit types as well as a defensive tree that’ll keep enemy seedlings off of your rock.
The strategy factors into the picture in a variety of ways. You can’t hit up an asteroid unless you have an asteroid connected to it. Also, most asteroids are inhabited, so you’ll need to kill the enemy seedlings and then destroy their trees, which are jacked into that asteroid’s core. Cracking the core boils and tearing down an impromptu space settlement boils down to a numbers game: basically, whoever has the larger wad of dudes wins. Much later in the game, you’ll be given very specific tasks, like say, defending or finding a path through a system.
On our show, Kremers explained where these ideas came from. Eufloria proper is based on a proof-of-concept called “Dyson,” which is named after who theorized that you could explore space by growing mechanical trees on asteroids. It’s neat to see this crazy idea living on in a game.
The beauty of Eufloria is in its simplicity; it’s artfully stripped of graphical clutter and is fairly bare-boned on the UI and sound front. It’s also strikingly easy to play for a strategy game since most of the action happens on a macro-level: clicks, drags, and drops compose all you’ll need for galactic takeovers. This type of game feels great on iPad, and it seems like Team Eufloria and pulled it off.
My time with the preview build, for reasons of avoiding anything other than modest scrutiny at this phase in its pre-release form, has been artificially shortened, so I don’t have a verdict for you. You’ll get that later at some point this month when the game sees a release across iOS at an unannounced price. We’re expecting more details to roll in shortly. Fingers crossed.
All the screens in this write-up are from the PSN version of the game. I can’t tell a difference between the two in picture-form.
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‘Warm Gun’ Receives Some Needed Fixes
’s FPS, Warm Gun, has received a notable update that aims to fix a lot of what owners have been rightfully grumbling about since the title’s release. According to the game’s latest patch notes, this update increases performance “across all devices by roughly 40%”, which should help a lot of folks with frame rate woes. It also adds in more control schemes, improves the AI and UI, and resolves what Emotional Robot calls “random crashes.” Yikes, that’s a lot tweaks and fixes for a release game!
There’s some content mixed into this update, too — specifically, an all new map called “Coldshot” has been added to the multiplayer rotation. In celebration of all of this, Warm Gun’s price has been dropped to $1.99 until the end of this month. But regardless of price, you definitely want to check in before diving into this one. You know, just to be safe.
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Macworld | iWorld 2012 – New Titles from XMG Studio
At last year’s Macworld, was showing off Cows vs Aliens [99¢], a game I thoroughly enjoyed when it came out and is still amongst my favorite games. This year, their big upcoming title will be a brand new licensed Ghostbusters game. It’s not really past the concept stage just yet, but the mock artwork and test animation videos I saw are looking pretty sweet.
Ghostbusters will have a heavy social component, as well as some augmented reality gameplay ideas. So, for example, you might wander into Starbucks and get alerted that there’s a ghost on the loose there, and you’ll need to find it using your device’s camera and wrestle it down into one of those fancy traps just like in the movies. Then, you can valiantly hold your device in the air and loudly declare “we came, we saw, we kicked its ass!!” as the entire cafe cheers you on. Or something like that, at least that’s how I’d imagine it going down.
Another upcoming project from XMG is a remake of their incredibly popular Drag Racer: Pro Tuner [Free] series. Drag Racer lets you get super involved with tricking out a vehicle with tons of customization options, from cosmetic stuff to performance improvements, and then you get to take your ride to the streets and compete against other players and their cars. The new version will feature completely redone visuals and a nice UI overhaul, which the team tells me is something they’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Finally, if there are any teenagers in your life, then they might get a kick out of the just released Totally Amp’d! [Free]. XMG has enlisted some actual established actors to create 10 episodes to play through, which let you do things like create your own music videos, record your own songs, and come up with your very own fashion designs for characters in the game. The production values are through the roof in Totally Amp’d!, and you can check out the first episode for free with the remaining episodes available as a $4.99 in-app purchase.
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‘Oceanhorn’ Footage Appears And We’re OK With That
Check this: footage of Oceanhorn, the adventure game joint that seems to resemble the best Zelda ever in both style and tone, is now available. We’ve embedded the video just below for your viewing pleasure and aren’t worried in the slightest that it will be pulled despite This is a PR stunt for a title that made waves when first announced, and hasn’t seen substantial coverage since.
We’re not complaining, by the way. We want to see more and realize that Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas could be a big deal when it hits later this 2012. Not only is it fascinatingly gorgeous, but it’s also mechanically and functionally inspired by Zelda. The world desperately needs more of these kinds of games, and if these cats can pull it off, a lot of people are going to be very happy.
Also, in entirely unrelated but sort of related news: If you’re into Wind Waker, check that just hit YouTube and is blowing up all over Twitter. Bananas!
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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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