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Late last week Capcom surprised everybody by announcing an iOS port of their classic arcade fighter Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 [ $2.99 ]. In all honesty, I suspect this was a cleverly timed release to casually tie in with ‘The Avengers’ movie coming out next week, but whatever the motivation I’m not complaining. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is one of the most beloved fighting games in history, and prior to the downloadable rerelease on XBL and PSN in 2009 it could be kind of a difficult game to play unless you owned the Dreamcast or the somewhat rare PS2 or Xbox versions.

With that said it’s fairly mind blowing then that today you can download the entire original game onto a device that fits snugly in your pocket (or to your iPad if you’d rather, since the game is Universal, though it’s extra snug trying to jam that in your pocket). The iOS version of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is really cool for what it is, basically a cheap nostalgic trip, but it’s plagued with several major problems that drag the experience down, making it feel more like a novelty rather than another solid iOS fighter.

The major sticking points in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are that it’s difficult to control compared to the other top iOS fighters, the 12 year old visuals have not aged gracefully, and the overall performance leaves a lot to be desired. However, the virtual control setup that Capcom has come up with for the game is pretty clever, and just having a classic like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in my pocket is worth putting up with its shortcomings. It’s just a shame because with a little more care I think this port could have been a whole lot better.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 features a whopping 56 playable characters, 28 from the Marvel camp and 28 from Capcom. Only 24 are available from the start, with the rest being unlocked from an in-game store using coins earned through play, or for performing certain tasks like completing the arcade mode with different characters.

In the XBL and PSN versions of the game, all characters are unlocked from the start, but I far prefer having to unlock them on my own as it gives you a sense of progress and some goals to shoot for while playing. However, if you’re dying to download the iOS version and bust out some local Bluetooth multiplayer with a buddy (sadly there is no online) right out of the gate, then you might find it annoying to have to spend significant time earning enough coins to unlock your favorite characters. Surprisingly, there is no sort of in-app purchase option to unlock everything.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is all about 3-on-3 tag team matches where characters can be swapped in and out at will, there’s a crazy emphasis on battles in the air, and the combos and special moves are all outrageous and over the top. Unfortunately, the iOS version runs so sluggishly that much of those fun moments are turned to frustration. The framerate can be a bit choppy and the virtual controls don’t seem to respond as well as even other Capcom fighters available on the App Store. This makes pulling off elaborate combos and air battling nearly impossible.

Despite the controls being sometimes unreliable, the default controls that Capcom implemented to simplify the experience are pretty nifty. There’s just a single button each for punch and kick, then there is a special button for controlling teammates and another for special moves. Besides just tapping these special buttons, each one can also be flicked in 4 different directions in order to perform additional moves. For example you can simply tap the special move button to shoot out a hadoken (fireball), but if you flick it to the side instead you can instantly launch into a shoryuken (dragon punch).

It’s a really cool idea and when it works well it’s brilliant, but for some reason much of the time it feels like the special buttons don’t respond to many of your flicks. There is the option to go with the original arcade game controls, which means no flicking for special moves, and I found that this option is much more reliable but does require more work on your part.

The visuals in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are also a pretty big letdown. I expect a 12 year old game to look dated, but for some reason the iOS version looks worse than any previous version. Sprites are noticeably jagged and pixelated, something that is accentuated on the iPad’s bigger screen. On the bright side, the fully 3D animated backgrounds are intact here and actually look quite good, especially when you consider the boring static backgrounds used in Street Fighter IV Volt on iOS.

So, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 has a lot of issues, but nothing that renders the game completely unplayable. The controls work well enough but are far from as good as other iOS fighters, and definitely not good enough to fully pull off some of the game’s more complicated techniques. If you’re a fan of the game on other platforms and can accept the problems it has on iOS for the sake of having it in your pocket, then I think it’s definitely worth the $3 price of admission (or $5 when the intro sale ends). Personally, I’m having a ton of fun playing through the game again, even with the inherent frustrations.

If you don’t have any particular affinity for the original game but are just looking for a new iOS fighter, then Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is a tougher sell. The controls are passable, but nowhere near the likes of Street Fighter IV Volt [ $6.99 ], King of Fighters-i [ $6.99 ], or SoulCalibur [ $11.99 ] on iOS. It’s frustrating because those examples prove that Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 could have been such a better port, and it may be in the future after some updating, but if nostalgia isn’t playing a big role in your desire for having this game on iPhone then I’d suggest waiting to see how things shake out down the line.

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I like to think that Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead is an exploration of character and violence more than it is some grim zombie fairy tale. Its cast is as beastly as its undead. Action is sudden, terrifying, and distressing. Decisions are made in bursts of lust and blood, greed and anger, brains and preservation. This miasma is revealing: we’re not good people. This makes for interesting reading, as you get to glimpse into what makes us forget who we want to be, and become what we actually are.

The first episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead plays like a celebration of the comic and its themes. It adheres to the Kirkman’s vision, showcasing the series’ violence and grit, choice and character. You’ll make painful decisions, interact with broken people, and participate in some of the most brutal, real-world action that’s ever been shown in a video game. In under an hour of play with a Mac build of the title, I have become one of The Walking Dead’s characters: a liar and a monster in the face of danger.

You’ll play through a vehicle named Lee, a loosely defined character with a mysterious history and an innocence about him. The opening takes place right before the world goes to hell. Lee is in the back of a police car, handcuffed, talking to the officer driving when, suddenly, the officer strikes a walker with his vehicle. The crash is a stomach-churning, and the action after is intense. Lee survives, but finds himself in a world where the dead shamble and the living sprint.

Lee goes on to meet a few characters, including a little girl who becomes something of a companion. As you progress, you’ll make choices that each character will “remember,” perhaps coloring the events in later episodes as you jump in and out of alliances with others, react calmly or violently, or lie. Thus far, I don’t have a great sense of how anything that I’m saying or doing will play out, and that’s perhaps The Walking Dead’s biggest upcoming challenge: these choices need to feel meaningful one way or another.

Mechanically, the game controls like a cross between Jurassic Park and Heavy Rain: you manually move Lee in very specific environments, searching for items and clues that will inevitably lead you to the next story point. The Walking Dead doesn’t rely on puzzles as a bridge. Instead, it leverages Lee’s confusion and desire: you find things for people or for Lee. Action segments challenge you to react fast, as you line up reticules or tap buttons to complete QTEs. The dialogue system, on the other hand, presents multiple flavors of response and a timer forces you to make snap judgements and decisions.

I appreciate the intensity of the writing. The Walking Dead invites you to explore a grim and violent world spotted with people who actually feel like people and react in extreme ways under the pressure of survival. Being able to lie to cover things up or get an “in” with a group of better equipped survivors, or save one person over another are the game’s strongest points of narrative design. I’ve been swaying between unnerved or moved as I progress, and this emotional connection is what appeals to me the most about the game as a whole.

We don’t know how the iPad (or iPhone) version of The Walking Dead will control, though the expectation is that it’ll work similarly to how Jurassic Park did with its basic and functional touch, tap, and swipe controls. We’re also not so sure when we’ll see this episode on our devices of choice. Rumor has it that the iOS versions have been delayed beyond its planned May launch. We’re checking on that.

Regardless, you’ll want to keep up with its progress. Provided Telltale will continue is trend of launching really, actually good ports of its games on iOS post-Jurassic Park, this is something I feel like could be required play material.

All of the assets in this article are from the PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade, or PSN version of the game. If it means anything to you, we played the Mac version with medium settings and it still looked fantastic. We expect this level of quality, at least, on the new iPad.

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One of my personal favorite games of 2011 was the quirky slot machine-meets-role-playing game King Cashing [$0.99 / Free ]. The slot machine battle system was a really different kind of idea that turned out to work great in practice, and the character leveling and upgradeable items drew you in to continue forging on through the campaign. We totally enjoyed King Cashing in our review, and about a month later a big update hit that added new weapons and a new kind of battle, making the whole game just that much better.

Yesterday the second major update hit for King Cashing, this one even bigger than the first. It adds an entire new Survival campaign where you face off against a string of enemies while utilizing the same pool of spin cherries. You can earn a small portion of cherries back by each time you defeat one of these enemies, but you can’t go back and replay levels to grind so efficient play is crucial if you’re going to last until the end of the campaign. It’s quite challenging and a great twist on the normal gameplay found in the original campaign mode.

Speaking of the original campaign this update also brings 3 new battles against “protected” bosses who are covered with shields which must be broken away before inflicting damage on the enemy itself. There’s 3 new weapons too, one for each class member, as well as some new bonus types and a myriad of other tweaks and fixes. The new Survival mode adds a great new way to experience King Cashing, and the other new goodies are all welcome additions as well. If you haven’t checked out King Cashing yet there’s a lite version to try and the full version is currently on sale for 99¢ to celebrate this new update.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines. As Nimblebit’s Pocket Planes continues to barrel through its beta period, we’ve had a chance to try out one of its new features. It’s been added since our GDC preview and we’re pretty sure you’re going to like it.

You know how Tiny Tower [Free] and Pocket Frogs [Free] have missions you can complete—stock this much of certain items, or breed certain colors and patterns of frogs? Pocket Planes is going to have missions, too, but they’re competitive. For these ones, you’re going to need a little help from your friends. Or rather, your flight crew.

A new Flight Crew challenge will be posted every so often—maybe twice a week. The challenges look to be pretty simple: deliver as many jobs (pieces of cargo and passengers) to a certain city somewhere in the world. You can’t just take any old thing, though. Everything in the game has a destination, and the destination needs to match the city for this to work.

Your Flight Crew can have as many or as few people as you can muster, but the more the better: the crews who manage to bring in the most jobs will win some very cool in-game prizes. Like, say, the bad boy below. Look familiar? Nimblebit is hard at work making up some very cool secret planes as we speak—here’s hoping for a good ol’ fashioned airship. And on top of the cosmetics, it sounds like there will be a Bux reward to boot.

Now Pocket Planes is still a work in progress, so none of this is set in stone. But currently, the only thing you need to join a Flight Crew is a Game Center account (which you don’t need to share with your crewmates) and a common Flight Crew name. If I were the sort of person who wanted to get a leg up on the competition, I might use that information to hit the forums and start drumming up a good team of people. While I was at it, I might try to recruit a few of the folks who have put 2323 pages of forum posts into trading frogs in Pocket Frogs. Those dudes seem like they might have the dedication for the job.

The rest of the game is coming along nicely, from what we’ve seen, and it looks like Zynga hasn’t caught on to it so far (fingers crossed!). Nimblebit isn’t ready to commit to a release window yet, but it can’t be too far over the horizon at this point. So stick around—we’ll have much more to show you as Pocket Planes gets ready to touch down.

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It’s been sort of a slow news day, so while we’re busy plugging away at busting out reviews from yesterday’s release onslaught, here’s two great deals you should be aware of. Actually, before you get either of these you should take a good long look at Ballistic SE [ $1.99 ] as I’ve been having a blast with it since it came out last night. But, anyway, on with the show.

Smash Cops, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Normally $2.99 and free for a limited time, Smash Cops is a really cool driving game where you (get this) play a cop, and smash into other cars. It’s worth checking out for the controls alone, because the way you drive the car is by “pushing” it with your finger. It’s hard to explain, and feels a little weird as first, but once you get into it you’ll wonder why more top-down games don’t employ similar controls.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Normally $4.99 and recently slashed to 99¢, Ascension is a deck building fantasy-based card game. I had some small gripes with the mechanics of the actual game itself in my review, but as far as a paper card game to iOS port, Ascension is flawless and worth checking out just to see how well it translates. 99¢ is also a stupidly good deal considering the physical version retails for $39.99. An expansion with new cards is available in game for $2.99, which sells for $29.99 in the real-world paper version.

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Remember early last month when we posted a gameplay video for Cyan’s upcoming RealMyst? Well, they’ve since gone and released a second video, which is equally impressive.

Take a look:

RealMyst, in case this is the first time you’ve heard of it, is a remake of the original Myst. Only, instead of the whole game being pre rendered, it’s rendered in real time, and allows you to have complete control over where you go and what you look at. This is especially crazy when you consider back when Myst was originally released, streaming the pre-rendered video off your CDROM drive was considered cutting edge. Now we’re just rendering all that in real time on your phone.

We’ve still yet to get a release date more specific than “Spring 2012.”

Thanks, @Vragal!

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Keep crossing your fingers: an iPad or a handset version of Botanicula is still in the cards, Czech developer Amanita Design has told TouchArcade. But before it can go forward with this version, it needs to go back. “We are still fully focused on the PC and Mac version of Botanicula,” representative said. “First, we need to fix all of the bugs and update the game on all channels, and then we’ll start to port the game on tablets.” The updates are basically ready, we’re told, so work should begin soon.

We last heard about a possible port of the gorgeous new adventure game in October 2011, well before its release on other platforms. At the time, Amanita said it needed to be able to experiment before it could take an iPad or iPhone port seriously. That phase of the development appears to be just beginning.

“I’m sure there will be many technological challenges and we’ll have to adjust also the design at some places so the experience on the tablets is perfect, but we are definitely excited about this version because I believe tablets are ideal devices for this kind of game,” we’re told.

If you have a Mac or PC, definitely give Botanicula a spin. It’s a beautiful game with a well-realized world and a delicious premise. We’re thinking it has the potential to be the Next Big Thing on iOS, so here’s to some relatively smooth sailing as Amanita begins work on this version.

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One of the absolute finest games available on the App Store is 11 Bit Studios’ Anomaly Warzone Earth [ $1.99 ]. Don’t believe me? Well check out our glowing 5 star review of the game from when it launched on iPad last August, and then consider that we chose it as our runner up for Game of the Year 2011. It’s not just us, either, as Anomaly has received critical praise across the gaming universe as well as plenty of award consideration, including winning a prestigious Apple Design Award for the Mac version.

So yeah, Anomaly Warzone Earth is good. And today it gets even better, as 11 Bit has just released the latest update for the game which adds high resolution Retina Display support for the new iPad. Anomaly was a gorgeous game to begin with, and it held up pretty well even on the new iPad anyway, but the difference this update makes is quite dramatic. All the text and UI elements are razor sharp and the in-game visuals are as crisp as they’ve ever been, practically popping right off the screen.

Of course, while Anomaly Warzone Earth really sings on the iPad, it can also be played just as well on the smaller screens of the iPhone and iPod touch. The original iPad version became Universal late last year, and to celebrate the new update it is currently on sale for just $1.99. If iPads aren’t your thing, the iPhone/iPod touch only version is also on sale for 99¢ [Link]. Basically what I’m getting at is that no matter how you do it, you must experience Anomaly one way or the other, and with the new update and sale now is a fantastic time to dive in.

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Most puzzle games would have you believe that fun only lies under a pile of rigid rules. That doesn’t seem quite right, when kids have the most fun playing without any rules at all. Whitaker Trebella’s Polymer [ ] isn’t child’s play, but it only demands one thing: a shape can’t have unfinished edges, or it’s not a shape. Everything else is fair game, and that sure feels freeing.

To create shapes in Polymer, you slide rows of pieces back and forth, columns up and down. When you’ve found a stopping point and slid your last piece into place, tapping the shape destroys it. With that, poof, your hard work is gone. In its place you’ll find a fresh canvas and a big pile of points to soothe you.

Polymer’s first mode serves as a good introduction. Called “Two Minutes,” it gives you that much time to create anything you like. A hundred tiny shapes in a row, cascading into ever multiplying combos? Sure. A few carefully crafted behemoths? Go ahead. Quality generally scores over quantity, but your masterpiece won’t be worth much if you can’t finish it in time.

“One Polymer” mode does what you might expect: it gives you as long as you need to create the ultimate shape. Each piece that you manage to add to it rockets your final score to new heights, but there comes a moment when your shape is so large and complex that every move you make will damage the surrounding structure. The most important skill you can learn here is how best to delay that moment.

“Bombs,” the third and final mode, adds, well, bombs to the mix. These are pieces with timers and four unfinished edges. Working them into a shape doubles its score, but the game ends if a single timer runs down to zero. More and more bombs are introduced as the game progresses. Here you need to know your limitations—how complex of a shape can you make within each time limit?

You’ll begin playing Polymer with only the first mode and two kinds of pieces, a rounded corner piece with two free edges and another that caps ends. Reaching a certain accumulated score unlocks the next piece, and then the next mode. It’s a good system, ensuring that you fully understand how to play with what you have before things get more complicated.

Unfortunately, this same system might prove frustrating for some players. Since the scoring scales on a steep curve, players who can’t pull off large shapes will find themselves pecking away at unlocks for much longer than necessary. There are two ways out of that hole: improve, or pay your way out. Each unlockable can be bought if you don’t have the patience to earn it. It’s a little too easy to see this as a push to make extra purchases.

Better to put your wallet away, though. The game is more fun when you have something to work toward aside from achievements and leaderboards, and playing without pushing yourself won’t get you far. Not only that: it’s entirely possible to get ridiculously high scores without the unlockable pieces. At the highest tier of play, you’re probably going to need them. Before then, though, they can actually get in the way, making the board too complicated for beginners. If you find yourself in over your head, you can toggle the more complex pieces off for as long as you need.

As mentioned in our preview, music plays a big part in the Polymer experience. The mood of each mode is enhanced by its soundtrack, cheery, studious and tense in turn. The tones created when you destroy a shape are equally fitting. This is one of those games you’ll want to play with the sound on.

The visuals are somewhat less appealing, at least at first. The look is clean and minimalistic, but when the pieces are all strung together they start to look a little sausage-like. It’s not the most pleasant association. I forgot all about that slight distaste after making a few complex shapes. I’ve saved pictures of a few of my successes for later, and been tempted to tweet more than one. If waiting to acclimate to the look doesn’t work for you, try one of the unlockable color schemes. Some are quite striking.

The thing that keeps me coming back isn’t color or music, though. It’s not even the selection of game modes. The game draws me in because it lets me be creative. It’s freeing to play a puzzle game that lets the player decide when a piece is finished. It’s great to have the choice to create something pretty, or huge, or sophisticated. Polymer cuts away all but the most necessary of rules, and the game is all the better for that. Take a look, and share your best creations in our forum thread.

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The highly anticipated update to Jetpack Joyride [ Free ] which Halfbrick has been teasing us with since we first checked it out at GDC has finally gone live in the App Store. Version 1.3 brings the major new addition of Gadgets to good ol’ Barry Steakries’ arsenal. There are 15 Gadgets in all which are unlocked with coins in The Stash area of the game. You can assign up to 2 different Gadgets to Barry at a time, and each one brings with it a special ability.

For example, the “Air Barrys” Gadget gives Barry a pair of sneakers that let him immediately jump into the middle of the screen, rather than waiting for the jetpack to slowly raise him to the same point. Or the Missile Jammer which will cause the missiles that target you from offscreen to come at you wobbly and slow. Or the X-ray Specs, which lets you see ahead of time what vehicle is waiting for you in the icon, as demonstrated in this latest teaser trailer.

As you can tell, these new Gadgets can dramatically change how you play the game, and if you thought you’d had your fill of Jetpack Joyride before there’s now a bunch of new items to unlock and use to reinvigorate you. There’s also new Game Center achievements and new mission types that tie into the use of the new Gadgets. And of course Jetpack Joyride is free to download and play, so if you somehow still haven’t gotten on board yet then what are you waiting for?

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