With the iPad 2 slated to hit consumers’ hands later today, developer’s are already beginning to release updates to their games that take advantage of the extra graphical processing power that we talked about in-depth yesterday.
Dead Space™ for iPad, $9.99 - First out of the gate is an update for Dead Space for iPad that features enhanced graphics and a couple of other user requested improvements. You can now freely adjust the look sensitivity, which was a sticking point in our review, and can also invert the Y-axis for gamers who prefer to play with that option. These latter two control options are also included in an update for the iPhone version of Dead Space [$6.99].
Check out these newly release screens for Dead Space for iPad that show off the improved iPad 2 visuals:
This update is already out and ready to go, and in addition Dead Space for iPad is currently on sale for $6.99 down from the original price of $9.99.
Infinity Blade, $5.99 - Also getting updated today is Chair’s epic sword battling game Infinity Blade. It was just last week during GDC that Infinity Bladereceived a huge update that practically doubled the content in the game, adding a new dungeon; new enemies, arenas, and items; and the ability to start a new game+ and continue leveling up to your heart’s content. Now Chair is already at it again with an update that optimizes Infinity Blade for the beefier hardware of the iPad 2.
The update for Infinity Blade is just starting to go live, so you may not see it in your updates tab right away as it's still propagating through Apple's servers, but keep checking as it should be available for you sometime today. Along with this Infinity Blade update, the update for Dead Space for iPad, and the just released Real Racing 2 HD [$9.99], there should be more than enough visual stimulation to show off to your friends if you're planning on picking up an iPad 2 today.
There's no doubt that Chair's Infinity Blade [$5.99] is a technical wonder, but the included plot left us scratching our heads in our review. You see, what keeps Infinity Blade going is your (usually) inevitable death at the hand of the God King. Following this, your successor takes up your sword, equipment, and xp/gold to continue the fight against the God King. It's a little weird, especially since you'd think after your great grandpa, your grandpa, and your father were all killed fighting the same entity that perhaps you'd pursue a career in something other than God King slaying.
Even though the story of the game can get a little ridiculous, especially as you hit the 10th (or further) bloodline, Infinity Blade is still an awesome game that anyone with hardware capable of running it needs to check out. If this is the first you've heard of Penny Arcade, you've likely got an afternoon full of going through their back catalog ahead of you, as it's one of my favorite web comics that any gamer should love.
I struggle to find a mechanic or point of level or enemy design in The Flying Hamster [$5.99] that I can use to put the game on a pedestal, to show you that its better than the rest of its side-scrolling, shoot ‘em up brethren on the App Store.
I find myself in this backbreaking dilemma because the game is so goddamn cute -- it’s so full of life, character, and expressiveness, that I’m compelled to justify my adoration of it by conjuring positive opinions about its design that just aren’t present.
The experience is basic. You control an avatar with a limitless primary attack against a diverse range of enemies, each type possessing a unique range and rate of fire. Your goal is to reach an endpoint, to successfully navigate a storm of bullets and enemies to some arbitrary destination guarded by a bullet sponge of a boss.
Your ability to recognize and memorize patterns is the difference between success and defeat. Enemies, including bosses, aren’t erratic -- enemies are scripted and each level plays out the same, which is a good thing considering that there are no checkpoints.
But here’s the deal: all of this simplistic, generic stuff is awash in color, inspiration, and genuine character. Your avatar is an anthropomorphic hamster that can fly. Your enemies are penguins floating down from the heavens while shooting rounds from their hand cannons, angry rams, seagulls, cuddly vampire bats, and red scorpions that shoot pellets out of their venom-laced tails. Your weapons are your own loogies, streams of root beer, and seeds.
And the expressiveness! Each level is capped by a cut-scene of this adorable hamster created in a Japanese style that emotes a bright and cheery tone that flows into the level design, the equally upbeat audio, and the boss fights.
The character, I think, hides something a little more feral than you’d like -- The Flying Hamster doesn’t give you many opportunities to continue. You start the game with five lives and it ends after you lost them. Plus, the points you accumulate are based on what you scored in a single life; it’s not cumulative.
The controls can be a point of frustration. The standard layout gives you the ability to move your character wherever, no matter where your finger is on the screen, which is a nice touch… whenever you’re not inadvertently hiding an enemy with your flesh. Those times, however, are few.
But while that controls and difficulty can be a bummer considering how little this game gives you to work with in terms of chances and tools to succeed, I feel like its art and character triumphs. Sure, The Flying Hamster is not even close to being the best shoot ‘em up available on the App Store, but it’s one of the best-looking and most artistically inspired of the bunch. Give it a shot if you don't mind routine design or a challenge. Or if you're into looking at cute animals.
Earlier this month we posted a brief teaser video from developer Mobigame for their newest iOS title called Perfect Cell [$5.99]. The video didn't explain much in the way of gameplay, nothing at all in fact, and we were left scratching our heads wondering exactly what Perfect Cell was all about. Now that the game has actually been released I've spent a good deal of time with it, and it has turned out to be unlike anything I could have imagined. It's sort of a mishmash of genres, with elements of action, platforming, stealth, and puzzle. These end up working really well together, and coupled with intuitive controls and a beautiful graphics engine, Perfect Cell is a good time from beginning to end.
The story of Perfect Cell starts as an asteroid crash lands to Earth in the not too distant future. Humans discover a form of life in the asteroid that is advancing at an incredible rate. They keep this life form in a research facility deep below the sea in order to study it, but after some time the alien grows into a sentient being who doesn't fancy being held in captivity. It then becomes your job to control this squid-like alien as you negotiate intricate levels full of puzzle-like traps, enemies, and hidden passages in an effort to break free.
The look of Perfect Cell employs a 2.5D perspective, similar to Shadow Complex, with fully 3D backgrounds but action that takes place on a single side-scrolling 2D plane. The lighting effects in the game look fantastic, as do the style of the characters and environments. The underwater facility almost gives off a James Bond-like vibe with giant computer panels and scientists in lab coats spread throughout. Shortly after the game begins soldiers start to infiltrate the facility, and don't seem to take kindly to the scientists, and certainly don't take kindly to the alien being.
You control your alien in Perfect Cell by simply touching and dragging to move, or touching and holding to call the alien to that position. Quickly swiping the screen performs a dashing attack that can kill enemies and bash through certain structures to find hidden areas. Later in the game a super dash attack is introduced, where you can charge up and draw a line that the alien will rapidly follow, killing anything along the path. Also, as you progress you'll run across a couple of your alien buddies which absorb into you, making you larger and stronger. You can then use a pinching apart gesture to split yourself into two or three separate beings, controlling each individually to conquer tasks that require being in multiple places at the same time.
Perfect Cell contains 35 levels to play through, and in reality it will only take several hours to complete them when destroying anything in your path. The real genius to this game comes from not killing people. There is a stealth element to the game, and its very possible to complete every level without killing a single person. This is where serious strategy comes into play. Upon seeing you guards will become alerted in a very Metal Gear Solid kind of way, minus the exclamation point above their head, and will seek you out for a short time before becoming bored and going back to normal patrol.
It would be easy to just dash attack the life out of these guards, but when trying to complete the game without killing anyone you'll need to take advantage of hiding spots and your ability to cloak yourself by staying still. Taking this pacifist's route through the game is really challenging, and practically turns Perfect Cell into two completely different games depending on how you play.
The only real problems I had while playing came from the controls. They're very intuitive and touch screen friendly, but lack precision at times when you need it. Also the dash attack isn't always reliable, and when you're counting on pulling one off during the split second when a guard's back is turned it can be detrimental when the move doesn't come through. These problems are minor, however, and for the most part there's nothing that will hamper you from progressing and enjoying the game.
There's really nothing like Perfect Cell on the iOS platform, and it offers some refreshing gameplay and fetching visuals. It doesn't take too long to whiz through the game when you're killing everything you see, but sparing lives and utilizing stealth offers a real challenge that will keep you busy for a while. There is also Game Center integration for achievements and high score tracking. Fans of games like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid will find similar gameplay in Perfect Cell, along with the exploration and puzzle solving of the Metroid series.
Perfect Cell blends all these different elements together seamlessly, and creates an experience that feels like its own. Players in our forums have been enjoying this one too, and Perfect Cell is recommended if you enjoy any of these previously mentioned influences or are just looking for a new unique gaming experience.
Trilobyte recently had an update to The 7th Guest [$2.99 / $5.99] land on the App Store which addresses a few complaints that we had in our review and that forum members had in the game's thread. Music now loops properly, and the game's animations have been slowed to their intended speed allowing for much more dramatic movement through the house.
The virtual mouse cursor and vintage save system still persists, but it's really great to play the game at the original speed it was intended to be played at. It would be nice if there was a toggle somewhere in the options for a "turbo mode" to make the game as fast as it was before, but maybe we'll see something like that in future updates or even in the upcoming sequel 11th Hour.
The first Infinity Blade [$5.99] update Chair Entertainment spoke about last week is coming tomorrow, according to a recent press release. As mentioned, this "booster pack" raises the game's cap to 40 to 45 courtesy of the five new swords, shields, helmets and the additional set of armor it adds. The update also adds the Marrow Fiend to the game, the first of several new enemies promised to come in later updates.
There are a couple of surprises bundled into this booster as well. One of those aforementioned helmets will be a "Santa-themed" helm. Also, Chair has added the ability to listen to your own music while playing through the game on top of several bug fixes and "optimizations."
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that this update will allow you to purchase gold in the game with real world cash. Chair PR says it's added this due to "popular demand," but something tells us the smell and taste of green was a great motivator, too. And good on them, really. Chair created a fantastic game, released it at a low price, and deserves the extra money.
However, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the game's precious balance is maintained in future updates and DLC -- either paid or free -- moving forward. I'd hate not to get rewarded with as much gold as I'm accustomed to because people like to buy fake currency with real currency. Benefit of the doubt, though. Again, Chair did a bang-up job on Infinity Blade. It's one of the coolest iOS titles this year, for sure.
Here's a neat one. The creative nucleus of Infinity Blade [$5.99] was originally concieved as a Kinect title instead of an iOS game. Game creator Chair Entertainment's co-founder Donald Mustard explains in another delicious Joystiq interview post.
"We always have some cool ideas on deck, and kind of the inception of Infinity Blade began as a discussion around: 'If we were going to make a Kinect title, what would we make? What would a Chair Kinect game look like?'," he said.
"That discussion happened, you know, a year and a half ago. We had this really cool design, and it's not that dissimilar from the game you're playing today; it's just been refined and adapted to the iOS screen, which honestly I think is where the design works the best. "
Mustard neglected to get specific about what ideas were being thrown around in these conceptual stages of Infinity Blade, but theoretically, a Kinect version of the action RPG would have you acting out the sword swings and parries and near-miss dodges with your body and arms instead of your fingers. It's a neat idea, and what's wild is, it could totally work. Kinect fairs best with broad, sweeping motions such as a pretend sword slash. But that's not to say Infinity Blade sucks on the iOS. It's, as we've said before, a fantastic Chair joint.
The kicker here is that even though plans changed for Infinity Blade, a Kinect version could still happen. "Yeah," other Chair co-founder Geremy Mustard told Joystiq, "if the Kinect really takes off over the holiday season, who knows?"
Who knows, indeed. Maybe I'll actually turn on my Kinect again if Chair decides to bless it with the gift of Infinity Blade.
Riven: The Sequel to Myst [$5.99] might have just been ported for the last time. (Eh, who are we kidding.) Developed in 1997 for the PC, Riven has seen releases on the Mac OS, Pocket PC, the original PlayStation, and even the Sega Saturn. This morning, Riven was released for the iOS a little more than a decade after its original creation.
As its name outright says, Riven is a continuation of the Myst series. It's a point-and-click adventure locked in a first-person perspective, much like its forerunner. And it features a similar approach to puzzle design and basic world navigation. Essentially, you're a walking monkey wrench that can fuss with levers and various other mechanical devices in addition to being able to decipher codes and symbols.
If you've played Myst properor Myst [$4.99]iOS, in other words, you'll probably feel right at home with Riven.
Our forum members have been pretty excited for this port and seem happy with it thus far, which is to be expected. Cyan Worlds, the original developer of Riven and Myst, are the dudes making Riven iOS possible. They kind of know what they're doing at this point, you know?
Chair Entertainment's Donald Mustard has shared some spectacular news with the folks over at Joystiq. The first update to Infinity Blade [$5.99] is due out at some point next week and it'll add a total of five new weapons, five fresh shields, five helmets, a brand new set of armor, and a new foe called the "Marrow Fiend" to the action RPG.
Mustard calls this a "booster pack." It's the first of two planned, the second of which will see a release at some point in January.
Chair hasn't been shy in the past about its plans to support Infinity Blade post release. Online competitive support has been promised, in addition to new items, areas, and monsters. As for when we'll see those new areas and multiplayer? Well, these might take a bit to create considering that the Infinity Blade team is only 12-men strong and quality is a serious priority.
But that doesn't mean Mustard didn't have anything to share on that front. Speaking about new areas, Mustard said "There will be new areas to go to, the story will be evolving a little more as you see what the God King is really up to, and we're going to let people down into the dungeons." He added that these new foes in the dungeon will "make the [current] enemies look like nothing."
Ah, so exciting. Anyone else tap out their current character and itching for some new content? Surely I'm not the only freak out there.
Let's rewind time back to 1993. You're sitting at your brand new (or Frankstein monster of upgraded components) DOS-based PC staring at this newfangled CD-ROM drive that you paid an insane premium for, wondering what in the world to do with it aside from listen to your DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince CD on repeat while marveling at just how cool your acid washed jeans were. One thing lead to another and eventually you found yourself staring at the shelf of CD-ROM PC games at the local Egghead Software trying to rationalize the $79.95 price tag. You haven't played a CD-ROM-based game before, and decide to give it a try.
After jumping through all the hoops that installing the game required, you find yourself knee-deep in one of the most impressive things you've ever seen your computer do: Display full motion video and offer a shockingly immersive atmosphere that your previous disk-based games couldn't even begin to touch. You then proceed to spend the rest of the day glued to your computer, endlessly attempting to figure out the puzzles the game contained within.
If you have similar memories of playing these classic CD-ROM based games of the early 90's, this is likely where you can stop reading this review. The 7th Guest [$2.99 / HD] offers the same awesome blast from the past as Myst [$4.99 / Free], and even hearing the music of the opening sequence will be more than worth the three bucks to you. If The 7th Guest was before your time, or you're not the kind of person to mash the download button for the sake of nostalgia, read on...
The 7th Guest is set in a mysterious mansion owned and operated by Henry Stauf, a drifter turned toy-maker, then puzzle maker, then creepy mansion builder thanks to a series of visions he experienced and acted on. I'm reluctant to get too involved in discussing the story of the game, because the way it is revealed through sets of ghostly cut scenes and puzzles is a huge part of the experience. You play as Ego, an amnesiac who finds himself at the mansion, traveling from room to room, solving various puzzles. These puzzles range from incredibly difficult word games, chess-based games, and other logic games.
What you will get out of The 7th Guest largely depends on just how much you rely on outside resources for solving the puzzles. Back in the glory days of CD-ROM gaming, you weren't instantly able to find the solution to any puzzle like you can now thanks to the wonders of Google. You were forced to utilize the in-game hint system, which amounted to a cryptic book found in the library that offers vague hints on how to complete puzzles. If you cheat to find (or remember) the solutions to these puzzles, you'll likely be able to complete the entire game before you know it. However, if you have the gumption to sit down and figure out the puzzles on your own, you'll be in for hours and hours of fun (or frustration).
The game is controlled via a curious conglomeration of the classic mouse pointer the game was originally designed for and the touch interface of iOS devices. When you touch the screen, the pointer appears near your finger. Dragging around and hovering the cursor over things reveals where you can go, where puzzles are, and where paranormal events you can trigger in the house are. "Clicking" is accomplished by lifting your finger off the screen. Whatever you had the pointer hovering over gets "clicked" which triggers everything from movement to selecting puzzle pieces inside of the puzzles.
The control scheme works, but feels far from ideal. The game was originally designed for the precision of a mouse pointer, so changing everything over to being touch sensitive without this workaround would likely require a complete redo of most of the game. In my play through, I didn't come across anything that was impossible to do with this control scheme, but many of the puzzles (especially the more intricate ones) can be downright irritating to complete. On the iPad, these controls work a little bit better thanks to the increased screen real estate, but they still aren't great. The good news is, even though the controls are annoying at times, the game runs substantially faster on the iPhone than it ever did on any other platform I've played it on.
One of the first puzzles you come across is a puzzle where you must divide up a cake evenly. I clearly remember that puzzle on my ancient computer taking forever to complete, because each clip came with its associated sound clip and animation that stuttered across the screen of my PC. On the iPhone, all of these animations are fast and silky smooth. Moving about the mansion is the same way, allowing you to practically run from one side to the other. If it wasn't for the crazy control scheme, this would be the best version of The 7th Guest yet.
As you play the game more, other issues rear their ugly heads. Like many retro ports that have made their way to the App Store, the best part about The 7th Guest is that it's such a faithful port. Consequently, this is also its biggest flaw as gaming has moved forward quite a bit since then, and the lack of any kind of modern gameplay conventions might turn off new players. For instance, the game lacks any kind of undo function in puzzles, forcing you to commit to every move you make, or reloading from your last save if you made a mistake.
Also, the menu system persists from the PC game, forcing you to navigate it with the odd cursor system, even forcing you to type out the names of your game saves with the virtual mouse pointer instead of the native iOS keyboard. The game also seems to have issues with looping music too, leaving you to complete puzzles in silence (aside from voices) once the track that is playing completes.
None of these things stopped me from having fun playing through The 7th Guest, but I would exercise caution if you have no history with and/or no nostalgia for the game. The 7th Guest is a classic early 90's CD-ROM game that still plays exactly like an early 90's CD-ROM game. While I totally appreciate that this port exists, I just wish a little more care was put in to making it into a good iOS game that would appeal to a broader audience to get more people interested in series, instead of merely a good game that runs on the iOS platform that seems catered specifically to lovers of the original.
We've been following Chair's Infinity Blade [$5.99] like a hawk since we first caught wind of the game at the Apple Keynote. Through various interviews, trailers, screenshots, and other snippets of information, the hype surrounding Infinity Blade's release couldn't possibly be more intense. For what it is, it's an absolutely fantastic gesture-based fighting game that has without a doubt the best graphics we've seen so far on an iOS device. However, for all that it is, there are also many things that it's not.
The game opens with a cut scene with your character ascending the castle to come face to face with the God King. In a cryptic foreign language decoded with subtitles, they chat back and forth for a bit before the God King dispatches his guard to fight you. This begins a brief tutorial which ultimately ends in the God King slamming his Infinity Blade straight through your gut, draining your essence, and powering up the God King even further. This begins the infinite loop that is Infinity Blade, as 20 years later, your successor stands staring the very same castle in the face.
Navigating the castle is all done via a point and click interface, where you tap pulsating circles, watch a brief cinematic animation, and wind up where you tapped. At each stop you can look around, but you can never move anywhere but to the next waypoint. When an enemy appears, you can inspect them with a button in the bottom right corner of the screen, or tap them to fight them, which is when the real fun begins.
Infinity Blade is a game of technique more than anything else. Looking at the combat at its most basic level, you're able to swing your sword by swiping, block by tapping the block button in the bottom center of the screen, or dodge either direction by tapping the bottom right or left sides of the screen. Sure, you can randomly block, dodge, and swing wildly, but doing well really involves putting all these moves together to avoid taking any damage while dishing as much out as you can.
My favorite part of the combat system is parrying. When fighting enemies, you're able to parry attacks by swinging your sword in the direction to collide with the incoming strike. It's not that simple though, as different enemies all have different attack speeds, as well as different attacks which might be faster or slower. An immense amount of timing is required to successfully parry, especially as you progress in the game. For instance, you might be fighting an enemy who is winding up a slow but extremely powerful attack. If you swing your sword too soon, you'll just scratch the enemy. Too late, and you'll have already taken it to the face. Dodging works much the same way.
The truly neat part of all this is just how well the animation of your character translates to each swipe on the screen. If you swipe right, your character swings right, swipe left, and he swings left, and so on. What you begin to realize once you get farther in to the game is just how exact and deliberate each swipe needs to be. There isn't any way to cancel your current swing once you swipe on the screen, so swiping in the wrong direction or at the wrong time can leave you open for attack for the entire duration of the swing animation. It all works incredibly well, and is just ridiculously cool once you begin to grasp these kind of nuances.
Once you successfully progress through the castle, which will likely only take you around a half hour of solid play, you'll be face to face with the God King again. It seems like with perfect technique, beating the God King might be possible on your first play through, but it seems far outside my ability. Inevitably, you will die, which just like the beginning of the game leads to your essence being sucked out. Thankfully, the God King is a good sport, and seemingly allows your next of kin to retrieve your corpse, all your gear, and any experience you've accumulated.
After that, the next bloodline begins, with the successor of the previous victim of the God King overlooking the castle ready to try again. Why the God King keeps giving your loot to your predecessor and why your family doesn't just decide that killing God Kings just isn't for them isn't ever explained. If you don't kill the God King, you can send generation after generation of your bloodline to their death. Maybe I'm too much of a pacifist, but if I had heard that my great grandpa, my grandpa, and my Dad were all killed by the same God King, I'd explore a career in something other than revenge, but I digress.
The way the equipment, experience, and magic system works in Infinity Blade is awesome. You earn experience through items, and as you fight, items are filled with experience until they're mastered. For example, you buy a new sword from the in-game store with your gold coins that looks really cool. That sword has its own experience bar, and it gains a bit of experience after each battle. Any experience it earns, you also earn, and your character also has his own experience bar for leveling up. Once you fight enough with that sword to fill its experience bar, you master it. Mastered items provide an additional bonus, with the drawback that you can no longer gain experience through that item.
This requires you to balance your equipment load-out based on several factors. Obviously, experience is required to level up your character. Using all mastered items, or more than a few, flat-out stops or greatly reduces the amount of experience you're able to earn. If you've got a difficult battle coming up, you could equip all your mastered items to be more effective, but you'd be sacrificing all the experience you'd earn from the fight. Additionally, items have elemental properties to them for casting magic spells such as a fire spell, a lightning spell, and more. These are executed by tapping an icon when it's ready in the top right corner of the screen, then drawing the spell's gesture on the screen.
The equipment system adds a really great element of replay value to the game. While the looping nature of the game is a little silly, the RPG-loving experience bar filling side of me absolutely loves how you're constantly cycling new gear, leveling that gear up, and equipping something new. With each play through as your strength increases, so do the enemies you're fighting, and the rewards you're given.
If you were expecting Infinity Blade to be some massive open-world RPG and any number of other things I've seen people on our forums suggesting, you're going to be sorely disappointed. If all you were looking for is a fighting game with a really cool input method that fits perfectly with iOS devices, you're going to be in for a treat. The RPG elements are very light, but the fighting is solid, and the graphics are the best we've seen so far on the App Store. Infinity Blade is universal, and seems to play equally well on both the small screen of the iPhone and the big screen of the iPad. I cannot stress enough just how great the graphics in this game are. The bar has been raised, and anyone with a device capable of running the game needs to download Infinity Blade to see what the iOS platform is capable of.
Early this year we got word that Cyan's Riven: The Sequel to Myst, would be making its way to the iPhone. An update came in a Myst online forum post by Cyan's Mark DeForest ('Chogon') back in August, including a few screenshots and an indication that an iPad version, Riven HD, would follow the iPhone release into the App Store.
This past Saturday, DeForest announced that Riven has finally been submitted to Apple and that we can expect to see it in 10 days to two weeks.
The version that was submitted is the iPhone / iPod touch release -- Riven HD that specifically supports the iPad will come later. (Of course, like all iPhone games, it can be played on the iPad in the shrunken fashion.)
The iPhone version was not written to specifically take advantage of the iPhone 4's Retina display, but the source images that make up the game are 608x392 pixels in size, which iOS scales down to 480x320 on older displays. The iPhone 4, thanks to the way iOS handles the scaling, will take advantage of the image's source resolution to render them more clearly on the Retina display.
This initial release contains Game Center support, but in a limited fashion. There is one achievement and a score leaderboard for the fastest time getting to the end of the game. "Tons" of achievements and OpenFeint integration will come in a future update.
The game features an integrated Shake-A-Hint system, with various settings, that highlights action points to help stuck players along.
The game is huge -- it will require 2GB free to install (though some of that will be freed up once the install process is complete).
Riven will launch at a price of US $5.99
We'll be sure to let readers know when Riven: The Sequel to Myst goes live in the App Store.
Cyan's classic Myst [link] arrived in the App Store in the Spring of 2009 and is currently priced at $4.99.
If you've been wondering when in the world you're going to be able to play Chair's upcoming Unreal Engine powered sword fighter, Infinity Blade, the wait is over. A release date of December 9th was just announced, at a price of $5.99. Infinity Blade will be a universal app, and will run on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch as well as the iPad.
In addition, a new set of screenshots have been released:
Needless to say, as soon as the game appears for download we'll be reviewing it, and we really can't wait to get our hands on it.
Now this is a press release that I didn't think I'd ever see, as both Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [$5.99] and Streets of Rage [$2.99] were just updated to support full multiplayer co-op modes via Bluetooth. To play, you'll obviously need two devices, each equipped with Bluetooth and their own copy of the game. In Sonic, players will be able to play through the game together with one person controlling Sonic and the other controlling Tails. In Streets of Rage, players will fight together through the game as they purge the streets of bad guys.
It's incredibly cool to see both of these games updated, as it means that Sega has been working on improving their Genesis emulator, which as we've mentioned several times in the past leaves much to be desired. With Bluetooth multiplayer working, my imagination is running wild with two player games I'd love to see Sega bring to the App Store. If you own either Sonic 2 or Streets of Rage and know a friend who does too, snatch up these updates as soon as possible.
We loved Beyond Ynth [$3.99 / HD] in our review, but went as far as to mention the fact that the game can be frustrating in the review title. Don't get me wrong, I love a good puzzle game that can leave me stumped at times, but needing to redo entire levels due to minor errors in execution caused my shiny new iPhone 4 to nearly become an airborne projectile more times than I'd care to admit. Before I get ahead of myself, here is a brief overview of the gameplay poached from our review:
Kribl (the bug you play as) will start at one side of a level and use a series of boxes to get to the exit on the other side. Boxes come in various shapes and sizes, and once you crawl inside of one you can tilt the box over by pushing on one of the inner walls. You'll “roll” these boxes by tilting them over and over to progress through the level. The puzzle element in Beyond Ynth comes from being able to align the openings of the boxes together so you can make your way from one to the other without accidentally getting yourself stuck. You must also think ahead in order to properly deal with the environmental hazards and other various objects present in each of the levels.
The gameplay mechanics work well, but later levels are incredibly brutal, and to say they test your patience is an understatement. FDG Entertainment thankfully came to the realization that the game could still be fun and difficult without being frustrating by introducing a new rewind system. When the upcoming 1.1 update lands, players will be able to rewind back up to a minute of play. Fall in some lava? No big deal, just hit rewind. They even have an awesome VHS-style effect when you do it:
The only catch? Your score gets reset to 0 as soon as you tap the rewind button. Otherwise, you can rewind whenever you want, as much as you want, with the only limit being that you can only go back up to a minute. I think this is a great compromise, because hardcore types shooting for high scores can still do that, and people like me, who just want to have fun playing through the game don't need to shout a series of expletives when I fall in lava inches from the level goal. In addition, 1.1 will come with Game Center support and onboard videos that show the solutions to the levels if you find yourself really stumped.
1.1 has already been submitted, and according to FDG, its release is "imminent".
I struggle to find a mechanic or point of level or enemy design in The Flying Hamster [
The first Infinity Blade [$
Here's a neat one. The creative nucleus of Infinity Blade [$
Riven: The Sequel to Myst [$
Chair Entertainment's Donald Mustard has shared some spectacular news with the folks over 
We loved Beyond Ynth [
