So, I have a confession to make. I was prepared to dislike Baseball Superstars 2012 [Free]. You can blame Homerun Battle 2 [$4.99/Lite] for that one, as it had left me deeply distrustful of freemium sports games. Nonetheless, driven by Air Penguin [99¢/Lite] inspired optimism and the extravagant amount of praise that had been lavished over the franchise, I ended up downloading it anyway.
I'm glad I did. Though not what you would call 'your must-have game in the event of a zombie apocalypse', Baseball Superstars 2012 is still kinda awesome. Depending on how much you like your baseball, it might even be extremely awesome. There's a part of me that wants to be the cranky curmudgeon and witheringly observe that Baseball Superstars 2012 is, while a competent product, just a souped-up version of the one from the previous years, but I can't. The rest of me is too busy cultivating my digitized athletes.
There's a reason MMORPG players use the term "trash" to describe the stuff that leads up to raid bosses: it's missing all the great rewards, and it's almost always lame. It's junk, in other words, junk that pads the time between the good parts. Red Zebra Games clearly knows the score, because Raid Leader [99¢] skips right past the trash to bring us nothing but the good stuff—intense, white-knuckled battles.
As we pointed out in our preview, the big picture will look familiar to Battleheart [$2.99] fans. But it's the little details that get this recovering World of Warcraft addict's heart a-fluttering. There was a time when damage number spam, health bars and massively telegraphed attacks were my bread and butter, and boy do they come out in force here.
Before I get your hopes up, though, let me be clear. This isn't the next Battleheart, and it's not raiding in World of Warcraft. It's far, far simpler than either. If you're looking for a deeply strategic RTS-RPG, this might be a bit casual for your tastes, but it's a potent combo for those of us nursing fond memories of raiding.
Raid Leader lacks Battleheart's big list of classes, levels and loot. Instead it has bosses, and the three things any proper team needs to defeat them: a tank, a DPS class, and a healer (in the forms of the Knight, Hunter and Priest). Each of them has a bevy of skills to unlock and choose from, and choose you must, because each character can only bring two skills into battle. You might want to deal damage, snare and buff with one character, but you have to pare that down to the skills you really need. That's half the game's strategy right there.
The other half is the battles themselves. There are fifteen levels in total, with 2 arenas, 8 original bosses and a powered-up heroic version of all but the last. These have minions, lasers, death zones and many other familiar tricks, requiring priority targeting, clever positioning and quick reflexes. Lest you think I'm being irresponsible with my WoW comparisons, by the way, one of those bosses is nearly a one-to-one clone of Karsh Steelbender from the most recent expansion. Not that I mind. It just feels a little too much like coming home, if you know what I mean.
Your survival depends on two things: how well you've chosen and upgraded your skills, and how well you can pay attention and perform. It also helps to have a basic understanding of MMORPG-style battles. You'll have an easier time if you already know that the tank should keep the enemies' backs to his team, or when to toss a heal-over-time and switch targets. Admittedly, though, knowing too many tricks takes a little fun out of figuring out the right strategies for each fight, especially when kiting works so effectively.
Because of this, the game sometimes fails to straddle the line between too easy and too hard. Executing a strategy is often fairly simple, because the bosses never have more than three or four plainly timed and well-telegraphed abilities. You'll never have serious trouble figuring out how to handle an encounter when anything tricky is explained on screen.
You'll still run into plenty of difficulty, though. Two things will conspire to stop you no matter how well you can plan. The first is the somewhat-awkward touch controls. Like in Battleheart, you drag one hero to another to heal or attack, and drag your heroes around the screen to move them. Because those two actions are so similar, you may occasionally find the game mixing up your intent. Worse, though, is the way the controls sometimes lead to deaths-by-Notification-Center. Those probably can't be helped, but that doesn't keep them from being frustrating.
The second big roadblock is the enrage timer most bosses sport. This isn't a problem, it's a classic MMORPG mechanic. Three or four minutes into a fight, the boss becomes immensely more powerful. This isn't designed to kill you instantly, but it does keep you from flinging yourself at a boss for ages if you're not powerful enough to defeat it. In Raid Leader, you're not going to run down the clock because you haven't leveled enough or hit the right gear level. Instead, it's your skills that can fall behind.
The three classes each get eight or nine skills to play with. These include a healthy mix of class-appropriate heals, attacks, buffs, debuffs and so on. You can pay out the coins you earn from defeating bosses to upgrade them up to four times each. If you're a better player than I am you might be able to get by with nothing more than the coins you earn from each boss. I rather doubt it, though. It gets seriously tough to pump out enough damage to beat the enrage even when you're doing well. If you hit a wall and decide you need more coins, you have two options: grind or pay.
It's kind of a lame choice. Grinding is actually fun in Raid Leader, but it's hard to turn down the comparatively massive number of coins you can get by putting down an extra dollar or two. If you do, you can earn a decent rate in two arenas fighting waves of minions, or you can replay completed boss fights. You can earn Game Center achievements and leaderboard rank for beating bosses quickly, so this isn't a bad way to go.
I just wish there was more of everything. I want a reason to pull out more skills and level them higher. I'd dread putting hours into WoW at this point, but the few brief hours I put into Raid Leader left me craving a lot more. That's not a bad thing, assuming there's more to come. While we're talking updates, Red Zebra, could you work out the spelling errors and put some clothes on the poor Hunter? She's literally fighting in a bikini. Not even a chainmail bikini, just a few flimsy scraps of nothing.
Raid Leader isn't perfect, and it's not perfectly original. That said, it sure is fun. Any recovering raider will find plenty of great nods and familiar concepts, and anyone who's wondered why folks make such a fuss about raiding will get a low-impact introduction. Drop by our discussion thread to let us know what you think, and point out how much you want more levels while you're there. For me. Because even though I can quit any time, I really don't want to quite yet.
I have no shame whatsoever in telling you that I was literally obsessed with Mystwhen it came out in 1993. The mystical adventure that dared me to tumble into an unknown world and explore beautiful oversized tomes to unlock its secrets had everything that I wanted from a game at the time. It gave me a solo adventure, puzzles that were hard as hell to solve, and atmosphere for miles. I just might have played Myst (and all the clones of it) a rather embarrassing number of times.
So, it was really kind of a given that I was going to be thrilled to see The Lost City [99¢], which at a glance seemed to be aimed like a notched arrow at the heart of the Myst-era adventure game lover. Of course, anyone who was with me on the long ride through the adventure clones that Myst spawned knows that there were a handful of decent ones, but mostly many, many bad ones.
Fly With Me [99¢] from Electronic Arts may resemble a cute kids game about a flying bird, but it's not actually as simplistic as it seems. You tap the screen to make the little bird fly and try to collect three stars and reach the birdhouse at the end of the level. This may sound easy, but the catch is you have a limited number of wing-flaps available.
Each time you tap the screen to flap your wings, your flap-meter decreases slightly. Once that meter is depleted, you'll literally fall out of the sky with an amusing animation as you splat into the ground. So, you quickly learn to be more conservative with your flaps, and glide whenever possible. NOT flapping is a key part of this game. Your flap-meter must also be replenished by eating bees, otherwise you won't have enough flaps to reach the end.
Depending on how you look at it, my weekend was either a complete success or a disastrous waste. Asides from my daily ablutions, I've done nothing but sit on my derriere and play Capcom's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective [Free]. It's true. I'm not ashamed.
I would be ashamed if this was a cheap rip-off stemming from some copycat's attempt to cash in on a popular indie title somewhere but Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective isn't that sort of game. If you had to liken it to a gender-unspecific trophy spouse, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective would be a 6'2" Scandinavian model with a degree in rocket science and a part-time job as a professional comedian. You won't be ashamed to be caught with this one.
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.
After spending some quality time with a preview version of Int13’s new bullet hell shooter Shogun: Rise of the Renegade [Free] last week, we were eager to get our hands on the final version to see how it all came together. And sure enough, earlier this week Shogun quietly snuck into the App Store.
It was interesting that Int13 was departing from their typical augmented reality based games, like ARDefender [Free], and trying their hand at an established and nuanced genre like arcade-style manic shoot ‘em ups, especially with veteran shmup developer Cave basically cornering the market with their stable of high-quality ports. However, Int13 has surprised me with just how right they got Shogun, and while it might fail to totally impress the more discerning bullet hell enthusiast, fans of shmups in general will find a lot of action and fun brimming from the game.
Back in October 2011, we saw a preview of the arcade-puzzler Hank Hazard [99¢] from Red Rocket Games and Chillingo. Well, a few months have passed, but it's finally out. And after punching, dropping, rolling and blowing up Hank the bucktooth hamster for a couple of hours, I realized I was enjoying myself.
Hank is a brave rodent, who dreams of being the worlds first "stunt-hamster". He's sealed inside a transparent hamster-ball which must maneuver through each level, collecting three stars before crashing into the finish target. It's part "physics game" and part "puzzler", as you need to determine a safe way through each level.
Did you know that penguins spend up to 75% of their time underwater, looking for food in the ocean? Or, if Chillingo’s recent Greedy Penguins [99¢/Lite] is to be believed, they spend 85% of their time on ice floes, waiting for you to feed them, 10% of their time playing guitar and burping, and 5% of their time getting eaten by ravenous Orcas.
Greedy Penguins is a bird-centric physics puzzler (what a concept!) that revolves around you finding ways to get incredibly stressed-out fish in the mouths of the correspondingly-colored penguins. You tap the fish to drop it from its hook and get it rolling, then through a combination of timing and obstacle-clearing, get it to the right-colored penguin. Once your penguin is successfully fed, he coughs up ice cream, which you tap to feed each level’s companion and get bonus points when completing the level, garnering a one, two, or three-fish rating.
Fingle [$0.99] should come with a warning. Maybe "Caution: always bring protection"? I mean, sure the iPad is great for co-op games with the fam, but not this time. This time, things might just get a little... heavy.
Finger twister isn't new, but Fingle is a finger twister game with one purpose: flirtation. A cheesy soundtrack, suggestive backdrops and more than a few double entendres might be enough, but Fingle doesn't settle for enough. Your fingers will stroke hers, or his. You'll make terribly lewd gestures at one another. Fingle takes its premise all the way.
Here's how you play the game: there are squares, and there are boxes, and the two must meet. Some are yellow, some are white. Your fingers rest on one set, hers on another. And then you do as you're told.
At first this is simple. Drag a box here, hold it there. Your fingers might brush up against one another. Then things heat up. One player finds himself stroking his hand over the other's. It gets pretty steamy.
Sort of, anyhow. There are a few rules you have to follow to get the full effect. You can't really play solo, for, um, obvious reasons, and you need to use one hand each. Two hands is easier, but it's a lot less fun. Stick to those rules, and one of you will basically end up in the other's lap before long if you want to pull off some of the moves.
So you can see why you don't want to play with a stranger, or your Grandma. You might also not want to play for too long. While Fingle starts out very flirty, it actually gets pretty hard over time. If one of you has small hands, long fingernails or sweaty palms, you might find it a bit out of your league. Nothing kills the mood quite so much as frustrated failure.
There are over 50 levels to work through, so as long as you know your limit you'll be fine. If you're actually playing to tease, work through the first level pack or two. It starts out slightly subtle and gets suggestive quickly. If you're playing for a challenge, something that's totally possible, work your way through all the rest. Fingle is missing a lot of the traditional game structures we're used to -- scores, points, achievements and the like -- but it's certainly a good time for two people who are comfortable with a little touching. The design that has gone into this game is truly charming, so it's hard to say no.
In all seriousness, you need to know your audience if you're going to play. You can definitely go at it platonically for a laugh, but first be sure you both know where you stand. And you could certainly make someone extremely uncomfortable if you're not at the point where cheesy 70s-style music, suggestive sound effects and light touching is okay. Fingle is the sort of game that could start out funny and end up sexy, or start out cold and end up with a slap to the face. Judge carefully, and stop by our discussion thread to let us know how it goes - just keep it work safe, tiger.
The just-released Paper Monsters [99¢], co-developed by Robots Vs Wizards and Crescent Moon Games, has been in the works for a long time. In fact, development originally began way back in mid-2010, and we didn’t learn until well into 2011 that Crescent Moon had actually jumped into the project to give it a graphical makeover (as they’ve been known to do from time to time).
With such a long development cycle, it’s easy for the hype over a game to do one of two things: either people start to lose interest as the months drag along, or the hype builds up to the kind of level that would be hard for any game to deliver on. Well, Paper Monsters finally has reached the App Store, so if you’re part of that first group then it’s time to start paying attention again.
Star Warfare: Alien Invasion [99¢] is a first-person arena-shooter from Freyr Games, which features wave after wave of relentless attacking alien creatures. The aliens emerge from holes in the wall and from underground, or come flying, bounding or waddling straight towards you from all sides. And once you've shot them, the next wave arrives immediately. It's almost as if you don't even need to explore, as the aliens will come straight for you.
The single player campaign includes five maps, each with six levels of increasing difficulty to unlock (30 levels in total). A progress bar indicates how many of the enemies have spawned and if you survive to the end, your reward is currency to spend in an in-game store. The sixth level of each map is a "survival" level.
Are your time-management titles missing the hands-on charm of cooking sims, and your cooking sims missing too much restaurant management? If so, you'll want to take a look at Order Up!! To Go [Free]. A combination between a time-management restaurant game and a touch-screen heavy cooking sim, Order Up is filled with great stuff: charming characters, varied locations, fun recipes and surprisingly decent voice acting, for starters.
Order Up!! was first released for Wii in 2008, and is due to come out soon for PS3 and 3DS at full retail price. I haven't played the console version of the game, but it sounds as though To Go is essentially the same game. For the mobile outing, Supervillian Studios has added advertisements, removable with IAP, and taken away certain goals to encourage players to purchase currency. Aside from that, it looks like everything else is intact. Intact, and downright entertaining.
We previously covered smuttlewerk interactive when we took a look at Companions [$4.99/Lite], a well-done top-down role playing/strategy title. Now the developers are back with Time of Heroes [$0.99], another great addition to the genre. Ditching the top-down sprite visuals for a 3D-look, Time of Heroes still maintains smulttlewerk’s reputation for gameplay depth while successfully transitioning to a classic turn-based strategy game.
If you’ve ever played the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics, you’ll feel right at home with Time of Heroes. The game takes place on a series of maps, with players choosing heroes, units and their placements at the beginning of the battle. The game then plays out via turn-based gameplay with the goal being to accomplish all the objectives of the map (typically kill the opposing heroes while keeping your own alive). Time of Heroes is classic turn-based strategy, and I think it gets a lot of things right.
Back in the arcade fighting game heyday of the ‘90s, 2D heavyweights like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had to contend with a new brand of brawler on the block: the 3D fighter. Games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken forewent 2D sprites and single-plane gameplay in favor of 3D polygonal character models and a full range of movement within the combat arenas. Happily, it turned out that there was room for both kinds of fighters to coexist, with gamers enjoying 2D and 3D fighting games in harmony.
One of the most popular 3D fighting franchises to come out of this era was Namco’s Soul Edge, and more prominently its sequel SoulCalibur, both of which were noteworthy for their focus on weapon-based combat. SoulCalibur hit arcades in 1998, and was then ported to the Sega Dreamcast to launch alongside that system in 1999. The Dreamcast version was remarkable, featuring even better graphics than the arcade version and a wealth of additional modes and characters. In 2008 SoulCalibur was again resurrected for Xbox Live Arcade, boasting a high definition makeover but lacking any sort of online play.
So, I have a confession to make. I was prepared to dislike Baseball Superstars 2012 [Free]. You can blame Homerun Battle 2 [$4.99/Lite] for that one, as it had left me deeply distrustful of freemium sports games. Nonetheless, driven by Air Penguin [99¢/Lite] inspired optimism and the extravagant amount of praise that had been lavished over the franchise, I ended up downloading it anyway.
Fingle [
