games - page 32

From the mathematical brilliance of Threes to the insanely addictive, Design Award-winning Blek, iOS users are spoiled for choice when it comes to great puzzle games on their iOS.

Does that mean developers should throw in the towel and stop making them, then? On the contrary, as the great Alan Partridge once said about regional detective shows: “Another way of looking at it is, people like them, let’s make some more of them.”

The “more of them” in question is Cubical, a seemingly straightforward puzzler that asks you to match the colours of different cubes by tapping them before the time runs out. And it’s a whole lot of fun.

Sometimes a video game movie spinoff comes along that is so left field that you you a) check to see that it’s not April Fool’s Day and b) makes you wonder if the developers have actually seen the film in question.

Joining 2004’s Fight Club video game, which turned the epic David Fincher mindf*ck movie into a straightforward beat-em-up, is a new Forrest Gump iOS game, which mutates the beloved Oscar-winning comedy-drama into an endless runner. Yes, really.

Called Run Forrest Run, the game “celebrates” the twentieth anniversary of the movie by stripping it of whatever complexity it had, and transforming it into a game in which Tom Hanks’ simpleton character runs into traffic and collects coins like a “stupid is as stupid does” Super Mario impersonator.

Yesterday we wrote about the exciting news that Ace Attorney 5 (known outside Japan as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies) had landed in the Japanese App Store.

Although it came with no official announcement of an English language release, we noted that we remained hopeful — particularly since the game had already received such a translation for a Nintendo 3DS version in 2013, which went on to be heavily praised by various outlets.

Well,  developers Capcom didn’t keep us in suspense for very long, since already the company has confirmed that English-language audiences can expect to play a version of the hit game “quite soon.”

Team Chaos has a reputation for publishing quirky, fun, colorful games like Cat vs. Aliens, Flappy Stache, and Dragon Academy (a “hatch-three” puzzle game).

With Space Colors, they’ve done it again. This time, you’re an Asteroids-style spaceship trying to destroy and mine asteroids, kill all the baddies, and avoid dying for as long as possible while gaining experience points and credits, which can be used in the in-game store to purchase weaponry and armor upgrades.

It’s stylish, easy to learn, hard to master, and is truly a lot of fun.

Godus, the much-anticipated video game from god-game specialist designer Peter Molyneux and 22cans, is available now for iOS devices. Godus will let you play as your own private deity, letting you create and nurture a little island paradise on your iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone.

You’ll get to carve out landscapes with the touch of a finger, placing mountains, rivers, and flora wherever you like. You’ll also have the care and feeding of devout, worshipful followers of your very own.

“In Godus your hands will sculpt the mountains and carve rivers,” said Molyneux in a statement. “Your touch will create pastures for your people. You will be loved by tiny worshipers that need your help to grow and your direction to progress through the ages of civilization.”

Apple’s EarPods aren’t too bad for gaming, what with their in-line microphone capabilities, but they’re really not the best for long game sessions; honestly, they just end up hurting the inside of my ears.

And as far as gaming mice are concerned, you really do need one with a second button at the very least.

While you’re at it, of course, you want your gaming peripherals to match your Apple style. Razer’s Taipan ambidextrous gaming mouse and matching Kraken-pro headset are exactly that – quality peripherals that make your gaming life easier and your style just that much more put together.

A year ago, I heard about an intriguing potential game in the making, a possible hybrid of games like Mass Effect and Heavy Rain, two of my all-time favorite console games. This alone was enough to pique my interest, but once I found out it starred a crack black ops team of lycra-clad ladies like Charlie’s Angels, I was sold.

Ambitious and innovative, Revolution 60 offers an iOS experience like no other. With gorgeous 3D animations, bold interactive gameplay and intriguing plot, Giant Spacekat brings to life a team of four futuristic female operatives assigned a mission to re-establish control of a compromised space station. As the sharp-tongued and strong-willed protagonist Holiday, you’ll find yourself balancing your decision-making between the needs of two of your subordinates – the compassionate Amelia and authoritarian Minuet.

Originally released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, Capcom has dropped the fifth instalment of its superb Ace Attorney series into the Japanese App Store, seemingly without any warning.

The game (which was heavily praised upon its release) follows the story of attorney Phoenix Wright who returns to action after his premature retirement in the game’s previous instalment, set one year earlier. Going up against former death-row-convict-cum-prosecutor Simon Blackquill, Wright is able to draw on the help of fellow legal eagles Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes.

The game features five cases, with a sixth one downloadable via in-app-purchase. Other IAPs allow users to add extra costumes or access a special mini-quiz.

Ever since it arrived on our computers all the way back in 2000, the makers of The Sims have always been great at providing plenty of expansion packs designs to grow your Sim universe out in a variety of different directions.

That same spirit had carried over to the iOS game The Sims FreePlay, which has just added a “Let’s Eat” update, letting your Sim become a master of the culinary arts.

Dong Nguyen’s runaway viral hit mobile game, Flappy Bird, is back in a new form, but this time it’s only on Fire TV, Amazon’s answer to the Roku and Apple TV devices.

The new game, titled Flappy Birds: Family, is available now on the Amazon App Store, and seems to only work on the Fire TV as of this moment.

The game seems to have the same basic gameplay as the original (tap or click a button to flap the bird’s wings and avoid pipes), but adds ghosts as a new obstacle and a new multi-player feature.

“Flappy Birds now are on Amazon Fire TV,” says the app description, “with incredible new features: Person vs Person mode, more obstacles, more fun and still very hard. Enjoy playing the game at home (not breaking your TV) with your family and friends.”

San Diego Comic-Con 2014 may be over, but with all of the announcements out of the way, now we get to reap the rewards. Among the event’s iOS-related announcements was Marvel’s proclamation that its great Marvel Pinball app is getting a new table, to celebrate the company’s new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. To mark the occasion, the app is going free for the first time ever.

Back in the heady days of the early new Millennium I went out and bought a Sega Dreamcast (still a massively underrated console, in my mind) to play Crazy Taxi, one of the most original and addictive arcade games I’d played in forever.

Jump forward to 2012 and Crazy Taxi finally made its way to the iPhone as a $4.99 premium game, where it played better than expected, and (best of all) retained the nostalgic soundtrack that had helped make the original so much fun.

Leap forwards again to the present, and we’ve received word that Sega’s sequel, Crazy Taxi: City Rush is set for worldwide release tomorrow — bringing players more of the frantic passenger-pickup, traffic-dodging action they’ve been missing.

Ever wonder how badly graphics and gaming performance gets compromised in the hottest apps on older hardware? As it turns out, not very badly at all. Maybe that’s why iOS has become a major gaming platform.

Full disclosure: the publisher of the naughtily-named Age of Booty: Tactics sent Cult of Mac a really nice wooden treasure chest with some fun promotional stuff in it. This usually means that we’d give it a skip, as generally, the better the swag, the crappier the game. We were pleasantly surprised, then, when we found Age of Booty‘s first outing on iOS to be a pretty darn great free-to-play game, with only a few caveats for the novice player.

The original Age of Booty was a 2008 downloadable real-time strategy game for Xbox and PlayStation, developed by Certain Affinity and published by Capcom. This time around, Certain Affinity took the concept to iOS with Age of Booty: Tactics, which switches things up, adding some new mechanics to the strategy formula and putting it into an asynchronous multiplayer format.

The graphics are charming enough, the soundtrack is appropriately pirate-themed, and the sea and boat sounds are nicely atmospheric. It’s in the strategic gameplay, though, that Age of Booty: Tactics surely shines.

Coinciding with the forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot produced by Michael Bay, Apple has announced its latest free App of the Week as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rooftop Run.

It’s an endless runner combat game, in which the heroes in a half-shell fight against the sinister Foot Clan and evil associates. If you’re a Turtles fan, you’ll find plenty of familiar faces here — including the obvious (Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael) and less obvious faves (Kraang, Baxter Stockman, Casey Jones).

The Angry Birds are, ahem, transforming yet again in this new trailer from Rovio and Hasbro, released to coincide with San Diego Comic Con this week.

You’ve got the red bird cosplaying as a voice-less Optimus Prime, running his way through an island-style world, smashing through crates, and then finally facing a giant, laughing pig-bot Deceptihog. It doesn’t get much better than this. Check out the video below.

Just in time for Comic-Con International, iOS game Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is rolling out an appropriately themed update, adding a whole new storyline and cameos from a bevy of geek-chic celebrities.

The new plot line concerns (surprise, surprise!) a comic convention that comes to Quahog. Chaos naturally ensues, and Stewie somehow gets transformed into the evil octopus monster seen in the above picture. To fight him, Quahog enlists the help of an all-star celeb cast including Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston, Stan Lee, Ron Perlman, George Takei, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion.

With their help, the Griffins and supporting characters are turned into real superheroes, who can use their new-found powers to save the day and restore order to the town.

The console-quality, Zelda-inspired game Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas was one of the best original games in ages when it hit iOS late last year.

Based on the amazing feedback that game deservedly scooped up, developers FDG Entertainment and Cornfox & Bros. have just dropped a brand new victory lap trailer hyping what looks to be an epic “Game of the Year Edition” update the team is currently working on.

Released earlier this year, Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft manages to do what many would have thought impossible: out MtG Magic: The Gathering.

An astonishingly addictive collectible card game, Hearthstone‘s only failing, if you could call it that, is it was for all intents and purposes multiplayer-only. But today, Blizzard has rectified that by releasing its highly anticipated Curse of Naxxramas expansion for the game on both Mac and iPad.

Best of all? It’s free. Or, at least, the first taste is.

“You have no idea what loss is,” says Joel, the protagonist in the best game of 2013, The Last Of Us.

On July 28, you’ll be able to watch a live stream of the principal actors read select lines from Naughty Dog’s cinematic hit. Troy Baker, Ashley Johnson, Merle Dandridge, Hanna Hayes, and Annie Wersching — the main characters in the game — will take direction from none other than Neil Druckmann himself, the writer and director of The Last of Us. Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla will be on hand as well to play selections from his game score.

Check out the promo trailer below for more details.

A good mobile puzzle game is always welcome, and if you’re looking for something to augment your TwoDots and Threes games, developer Ricardo Fonseca is hoping he has something for you.

Called Dropu, his new iOS game is — as Fonseca describes it — what would happen “if Tetris and Sudoku had a baby.” As with Tetris, blocks fall from the sky and it’s your job as player to make sequences of them in order to clear lines.

I know that TwoDots, the followup to last year’s megahit Dots, has been out for a little while, but I have a pretty good excuse for not having reviewed it yet: I’ve been playing it this whole time.

It’s taken me so long to get to this article, in fact, that the developer has since released an update with a bunch more levels, and now this review is timely again. So take that, Time.

Anyway, TwoDots is a lot of fun. Provided you’re incredibly lucky.

In what has been a great year for iOS gaming, Monument Valley stands head and shoulders above most of its competition. Part M.C. Escher and part Fez, the game lets you journey through a surrealist world full of optical illusions and hidden paths — all the while avoiding and outsmarting the sinister Crow people.

It’s great, compelling fun — and apparently we’re far from the only people to think that, since developers Ustwo announced late last week that their game has now been downloaded in excess of 1 million times.

Fans of strategy simulation games can rejoice at the news that the popular Anno series — which first arrived on PC back in 1998 and has continued as a successful franchise to the present day — has landed on iPad.

Called Anno: Build an Empire, the games starts with you colonizing an uninhabited island, which you harvest for resources, before building your way up to a fully-fledged, bonafide civilization — featuring various colonized islands under your control.

Back before the popular starship sim roguelike FTL had come to the iPad, France’s Mi Clos Studio released a charming little game called Out There that scratched a lot of the same itches. Like a randomized choose-your-own-adventure novel with resource management, Out There allowed you to explore alien universes, learn extraterrestrial languages, fight an evil alien civilization, and more.

Not everyone loved the game, saying that victory in Out There was too random, but I always had a lot of fondness for it. It had an incredible sense of atmosphere, thanks to wonderful art and music. I’m delighted to hear, then, that Out There isn’t just getting a sizable update… it’s clso oming to the Mac.