Posts Tagged ‘4 stars’
‘VineKing’ Review – Multitask Your Way to a Greener World
How much of a multitasker are you? If you're anything like me, you've probably got a dozen tabs open in your browser, three other programs on your desktop and a game or two waiting on your phone. But that might just make you a singletasker with a short attention span. If you want to prove [...]
‘Ant Raid’ for iPad Review – When Insects Attack
Ant Raid [$2.99] isn't a knockoff of Nintendo's Pikmin. I want to get that out of the way up front. It has a few things in common with Pikmin, sure, and it does a pretty good job of scratching that itch while Nintendo takes its sweet time bringing out the next sequel, but the game [...]
‘Sword & Soldiers’ Review – Four-Star General
Ronimo Games’ Swords & Soldiers [$2.99 / HD] is a stripped-down, side-scrolling RTS that offers a decent amount of creative situational content inside a shell that otherwise doesn’t torture standard genre tropes. The gorgeous visual direction and whimsical writing emits an unusual, but comfortable warmth. Most levels boast sharp, sometimes dramatic change-of-pace mechanics or objectives [...]
Bungie’s Classic Mac FPS ‘Marathon’ Launches for Free in the App Store
It was back in February that we first learned about the guerilla porting project of Bungie’s classic Mac first-person shooter trilogy Marathon [Free] to the iPad. Lone wolf coder Daniel Blezek had taken it upon himself to take these games, which were by this time a part of the open source community, and adapt them [...]
‘Amazing Breaker’ Review – Ever Seen an Ice Sculpture and… Wanted to Bomb It?
I stumbled across Amazing Breaker [99¢] a few days ago, and since then it's been sucking up a surprising amount of my time. I think the quickest way to describe the game is that Amazing Breaker is Angry Birds' cousin, twice removed on its mothers side. It's a catapult-style flinging game with multiple types of [...]
‘Ballistik Wars’ Review – PONOS Wages a Castle War
The cliché that nothing good in life is free can be especially true when it comes to to iOS games. Sure, every once in a while you stumble across a truly great free title, but there almost always is a catch. In the case of Ponos' Ballistik Wars [Free], the catch is simple: it's ad-supported. For [...]
‘Push-Cars’ Review – Hit the Road, Sparky
Push-Cars [$0.99 / HD] is a puzzle game with a conscience. Like a pint-sized version of Pixar's Cars, you've got a bunch of anthropomorphic cars to handle. There's the eco-friendly ones like Sparky, the slow but green electric, and there's the gas guzzlers like Sixteen. Your job is to smash those gas guzzlers to bits [...]
‘Paper Munchers’ Review – Paper Monsters? Om nom nom
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are tiny little squares and circles with big eyes and toothy frowns. Others are sharp-toothed maw beasts. And sometimes those maw beasts like to eat cuter, smaller monsters. That you toss in their mouths. Using bombs. When you get down to it, Big Blue Bubble's [...]
‘P1XL Party’ – A Multi-Game Pack for the Retro Lovers Out There
P1XL Games, who brought us RPG Quest: Minimae [App Store], has just released an original collection of simple, C64-styled retro games entitled P1XL Party [App Store] — and it's a collection that retro gamers won't want to miss. The initial release brings three titles — Splatform, Wandererz, and Marz — but there's more on the [...]
‘Avadon: The Black Fortress HD’ Review – Kickin’ It Old School
The name Spiderweb Software is a bit misleading, after all, it's mostly the work of one man, Jeff Vogel, who has for almost twenty years given us some of the most intricate RPGs on PC and Mac. Until now, at least, these were often an inclusive, old-schooler affair. But Avadon: The Black Fortress HD [$9.99] is [...]
‘Current’ Review – The Hexog Are Coming
The Hexog are coming, and it's up to you, as the ARC pilot, to stop them. You'll need to bring your best Bust-A-Move skills to the table if the Hexog threat is to be eliminated, and the universe of Current [$0.99] is to be saved. While some action match games let you play calmly, Current [...]
‘Hard Lines’ Review – A Classic Arcade Experience
Have a Snake-shaped hole in your app collection? Longing for light cycles? Check out Hard Lines [$0.99], by Spilt Milk Studios. It's the perfect mix of point-gobbling and line-racing arcade action in one little package. The basic gameplay is simple and familiar. You take control of Lionel, a line that can take only 90 degree [...]
‘TITUS’ Review – Politics is a Dirty Game
Feeling a little cynical about politics? Pick up Frogame's TITUS [$1.99]. You won't feel any better about the world, but you might enjoy being the one on top of a corrupt system for once. This is the oddest title I've played in a while. The art is strange enough (though quite attractive), with sinister-looking characters [...]
‘A Long Way Home’ for iPad Review – All Alone in the Universe
Space is a pretty lonely place, something you'll discover in Jonathan Mulcahy's A Long Way Home [99¢]. Stranded a hundred light years away from Earth after a catastrophic ship explosion, the game's astronaut hero has to find a way home. He travels from galaxy to galaxy alone, with just a haunting piano soundtrack and an [...]
‘Flick Golf Extreme!’ Review – Remember When EVERYTHING Was "Extreme?"
I've always tried to reserve my own usage of the word 'extreme' for cases that really warranted it. Perhaps that's just a side effect of growing up in the '80s, when everything that was anything was labeled 'extreme.' To that end, Full Fat's Flick Golf Extreme [$2.99] is indeed an 'extreme' update to the original Flick Golf [...]
‘Mower Ride’ Review – Forward Mow-Mentum
There have been quite a few "go-as-far-as-you-can" games in the App Store, but the majority of them have taken Canabalt's cue and stuck to the side-scrolling platformer style. Vivid Games' Mower Ride [99¢] takes that same idea and applies it to a top-down vertical racer — with a lawnmower. Taking most of its gameplay cues from old [...]
‘Monster Soup’ Review – Matching Monsters to Stave Off the Ice Age
Life was easy for the microbial denizens of the Soup System, all floating around and eating soup. Then Plubert from Pluto came by and spoiled the fun by trying to freeze everyone. Plubert's a bit of a bully—maybe he has problems at home? Now you'll need to rescue all the little monsters in Monster Soup [...]
‘iDaTank’ Review – Who’s the Tank? Oh.
Pavel Tsarev's iDaTank [$1.99 / Lite] was released a few weeks ago but had some troubles, namely some crashing issues and a lack of a save function when the home button was pushed — thankfully an update thrust out last week fixes those problems, meaning all of us can sit and enjoy the unique experience without [...]
‘Icebreaker Hockey’ Review – Skate Attack
NaturalMotion Games' Icebreaker Hockey [99¢] is a bit difficult to describe. Not because it's a complicated game, it's not — but it so resembles the studio's Backbreaker series of games it's a bit hard to really dig into the premise of it without noting its pedigree. So, if you've played Backbreaker, you're going to know what to expect [...]
‘Hanging With Friends’ Review – Hangman Meets Scrabble in Zynga’s Playground
Like asynchronous-multiplayer word games? Then Hanging With Friends [Free / $1.99] is the game for you. Brought to us by Zynga and the folks behind Words With Friends [Free / $2.99 / HD], Hanging With Friends is a strange-but-fun combination of Hangman and Scrabble. Like other asynchronous titles (and exactly like the other With Friends [...]
‘Galaga 30th Collection’ – Namco Brings the Galaga Series to iOS
On July 23, 1981, Galaga, one of the most well-loved scrolling shooters of all time, made its arcade debut. In celebration of its coming 30-year anniversary, Namco has released the Galaga 30th Collection [App Store], which brings Galaxian, Galaga, Gaplus (aka Galaga 3), and Galaga '88 to iOS. The collection is a free Universal download [...]
’1000 Heroz’ Review – Every Day a New Hero
1000 Heroz [$0.99 / HD] is a simple game wrapped in a fantastic gimmick. Every day you can open it up to find a new hero and a new level to conquer. You'll need to hurtle your hero to the finish line as fast as you can to top the leaderboards for the daily competition. [...]
‘Mighty Fin’ Review – Everything’s Better Under the Sea
Have you ever signed up for a cheap vacation, only to find the room is half the size you expected and the "beach-front" view is actually a back alley and a pile of dirt? That's pretty much what Fin, the pint-sized hero of Mighty Fin [$0.99], gets when he decides to sign up for Shady [...]
‘Feed Me Oil’ Review – Mmm… Delicious Petrochemicals
Feed Me Oil [99¢ / HD], from Chillingo and HolyWater Games, is a game about petroleum. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas-tea. Bubbling crude. Your role is to guide the expensive black liquid from the broken pipe to the designated area, to clear each level. Liquids are difficult to render realistically, so I wondered how well the oil [...]
‘MecaPix’ Review: Hey, ‘Tetris’ And ‘Space Invaders’ Do Work Together
If Tetris went out, got trashed, hooked up with an old-school shooter like Space Invaders and then spit out a video game love child, the offspring would resemble MecaPix [$.99 / Lite]. It’s a slick combination of two genres that seem like they’d mix no better than oil and water, but what Robotalism managed to [...]
‘Popstar Physics’ Review – This Time You Have to Kill Her
Nitako's Popstar Physics (Save Toshi 2) [Free] is a puzzle game wrapped in a weird exterior. It's also a sequel to Save Toshi [Free], a game that got a lot of love for how odd it was, how gaudy it was and ultimately, how fun it was. So Popstar Physics has a lot to live up to both [...]
‘Mexiball’ Review – A Challenging New Puzzle Game from Donut Games
It seems fitting that the logo for Donut Games involves a cup of coffee, because these guys seem so busy that I doubt they find much time for sleep. Between releasing new games at a steady clip, and updating their old titles with new features, they are constantly putting out quality stuff for the iOS [...]
‘Tower Defense: Lost Earth’ Review – The Official Game of Tower Defense
There is no way to beat around the bush, so let's just get this out of the way from the start: Com2uS trademarking "tower defense," for Tower Defense: Lost Earth [$2.99 / HD] is a little bonkers, like if Call of Duty was granted a trademark and changed its name to First Person Shooter. Not only does it [...]