Published: June 20, 2010 Comment Just plain rotten. There are some things us gamers take for granted in modern games. Take, for instance, the savegame. The ability to save our progress at convenient points is what separates Dragon Age from Rogue, and Gears of War from Dark Forces. Rotten City neglects to include this feature in an accessible way, and this one omission drags the rest of the game down with it. Rotten City has plenty of potential. The game is a sort of top-down Left 4 Dead with RPG elements. The player is thrust into a city filled with infected, and must battle their way to the airport and escape. Rotten City places an emphasis on the acquisition of new weapon types and gems, the game’s currency. Each area contains something interesting, be it railroad tracks or a weapons store. These base mechanics are compelling, but the way the game executes them is off the mark. Your character levels up in Rotten City, unfortunately the impact is not all that clear, and the game doesn’t even tell you that you have leveled outside of changing a small number in the HUD. Shooting infected can be tricky due to the rigid controls, the whole time you will pine for the infinitely more smooth controls of iDracula. Finding your way out of the city shouldn’t be a cakewalk, but after purchasing a map that doesn’t even include a “you are here” feature you will be both upset and confused. To round out the game’s flaws, the character must walk all the way back to the starting area to save the game. This means you can progress for quite some time, die, and lose all of your progress. Some games I can handle that in, but in an iPhone game this Read More
By Matt Dunn, USAfor www.touchgen.com Published: June 17, 2010 Comment Pixel, the loveable 8-bit cat of XBL fame, has arrived on the iPhone/iPod Touch! Pixel the Cat came to the Xbox Live Arcade quite a while ago, and stole the hearts of many a nostalgic gamer, myself included. The game featured old platforming action mixed with crystal-clean 8-bit styled graphics. Not to mention the odd-looking cat as the protagonist. One of the first things I thought after beating the game on my Xbox was, “Wow, this would be awesome on the iPhone!” It looks like the fine folks at Bulkypix thought the same thing, as Pix’n Rush Love has been released today for the iPod and iPhone. To be clear, Pixel’n Love Rush is not the same game as the Xbox version. Rather than a straight up platforming game, it focuses on timed platforming for gaming on the go. At launch there will only be a single 5 minute timed mode, which has you collecting coins and shooting baddies across a new level every 20-30 seconds or so. The more enemies you kill and coins you collect, the higher your score multiplier raises. If you get hit by an enemy, your multiplier resets. There is also an unlockable “Infinite Mode” that features 125 different levels, and 7 different skins for the graphics. These are pretty awesome, with one resembling the game on a Virtual Boy, and another on a classic Gameboy. It’s cool to see some creative visual effects, as the original game just featured the classic blue version. You’ll notice in the video below that we are playing the iPhone version on an iPad. That’s right, the game looks that good without an “HD” version. You can check out Pix’n Love Rush for $.99. Check out the video Read More
Published: June 16, 2010 Comment This free update is coming to the acclaimed Zombie Smash game in a few days! Zombie Smash is the extremely polished and sexy physics-based zombie defense game from the Game Doctors. The two main developers are actual certified, PhD carrying doctors. Perhaps that’s why tearing zombies limb from limb or smashing them into the ground has never been more satisfying. For those wondering, Zombie Smash received the coveted Editor’s Choice award and a fantastic 4.5/5 score in our review when it was released in March. The developers are committed to releasing free updates to increase the gameplay and longevity of the game. This weekend they are releasing a World Cup update that allows you to dress up the zombies in your favorite (or least favorite) teams to smash them to bits. There are also a bunch of awesome new football (soccer) powerups, including a giant ball that smashes zombies in it’s path, a swinging shoe, and a hilarious weapon that shoots balls at zombies from both sides of the screen. Aside from the weekend update, Mathias from the Game Doctors mentioned that they have a full new campaign mode in the works, complete with a new month of action (the campaign levels represent days of the month). All of this so far is planned for a free release. That’s quite a bit of content for a $1.99 game of this caliber. For those wondering, an iPad version of the game is in the works, but with the extremely high quality of the assets for the iPhone version, it’s a game that will scale well to the iPad on it’s own. Zombie Smash is one of the few games I’ve seen that actually contains better quality content if you own a 3GS (or the new Read More
Published: June 15, 2010 Comment I hate laying puzzles, and I at times loathe my passion for solitaire games. This love/hate relationship has never been fully explored until now. Carcassonne is a combination of these two types of time wasters. The puzzle aspect rears it’s ugly face in form of the limited types of pieces to place on the board. The solitaire aspect is all about clearing the puzzle before you run out of pieces. It sounds like a simple game, and to some even like a boring one at that. Let me tell you right now that Carcassonne is far from boring, actually it has become one of the most involving games I have ever played on my iPhone. Ok, I need to back it up just a bit here as I have not mentioned that there are a number of different game modes that play completely different. The normal game mode can be played either against eight different AI players or multiplayer over internet or Bluetooth/local network. The normal game is a all about creating lands, towns and roads that you tag with your colour. It is turn-based, and this is a perfect way to play against your friends over the internet. It comes with push notifications helping you remember that you have a move to make. There is a limited number of pieces available, and you don’t get to choose the order they appear in. Once there are no pieces left the game ends, and the game calculates the final score. This is a fun mode, and the AI is moderately quick in making it’s moves. Playing against players over the internet is as quick as the humans behind their screens. One thing that bothers me somewhat is that if you have more than one device Read More
By Nigel Wood, UKfor www.touchgen.com Published: June 12, 2010 Comment Kill time between World Cup matches with this accurate Foosball simulator for iPad.. As most of the world know’s, the tournament of all tournaments begun this week, that’s right, the World Cup. The big game today is England Vs USA (which I predict as 1-0 to England), while you wait for your own countries game to start their campaign to glory, why not indulge in a spot of classic Foosball? Illusion Labs of Labyrinth and TouchGrind fame have released Foosball HD, a highly accurate simulation of the classic table football. It offers both single player against the computer or two player. It takes a little getting use to not have full tactile control over the player rods, but after that it’s great fun, particularly with another human. Now all you have to do is argue over the no spin rule! Foosball HD is out now for $2.99 Remember to follow us on Twitter @TouchGEN Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here Read More
By Nigel Wood, UKfor www.touchgen.com Published: June 10, 2010 Comment Get in touch with your feminine side and fly the rainbow flag, with this Canabalt clone from Adult Swim. Adult Swim, the team that brought you Robot Chicken, Cowboy Beebop and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, bring you more tongue in cheek humour with this camp platformer ‘Robot Unicorn Attack’. In the game you must guide the star of the show as he automatically gallops from platform to platform using two touch buttons. One makes him jump, or double jump if you tap again, and the other activates a dash, which is good for clearing large chasms, or breaking through ice stars in your way. You get three tries to get as far as you can, with the score dependant ran how far you get, and how many fairies you collect on your way …of course! Once its game over, as well as be presented with a shot of your decapitated unicorn, the game adds up the three scores and allows you to share them on face book. Much like Canabalt, it’s a short lived game, so it cannot be compared to the deeper games out there. But its quick-play ability begs you for another try, even if collecting fairies with a bright pink mystical beast, and farting rainbow trails, is not your cup of tea. $2.99 is a little pricey for what you getthough, with $0.99 being a better price allowing for an impulse buy. What tickles me the most, is the thought of the developers spending hours searching for the gayest music track to accompany the game, where they settle in the end for Erasure’s Always - a song that would turn even George Michael a brighter shade of pink! Robot Unicorn Attack is out now for $2.99. Read More
By Nigel Wood, UKfor www.touchgen.com Published: June 7, 2010 Comment Activision announced today, at the Apple WWDC keynote, the release of Guitar Hero for iPhone and iPod Touch… Created by Vicarious Visions, the game features avatar customization, a built-in social network feeds that allows you to share your scores on Facebook, as well as touch and tap based gameplay. It includes six songs, with more available as DLC: - Queen - We Are The Champions - Rise Against - Savior - The Rolling Stones - Paint It Black - The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army - Weezer - Say It Ain’t So - Vampire Weekend - Cousins Guitar hero is out now for $2.99. Get it on Remember to follow us on Twitter @TouchGEN Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here Read More
Published: May 28, 2010 Comment I hate how my time gets all consumed at times. Looking down on my iPhone concentrating, planning and upgrading. Looking up I have often lost one or two hours to the game. This happens too often with tower defense games, and BioArmy is no exception. It is never about the story, but always about finding the perfect strategy. To be a good game in the genre being challenging is a must. Too many times I find that tower defense games come with too simple levels of difficulty. In Bio Army I get my ass kicked, and I love it. The interface works really well, and is completely touch controlled. You touch the side menu to open submenus for purchasing units, and special structures. As the 15 maps give you a predetermined route for the enemies this game is all about resource management, and making the maximum amount of damage. I personally prefer these set path tower defense games. In terms of gameplay BioArmy is not far from Crystal Defenders from Square Enix. 15 maps to unlock in five different game modes give a whole lot of game life. As you progress new units, and upgrades are unlocked. This clear sense of progression helps motivating me to push on. The special structures such as the lotto center where you buy lottery tickets, and pray for a win, add freshness to the otherwise quite flooded genre. Strategy, all about strategy. I have yet to fully understand the game even after 30+ hours of concentration. At times I find it better to upgrade a few units to become hard as nails warriors, and at other times I just litter the map with cheap units and succeed. The special structures also disturb my planning, and I have yet Read More
Published: May 28, 2010 Comment This sequel’s mascot character may ask for a premium price, but for that you get the closest thing to Mario Kart yet! Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D was Polarbit’s first foray into iPhone gaming, and one of the first high profile games to hit the AppStore when it debut back in 2008. By today’s standards it looks incredibly dated, with jagged low res graphics and limited gameplay… However it was still a fun if limited experience and offered a Mario Kart feel that, despite a pretty convincing April fool from last year (even if I do say so myself), lets face it will never come to Apple’s devices (emulation excluded). Fast forward to present day and Polarbit, in partnership with Activision, have pulled the rabbit out of the hat and produced a near perfect racer. First things first though don’t expect any originality here. The kart racer has become a genre unto itself and there seems to be a set of rules that every kart racer must emulate. (1) Mascot characters… check! CBNK2 features the characters from the Crash Bandicoot series of games that started on the PSX. (2) Themed tracks… check! CBNK2 features the usual suspects of environments, spooky houses, Aztec ruins, pirate coves and evil mastmind’s castle. (3) Crazy power ups… check! CBNK2 doesn’t disappoint, including bombs, rockets, shields, magnets and time warp… There’s even a device that takes the leader and beams him a few places back, similar to the much lauded blue shell in Mario Kart Wii. It’s unoriginality in this case though is it’s strength, as Polarbit seem to have borrowed from the best in crafting this game. I’ve yet to come across track designs that better Mario’s but CBNK2’s come exceedingly close. They feature multiple levels in each Read More
By Nigel Wood, UKfor www.touchgen.com Published: May 27, 2010 Comment Activision have released Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 for iPhone and iPod Touch… This sequel to Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, released back in 2008, adds 12 new tracks and 4 cups, an adventure mode and 4 player online multiplayer. The presentation has been taken up a notch too. The original games tracks were a little featureless and the textures were low in resolution and quality. While the geometry is still a little low poly in this sequel, the tracks themselves are far more appealing. Look out for our review later this week. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 is out now for the premium price of $9.99. get it on Remember to follow us on Twitter @TouchGEN Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here Read More
