Developer: Ravenous Games
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPod touch 4G
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.88 out of 5 stars
Games inspired by the age of gaming when all anyone ever needed was a d-pad and 2 buttons are finding a new home, ironically on a platform that features no physical controls at all. Welcome League of Evil to this stable of faux-retro games, featuring a very simple premise like those 80′s classics that it takes from. There are evil scientists that are in cahoots to develop weapons of mass destruction, and have formed a coalition, appropriately titled the League of Evil. Your goal, as a super soldier, is to take these evil scientists out in the only way you know how, by punching them in the face. There are 54 levels, each containing one scientist to explode, being guarded by a variety of traps and soldiers. Each level also contains a briefcase that you can collect, your ultimate goal being to complete each level with the briefcase and a 3-star time.
League of Evil’s mechanics are designed for fun – you can pull off a variety of acrobatic moves like double jumps, mid-air kicks, and wall jumps to help get you through the levels, and mastering these techniques is the key to succeeding in this game, and is quite fun to boot! League of Evil is perfect for fans of retro-inspired games, with a chiptune soundtrack and 8-bit inspired graphics. The game is also designed perfectly for short play sessions, as every level is designed to be beaten in less than a minute. This also keeps the frustration level of the game down, as when you only have to beat short levels, repetition is more forgivable. Also, the game comes with support for OpenFeint and Game Center for achievements.
League of Evil is unfortunately very short, though. Even with all the repetition of challenging levels, it still only took me 2 hours tops to beat all the levels, though completing them all with 3 stars and all the briefcases may take some extra time. While it’s a minor issue, the game doesn’t support the Retina Display yet. The movement controls are slightly problematic, as I often found myself accidentally moving in the wrong direction, and this could be an issue in the trickier platforming sections.
League of Evil is a supernova – shining brightly for a brief moment before it fades away. With some more content, this could be a fantastic retro-inspired action platformer, but for now, it’s fun but brief. If you love retro-inspired games, this is worth a pickup despite its short playtime. Others may want to hold off until the League of Evil beefs up its membership, but make sure you check out the Lite version, which features 7 exclusive levels not in the full version.
Developer: Candywriter
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.4
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Solitaire is (probably) as old as time. It’s seemingly been on every PC ever and I suspect more hours have been pumped into it than any other game, even scary big MMOs. So just how do you mix it up to make it new and exciting once more? Simple. Add a word game to it.
Word Solitaire: Aurora does exactly that. Following the traditional solitaire route, instead of matching up relevant cards, instead you have to create words. Each card offers a letter and it’s down to you to make the best words from the selection. Using a similar scoring system to Scrabble, the ‘harder’ letters like J and X offer more points so it’s in your interest to create more complex words than simple three or four letter combos. At times it really makes your brain tick and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual solitaire game.
A campaign mode offers 250 levels each of which gradually increasing in difficulty. Amongst these levels are Milestone levels which focus on specific letters of the alphabet and offer a varied challenge. There’s also a quick play mode with a wealth of options if you prefer just diving in briefly. More intriguingly is the daily puzzle mode whereby you can compete with other people across a global leaderboard. This is the mode you’ll find yourself returning to regularly. After all, who can resist that moment of fame, topping the leaderboard?
In my case I suck at creating words and am distinctly mediocre at all word games, but I do enjoy it. Word Solitaire: Aurora is certainly great fun providing a great twist on the solitaire format. Including so many great social tools such as the daily puzzle, leaderboards and achievements just makes for icing on the cake. It’s the kind of game that you’ll find yourself playing obsessively at first, but even after the initial excitement has gone, you’ll still be returning to it daily for the next challenge.
Developer: Fireflame Games
Price: $2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.2.2
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.88 out of 5 stars
There’s a reason why Match three titles are so prevalent on the app store: they’re addictive. They’re simple of course, very simple, but that’s what hooks you. It’s easy to drop into for how ever long you want to be gaming, making it a ideal genre for a casual or portable gamer. Puzzle Quest revolutionised this genre though by adding more depth to proceedings and including RPG elements. Dungeon Raid does something very similar. It’s not as deep, lacking a storyline to tie everything together, but it is rather good fun.
The game starts throwing you immediately into battle. In order to hit your enemy, you have to string together various gems. It’s very much like a Match three game but the difference is that you can match as many of one gem as you like. This is done by dragging your finger across adjoining gems and letting go. It’s all very easy to get to grips with, at least once you get over the fact that you can clear more than three gems at a time. Each gem correlates to something of use. Skulls and daggers for example damage your foe, while gold helps you buy new items and upgrade existing ones. Experience can be gained with new skills unlocked as you level up and potions restore your health.
The game is never-ending really. You just keep going, trying to last as long as possible while taking on new monsters. The monsters level up with you so the fight gets increasingly trickier adding a much needed dose of strategy to proceedings. The steady stream of upgrades encourages you to keep playing with a sense of gratification throughout. Ultimately though, you’re doing it for the sake of having the best high score which – if worthy enough – features on OpenFeint and Game Center.
All these features makes Dungeon Raid an ideal game to play whenever you get a spare 10 minutes, but also an ideal game to play for extended sessions. It is a little overpriced sadly at $2.99 but then it is also excellent fun. If it had a story mode, it’d be a must buy but even without that, it’s still an excellent purchase to make for Puzzle Quest fans.
The iPad may have a big and beautiful screen, but sometimes, you want to play those games on an even bigger screen, like your TV. Thankfully, there are a selection of iOS games that allow you to hook up your iPad and/or iPhone/iPod touch to the TV using the VGA adapter, and sit back and enjoy games on your monitor or HDTV.
Rage HD: Consoles and PCs won’t be getting the id Tech 5 engine and the full Rage game until the end of this year at least, but you can play the first fruits of the id Tech 5 engine on your monitor TV through Rage HD. Plug in your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into your TV, and you can play id’s latest game on your TV, making those console and PC owners all kinds of jealous. While the game’s on-screen buttons can be a bit challenging to manage without looking at your device’s screen at first, the TV still displays the location of those buttons, so you can get used to the location of the buttons using that visual guide.
Released: 2010-11-18 :: Category: Games / Adventure
Max Adventure: Imangi’s dual-stick shooter supports TV out as well, allowing you to directly plug in and play on the iOS device of your choice. The game is easier to control in many respects than Rage HD is, due to the easy to use dual-stick controls that let you just use your left thumb to move, and right thumb to fire, with double-tapping on the right side of the screen used to activate your powerups. Easy to setup, easy to play, just as the game itself is.
Released: 2010-12-14 :: Category: Games / Adventure
The Incident: If you want to play this game on your TV, you’ll need an iPad and an iPhone/iPod touch to control it with. Despite the cost of entry, The Incident looks fantastic on an external display in HD. As well, the game runs in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, meaning if you set your HDTV or monitor to stretch, it will fill the whole screen. The game also features simple controls that only require you to tilt your iPhone or iPod touch and tap anywhere on it to jump. This one is almost worth playing just so you can appreciate the irony of using the latest and greatest in portable technology to play an 8-bit inspired game on your TV.
Chopper 2: One of the very first games to support TV output, and one of the best. While you have to have two iOS devices to play the game with, one hooked up to the TV and one to use the remote controls with, the experience and feature set is probably the best. There’s anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, multiple control schemes to use for iPhone/iPod touch depending if you want to use tilt controls or not, and you can thankfully see your firing angle on screen, making the iPhone or iPod touch in your hands practically melt away and become a natural controller. The game thankfully also supports online save synchronization with OpenFeint, so you can easily take your game across whatever iOS device you want to use. You can even use your iOS version of the game to play the Mac App Store version of Chopper 2 remotely.
While the selection of TV-out enabled games is currently limited, the selection currently available is quite fine. As well, worthy of special mention is Red Nova, which supports remote controls but doesn’t support TV-out yet. While some form of standardization of remote and display-out protocols would help get more games supporting these features, for now, there is a quality selection of games to enjoy on the larger display of your choice.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, I have a constant fear that something’s always near…
On This Episode:
Carter and guest Robert Workman discuss the recent release of Dead Space for iOS, praising its atmosphere and it being an actual original title for iOS instead of a port.
They discuss a few assorted issues on iOS and for the iPad, like the ethics of in-app purchases, single-device multiplayer games, and Retina apps on the iPad.
They talk about the new Sony handheld, the NGP, and Nintendo’s new 3DS, and how they will compete against the iOS devices like the iPod touch and iPad as gaming machines.
Games inspired by the age of gaming when all anyone ever needed was a d-pad and 2 buttons are finding a new home, ironically on a platform that features no physical controls at all. Welcome League of Evil to this stable of faux-retro games, featuring a very simple premise like those 80′s classics that it takes from. There are evil scientists that are in cahoots to develop weapons of mass destruction, and have formed a coalition, appropriately titled the League of Evil. Your goal, as a super soldier, is to take these evil scientists out in the only way you know how, by punching them in the face. There are 54 levels, each containing one scientist to explode, being guarded by a variety of traps and soldiers. Each level also contains a briefcase that you can collect, your ultimate goal being to complete each level with the briefcase and a 3-star time.
League of Evil is unfortunately very short, though. Even with all the repetition of challenging levels, it still only took me 2 hours tops to beat all the levels, though completing them all with 3 stars and all the briefcases may take some extra time. While it’s a minor issue, the game doesn’t support the Retina Display yet. The movement controls are slightly problematic, as I often found myself accidentally moving in the wrong direction, and this could be an issue in the trickier platforming sections.
Word Solitaire: Aurora does exactly that. Following the traditional solitaire route, instead of matching up relevant cards, instead you have to create words. Each card offers a letter and it’s down to you to make the best words from the selection. Using a similar scoring system to Scrabble, the ‘harder’ letters like J and X offer more points so it’s in your interest to create more complex words than simple three or four letter combos. At times it really makes your brain tick and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual solitaire game. 
The game starts throwing you immediately into battle. In order to hit your enemy, you have to string together various gems. It’s very much like a Match three game but the difference is that you can match as many of one gem as you like. This is done by dragging your finger across adjoining gems and letting go. It’s all very easy to get to grips with, at least once you get over the fact that you can clear more than three gems at a time. Each gem correlates to something of use. Skulls and daggers for example damage your foe, while gold helps you buy new items and upgrade existing ones. Experience can be gained with new skills unlocked as you level up and potions restore your health. 
:: 
:: I LOVE A MINOTAUR
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