iPhone developer Resolution Interactive, who brought us the highly enjoyable Aqua Moto Racing, has just released dirt-track ATV racing game Dirt Moto Racing [App Store] for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Dirt Moto Racing is an off-road racer that feels something like a scaled-back member of the Playstation 2’s ATV Offroad Fury series. Core gameplay involves working through the game’s Career mode, unlocking tours of increasing difficulty — eight in all — set across four different North American locations: British Columbia, Death Valley, Toronto, and the Florida keys. Tracks unlocked in the Career mode can be visited for a quick play in the Single Event mode.
The terrain, while somewhat basic, looks rather nice and polished. The graphical elements in general come together to deliver a smooth, “complete”-feeling racer that runs at a very good framerate on my test unit, the 2G iPod touch. In my early experience with the title, I found the forest scenery a bit more lavish than the desert runs, but every environ makes for a very playable racer.
Dirt Moto Racing utilizes a combination of accelerometer- and touch-based controls. Your vehicle’s left / right steering as well as mid-jump lean / pull are handled via accelerometer. Acceleration (unless the cruise control option is enabled), nitro boost, break and view change are handled via touch controls. In-air tricks are carried out by swiping in the center of the screen in any of four directions to indicate the desired trick to be performed. There are 12 ambitious stunts in all, across three difficulty levels. (The more complex stunts do take some skill…)
In a nutshell, some of the other standout features of Dirt Moto Racing include: a pounding 12-song soundtrack, online leaderboards, 21 unlockable achievements, 36 unique game events, customizable rider and vehicle and downloadable best-of-the-best ghost play competition.
In all, it’s really a great game that offroad racer fans have reason to embrace. The controls feel “right,” the physics are solid and it’s just a very enjoyable off-road racer that stands as the king of the genre in the App Store. And at $4.99, it comes as a recommended purchase
Our demo video, taken on a 2G iPod touch, shows early gameplay.
Developer: ngmoco, Inc.
Price: $9.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.85 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.95 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
The App Store has its first killer franchise, and it’s Rolando. With new gameplay elements and a fresh 2.5 graphics engine, there is really no reason why anyone should not buy Rolando 2.
It seems that an adventurous Rolando has returned from a far off land, but with him he has brought the dreaded Kilgorean flu. He accidently infects the revered sages, and Rolando-land goes into a panic. The only known cure is the fabled Golden Orchid, and just like that the Rolandos are off on a journey to a mysterious island to find the cure. To obtain the Golden Orchid, they’ll have to make their way through over 45 levels spread throughout five different worlds. Levels are arranged in a roughly open world layout, so you can choose which level to play next.
To complete levels, you’ll have to get the required amount of Rolandos to the exit. Standing in your way are malevolent natives, walls, levers, switches, and more. Some switches can only be activated by the Rolandos, and some platforms and other elements can be moved by you, the omnipotent “Finger.” There are a variety of Rolandos with unique abilities to help you reach the exit, and, new in this version, vehicles for the Rolandos. There are heavy Rolandos that sink in water, spikey commando Rolandos that can stick to walls, and the new native Rolandos that can float after consuming chilis. And of course, there are the royal Rolandos. The princess will roll back and forth on her own, and the king and queen are always asleep, so you’ll have to use other Rolandos to push them along. In addition to the normal levels, there are bonus levels with only King Rolandos where you can affect gravity 360 degrees.
One huge improvement over the first iteration of the first Rolando is the level design. While the first Rolando was tedious at times, the levels in the sequel are a perfect blend of puzzle and action. The levels play out like puzzles on a huge scale, as you have to approach a level correctly to succeed. In addition, there is a strong dose of action, and levels like the one in which you have to run from a momentous boulder are pure exhilaration. New gameplay elements like vehicles, the floating Rolandos, and arrows that can kill baddies further add to the game.
Each level has three obtainable medals: saving all Rolandos, collecting all crystals, which are spread throughout each level, and finishing under the challenge time. These add significant replayability, as it is quite tough to get all the medals for all the levels, particularly the challenge time. There also a bevy of unlockable achievements. Rolando 2 comes full integrated with ngmoco’s Xbox Live-esque Plus+ network, which allows you to directly challenge your friends’ scores via push notifications.
Controls, as in the first Rolando, are simple and intuitive. Tilt to roll the Rolandos, and swipe anywhere to jump. To select multiple Rolandos, simply draw a selection box. To deselect or navigate throughout the level, you use two fingers. Considering Rolando 2 is much less annoyingly technically than its predecessor, the controls work much better. The only thing lacking, which should really be a requirement for any games using accelerometer control, is a sensitivity adjustment option. To activate things such as spring launchers, you simply drag with your finger.
The new 2.5D graphics engine is very impressive. Besides the added (half) dimension, the graphics are done in mostly the same style, but the added perspective really adds pizzaz. The in-game music, composed by Mr. Scruff, is really fantastic, and is among the best I’ve heard from an App Store game. Sound effects are top-notch as well.
Rolando 2 is simply one of the best games available at the App Store. Even at $9.99, you shouldn’t even blink an eye before purchasing this truly magnificent gaming experience.
Sentinel 2: Earth Defense from Origin8 is the sequel to the much-acclaimed Sentinel, now called now called Sentinel: Mars Defense and originally reviewed by Chris J here (let’s just call them S1 and S2 hereafter). The story goes that despite your valiant efforts defending the Mars mining colony you ultimately failed, the base was completely overrun, everyone died and now the aliens have their belligerent eyes fixed on another target…Earth. Pushing aside your prior job performance, top brass has again entrusted you with the job of defending a planet…just this time it’s your own (no pressure). You’ve got a little something extra to bring to the party this time though in the form of 4 orbital attacks from the spaceship Sentinel, 2 new barrier types and 1 new drone (more on this later). Add 4 maps, sprinkle in a new boss alien plus a new mission mode and you have yourself a sequel.
If you aren’t familiar with the tower defense (TD) genre, the nutshell of it is you must prevent swarms of enemies from traversing a path across the playfield by deploying active and passive defensive structures (colloquially just ‘towers’) along the route. S2 then is a fixed-path TD which means you have no control over the route enemies take; just need to stop ‘em from taking it. All towers from S1 are back with the addition of 1 new one, the booster which has no direct attack but grants a damage and range bonus to all towers immediately adjacent to it (8 max). All towers can be upgraded thrice and have a unique graphic representation at each point. Notable is the final upgrade for each tower which has been beefed up to make it much more worthwhile to save up the extra cash to achieve. The 2 things S1 brought to the table that I felt unique and very cool were the drones and barriers; thankfully both have been further fleshed out for S2. The standard repair/resource collection drone can now be given a priority to either always collect resources (money) regardless or repair first and then collect. New is the energy drone which will boost energy production. Energy collection is a new concept and used to power 4 orbital attacks from Sentinel: homing missiles, attack drones, time warp (slows enemies) and the almighty orbital laser for those times when only total annihilation will do. You collect energy to power these attacks slowly over time but can boost it with drones and barriers. There are 4 barrier types in S2 now: standard which just blocks enemies, pipeline which grants cash after each round, energy which grants energy after each round and double which blocks 2 paths at once. A big key to success in S2 is building up energy production so your orbital attacks are on tap as often as possible. All alien types are also back from S1 with the addition of 1 new boss, the Arthropod Parasite. The graphics in S2 are as stunning as the original with gobs of animation and detail. An all-new soundtrack from Specimen A rounds out the intense audio-visual feast of S2. Origin8 have finely honed their craft here as the game is capable of rendering a massive amount of action in uber-high detail with nary a framerate hit in sight. That said, if I could nitpick on 1 thing, I’d like to see a little more ambient detail such as waves breaking, palm trees swaying and such as the backdrops are a bit on the (lovely but) static side.
S2 features 2 modes of play: campaign and mission. Campaign mode consists of completing a set number of waves on each of 4 progressively unlocked maps at your choice of 3 difficulty levels. Once you beat a level you unlock endurance or ‘freeplay’ mode where you can just play forever or until the aliens stomp you. New for S2 is mission mode which is a series of 10 progressively unlocked challenge levels (using the same maps) that give you specific victory criteria such as a set amount of money to work with or access only to orbital weapons. Mission mode is quite a lot of fun and a welcome addition; would in fact like to see more such levels! Finally, the game features superb global leaderboard support using Openfeint which just plain works really well in addition to enhancing replay value.
Alright, onward with the gripes and suggestions.
No ingame music or sound volume control; would really like to see this added.
No screen flip. Not sure why this feature is so often overlooked, everyone wants it but it continues to be elusive.
No manual targeting for towers (like Sweetwater Defense). Granted this is something of an up and coming feature in TD games but it would be nice to see it adopted here.
The build menu at the bottom of the screen can become obtrusive so would really like to see it auto-hide after a few seconds or something. Not only would this show more of the screen and enhance the visual enjoyment but more importantly prevent accidental tower deployment. Far too many times while just zooming/scrolling during the normal course of gameplay my finger caught a tower and ended up building it at some random location unintentionally.
It’s too easy to mistakenly sell a tower. When you want to deselect a tower you have to touch an unrelated part of the screen but on several occasions in the stress of battle I accidentally hit the sell button which is incredibly frustrating.
Not as common but still frustrating is the possibility of upgrading the wrong tower when there’s a big cluster of them together. In what is possibly the only downside to the detailed graphics, visual clutter can definitely become an issue on the small display. I think a simple ‘undo last move’ feature would go a long way towards addressing these last 3 points.
Oddly, the game became at times completely unresponsive to touches, something I also noticed in S1. Not sure what would cause this but again highly frustrating in the heat of battle.
Game seems a bit of a battery hog so just be aware during long play sessions.
A gripe shared also with S1 is that there’s no story to unfold; you get a blurb at the beginning about your base under attack and from there it’s just play the maps. A minor gripe for sure but Sentinel in particular just seems ripe to at least try and tell us a cool SciFi story to go with the awesome production values.
People who have never played Sentinel 1 should just buy Sentinel 2: Earth Defense right away and commence to playing this awesome game. Some debate exists among S1 veterans though as to whether S2 should really have been released as a sequel or simply as an (lower-priced) update to S1. After playing both games extensively, there’s no question S2 feels like S1 about 85% of the time and there’s certainly something keen about having your entire Sentinel fix in just 1 app. That said, it’s a fine line indeed and not the point of the review but I think specifically the orbital weapons and energy collecting, extra value attached to protecting barriers, definitely mission mode and to a lesser extent the booster tower make for enough new strategic elements and fun to call it a worthwhile purchase for S1 fans. Personally I’m tending to think of it as ’standalone DLC’ for the original and $3 really isn’t too much (plus OS3 gives us 2 more pages in the Springboard so what the hey). I will say that I’m definitely looking forward to what Origin8 can come up with next given their obvious talent (which is a subtle way of saying I hope Sentinel 3 is not in the pipeline). Bottom line then is Sentinel 2: Earth Defense is a very high-quality TD game that does not disappoint and has enough new elements to keep veteran S1 players entertained.
version reviewed – 1.1
reviewed on – iPhone 3GS 16GB OS3.0
screen flip – sadly, no
iTunes music support – yes (OS3 required)
Expando is a fun challenging game for the iPhone. In Expando, you have to try to fill up the screen with smiley faces without hitting the red balls! Its fun, try it! This app is sex, sex sexy.
FEATURES:
* Auto saving games when you quit Expando
* Easy, Medium, Hard and Instant Death modes!
* Heaps of backgrounds, and cool music tracks
VERSION 3:
In version 3 there will be many new game modes:
* Fast
* No Space
* Zero Gravity
* No Tilt
* Super Bad
* Timed!
Also coming is:
* 48 backgrounds
* 10 music tracks
* Better physics for trapping balls
* Prompting before overwriting the game!
RULES:
To finish the level, fill up 2/3rds of the screen with yellow smiley faces! Press and hold your finger to grow a smiley face. Let go of your finger when you are done growing the smiley face. Avoid the red balls while growing a smiley face, or you will lose a life.
Beware, you have a limited number of lives and balls.
REVIEWS:
"This is an addicting game that will keep you on your device for hours. I played for more than two hours today and it felt like 30 minutes. Outstanding! Worth four or five dollars… free is a total bonus. Thank you." — RSGardner
"I LOVE this app!! The other day my kid was bored, so I looked for a free app to entertain the little guy. It's a great app and [it] entertained him for the next hour. In fact, this app is great for people of all ages. I started playing it, and then I understood why he loved the game. Well, you heard my opinion, so I say buy Expando!"
"So I was like "What's this happy face thing…" … and so I downloaded it and started playing…. for over an hour! This game is my new obsession! My only complaint is no pause button" — CoverGurl [ed you can actually pause, read below]
NOTES:
* You can press the lock button on the phone to pause (just unlock it and it will be paused)
* You can double tap the home button to play your own music (stop your own music)
* You can flick the mute button the the iPhone to turn off the popping sounds
* You can turn down the volume on the iPhone too
IS EXPANDO SPYWARE?
Expando is NOT spyware. We DO NOT track GPS information. Apple will ask for permission with every app if they want to get your location. We only track how many times you play a game for how long. Its all aggregate information, so we have no idea who you are individually, we just know the average amount of times everyone plays a game and for how long.
SUPPORT:
If you have any bugs, questions or comments please email: [email protected]
Fly with the Fairies and discover a world of adventure and fun. This magical game captures the excitement of the changing seasons in the heart of Never Land, in a place called Pixie Hollow.
— Fly with the water-talent Fairy, Silvermist, in the cool waters above Spring Valley.
— Iridessa, the light-talent Fairy could use some help to light fireflies in the Summer Glade.
— Help catch flower petals as they flutter in the breeze of the Autumn Forest with Rosetta, the garden-talent Fairy.
— Soar over the Winter Woods with Fawn, the animal-talent Fairy, as she gathers nuts and berries for all the animals preparing for winter.
— And let’s not forget Tinker Bell! Fly with Tink to find lost things at the Beach Cove. You can even explore Tinker’s Nook to see video trailers, images and collect exclusive wallpapers from the Disney Fairies movies!
Simply tilt your iPod or iPhone to guide your Fairy. As you fly, try to pick up items and collect Pixie Dust to score points and unlock new surprises. Watch out for birds, thistles and other hazards that might slow you down. With dazzling graphics and a beautiful orchestral score direct from the creators of the Disney Fairies movies, you’ll soar to new heights with Fairies Fly!
Disney makes other great games for you and your kids! Check out Disney All Star Cards.
Source (Credits to Original Poster):
Code:
http://ipastuff.com/?view-id=298153386
Link:
Code:
http://zshare.net/download/574323262f105f87/
Link checked on Wed Jul 01, 2009 3:28 am [WBB_Linkchecker_Bot]
Comments