Search Results for: label/0.99

Shoot-em-ups have become a fairly popular genre within the iOS gaming crowd. Thankfully, the 3rd person rail-shooter genre hasn’t been left out of this revolution. Games like Dark Break, Denizen, ExZeus, TheMars and the more open ended Battle 3D: Robots Sky have given iOS gamers endless hours of Space Harrier type 3rd person rail-shooting excitement, though sadly, it’s far from the amount of shmups that can be found within the AppStore. Hopefully with the growing hardware, more and more 3rd person rail shooters will be developed. Until then, we can add Wizard Ops to this small list of games, developed by Phyken, you’ll guide a Wizard through 6 levels of hectic action, as well as have an endless survival level to try and play through.

Granted, 6 levels does seem short, but the replay value is fairly high, and there’s apparently more levels coming in the future, and at the current price-point, it’s hard to get upset when the 6 levels can be played over and over again to earn more coins which let you unlock any of the 18 total weapons that you can mix and match, equipping 2 at a time, along with the endless survival level offering up hours upon hours of gameplay.

Now, I’ve already said that there’s 18 weapons, but getting into them while talking about the controls is probably a good idea, because there’s quite a few of them that auto-target, but in a nice way. You won’t be able to just stand there and let these auto-target weapons go to town on all the enemies, instead, you’ll need to scroll over the enemy with your aim, in order to enable auto-targeting. Other than that, almost all of your weapons will shoot straight in-front of where your character is. There are a couple that toss out bombs, or have a spread shot, but basically, you’ll be shooting right in front of your character, and with the 3D onslaught of bullets coming your way, actually getting enough shots off to kill the enemies can sometimes be a challenge, especially in survival mode, where the difficulty ramps up fairly quickly. There will be some gamers out there who feel that the 6 regular levels are fairly easy, especially those of you who are in to bullet hell gaming, but not to worry, the survival mode has the difficulty to keep you hooked for quite some time.

There are pick-ups in the game, with each enemy dropping a bronze, silver, or gold coin, health drops, and even some guns are dropped in-game. If you already have the gun, however, it will automatically be sold, usually for about 300 coins. A major difference with the survival mode is that there are no health drops. So along with even more hectic bullet play, and an increasing difficulty, you won’t be able to regain health, adding even more of a challenge to the endless play.

For those of you who are worried about IAPs, and are wondering if this game’s shop is pushed towards them, you can take a deep breath, and rest easy. There’s NONE. That’s right, an out-right FULL game for $0.99. Better yet? It’s Universal! And aside from the short regular campaign time, having only 6 levels, it’s hard to even bring that up as an issue since they’re all replayable, there’s an endless survival level, and there’s more levels to come. If you’re a fan of 3rd person rail shooters, or even if you aren’t big on them, but love action filled arcade-based games, Wizard Ops is definitely a title that deserves some attention. I, for one, am really hoping that it sells well so that not only can we get the planned more content, but also see more from developer Phyken. The game looks great, plays great, has tons of action, and essentially endless replayabilty, all without any added IAPs, what’s not to like?

Tunnel racers are fairly popular on the iDevice. The utilization of tilt controls, along with pretty simple gameplay appeals to casual and hardcore gamers alike. The most recent addition to this genre is Gripati Digital Entertainment’s Corridor Fly.

The game does take a little bit of getting use to. You’re able to fly all around the tunnel you’ll be racing through by using the iDevice’s accelerometer controls, along with a button on the bottom left to tilt your aircraft sideways, and a button on the bottom right to use whatever power-up you might have stored. This wouldn’t normally be too hard to get acclimated to, but Corridor Fly’s collision detection seems to be more than just a tad off, and with the doors closing in on you as you try and make it through them. But usually, you’ll end up crashing without touching anything. It’s the worst when you’re basically right in the center of the tunnel, and the doors are just starting to move towards you from the sides, and your ship blows up with just the edges of the doors showing. This is even more upsetting because the trailer doesn’t really show the collision detection as being this bad.

Now, I guess all of this isn’t so bad. If you play the game enough, you should eventually learn how to get your ship through doors, and deal with the poor collision detection, as well as get good enough to earn enough stars to maybe unlock the ship that costs 2. But you might not even get that far. The loading screen takes, literally, a minute and a half to load on a 4th gen device. With the graphics far from being amazing, and the gameplay usually lasting about 20 seconds, most people will not sit and wait over a minute for the game to load.

All of this seems really bad, and it kind of is. With the amount of really good tunnel racers out there, it’s hard to recommend Corridor Fly. All of these issues could be fixed in an update, and hopefully they all will, but it’s not looking promising, with no iTunes reviews, and only 34 GameCenter scores, it doesn’t look like sales will be pushing a quick update to be submitted, if at all, but if one does come, you know that we’ll keep you informed of it.

Full on destruction games are kind of a niche genre within the AppStore, there’s really only a couple of titles that I can think of using destruction as a core mechanic, Destructopus, Robot Rampage, and to a lesser extent, Blast Zone Mega, and Burn The City, which is really more in the line of an Angry Birds type physics puzzler, but you get the idea. It’s not a genre that’s been well expanded on. Andrew Wang, and Ayopa Games (W.E.L.D.E.R., Chicken Rescue) are giving us one more title to add to that very short list. Inspired by the classic arcade game, Rampage, and taking influences from The Simpsons and Futurama, as well as trying to incorporate the customization of Mechwarrior, BigBot Smash is now available for our iDevices, and fingertips that are hungry for destruction.

To start it off, the controls in BigBot Smash will take quite a bit of getting use to, but once you do, even more problems show their face. There are two different control schemes included in the game. The first control method uses the iDevice’s accelerometer, tilting to turn the world that you’ll be destroying. This can be extremely difficult to use, as you’ll need to turn your device completely around to turn your robot around, and tilt it in pretty uncomfortable ways to turn. Tapping on the screen controls your robots projectiles, and tapping on the robot will make it jump. If you tap on a building that is close to the robot, it will smash it with it’s fists. Here’s where it gets even more difficult. If the building is just a little bit too far away, you’ll shoot at it instead of smashing it, which takes up quite a bit of time, which can be pretty frustrating in the Speedrun Mode, but outside of the Speedrun Mode, it’s just bothersome. Tapping on your robot also does not always make it jump, sometimes it will jump, and other times it will destroy the building right in front of it. There are touch controls as well, which have the same sort of issues as the tilt controls, except you won’t be tilting your device in uncomfortable ways, instead, you’ll be dragging your finger on the screen to change the robot’s direction. However, this also has it’s own issues, as more than half of the time, dragging your finger across the screen is registered as a tap, and will result in the robot shooting it’s projectiles. It’s not so bad that you won’t be able to play the game, but once you hit stage 4 in the campaign mode, and the game gets a little more hectic, you’ll be constantly wanting to turn the game off out of frustration. The same goes for the speed demolition and survival challenge modes, once the game reaches that point where the action picks up, the controls become a real issue.

If you can look past these, especially the control issues, which could be fixed in an update, BigBot Smash does have quite a bit of fun gameplay at it’s core. Using three different robots, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, you’ll smash buildings, blow up buses, police cars, squish people by walking on them or jumping onto them, and shoot them with your lasers, which will give you a nice little laugh when the sound effects for this go off, and you can hear the people scream when they die. In the campaign mode, you’ll need to destroy buildings, looking for pieces of your robot girlfriend. Within most of the buildings are parts that you can use to upgrade parts on your robot, along with some power-ups, and recharging items. In the speed demolition, you’ll need to destroy a set amount of buildings before the clock runs out, and in survival mode, you guessed it, you stay alive as long as you can. Both of these extra modes will have you collecting bits and pieces to upgrade your robots as well, but are not saved or transferred over to the campaign robot, so you’ll start from scratch every time you start to play in these modes.

For $0.99, it’s not a bad game by any means. The controls can be worked with, and might actually just have so many issues if you’re playing on a small screen. Gameplay videos on the iPad show the game in a completely different light, and since the game is Universal, you won’t need to buy an HD version to find out. There are GameCenter leader boards, though only for Survival and Speed modes, but do have 48 achievements to try and grab. There is quite a bit of replay value, and the core gameplay looks like it could be great fun. But until an update hits with some tighter controls, it’s hard to really give the game a fair play on my small screen, but I’m excited about having the opportunity to.

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Worms. They are absolutely repulsive creatures used only to gross out people and to be placed in your parents spaghetti. But they seem to be used often as cute protagonists so I guess they have something going for them. 
In this new worm filled adventure you star as a worm with a rocket on its back. Unfortunately at the party you are sleeping at, three jokesters light the rocket on your back causing you to be brutally propelled out of the window and into the world. It is your job as the player to take control of the worms path and make sure he doesn’t hit any obstacles on his flight. This is accomplished by taping the upper or lower part of the screen. By tapping the bottom of the screen you dive into the ground and by tapping the upper part you jump to avoid obstacles.  Obstacles are placed in various different locations, requiring you to think fast to avoid making the wrong move. Some are embedded halfway in the ground allowing you to either jump or dive to avoid them while others take up all of the above ground area.  Unfortunately after you have played through a few games all of the obstacles become fairly easy to avoid and not even your ever-increasing high speed makes these any more deadly. Also no new obstacles are introduced later in your never ending run so you can get bored of them easily. Also scattered among the level are power-ups which can do one of three things. Either give your worm another life, a helmet, or let him destroy anything in his path. You lose life’s by running into obstacles so its always a good idea to pickup a health or a helmet  pick-up.
By completing certain pre-determined missions you can unlock new rocket types which don’t really do much other than look cool. If thats incentive enough for you to play hours and hours of this game then you really need to find something better to do with your time.  Another annoying feature of this game is its achievment system. They choose to use something called Kiip points. Apparently you can redeem these Kiip points for real world items from certain companies. This system miserably fails for this game as you can only use them for Kodak pictures and is a big nuisance when playing the game.

Overall this is a sub par endless runner which feels like a rip off of Tiny Wings and the original Worms franchise. I give it a 1/5.

With enough titles being released in the AppStore, a lot of them start to play similar to one another, and it’s not too often you’ll come across a game with some interesting mechanics. Lucky for us, there are developers out there that see and recognize this, and don’t want to just make a game that’s like other games, but a game that brings something, not necessarily new to the table, but something that‘s not done often, and can actually pull it off, fitting it into their game flawlessly. P@ssword Studios first release into the iOS scene just so happens to be one of these titles. Unknown Defender, a base defense arcade shooter in which you’ll need to mix up different types of energy to make new types of projectiles, also researching your opponents, and finding out what types of energies they are resilient, and which they are weak against.

The controls in Unknown Defender are pretty simple. You’ll drag your finger across the screen to control which direction you want your gun to point, and then tap on the different energies you have unlocked at the bottom of the screen to fire. Each different type of energy has a certain amount of shots in storage, so you’ll need to be careful when deciding what to shoot at the enemies. After the 5th Stage, you’re able to mix the energies you have unlocked, and can create much more powerful shots. To use these, you’ll need to make sure you have enough of the energies stored up, and then tap on your cannon, which will bring up a menu, brining the game almost to a stand-still, then deciding which mixture of energies you want to fire at the enemies heading towards the bottom of the screen. Once enemies make it to the bottom of the screen, they’ll start attacking your base. There are some enemies that will start attacking with projectiles of their own once they’re about halfway down the screen, which makes for some added strategy in deciding which enemies are a higher priority.

After you get more accustomed to the game, there’s two more modes alongside the Normal Mode. Rush Mode, which offers weaker enemies, but more of them, and an Extra Mode, which is pretty much a Hardcore Only mode, offering the hardest challenge. Both the Extra and Rush Modes offer the same type of upgrades, and Stage 5 Mixing Energy options that the Normal Mode offers, but with different types of strategies involved. There are only a certain number of Stages in each Mode. Normal Mode has 25, while Rush Mode has 30, and Extra has 15.

For $0.99, it’s an excellent take on the base defense arcade shooter, offering multiple types of gameplay, and strategy, along with loads of experimentation with upgrades and energy mixing. There is no GameCenter or OpenFeint support, which does take a bit away from the replay value, as well as the drive to get the best score you can. It can also feel like your finger that’s controlling the direction of your gun gets in the way quite a bit, though, with the current set-up, and gameplay. But it’s fair to say that P@ssword has given gamers quite a bit of gameplay, with pretty interesting mechanics that are definitely worth checking out if you’re tired of the same games being basically re-skinned and sold within the AppStore. Here’s hoping they stick around, and release, at least, a couple more games for the iOS in the future.

Unknown Defender gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Platformers are anything but a rarity in the AppStore these days. About a year ago, that was not the case. Fans of the genre have been flooded with platform after platform game, and couldn’t be more happy with most of them, even though the very unique and original plat former is still kind of hard to find. Luckily, there are still developers out there with quite a bit of imagination and skill. Grass Fed Games is new the AppStore, but their first iOS title, Run, Jump, Kill, is one that platform fans should definitely check out.

You’ll play as the king of a kingdom that has been ravaged while your brother, Lord Locke, was put in charge for your vacation. Your loyal subjects are no-where to be found, there’s hordes of crazy monsters running around, and your trusted friend Follo is the only one who can help guide you to your brother so you can find out what all has happened. It’s a hack-n-slash platformer fest that’s incredibly enjoyable. While it lasts.

The levels, while designed fairly well, are lacking. There are springs, but they’re really linear, which is a shame, because hidden areas, and some exploration would fit within the game so perfectly, it would be borderline magical. But while you’re playing, you will be constantly wanting to know what’s coming next, what the next boss will look like, and what you’ll have to do to kill him, Run, Jump, Kill is a very hard game to put down.

For $0.99, Run, Jump, Kill is a decent hack-n-slash platform game that while it doesn’t give you loads of content, it is very satisfying to play. It would do well to add GameCenter support, with a leaderboard and achievements, to help with the drive, and add some replay value to the game though. But what makes the entire game even more impressive is that it’s all made with GameSalad. Usually, I’m the first one to turn my head right when that word is uttered, but with Run, Jump, Kill, I wasn’t really completely sure that it was made with GameSalad until I asked the developer. There is the typical GameCenter loading circle in the corner, but aside from that, this is unlike any other GS game I’ve ever played. Nice physics, great controls that are responsive and work very well, no lag or framerate issues, incredible graphics, and the game is just a blast. Hopefully we’ll see more added to the game with future updates, but I, for one, will be watching Grass Fed Games very closely from here on out.

Run, Jump, Kill gets a score of 3 out of 5.

3D Motion Picture Puzzler. Chances are you haven’t heard of the genre. Don’t feel bad, it’s relatively untouched within the AppStore, and aside from Flash games, finding a Motion Picture Puzzle game can be quite the task. On the iOS, Pictorial is available for free, and has been a very good example of a 3D Motion Picture Puzzler. What you might not know is that Pictorial is an unofficial iOS port of the Flash game, Starlight. The developers of Starlight are from FDG Entertainment (Blosics, Cover Orange, Beyond Ynth, Bobby Carrot, and more), who are also the developers of a wonderful new motion picture puzzler game; Blueprint 3D.

You’ll be given 240 different pictures to try and solve. When the picture first pops up, it looks like a bunch of broken lines, shapes, and really, just a jumbled mess. You’ll need to rotate the picture by dragging your finger across the screen until you see something that’s starting to resemble an actual object. Once you get the picture, you’ll need to use two fingers to rotate the image so that it’s right-side-up, and then move on to the next picture.

There are 7 different level packs at the moment, each with different backgrounds, graphics, and atmospheres, giving them all a different sort of feel. Architecture, Electronics and Military are a few, with new and old architectural wonders, computer parts and electronic devices, along with weapons and armor images to rotate together. Each level pack has images that fit the theme, and with Blueprint having 7 different packs, there is quite a bit of variety while going through the game.

Like EPOCH, and couple other recent releases in the AppStore, Blueprint will not take long at all to complete, but what gameplay is there is done extremely well, and is loads of fun. I’m not too sure how many of you out there are hoping for more games that are short and sweet, but done so well that every second you spend playing them is just about, if not more, fun than going through 40 hours of an RPG, but we’d love to see more of them hit the AppStore. At the low price of $0.99 for the iPhone version, and $2.99 for the HD build, with all the leader boards, achievements, and new level packs that are on the way, it’s a great price for what you’re getting. Sure, there are more polished games, games that have more content, or more action packed into them, but if you’re looking for something that hasn’t been reproduced a hundred times, and carries with it loads of entertainment, Blueprint 3D will be a great game to check out. You can also check out Pictorial for free, and Pictorial HD has just gone free for a limited time if you’d like to check out what sort of gameplay you’ll be getting yourselves into.

Blueprint 3D gets a score of 4 out of 5.

I don’t know what it is, but seeing cute little animals get butchered in video games is something I find extremely entertaining. There’s aren’t too many games on the AppStore that feed this little guilty pleasure of mine, but when they do come around, I enjoy them as much as I can, which is probably a little too much. When I saw the trailer for Bunny Reaper, developed by Assyria Studios (The Glowing Void, Future Racer, and more) with help from artist Molly Proffitt, and published by Daily App Dream, I couldn’t stop laughing. A platformer that had you play death, and go around and kill cute little bunnies. The gaming gods have heard my prayers yet again.

In Bunny Reaper, you’ll control a little Grim Reaper, who has the job of taking little bunnies when their time has come, and then making it to his underworld portal safely so he can move on, doing his job again and again. You’re given platform controls, left and right buttons on the left, and jump and attack buttons on the right. There’s also a zoom out button in the top right, which lets you see the entire level. You can also move your character when you’re zoomed out, which comes in handy quite a bit. To make things a little more interesting, you are able to turn back time. But, you can only do this after you fall off of a platform. A clock icon will show up at the top of the screen, and holding it down will send you back in time, so that you can reverse yourself back up to the platform that you fell from. This does add quite a bit of interesting gameplay to Bunny Reaper, but also takes away a lot of the challenge. Knowing that you can just tap a button to place yourself back up at the top of a level, instead of having to climb all the way up again takes away the pressure of needing to nail your jumps.

The graphics in Bunny Reaper are done in a silhouette styling. The backgrounds change color as you move on through level groups of 10, and always have clouds floating around. There are some levels with snow, which looks pretty nice, and adds to the atmosphere of the world, as does the extra environmental growths on the second world’s platforms. Each world has enough of a different look to give the game just enough variety so it won’t get boring. However, there are only 2 enemies that you’ll face, and one of them, the bunnies, can not hurt you. The other, heart monsters, are kind of like snapping plants. Seeing more enemies in a future update would be great. The animations are very well done though, and are a big part of the entertainment in the game. When you kill a rabbit, it will essentially explode, sending blood EVERYWHERE, even raining down on your character, and have the soul of the rabbit fly upward. The heart monsters shoot out green goo when you slice them in half, which looks pretty neat. It would be perfect if the bottom part of the reaper’s outfit moved more while you were jumping, but that’s just me being picky.

Bunny Reaper is $0.99, which gives you the first 20 levels. The last 20 levels can be unlocked with an in app purchase of $0.99, so the full game is about $2. It is supported with GameCenter, and has 57 achievements, but no leader board, and a lot of the achievements are “finish level 1” “finish level 2” and so on, so there’s not a whole lot of replay value to be gained from the GameCenter integration. And though the game is fairly violent, it’s also very simple. The first 20 levels will give you about an hours worth of gameplay. There is a puzzle element, with trying to figure out how to reach each level’s exit, but zooming out once or twice will give you the answer pretty much right away. For it’s price, I’m personally very entertained, and also very impressed with the developers interaction with gamers on the Touch Arcade forums, which counts for quite a bit in my book. If you’re looking for a fairly gory, just plain fun to play game, Bunny Reaper is probably just up your ally. But if you’re looking for a game with substance, and don’t have much of a sense of humor, or hate seeing video game violence towards virtual animals, chances are, you won’t like this game at all. It seems more like a game my daughter would take to school and show off to her friends, while hoping to make her other classmates think she’s weirder than she really is. But then again, I had those days back in high school too.

Bunny Reaper gets a score of 3 out of 5.

Endless jumping games, like MegaJump, Doodle Jump, and the whole slew of them you can find in the AppStore, have gained a pretty large following over the years, hell, even my kids cell-phones came with Doodle Jump pre-installed on them. But finding these types of games offering something new to the mix is pretty rare. However, Krivorukoff LLP has noticed this, and done something about it with their first iOS release, Mad Rush.

You’ll embark on a journey to become the greatest racer in the universe, while defending your home from the evil Mr. Storm. Guiding your rabbit in races against 10 different characters, with 3 different races each, evolving your character through leveling up and distributing points, and learning more about the rabbits destiny as you progress through the game. To beat your opponents, you’ll need to collect egg looking objects in order to speed up. You can bump against your opponent, pushing them into hazards, or out of the way of a power-up, and the first one to cross the finish line wins.

Now, generally, the controls, as well as the smoothness of the gameplay come into question quite a bit. With Mad Rush, both are top notch. Nice, tight controls make weaving left and right, and avoiding the hazards that await you comes naturally, while the gameplay is buttery smooth, with no lag or frameskips to disrupt you while you’re playing. Considering the game runs at a pretty quick pace, these aspects are pretty impressive.

Mad Rush is supported by GameCenter, having a top collective score leader board, but no achievements, and no time boards, which would be nice. However, something that will make the game exceptional once it’s added is multiplayer gameplay. According to the developers, you will soon be able to compete head to head against your friends in multiplayer races. This would shoot the replay and gameplay entertainment values through the roof. Sadly though, it’s not part of the game yet, so we can’t seriously consider it as part of the review. But if it is added in the future, you can be sure that we’ll let you know, and push you guys to seriously consider buying this title. Right now, the gameplay is great, and the replay value is there with the collective score leader board, though a lot of players don’t like leader boards that collectively add up how many points you’ve gotten while playing the game, because the #1 spot could, hypothetically, just replay the first race over and over again, eventually achieving the #1 spot, instead of the person who has the highest score on each of the levels. Having IAPs which give players an advantage is also generally frowned upon, but considering how much extra stuff you get for a dollar, it’s not really worth fussing over. I know when I put Mad Rush on my kid’s devices, I’ll probably end up buying the IAP just so that they can play the game without too much difficulty, and it’s kind of hard not to keep that in mind when talking about IAP additions for a game like this. But with the leveling up system, and abilities to enhance, along with the difficulty of the later races, the replay value is there. $0.99 is a great price for a title that’s a great addition to the MegaJump type genre.

Mad Rush gets a score of 4 out of 5.

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Evertales is the newest game from Crescent Moon Games, an influential gaming studio that emphasizes collaboration, innovation and unique ideas. They have had several previous forays into the RPG market such as Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Pocket RPG, Ravensword and many others. But in this new mix of the typical formula they have toned down the rpg aspect and turned Evertales into more of a sidescrolling platformer.

As mentioned before you are constantly moving right trying to get to the end of each chapter. Enemies are of course trying to kill you and have various ways of trying to do so. You can pick and choose from three different characters to handle each scenario while in the level.  This can be very useful because it allows you to approach each situation differently. Say you have a drunken dwarf throwing bottles of alchol at you.  You could choose to rush him with the Knight character and potentially risk losing some life or you could use the Archer or the Wizard, both long range specialists to pick em off from a distance.  These different characters allow many different puzzle elements to be worked into the game. For example the knight can barely jump because of his armor, the elf can double jump to reach high areas and the wizard can glide to hard to reach places with his cloak. Combined with the enemies different strengths and attack patterns you will have to be alert to pass through the level safely. Plus there is a gigantic boss fight at the end of each chapter which is always worth looking forward to.

  Once you finish a chapter, you can change your characters armor, buy new weapons or choose to upgrade them instead with “Evercoins”  These “Evercoins” are usually spread across the level in hard to reach places and can be a challenge to collect all of them. You can also choose to buy them through IAP. Though it doesnt feel necessary to buy the IAP the minimal amount of coins you get per level are hardly enough to upgrade a weapon or two. This can be solved by replaying the levels a few times to rack up enough Evercoins.  The graphics are as usual, superbly done and the sounds are just as good.  Controls can feel a bit spotty sometimes but they get the job done.

With only 9 chapters I managed to blow through the game in about two hours.  Even though the actual experience felt great I feel they should have spent more time working on the gameplay and adding new and intruiging puzzle aspects.  Its definitely not a bad game and I recommend you pick it up but to me it feels like something is missing that would make this a truly outstanding game.  I give it a 4/5. (Currently on a intro sale for 0.99)