I think we all can agree that this August has been an awesome month for game releases and many of my favorites have gotten sequels that drastically reinvented themselves.  There have also been alot of other unique releases that deserve mention as well.   Ladies and Gentlemen this is..The Best of the Best!

Pocket RPG-(Crescent Moon Games) 0.99

Though  released on the iPad before the iPod, this Wednesday it was made Universal. Pocket RPG is now fast becoming our favorite game with three different characters and tons of exploring and looting to do you’ll be spending all your free time with this amazing game. App Store Link

Mega Mall Story-(Kairosoft) 3.99

 If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to be the manager of a mall then this game is for you.  It puts all the elements of business and turns them into something extremely fun.  You can build shops, invest in the surrounding community and expand your very own mall.  Pick this one up today! App Store Link

Jetpack Joyride-(Halfbrick) 0.99

There’s no doubt about it that Halfbrick has done it again. This has got to be one of the best releases all summer. Do whatever you have to do to get this game. You won’t regret this purchase. This is truly a fun and addictive game. By addictive I mean you will literally be hooked on this game for hours and hours and hours… well you get it. Go download it now! App Store Link

Edge Extended- (Mobigame) 0.99
Based off of the success of the very first Edge Mobigame went and made a sequel to that game. This definitely feels like a true sequel and is true to the originals length and complexity.  To read up more on this game check out our Review of it.
 App Store Link

Contre Jour- (Mokus) 0.99
 
A blend of game and interactive art this breathtaking puzzler is one of the most innovative games we have ever seen.  With a blend of Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, and other games mechanics you’ll surely be entertained! App Store Link

Infinty Field-(ForzeField) 0.99
This is the first dual stick shooters that has actually stuck on my device for more than a week and is perfect for those few fleeting moments you have during your bathroom breaks and when your teacher is looking the other way.  All in all I highly suggest you try this game out for the low asking price of 0.99.  I promise you wont be disappointed. App Store Link

Temple Run- (Imangi) 0.99
Endless runners are a well done genre in the App Store but this game takes a turn where few other dare to go….3D.  You are frantically running away from the angry temple guardians who feel you violated the sanctity of their temple. By swiping you jump, turn and slide around all sorts of obstacles and passages. The replayabiltiy is off the hook and I have once spent 2 hours straight playing the game.  I highly recommend you try this for the low cost of 0.99. App Store Link

Spooky Hoofs is a new endless runner from Gamesmold. In it, you guide a stagecoach through woods and marshes collecting orbs for power-ups and avoiding holes, monsters and bosses. The game is semi-level based, in that you will always start in one of 3 randomly generated “first-levels”, but then after the first 3 levels, and after you defeat 3 bosses in a row, you move onto the harder section of the game, seeing enemies and bosses that you will never see within the first 3 levels. The end of each level is sectioned off by a boss battle and then a quick ride past another tavern. Each of the levels is generated based on what power-ups you have, and what kind of enemies there are. For instance, if you’re in a section that doesn’t have a lot of holes, you’ll face more ground enemies. In a section with lots of holes, you’ll face more flying enemies, and in a section where you have the double jump power-up, you’ll face lots of long holes and a pretty decent mixture of both types of enemies. Each of the boss battle sections are scripted, so that the difficulty stays fair and the choreography of the bosses works with the jumps and shots. This intelligent random design makes the game extremely well balanced as you’re progressing through the endless run.

The graphics in Spooky Hoofs are great, and have a similar style to Castlevania, which is awesome, and it‘s given to us in retina display, which makes it even better. The animations for the stagecoach, enemies, and bosses are done extremely well, making the flow of the game, and the gameplay, feel very professional and polished. The scoring is also done very well, separated between distance and a kill score. Each enemy and boss has a different amount of points, which when defeated, are added to your kill score, in the top right corner, under your health, while the distance is shown in meters, and is in the center top part of the screen.

The controls are done very well, as are the physics. You’re given a whip-speed boost button is on the left side, and the jump is on the right. You can use the whip button to whip the horses, also killing any flying enemies that might be above you, and holding it down sends you bursting forward. You can also boost forward while you’re jumping, making jumping over the bigger holes a lot easier. The power-ups in Spooky Hoofs are done very well also. To activate them, you need to collect 3 of the same colored orbs. There’s Blue, Orange and Purple, while Red orbs just need to be collected once, and add to your health. Collecting 3 blue orbs turns your horses into flaming blue invincible beings, giving you 3 chances to run into and through enemies, killing them, and adding to your kill score. Orange orbs give you the ability to shoot projectiles at enemies by hitting the dash-whip button, giving you 9 shots for every 3 orbs you collect, and purple orbs, when 3 are collected, give your horses wings and 9 air jumps, which you’re able to use consistently until you run out, meaning you can stay in the air for 10 full jumps before it’s used up and you fall back down to the ground.

There’s 2 leaderboards supported by GameCenter, one for distance, and one for your kill score, and no achievements. Having no achievements kind of takes away from the replay value, but with the leaderboards, it doesn’t take away too much, as you’ll be trying to get further and further, seeing more and more varied enemies, and increasing both your distance and kill scores. For $0.99, Spooky Hoofs is a great endless runner with awesome graphics, and great power-ups, while the gothic vibe of the game makes it even better. This is one game that will be staying on my iPod for quite some time.

Spooky Hoofs is getting a score of 9 out of 10.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spooky-hoofs/id455577493?mt=8

Spin The Nut is a new puzzle game from P-O-M Apps in which you try and get an acorn to the end of the level to feed the squirrel. You’ll also try and collect 3 golden nuts while getting the acorn to the end. The quicker you collect the golden nuts and make it to the squirrel, the better your score will be.

We’re given 80 nicely designed levels to try and get through, spread across 4 different worlds, with plenty of different objects to have the acorn interact with along the way, like bouncy platforms that are stationary, and then later in the game become platforms that you can move, spikes, helicopter baskets, pieces of wood that break after using them once, signs that will change the direction of the acorn while it’s in the air, and loads more.

The controls in Spin The Nut are done very well. To shoot the acorn, you place your finger on the piece of spinning wood that it’s stuck to, and then slide your finger away from the acorn so that you can see which direction it’s pointing. When it’s aimed in the direction that you want it to go, you let go of the screen, and it’ll shoot forward. There’s no gravity, so you don’t need to account for that, and the acorn will automatically stick to the next piece of wood it comes in contact with. Later in the game you’re also able to move the rotating pieces of wood that the acorn sticks to by single tapping on it to move it, and double tapping on it to activate the firing ability.

The graphics in Spin The Nut are polished and professional, and look very good. The squirrel is extremely cute, and the movement animations are done very well, and the music and sound effects fit with the cutesy vibe going on. The backgrounds, however, are not varied, and although they do let you see the objects throughout the levels very well, they feel pretty bland. For instance, in the treehouse world, the background is yellow with slight shaded in areas resembling branches, in the helicopter world, this changes to a pink background, and as you move on, the background color changes, but nothing else does. I don’t know how much the backgrounds were played around with, but seeing backgrounds that really match the worlds you are playing in could help liven up the game quite a bit, for instance, having an actual forest or tree background for the treehouse world, and the sky with some clouds for the helicopter world.

Spin The Nut is supported by GameCenter, and has 4 different leaderboards, one for each world, which helps add to the drive of getting as good of a score as you can in each level, but there are no achievements, and in a puzzle game like this, achievements go a long way. However, it is a pretty unique puzzle game with nice graphics, and great physics. The objects and gaming mechanics given to us are great, especially with the game only being $0.99. Spin The Nut is definitely a puzzle game that I will play through all the way, and will most likely go back through trying to get better scores and move up in the leaderboards. P-O-M Apps has shown that they have what it takes to make a nice puzzle game with great physics, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they add with future worlds, and what they have in store for us with their next game.

Spin The Nut is getting a score of 7.5 out of 10

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin-the-nut/id447830290?mt=8

Space Touch – The Touch Shooter is a new tap/arcade game from Alpha-Tauri Interactive. In it, you’ll be faced with wave after wave of enemies that are made up of 3 different colors, red, green, and blue, and you’ll need to match up the color of your tap to the color of the enemy in order to kill them. You’ll also switch between the tap play and joystick play. Between each wave of enemies, you’re able to control your ship with a joystick, and collect energy and bombs to help you get through the next wave of enemies. At the end of each level, you’ll face a color changing boss along with some side-kick enemies.

Alpha-Tauri Interactive has done a great job meshing the space shooter and tap arcade genres in Space Touch. The switch between gameplay modes is done very well, and the tap gameplay itself feels very good with the user interface that’s set up. You have color switch options in the bottom left corner of the screen, and once you get use to the set-up, you don’t really need to pay too much attention to in the heat of tap-battle. The enemies are varied, and the movement and animations are done extremely well.

Sometimes enemies will hide behind each other, and other times you’ll just need to learn their movement patterns. They can also move around 3 dimensionally, making three quarters of them unreachable for brief seconds of time. If you don’t kill the enemies quick enough, they start to shoot laser beams at you, taking away from your energy. Once your energy is depleted, you’ll need to start the level over again. After the first couple of levels, the action gets pretty intense, and you’ll be tapping away like crazy.

Along with this campaign mode, there’s 3 “classic” game modes. Each is endless, and you score as many points as you can before dying. There’s Asteroid, Out Of Energy, and Kamikaze Modes, each with different types of gameplay. In Asteroid Mode, you’ll control your ship with the joystick, and try to shoot down as many asteroids as you can. If you miss an asteroid, or your ship hits one, you’ll loose energy. In Out Of Energy Mode, you control your ship with your joystick again, but this time, your energy constantly drains, and you’ll need to maneuver around collecting as many energy balls as you can to try and stay alive. If you miss too many energy balls, your energy drains too quick, and it’s game over. In Kamikaze Mode, you’ll be faced with enemies that are not colored, and you’ll need to tap on them before they crash into you. These three extra endless modes add a lot to the replay value and high-score chasing parts of the game.

Space Touch is supported by OpenFeint and GameCenter, and you can select which service you’d like to use in the Profile section of the main menu. There’s leaderboards for each of the three endless modes, as well as for the campaign. There are no achievements, which would be nice, because most games have pretty good options for achievements. Like here, you could get an achievement for killing 500 red enemies, along with green and blue, or an achievement for finishing the campaign, or for collecting 100 bombs or 500 energy balls. Lots of possibilities, though it doesn’t take away too much from the gameplay, just a little from the replay value. The graphics in Space Touch are done very well, and each of the 11 campaign stages are varied in look and feel, and there is a very nice sci-fi atmosphere presented in the game. For $1.99, Space Touch is a very nice, professional looking game that plays great and can get very challenging. There’s plenty of replay value, and the controls are spot on. Aside from the lack of achievements, I really can’t say anything bad about what Alpha-Tauri Interactive has presented to us here, and I’m eagerly awaiting updates, and can’t wait to see what the developers come up with next.

Space Touch gets a score of 9 out of 10.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-touch-the-touch-shooter/id449855262?mt=8

Pocket Warriors is a new 2D side-scrolling action-RPG from Rainbow Game. You’re able to switch between two characters while you play, making the gameplay a little more interesting. It’s your job to keep the village safe from incoming monsters and enemies, while becoming stronger warriors. The game kind of plays like a 2D version of Monster Hunter, which isn’t really a bad thing at all. Rainbow Game has pulled it off quite well.

The controls for the game are simple, but work perfectly. You’re given movement buttons, left and right, which you don’t need to constantly pick your thumb up from to change directions, and 3 buttons, an attack, guard, and switch character button. To enter the stores, upgrade shops, or quest sections, the attack button changes to an enter button. Graphics-wise, Pocket Warriors is done in a professional manor, and looks very polished. The environments are varied, and there’s 15 different enemies along with huge bosses that are designed extremely well, along with pretty nice animations.

You start off in the village, and can talk to four different characters. An item storage lady, upgrade blacksmith, weapon shop panda, and the elder who hands out your quests. The quests need to be done in order, and each gives you a certain amount of gold when completed. To do the quest, you exit the village, and are taken directly to where you need to be in order to complete it. The quests are generally one of two options, kill X amount of enemies, or kill a boss. However, the lack of variety when it comes to the quests isn’t really a big deal, as you’ll need different strategies and items to defeat each different enemy, as well as each of the bosses. Combat is simple, with the attack and block buttons, you can also equip magical items up under your character avatars in the top left corner. These magical items can be bought in the shop, and do not drop during battle. More slots can be bought with the money you earn doing quests. Bosses do give off elemental items each time they’re knocked down, and you can use these to upgrade your weapons. There’s no exploration, no mixing items, or searching for other items, everything can be bought in the shop or won through a boss battle. There’s also loads of different weapons to buy and upgrade, each with different attributes and qualities.

The second character AI is pretty upsetting though. Sometimes the second character will hardly move at all, but when they do, they attack at about half the speed as when you’re doing the attacking, and almost always let enemies harm them. Being able to set up what you want a character to do, like in Final Fantasy, to attack, block, or just use the magical items, would have made the second character combat a lot better.

With 36 quests, each taking a couple minutes, some taking 4 or 5, the game doesn’t have very much gameplay, but it’s set-up in a way that new levels and quests can be added with updates pretty easily, so I’m really hoping for these types of updates in the future, and some tweaking of the second character AI is needed to really be helpful too. A scoring system would also be a very nice feature to see in the future, as well as online services, including leaderboards and achievements. It would also be extremely nice to see some defensive qualities added to the shops, for instance, some upgradeable armor, and shields Aside from this, Pocket Warriors is a great monster killing quest game, and what it has is done extremely well. For $2.99, it’s well worth having if you’re into the genre. For Rainbow Game, Pocket Warriors has definitely helped them make their mark on the action RPG scene, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting future updates, and future games from the company.

Pocket Warriors is getting a score of 8 out of 10.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-warriors/id455560723?mt=8

Earlier this month, I wrote my very first review for The App Shack, and the game I decided to make my first reviewed game ever was iDaTank. Today, it’s free. If you don’t have this game yet, GET IT NOW! It is seriously the game of the year for me. Deathsmiles, Bumby Road, Cut The Rope Experiments, none of them hold a place in my heart or mind like iDaTank. So grab it now while you can! And remember to leave the developer, Paul, a review in the AppStore. Indie devs like him who don’t get a lot of attention need all the help they can get!

Explodables is a new tap/arcade game from Bonpeach. Throughout the game you’ll go through levels, which are more like challenges, to complete the game. There’s also a Blitz Mode, which gives you about a minute to score as many points as you can. There’s red, blue, green, and white rockets, white rockets are wild, and can be any color you need them to be. The screen is broken up into 3 sections, blue on the bottom, green in the middle, and red on top, and you’ll always have a set color order that results in a combo. You can tap on the rockets anywhere on the screen, but you only get the massive point combos when you tap the rockets in their respective color sections, blue on the bottom, green in the middle, and red on top. If you miss a color, then the combo re-sets, and you’ll need to make the color combo again.

Through the levels, you’re usually given a set score to try and hit, but there’s also levels that challenge you to get 3 crowns, which are given off when you make a combo and get a multiplier circle, which you can then move around the screen. Placing this multiplier circle in the color sections that you need to pull off the combo gives you mega points, and moving it to follow the combo gives you crowns. For instance, if the color combo given to you at the beginning of the stage is red, green, blue, then you’ll need to tap a red rocket in the red section, a green rocket in the green section, and a blue rocket in the blue section, then a multiplier circle will appear, you’ll tap on it, and then move it up to the red section, tap a red rocket, move it to the green section, tap a green rocket, then move it to the blue section, and tap a blue rocket, then 3 crowns will appear. These crowns are the best way to get huge scores, and collecting 6 of them puts you into a bonus stage.

All of this might sound confusing, and it kind of is, but the learning curve is great, and you’ll get to experience everything one step at a time going through the levels. Blitz Mode is unlocked once you hit level 20 or so, I can’t really remember when I unlocked it, but it’s before you finish the rookie levels.

The graphics in Explodables are awesome. Very colorful, and stand out on retina supported devices. The movement and animations are smooth and very well done, and the music and effects go along very well with the game. There is a graphics option in the menu which lets you turn the graphics down if you’re experiencing lag, but I haven’t had any problems with jitteriness or any crashing at all. The tap controls are very responsive and accurate as well.

Explodables really is a top notch high scoring game, with GameCenter leaderboards for Blitz Mode and Levels 31 through 45. There’s also 45 achievements, all adding to the extremely high replay value of the game. Bonpeach has shown that they know exactly what it takes to make a professional, extremely polished arcade game for the iOS, and at only $0.99, Explodables is a great buy. Anyone who’s into high-scoring games with great scoring systems, and hectic gameplay should definitely check this out. I know it’s going to be on my iPod until it breaks, and I’m glued to Bonpeach, eagerly awaiting updates for this, and seeing what awesome game they come up with next.

Explodables is getting a score of 10 out of 10, and is recommended to everyone!

Dragon Of The Three Kingdoms is a new side-scrolling beat-em-up/hack-n-slash/action RPG from WaGame Technology. In it, you play as Zhao Yun as you battle against the Nanman Barbarians. The game really reminds me of Dynasty Warriors, but in a side-scrolling, old-school format. The graphics are awesome, and very reminiscent of the SNES/SEGA era, and the animations are great. Walking looks kinda funny, but it’s not distracting, and the fighting animations are very smooth and presented very well.

The controls in DOTTK are tight, responsive, and very easy to use. You move Zhao Yun with a joystick in the bottom left corner, and have an attack button on the bottom right side of the screen, with a skill attack button next to it. When you fill up your attack bar under your health bar, another button appears next to the skill button, and stays there until you tap on it. In that same area is where you tap to ride horses, and elephants. Turning around quickly to fight off enemies that swarm around you is very easy to do, and you’re never stuck mashing on the screen trying to turn around in a hurry so you don’t loose a bunch of health.

Right now, there is one pretty major bug/issue. Whenever you die, and try to retry from the last checkpoint, everything on the screen becomes unresponsive. The developers have said that they’re working on a fix for this, but it seems like this is something that should have been dealt with during some beta testing. It is a shame that if you die, you need to exit the game, remove it from your multitasking bar, and re-start from the beginning of the level, instead of at the last checkpoint. Hopefully the developers get this issue fixed soon, because it’s a pretty major bug.

Aside from that, the gameplay is pretty good. You go through the levels, hacking and slashing away at enemies. If you press the skill button, the action pauses, so you can take your time choosing which skill you’d like to use given the current situation on the screen. There’s vases, crates, and treasure chests scattered throughout the levels, each dropping gold, health, and flags. You can use the gold to buy accessories in the shop between levels, and the flags to use your skills. The enemies also have an item drop rate that’s reasonably decent, and sometimes you’ll come across a full meal that restores your health fully. However, in order to use a skill or your special attack, you’ll need to press forward on the joypad while pressing the buttons, and this can get pretty frustrating during hectic battle sequences.

There are also some power-ups, but these drop rates are pretty low. Some will give you stronger attacks, some will increase your defense, and things like that. You level up while progressing through the game, but another thing I would have liked to see is the health refilled when you level up. Right now, leveling up doesn’t really do anything but give you another attack and defense point, which in the battle sections, doesn’t really help too much. There are bosses at the end of each level, and defeating them can sometimes prove to be quite the challenge. But it’s not overly difficult, and reminds me of old-school beat-em-up games.

Dragon Of The Three Kingdoms does have a lot of content, especially for being $0.99. It’s a solid action RPG, with the addition of side-scrolling levels, and is definitely worth checking out. There’s plenty of variation with the bosses and enemies, and really hit’s the spot if you’re looking for a game that matches the gameplay and difficulty of old-school beat-em-ups from the NES and SNES eras. There is, however, very little replay value here. Maybe if you could unlock more characters at the end of the game or play on a harder difficulty, the drive to replay the game would be there, but as it is now, you’ll play it once, and probably end up deleting it.

Dragon Of The Three Kingdoms is getting a score of 7 out of 10.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-of-the-three-kingdoms/id408207206?mt=8

Super Drill Panic is the new retro arcade game from Orange Pixel, the developers of the awesome Meganoid and Time Chaos. In Super Drill Panic, you’ll make your way through 30 Levels along with two Endless Arcade Levels, while collecting coins, to upgrade items in the shop, hammers to smash through platforms, treasure chests that hold letters (spelling out DRILL once you collect all of them in a world), hourglasses that give you some breathing room, key cards that let you open doors, and glasses that make you invisible, all while trying to escape from a huge boulder trying to crush you or the jail bars from coming down on you.

Orange Pixel caught the attention of many gamers when they released the great platform game, Meganoid. This time, they have stuck with the retro graphics, but tried something new. Super Drill Panic is free. That’s right, free. It has ads, but you can’t complain when you’re not paying anything to play this great game. And it is one great game.

There’s two different characters available to play with, the female is unlocked after beating the first 15 levels. Each has a different set of worlds to go through, different shops, and different arcade levels. With the male character, you try to make it through caves while stealing the treasure and avoiding the boulder, kind of like a vertical version of hook champ, minus the hook, while with the female you try to escape the building after breaking into a vault, avoiding the bars coming down on you.

There’s plenty of challenge, as getting a high ranking at the end of each level is pretty decently hard to accomplish. The graphics are Orange Pixel Retro goodness, sounds, music, it all feels like an old-school Nintendo game, filled with action. I do, however, wish that I could get rid of the ad bar on the top of the screen, even if it was with an IAP, as I do feel this game is worth a buck or two. The arcade levels do add quite a bit to the replay value, but once you upgrade all your items, the replay value goes down quite a bit. For free though, it’s an amazing game, and highly recommended.

I’m giving Super Drill Panic a score of 9 out of 10.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-drill-panic/id456374645?mt=8