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Draw Slasher: The Quest is a new side scrolling slice-em-up from Mass Creation. In it, you’ll take the awesome monkey, Hanzo, from Draw Slasher: Dark Ninja Vs. Pirate Monkey Zombies on a quest to defeat the evil demon lord that has attacked your village, and kidnapped your family and master. Along with the Quest Mode, Mass Creation has also included Challenges, Endless Modes, and Online Multiplayer.

Draw Slasher: The Quest is a huge step up from the first Draw Slasher game, giving us a stamina bar under our health bar that drains as we draw slashes on the screen. This allows for more slashes at once, and coupled with a quicker moving Hanzo, really adds to the amount of carnage you can dish out quickly. This makes the gameplay a lot better than the first Draw Slasher game, because if you remember, you could only have one slash on the screen at a time, and Hanzo wasn’t the quickest moving animal out there.

In Quest Mode, you’ll go through 6 stages of bloody mayhem, tracking down the demon that burnt your village and kidnapped your family and friends. Each of the stages has a boss battle, and an ability that you unlock after defeating the boss. These abilities are all upgradeable with experience points that you gain while slicing up monkeys and collecting the red orbs that are randomly spit out of the bodies of your enemies. You can also upgrade your health and stamina bars, each upgrade helping you a little more in your quest to save your loved ones. Mass Creation has also added quite a few new types of zombies. A Chef, slicer monkey, little zombie monkeys, interesting bosses, and ghosts of zombies, each needing different techniques to take out.

The Challenge Mode is filled with 25 different challenges, all unlocked from the moment you start up the game. Not having to finish one challenge to move onto the next is awesome. You’re also able to keep your upgrades from the Quest Mode, making Challenge Mode even more interesting as you progress in the game. Each challenge is different, and will test your slashing skills, and help you master new techniques. Getting 3 stars in each challenge will be quite a task, one that only the most skilled zombie slashers will be able to accomplish.

Survival, or Endless Mode, is set-up just like Dark Ninja Vs. Pirate Monkey Zombies. You’re given 3 options, Tower, Waves, or Hardcore, each having different scoring mechanics, and in Hardcore Mode, you’re given only your base health and stamina, making it extremely difficult. These modes where a great deal of time will be spent after you complete the Quest Mode, especially if you’re interested in climbing online leaderboards, as each mode has it’s own board in GameCenter. Online play is comprised of Survival and Competitive play. Here, finding a match with GameCenter’s Auto-Match can be kind of difficult, as there’s not usually people online waiting to play. But if you have friends on GameCenter who have Draw Slasher: The Quest, playing against them will be loads of fun.

The graphics are awesome. Slicing up the bosses in Quest Mode is pretty graphic, as each final blow is done in a sort of clip mode, where you trace lines on the screen, then watch as blood flies everywhere, and their limbs fall off. Throughout the game, the screen is almost always full of zombies, which means the screen is almost always full of blood and the zombie’s body parts. The animations are also very well done here, adding immensely to the atmosphere of the game. It’s also Universal, meaning retina and HD supported, so you’ll be able to see all the blood and gore the way it’s meant to be seen. Music and effects are pretty much the same from Mass Creations first Draw Slasher game, but I’m not complaining because they fit the game perfectly. The controls are also flawless, making gameplay very simple to understand and master. There’s two control options, a tap setting and virtual buttons, able to be set in the right or left bottom corners. With the Survival and Online Modes, along with 4 online leader boards, and 44 GameCenter achievements, there’s pretty much endless replayability. This is a top notch title easily worth the $3 asking price.

I’m giving Draw Slasher: The Quest a score of 5/5, and can easily strongly recommend it to adventure and action fans. Gamers who loved the first Draw Slasher game will love The Quest even more.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/draw-slasher-the-quest/id455087584?mt=8

Ruffled: Feathers Rising is a free-roam 3D game from Pixelloop. In it, you play a bird set on taking revenge on the humans for invading their land. Just so happens that the only way you can take revenge on them is by covering them in feces, which actually makes for a pretty good game.

You’re given 5 different areas to exact your revenge; Residential, City Park, College Campus, Construction Yard and Downtown. Each is a huge open world in which you get to fly around collecting worms and gold pieces, flying through time circles, and nose-diving down to dump poo on unsuspecting people and cars. You’ll have different amounts of time for each level, starting at 5 minutes, and going up to 10, to rack up as many points and achievements as you can. There’s also practice modes for each level, which let you fly around, getting to know the layout of the level. Collecting worms adds to the amount of poop you get to drop on people and cars, while flying through rings extends your level time. You’ve got a rage meter at the bottom of the screen that rises with each successfully landed poo, and once it’s filled, the time stands still, and your points multiply. Entering Rage Mode is the only real way to get awesome scores.

Each level is filled with pedestrians and cars, and are pretty big. Flying around is done automatically, and you control your flight by pressing and dragging on the left side of the screen. The controls work reasonably well, but adding tilt controls would really help give the player the feeling of flight. The right side of the screen is tapped on when you want to drop one on someone. Each time you do, the camera follows your poop until it hits an object. This makes crashing into random objects in the world a pretty common occurrence unless you can manage to keep steering your bird while the camera is locked on your poop.

The graphics in Ruffled are pretty good. Environments are varied and detailed quite well considering how big they are. Walking and driving animations are a little funny looking, but they work. You can tell that each moving object is following a strict lined out path, but this does make it easier to plan your attacks and follow people around. The game runs relatively smooth, and hasn’t crashed or lagged out on me once. The music and effects fit the game and add to the atmosphere very nicely.

One thing I love about this game is that you can play it one of two ways. You can go achievement hunting, exploring the levels as thoroughly as possible, picking up every item you see. Or you can focus more on pooping on the people and cars, flying around in Rage Mode, and going for a high-score. I also love how each level is progressively longer than the last, and all unlocked from the moment you start up the game. So you can pick a level depending on how much time you want to spend playing the game.

There’s enough replayability to keep Ruffled on your device for some time, but without online leaderboards, you’ll only be able to beat your own previous scores. There’s also no story beyond the first intro images. It’s be great if after you finished a level, you’d get a cut-scene or series of images having the bird flying back to the flock, and telling of his wild escapades and achievements. If animations were cleared up, the story was expanded on, online functionality was added, tilt controls were thrown in, and the performance was cleaned up a tad, this would be one hell of a game. It does have Universal support going for it, so you can experience the great environments on both your iPod and iPad in the same resolution, and $2.99 for this open-world free-roam game is a pretty decent price. I do have high hopes for the game though, as the developers are active on the Touch Arcade Forums, and listening intently to iTunes AppStore reviews.

Ruffled: Feathers Rising is going to get a 3.5 out of 5 stars from me

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ruffled-feathers-rising/id448835495?mt=8

GooMonsters is a new top-down hack-n-slash game from DigitallyBold, the makers of Fly Away Rabbit, which was on the CNET 100 in 2010. With their success of Fly Away Rabbit,DigitallyBold has set their standards pretty high. GooMonsters is a great example of that. In GooMonsters, you play as a girl who ends up stranded on a remote island in the middle of the ocean. When you come to, you realize that your dog has gone missing, and that there’s tracks leading off to the distance. Following them, you find your dog, only to see him right before he’s taken away by a Goo Monster. Now, you need to battle the Goos in order to save your dog,Fluffy.

Starting off in the Campaign Mode, you’ll go through 26 stages, each having one of 4 different missions to accomplish, Vanquish, Survival, Collector, and Trainer. Vanquish missions give you a certain number of Goo’s to kill while in Survival missions, you just need to stay alive for a certain amount of time. Collector missions give you a certain number of items to pick up, and Trainer missions require you to stand next to a Goo for a certain amount of time without killing it while other Goos come at you. You only have one life, but unlimited retries, if you die you start the mission over from the beginning.

There’s 11 mini-games that are unlocked while you progress through the Campaign Mode. These are pretty much mini-missions, not unlike the missions in the Campaign. For instance, the first mini-game you’ll unlock is called “Green Overdose”, in it you’ll try and kill as many Green Goos as you can in one minute. The second mini-game puts you up against Goos that explode and Black Goos that stick to you and slow you down, seeing how long you can survive. It’s a nice addition to the game, but some more differences here, really separating it from the Campaign Mode would have been nice.

There’s also a practice mode, where you can select which Goos you want to practice against in a sort of training level. If you get hit, you just re-spawn at the center of the screen with the stage cleared of enemies. It’s nice for getting use to the different goos you’re having problems with if you get stuck in Campaign Mode. You can also find a weaponry area where you can unlock different bombs and weapons setting their buttons next to your attack button. Once you unlock a bomb or weapon, you don’t need to buy more, they slowly recharge after each use. There’s lots of different items here, bombs that attract goos, drones that help you take out goos, weapons that emit high-frequency sound waves that have vibrations that blow goos up. Unlocking these weapons and bombs is a big part of the gameplay, using them to your advantage will be critical in moving on in the game, and DigitallyBold has done a great job giving us loads of different items to buy. There are no IAPs in the game, everything is unlocked with in-game points, and everything recharges, you don’t need to keep purchasing weapons after you’ve unlocked them, which is very nice.

There’s numerous colors of Goos, each with different abilities. Green Goos don’t really do anything, and you can just hack-n-slash at em all you want, they also are the only Goos that don‘t hurt you if you run into them. Blue Goos leave a puddle of blue goo on the ground, if you walk into it, the goo splatters onto the screen, blocking your view of a small area for a short time. Yellow Goos leave an acidic puddle on the ground that can damage both you and other Goos. There’s loads more, each with different attributes.

The controls in GooMonsters aren‘t what I was expecting from the screen shots. You tilt your device to move the character, holding on the button in the left corner to stop and stand still, rotating your device to turn around, and tapping the button in the right corner to attack. You are given calibration options before you start levels, but no sensitivity options, and I found myself wishing I wasn‘t needing to tilt my device as much as I was quite a bit while playing. During the first couple missions, I also couldn’t help but think that the game would play a lot better with a joystick and attack button. I did get use to the tilting controls, but I still really think that some control options should have been added into the game, and hope that they are thrown in in the future. The controls as they are now are very responsive though, and do end up working pretty well. The graphics are nice and polished, and the animations for the goo moving around and splattering on the ground are nice, and there‘s different animations for each different goo. You can tell that a lot of work went into making each goo look and move differently, and this does add quite a bit to the gameplay. The music and FX are fitting for the graphics and gameplay as well. The game does run very smoothly, no lag or jitters, and the game hasn’t crashed once on me.

There are GameCenter leader boards for the campaign, along with separate boards for each of the mini-games. There’s also 58 achievements, all of which adds a ton to the replay value. I’m going to give GooMonsters a 3.5 stars out of 5, and if you’re into hack-n-slash games, this is one worth checking out. At $0.99, it’s a great deal, and includes lots of content to keep you playing and re-playing for quite some time.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goomonsters/id432923253?mt=8

Fractal Combat is a new aerial combat game from NewType K.K. It’s also their first offering to the AppStore, but it sure doesn’t show in their presentation. Fractal Combat is a very polished, top notch aerial combat game. The fractal graphics are wonderful, the music is great, and the controls are user interface are phenomenal. I really was not expecting what I got out of this game. The animations of the exploding enemies, along with the flaming bits of wreckage you see after the explosion is great. You rarely find this much attention to detail within games like this on the iOS, and seeing that it can be done, and done very well, might make you start to think less of all the other aerial combat games in the AppStore.

You’re given 10 missions throughout each of the 7 different landscapes, that‘s a whopping 70 missions. Each of the missions it’s your job to take out the targets, highlighted in red on the map. While you’re going after the targets, you’ll be bombarded by enemies that show up on the radar as yellow triangles. Each time you blow an enemy up, they leave behind some energy which if collected, gives you some shield. If you have no shield power, your armor, which is pretty much health, gets knocked down with each hit. Once you have no armor, you’re dead, and need to start at the beginning of the mission. If you happen to succeed in the mission, you’re awarded with a rating of 1 to 3 stars, along with credits which you can use to buy better weapons, generators,radars and even new ships in the garage.There’s 5 ships total that you can unlock byprogressing through the game, and then buy. Each has stronger armor, more shield capacity, and a different flight mode, or way of flying. For instance, you start off with a ship that has thrusters for flight, and the next ship up that you can buy uses magnetic rotors, each having drastically different ways of controlling them. There’s 7 different weapons, each with different speed, range, damage, and other attributes. 3 different radars, and 5 different generators. There’s slots in the game to have 6 profiles, so you can play the game on a device that’s shared between friends or family, and not end up playing each others games, or you can just start from scratch, and re-organize how you set up your weapons and which ships you buy.

You are given two choices of control options, a joystick which you can have on the left or right hand side of the screen, or you can use your devices accelerometer, and tilt while you play. You can also set the sensitivity, angle of accelerometer, and put the throttle on the left or right side of the screen. Fire buttons are on both the left and right hand sides of the bottom of the screen if you decide to use tilt controls, and on the opposite side of the screen of the joystick, if you decide to use that control method, enemies are also locked on automatically, so you can pretty much just keep tapping the fire button to blow them up. However, you are not able to change the Y direction, so pressing up on the control pad makes you go down, and pressing down makes you go up. Which is not the case for tilt controls, tilting the top of your iPod towards you makes the ship go up, and away from you to go down.This set up is a tad weird, but manageable if you’re use to default settings in most aerial combat games. You can also change the music and fx volume, which is always a nice option, and there is, of course, a reset to default option, just in case you end up screwing everything up and want to start from scratch. All-n-all, there’s quite a bit of customization going on in the options menu. But I think an option to turn the HUD display on or off would have been a good idea too, as it can seem kind of crowded on the screen, but not in a way that distracts from the gameplay.

The only real thing I think this game is missing is another mode, or a story. I know it’s not easy to create a story for a game, and it’s pretty much pointless to just cram a story into a game just for the hell of it, but if Fractal Combat had a story to go along with the missions, like why you’re fighting these ships, why they’re you’re enemies, something so that you know WHY, it would make this game a lot better. That, along with a survival mode, where you could take your fully equipped ship into a battle that only ended when you got shot down, would make this an even more amazing game. But with what it has now, Fractal Combat is still worthy of 4.5 out of 5 stars, and comes along with a strong recommendation from me. Anyone who’s into aerial combat, flight sims, or just action and arcade games in general should check this out one, it’s a game that you will never regret buying. It’s universal, and only $1.99.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fractal-combat/id422010858?mt=8