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There is no shortage of endless games on the App Store, and there is only one reason for this. THEY ARE FUN.  These days there are so many games appearing on the App Store that it is easy for hidden gems to drift by without a sound.  A new gem that should not be passed up is Ice Wings: Skies of Steel by MassiveFun3D. This newest addition to the App Store brings great visuals, an epic soundtrack, and frantic flying action together in an awesome endless arcade shooter.
The visual appeal of Ice Wings is definitely what caught my eye first. Cool and clean is one way to describe it. The color-scheme and building style really creates the feeling of being in a war-torn environment. Now, this is not to say that the graphics are perfect though.  The textures are a bit rough at the edges, and when you get up to speed some of the enemies look almost 2D. To go along with the visuals, the soundtrack of the game is nothing short of epic. You know the sort of music that you hear in the Call of Duty series that always puts you in the mood for shooting stuff? The best way to describe the music in the game is a mix between CoD and Top-Gun style. This really goes to create an awesome experience while you are playing, and for that I think the composer (Dave Dexter) deserves a big applause.
Moving on to the controls, Ice Wings utilizes a simplistic control scheme. A fixed shoot button (you can place this on the right or left side), finger dragging to move the plane left or right, and an upward swipe to dodge vertically.  My first few minutes playing the game were very frustrating as it took maybe 7 or 8 tries just to get past the first obstacle! Over at the TouchArcade forums, others have had the same trouble, but this is just a matter of getting used to the timing. Your plane is constantly speeding up, so in the beginning you have to wait until you are right up against the obstacle before dodging, whereas later on you have to dodge much earlier. In terms of obstacles, there is a variety ranging from train overpasses, to helicopters and cranes, and some more crazy ones like giant spinning blades and gates that slam shut with a tiny hole to pass through.  When you get going really fast, it becomes really difficult to see the obstacles coming, so you pretty much have to depend on luck. But hey, that’s the name of endless games isn’t it.

There are incentives to keep flying and crashing as well.  When you shoot down enemies you gain stars. These stars act as in-game credits to unlock new planes. Currently there are 4 planes total. The planes each have different stats in areas like acceleration, weight, and damage. This is what will keep you playing the game, and the developers will be bringing more planes in the future.
Speaking of future updates, the first update to the game is currently in the works. This will bring updated controls and hopefully some more customization. Some features that we hope to see in later updates are more obstacles (ie. some that you need to fly underneath), more maps, of course more planes.
This game is everything you could ask for from an endless game. It is nearly non-stop action, it has great visual appeal, it has an epic soundtrack, and it is from an indie developer. All of these are perfect reasons for you to get this game. It is highly recommended from me, and let’s hope that we will see updates galore in the future. Check out the launch trailer after the score:

Magic Cube’s Infect Them All holds a special spot in my heart. It was released around the time I started loosing faith in casual iOS gaming. More and more developers were diving into the IAP scene, making games that pretty much showed gamers how they were truly viewed as consumers instead of gamers or fans. Then along came Infect Them All from a company I previously hadn’t heard anything about, and I was hooked.

Now, after hours upon hours of gameplay with Infect Them All, Magic Cube’s sequel, Infect Them All: Vampires has just been released. There’s not too much of a difference between the two titles, they both include a Campaign, Infinite Campaign, Survival, and Blitz Modes, they both control the same with either tilt or virtual joystick options, can both have a whole lot of enemies on the screen at once, both have 50 Campaign levels, awesome boss battles, and more. The biggest difference you’ll notice at first is that ITA: Vampires gives your character a special ability. With your first character, you’re able to attack humans by hitting an attack button, causing your vampire to jump and slash twice in the direction you’re tilting or pressing on the joystick. After you attack humans, a reaper will appear above all of them that were in your way, and you can either let them die, or jump on them quickly to infect them, making large groups of humans easy targets.

As in the original Infect Them All, you will need to infect a certain amount of humans before Survival and Blitz Modes are unlocked; 5,000 to unlock Survival, and 7,500 for Blitz. It does seem like quite a bit, but after you get through the first couple of levels, infecting 30 humans a stage is not too hard, and much, much more (up to about 75) in the later levels, all of which are re-playable, will unlock the extra modes in no time. The two extra characters are also unlocked based on how many humans you infect. The first character unlocks at 1,000, and the second at 3.000, so you’ll have all 3 characters to play with before you unlock the extra modes, giving you adequate time to upgrade all their skills and abilities before taking on the harder modes.

Infect Them All: Vampries is supported by GameCenter and OpenFeint, having leaderboards for each of the game’s modes, and 23 achievements. Considering you can re-play levels, the main boards most gamers will be competing on will be the Survival and Blitz boards. But if you want to play and re-play levels, trying to get into the top 10 or so scores for the Campaign Mode, get ready to sink a good 40 hours into the game. At $0.99, it’s a great buy, especially if you enjoyed the original Infect Them All.

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.

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.

Endless Runners seem to be perfect for mobile gaming. They’re good for quick little spurts of playing, as well as long gaming sessions, and there’s an endless supply of them to top it off. Seems there’s a huge selection depending on what type of endless runner you’ve come to like, casual, hardcore, level based, hectic, relaxing, and within all of those styles, there’s always certain titles that stick out above all the others because of their controls, gameplay, and style. Super Bit Dash by FakePup seems to cover all of those preferences, as well as raising above the average title, and being a game that’s more addictive, more polished, and more entertaining than most.

In Super Bit Dash, you’ll guide your character through either a short 5 minute checkpoint based run with multiple lives, earned by collecting coins, with two difficulties, as well as an endless run with one life that also has two different difficulty settings. To control the character, you’ll need to collect coins which fill up a bar that gives you the ability to swipe on the screen, and dash up, down or forward, as well as being able to tap on the screen to do a regular jump, or swipe backwards to slow down, both of which do not require coins to do. The catch is that you’ll only be able to have 4 coins at a time in your dash gauge, meaning that if you pick a path that doesn’t have many coins, or none at all, you could get stuck without a dash when you really need one.

The graphics, and sounds all resemble old-school NES/SNES era games, while the animations for dashing and breaking through some walls are done in a more stylish way. There are various obstacles and hazards you’ll need to avoid, like spikes, lasers, green walls that you can dash to break through, and some spots where you will need to dash into coins in order to not fall to your death because there is no platform to walk on at the bottom of the screen. All of this is put together randomly, so you could run into any of these things right when you start out the game, or almost at the end of a long run, you’ll just never know. Once you get to know some of the more popular rooms, you’ll be getting better at the game, and if you take on the endless mode, you’ll end up finally seeing rooms that you probably wouldn’t have while playing in the Classic Mode. This big mix of rooms adds quite a bit to the difficulty, as you never know what’s coming up next, or what hazards you’ll need to have enough coins in your dash gauge to be prepared for.

Super Bit Dash is supported by OpenFeint, with leader boards for each mode, as well as each difficulty setting in those two modes, and then leader boards for the best overall Classic and best overall Endless scores. There’s also 10 achievements, most of which should take even hardcore gamers a while to complete. Tough it would be nice to see GameCenter support in the future, as there are plenty of gamers that don’t use OpenFeint anymore. It would also be nice to see some power-ups in the future, like invincibility, or a speed up and slow down pick-ups, as well as a pick up that lets you have unlimited dashes for a short period of time would be a very welcome addition. But for an endless runner, it’s a great deal at $0.99, providing plenty of content, as well as endless replay ability, and even more on the way. Platformer and Endless Runner fans alike will both enjoy the gameplay that provides both casual and hardcore gamers plenty of challenge.

Super Bit Dash gets a score of 8 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-bit-dash/id461843430?mt=8

Website – http://fakepup.com/

Version Reviewed; Version 1.0.0

Reviewed On; 4th Generation iPod Touch – iOS 4.3.3

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In a world of crime, genocide, and developers that integrate in app purchases there is little room to relax.  Even our gaming experiences are stressful like Gears of War 3 or RAGE. Idyllic by Fatcow Games fills that hole with relaxing tilt-based gameplay that is easy on the eye and aesthetically pleasing to boot.
First things first, this is by no means a vertical jumper like DoodleJump and its millions of clones. You jump horizontal in Idyllic which can be a bit trickier as more precision is needed but is a welcome change.  Similar to its predecessors the gameplay is in fact infinite so you are getting your moneys worth by investing 1.99 in it.  But where it differs is in the character upgrades, upgradeable powers, mini bosses and coin collecting.

When you first start off the gameplay is a little slow and it takes awhile to get to where you feel comfortably challenged by the gameplay. In fact, most of my main deaths occurred early in the game because I tend to over tilt.  The reason why I say early in the game is because there are checkpoints in the shape of houses placed randomly along the course of the game. The game saves your progress there and whenever you die or accidentally lose battery power you always restart at that particular part.  That means no drudging through the same platforms over and over again to get back to the point you were before. I haven’t got far enough to really test the infinite gameplay aspect of the game but rather than spending all of my life playing Idyllic I’m going to take the developers word on this one.  After you bounce on a platform it changes from evil to good. Apparently you are on a quest after you find your world in pain to restore your planet to the way it used to be.  Later in the game it of course speeds up and gets harder to be sure you’ll land your jumps successfully.

At each checkpoint you can buy upgrades with the coins you find randomly strewn about the level.  These upgrades vary between increasing the value of your coins and allowing you to double jump in the game.  This adds a extra element of replayability to the game as you will have a extra objective rather than just jumping around aimlessly.  Your two basic abilities are power smash and flap.  With Power Smash you can come crashing down on a platform or enemy to procure coins reminiscent of Mario.  Flap allows you to grow wings and float over to a platform in case you misjump.  These abilities recharge over time and one of the upgrades is in fact to reduce the time it takes to recharge.

The music is fantastic and has a deep relaxing melodic feel to it that draws you into the game.  The graphics are good particularly the backgrounds which feel like they had a lot of work put into them. Overall this is a great casual endless jumping game that really drew me in and had me playing for quite some time.  If you have some spare change on your account there is no better place to spend it than on Idyllic. I give it 9/10
Link:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idyllic!/id445869482

Invasion Earth: 1953 is an endless shoot-em-up developed by 285 Digital. This is their first real game that’s been released for the iOS, and boy is it a great one. The AppStore has desperately needed a quality endless shmup for a long time now. We do have Gunrazor, but really, after about Wave 5, it’s just not very interesting. Invasion Earth: 1953 has filled a void on our devices, and really, we couldn’t be more grateful for it.

The game takes place in 1953, after World War 2, when tensions were still high, and the threat of invasion, both from other countries, and from space, were on the minds of everyone in the world. You’ll take the reigns of a UFO going up against the military, blasting them all to pieces. And better yet, it’s endless, so the difficulty just increases as you progress. This makes it a great game for casual and hardcore shmup gamers.

The graphics in Invasion Earth are extremely polished, and presented very well. The planes are graphically made to look the time period, and the animations are awesome, especially the animations for enemies blowing up, and the UFO being shot down. The music also adds quite a bit to the edge of your seat feeling you’ll have when playing through the game. The controls are also done extremely well, giving a 1:1 relative touch control that works perfectly, along with a little hit box on the UFO that’s easy to see, and great to use while dodging through enemy fire. However, your ship does cover up enemies projectiles when going over them, so perfectly maneuvering through enemy fire can be difficult, though not impossible.

285 Digital has presented an extremely well made, and very polished, professional shmup. One that is endless, with the difficulty rising perfectly. Casual gamers, as well as hardcore players will find Invasion Earth: 1953 extremely entertaining, and very easy to pick up and play. Right now, later in the game, there is some slowdown. After you hit around 200,000 points, you’ll notice that the frame-rate gets a little out of hand, and there’s some noticeable lag and jitteriness. The developers have commented on this, and have said that they are working on a solution to the problem by staying in contact with the #1 score holder on GameCenter, so hopefully this issue will be addressed soon. Aside from that one issue, and the UFO covering up enemies projectiles when going over them, I can not find anything else wrong with the game. It’s got loads of style, an awesome scoring system, fantastic gameplay, 3 GameCenter leader boards, endless replayabilty, and personality out the kazoo. Being $1.99, it’s an awesome buy, and one that every shmup fan should get as soon as possible.

Invasion Earth: 1953 gets a score of 9 out of 10

Links:

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/invasion-earth-1953/id431492563?mt=8

Website – http://invasionearthgame.com/

ThingSOUP is a climber/distance game developed by Sherpa Reynolds. When it first came out, there was a lot of great feedback on the pretty basic game in the Touch Arcade Forums, and since then, Sherpa has released the 1.0.1 update, giving the game more content, and more polish.

In the game, you’ll control the “thing”. A mysterious little creature that has been captured and taken down a large hole while he was out looking for food. Now he must try and make his way back up to the top, or else be trapped in the “soup” forever. To control “thing”, you’ll need to tap on the screen and hold down to stretch out his tongue, which he can attach to the mysterious balls floating in the air, then use them to fling himself up, then tilt your device to move him left and right. The longer his tongue gets before hooking onto an orb, the higher he will fling himself.

There are bits of orange putty throughout the environment, and when you pick up 5 of them, you activate a power up that lets you fly a good distance upward. There are also little orange putty flies that when eaten will let you use your arms to fly up about 3 or 4 times by pressing on the screen. Along the way there are also lizards on the sides of the hole’s wall that stick out their tongues. If you land on them, they give you a big boost upward. But there are also exploding orbs that leave pieces of themselves behind. If you get these pieces on you, it will slow you down, and make it so that you can not fling yourself up as high. Once you get about 3 or 4 of these pieces on you, you’re pretty screwed, especially after about a distance of 10,000, when the orbs are more spread out, and you need bigger flicks to keep progressing.

The graphics in thingSOUP are pretty nice. They look more like clay than anything else. You can tell that it’s not made by a big name developer, but it’s got loads of personality. I really like the graphics quite a bit. The animations, as well, don’t look like they’re done by a big name company, but they fit the graphical style. They’re not choppy, or poor in any way, and they do add life to the game, but this whole “armature” style of graphics might turn some people off. It is, however, something I’m pretty drawn to.

The music and effects play a bigger part in the game than you would think. Aside from adding loads of feeling to the atmosphere, they give you hints as to when enemies and helpers are coming up. Listening to the music can help you get further in the game. This addition, and use, of music, is awesome. I really do wish that more developers would do things like this.

GameCenter has also been added, giving players 2 different leader boards, one for Distance, and another for how much Orange Putty you’ve collected. There are also 16 achievements, most of which will give you a decent challenge. This addition of GameCenter has added quite a bit of replay value to the game. ThingSOUP is only $0.99, and has more content coming in future updates. The developer has said that more levels, along with more characters will be coming soon. This addition of new characters and levels will add a lot to the aesthetic, and gameplay, and I’m pretty excited about it. This is definitely one game that has left it’s mark on me, and I can’t wait for more content to be added, and am also very excited to see what Sherpa Reynolds will come up with for future games.

ThingSOUP is getting a score of 7 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/thingsoup/id444711111?mt=8

Website – http://sherpareynolds.com/

Sherpa Reynolds was also kind enough to give us 4 promo codes to post with this review – so we hope that you guys who do redeem these codes after reading the review enjoy the game!