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Number of Results: 16

Spaceward Ho! (Ariton) – $4.99

There are some genres that have truly embraced the AppStore, using the iDevice’s unique touch screen capabilities, and basically feeling right at home on the platform. Puzzlers, Racers and Point n’ Click titles really make it feel like the iDevice was made to perfectly suit them. Strategy games are also definitely falling into this grouping of genres, and slowly, but surely, 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) titles are finding their way as well, and these are being sucked up by fans of this niche genre like an addicts choice substance. It also helps when these titles are ports of old-school titles, as a lot of iOS gamers are 30-40 year olds who found out they can fit gaming into their lives again by playing on their phones.
Spaceward Ho!, originally an Amiga and Mac title released in 1990 released by Delta Tao Software, has made its way into the AppStore, accompanying Ascendancy as two of the more notable old-school 4X games that have graced the iDevice, and the two man California based development team, Ariton (who also developed the Spaceward Ho! port for the Palm Pilot), has done a fantastic job transferring the game over to the touch screen.
Spaceward Ho! is not your typical depthy 4X Strategy game. Actually, on the surface, it’s very basic when compared to titles like Master of Orion or Starbase Orion, but underneath the surface, it does have quite a bit of depth. It’s probably better placed next to titles like 9 Colonies and Vincere Totus Astrum, offering up gameplay that can last an hour, or even play through as quick as 10 minutes.
When starting a game, you’re able to decide exactly what kind of game you’ll be playing. You’ll be able to choose what kind of system you’ll be thrown into; Thriving, Abundant, Advanced, Normal, Backward, Barren, or Outpost. How many other empires you want in the star system, choosing between 1 and 8, as well as their IQ, being able to pick between 50 and 200, in increments of 10. The enemies home system, like yours, Thriving, Abundant, ect… but you can also decide to have this be based on their IQ. How many years to advance with every turn, 10, 20, 30 or 50, whether or not to allow Best Buddies, and the Shape, size, and Density of the universe. All but the size influences the difficulty, which you’ll be able to see go up and down based on your choices.
Once you decide the settings, you’re taken to the Galaxy screen. Here, you can see your home planet, as well as all the other planets in the galaxy. To get started, you can double tap on your home planet, and be taken to the ship/satellite creation screen. Here, you can build various ships and satellites, adjusting their Range, Speed, Weapons, Shields, and Mini (amount of material used to build them). As you progress through the game, your researchers will automatically research different technologies, increasing what you can use as stats for your ships.
In the Info section, along the left side of the screen, you can adjust how much money you’ll spend on the different technologies by dragging the gauge’s. In this area, you can also view your entire list of planets that you’ve colonized, adjusting how much money you spend on the planet. You can adjust it so that you spend more on technologies, or put the money back into your savings. At the top of this bar you’ll find your total money and metal (the only resource that you’ll need to worry about in the game). The metal that you collect from around the galaxy is used to build your satellites and ships, so sometimes colonizing a planet just to take the metal from it, and then evacuating is a very good idea. At the bottom of the info section, you’re able to either hide the information or change to view your history, which is a list of every major event that has happened in the game. There is also a little box which tells you who the other players are, and if they’re an enemy or ally.
The game is complete when you either friend or defeat all of the other players. You can keep playing, colonizing the rest of the planets, or seeing how strong you can make your ships until you run out of metal, but it’ll be pretty boring since there won’t be any opponents. If you’re familiar with the original Spaceward Ho! this is basically an exact port. You can not view your technology level vs. the other players, there’s no ‘browse all fleets’ or ‘browse all planets’ and network play has not been implemented yet, but the developers have said that they are working hard on giving us GameCenter Support, Multiplayer features, and an iPhone build of the game. Being priced at $5, it’s a great title to pick up if you’re a fan of the 4X genre. It’s also one of the best 4X games you could pick up if you’re new to the genre. It’s very easy to learn, has a great ‘help’ section, which is also pretty short (unlike some other tutorial or help sections in other 4X games that are 50 pages long, and would take 2 hours to read through) because all of the unnecessary complexity that’s in other 4X games has either been weeded out, or is taken care of automatically. There is also an Auto-Play option, which lets you watch the game take over your decisions, which is a great way to learn how to play the game quickly. The developers are very active on the Touch Arcade Forums, and have an ‘Ask Us’ section on their website dedicated to answering questions. Having such active and supportive developers makes wanting to support them very easy.
[iPad Only]
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April 9, 2012 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Amoebattle (Intrinsic/Grab Grames) – $4.99

AMOEBATTLE
Intrinsic/Grab Games
Strategy games have really secured a place in iOS gamers hearts over the years. Games like StarFront Collision, The Settlers, Civilian Revolution, Red Conquest, Land Air Sea Warfare, Ravenmark, and many more, including ports from other consoles, and old PC games (Ascendancy, Z, War Of The Lions, and more recently, Imperium Galactica II come to mind). Something that doesn’t happen enough is titles coming to the iOS that are slated for release on other platforms. Amoebattle, from Intrinsic Games (who was picked up by Grab Games in 2011), a 5 man development group who’s first game, Divergent Shift, a DSiWare title, was published by Konami. Since then, they’ve released Penguin Patrol in the AppStore, as well as this most recent title, Amoebattle, built by 3 of 5 members of the development team, from the ground up, which is also slated for DSiWare later in the year.
The first thing that really stuck me when starting up Amoebattle was the insane amount of polish. Generally when it comes to Strategy games, players don’t rely too heavily on the graphics aspect of the genre. However, there are some titles which go above and beyond in this area, Amoebattle happens to be one of them. The beautiful environments and wonderful character design as well as the animations, are all enhanced by the fantastic BGM. Putting that together with the spot on controls, and Amoebattle is almost the perfect RTS package. The only thing missing? Multiplayer or Skirmish Modes. As of now, there’s only a Campaign Mode.
Thankfully, it’s a pretty hefty Campaign, featuring 12 missions that stretch out to between 8 and 10 hours of gameplay, each having numerous quests. The goal in the Campaign is to lead your group of amoebas through different areas to defend against a spreading infection. This infection is taking over other amoebas, and threatening your entire amoeba world. As you progress through the missions, you’ll be able to collect DNA and use it to transform your own amoebas into stronger, faster beings, each having their own strengths and weaknesses. With a total of 9 different creatures, this adds quite a bit of strategy to the already strategic heavy gameplay.
As you explore the environments, you’ll also be able to harvest energy, and use the environment to grow your little amoeba army. Certain areas on the maps will give you boosts, like patches of grass that increases your herbivore’s attacks, goo-like areas that act as a one way mirror so that you can sneak up on the enemy, or get away from them with ease, different goo which lets you replicate quicker, and more.
Each of the different amoebas have different ways of raising their feeding gauges, like eating the plant-life, or destroying enemies, but once these gauges are filled, a little smiley face appears next to your amoeba. When in this state, your amoeba can either stay full, and have stronger attacks, or you can use the energy to replicate yourself. This will be essential in progressing throughout the missions. You’ll also need to be careful when you choose to replicate, because when in the cocoon-like state, your creature is incredibly vulnerable. So replicating mid-battle is a surefire way to kill off your clan.
Also helping out with the enemies are probes. With these, you can greatly turn the tide, using them to gather resources, which you can then use to morph your amoebas, as well as use other probes, like the Cryoprobe, which lets you slow down your enemies significantly for a short period of time. You’ll unlock these as you progress throughout the game, and they can turn out to be life-savers in tough situations.
The controls in Amoebattle are perfect. You can choose one of two control schemes, the first has you using one finger to select amoebas, two fingers to move the camera, and drawing a line towards your enemies to attack. The second control set-up uses one finger to move the camera, two fingers to select amoebas, and has you hold down on enemies to attack. You can also choose to have the camera control inverted, tap to move or tap to attack, and change the camera sensitivity. Along with this, you’ll have a HUD which you can use to select and un-select all of your amoebas, divide them into groups either by tapping to select or drawing any kind of shape around the amoebas you want to select, and then assigning them a quick tab number, which you can also use by double tapping to quick jump to the group, use the small level map to quick jump to areas, and control your replication, and power-ups. It might sound a little confusing, but the controls kind of reminded me of StarFront, which is a very good thing. The only control mechanic missing, and that I constantly found myself wishing was included in the game, was being able to use two fingers to zoom in and out of your main gameplay area. There were many times when I was against the edges of levels, and wound up de-selecting amoebas, triggering a power-up, or replicating because an area I was trying to reach, my amoebas, or the enemies, were right under the HUD Icons. Being able to zoom in and out would have greatly helped with this.
The developers have said that the next major feature they would like to add is a Skirmish Mode, and that the game is already balanced for Multiplayer, and that they’re hoping to get that in. Either way, one of the two would be a fantastic addition, as Multiplayer and Skirmish Modes are a huge reason fans of the genre end up purchasing titles. Amoebattle is priced at $4.99, is Universal, supports the new iPad Retina display, which is fantastic, as the graphics in Amoebattle are definitely a highlight for the game, and make it a title to show off to friends. There’s also GameCenter support with 27 VERY challenging achievements, which add a surprising amount of replay value to an RTS Campaign Mode. For the price, Amoebattle is a great buy. It’s definitely one of the most polished, and well designed RTS games I’ve ever played, on any platform/console. If you’re a fan of the genre, and don’t mind waiting a bit for an extra mode, be it Skirmish or MP, Amoebattle is a title you need to snag. I can’t wait to see where the developers take this game with updates. It could very well wind up being one of the top 3 best RTS games for the iDevice.
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April 6, 2012 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

‘Land Air Sea Warfare HD Review’ – Command 3 different kinds of units in tactical warfare


Land Air Sea Warfare or LASW for short is a RTS game that allows you to command hundreds of units in your quest to outwit your strategically thinking AI opponent.  Real Time Strategy games like Starcraft and others have always left me in the dust as there were so many complex features and buildings availble to build. Luckily LASW simplifies the formula and makes moving and building units easy to understand and fast to execute.  Within a good 5 minutes of experimenting I was slowly starting to understand the way the game worked. Instead of writing a good five paragraphs lamenting about what you have to do and can do in this game I have decided to make the review a First Person view on how the game works and what beginners can expect. Let me know in the comments if we should start writing reviews this way.

Round 1- Noob Difficulty: 1 Opposing Force
Total time: 35 minutes

  • You start off with one building, your HQ. From there you can build powerplants, defenses, and factories for land, sea and air vehicles.
  • Powerplants are necessary because they provide you with  power which you need for your units and to build buildings. 
  • It is generally a good idea to build up your defenses early lest the enemy catch you with your pants down. This literallly happened to me because I figured I would leave my iPad alone and let my vehicles be built while I went to use the bathroom. Lo and behold the enemy showed up and messed up a few of my buildings and powerplants. Primary lesson: Defense is the best offense
  • Resources accumulate automatically from your HQ which is a mining station.
  • You can set a specific units to a group so it is easier to select. Comes in handy during battle.
  • Great user interface, works perfectly on the iPad. I can imagine it would be way more difficult to play on the smaller screen of the iPhone.
  • Lots of power units makes for faster advancement in the game.
  • Died by foolishly attacking enemy base whithout any back up units.
Round 2- Easy Difficulty: 1 opposing force
Total Time: 18 minutes
  • Building up Air units early allows you to discover where the enemy is and what the land looks like.  Should be the first factory you build.
  • Ground units are extremely inefective when the base you were planning on attacking with them is on the water…
  • Also if you build a water factory in a pond that doesnt lead to an ocean you basically just wasted your resources.
  • You can upgrade the Tech of your HQ to unlock new units from your factorys and to choose from.
  • The enemy can also upgrade their Tech level.
  • With a new Tech level everything gets more intense because in order to build the new units fast you have to produce lots of energy.
  • It is a good idea to seal off your base from the outside forces with your power units on the inside of the fence.
  • You can buy guns to defend your base with while your main forces are off fighting a long way away.
  • I’m starting to get a hang of the game by now and finish way quicker than my original round. 
Round 3- Hard Difficulty- 3 opposing forces
50 minutes or so
  • While In the options menu you can select certain factors that limit the gameplay. For example, If you select Air Only you can only build and use air units in battle. 
  • Took out the first team(China) rather quickly while they were busy building power plants. 
  • Turns out they rebuilt their HQ in a different area but foolishly decided to place it near to my base of operations. 
  • While I was busy with China, Russia decided to upgrade to Tech 2 and left me scrambling.
  • While it did take forever to upgrade I managed to hold them off with an Apache or two.
  • Started experimenting with the toggles for units. For example you can form patrols or tell your units to explore.
  • Russia keeps on beating up my air support. Luckily I manage to distract them with my remaining land units. 
  • Built up some defensive turrets and had a easier time dealing with them.
  • Its not a good idea to waste your entire air force on trying to attack the HQ.
  • At this point its useless to try to defeat Russia. I had no air force and a severely depleted land crew. Defeat was the only option.
Overall if you are a fan of RTS or thinking critcally then this is the perfect game for you. LASW is hands-down the finest RTS experience on the iOS gaming platform. Though the price may be a bit steep at a whopping $7.99(while sale lasts) it’s truly worth every penny. 5/5 stars.
Download on iTunes

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January 11, 2012 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Legendary Heroes (Maya Games)

The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived. The thrilling aspects of an Action RPG and the genius behind real-time strategies have been combined into one awesome game. Surely, you have heard of the massively popular free-to-play computer game, League of Legends.  With LoL, Riot Games not only championed the free-to-play structure but also built on the “battle arena” gameplay of DoTA.  In Legendary Heroes, Maya Games has brought this same gameplay and a somewhat similar monetary structure onto the iDevices. This game does not disappoint.
If you are not familiar with games like DoTA or League of Legends, here is what you need to know about the style of gameplay.  In Legendary Heroes you have 3 heroes on your team. You can control each of them (1 at a time) and the other 2 will be AI when not in your control.  The goal of the game is to protect your “source” or base, and destroy the other team’s source. Before you do this, you have to destroy all of the other team’s towers. To help you do this, these little guys called “minions” are automatically spawned and pretty much charge the other team and fight to the death. There is quite a bit of strategy involved if you actually want to do well. For example, you don’t want to sprint ahead of your minions and go tank one of the towers. More often than not you will be left with a minuscule amount of health and will be easy prey for the enemy.

If you have ever played a game like DoTA or LoL, you are probably thinking to yourself, ‘How the hell did they take into consideration the fact that you are constantly clicking your mouse to move your hero?’ Sure, you could just translate the mouse clicks into screen taps and tap-away at the screen to move your hero, but the controls let you drag your finger around to move your hero. This works very well and it gives you pretty solid maneuvering skills.  One thing to not is that screen space is very limited on the iDevices. In Legendary Heroes the on-screen UI is minimal so you won’t need to worry about having a cluttered screen. While playing a round, you have access to a mini-map that shows where you and your teammates are (fellow heroes and minions) along with where your enemies are, as well as a few skill boxes and your hero info.  The way this is all set up makes it very accessible and above all comfortable to play.

In terms of the Free-to-play structure, Maya Games has done an excellent job of keeping it balanced and reasonable. It’s always good to have options, especially when it comes to IAP’s on iOS.  It has become apparent from previous games that if there isn’t some alternative to the IAP’s many people will be infuriated beyond reason.  It’s safe to say that in Legendary Heroes the IAP’s are in no way necessary. Basically, there are two types of currency, gold and crystals. Gold is gained by completing a mission, and crystals are gained by accomplishing all of the tasks/goals withing a mission. The currency is used to unlock power-ups and heroes. In total, there are 32 power-ups and 8 heroes to unlock. Of course, time is the only thing standing between you and the unlocks, and if you want to speed things up you can choose to stock up on the currency through IAP’s.

An important thing to note is that power-ups and skills are not the same.  While you play the game, your heroes will level up. Killing enemies and enemy structures will give you experience. When you level up, you get points that can be used to upgrade your hero’s skills. Each hero has 4 unique skills ranging from leap-attacks to teleportation. These skills are one of the keys to success in a mission. On the other hand, power-ups have temporary effects like extra health, bonus attack power, or more speed. These must be purchased each time before a round and are one-time uses. If you are confused about the power-ups just think about them like health potions. When you use them once, they are gone.
Maya Studios has taken the successful gameplay and free-to-play structure of League of Legends and essentially “ported” it over to iOS. The fact that they were able to make it flow so well on the small touch screen is nothing short of amazing. Of course the game is not perfect, and the lack of a multi-player mode could make or break its success. Future updates are on the way with new heroes and hopefully new game modes. At the price of free, there is no reason not to pick Legendary Heroes up today and try it for yourself.

Get it on iTunes: Legendary Heroes
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January 7, 2012 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Blue Libra – 0.99/2.99 (Orator Games)

Science Fiction Real Time Strategy. A genre pretty much left untapped within the AppStore, there’s only a few titles that cover the 4X gameplay, but the ones that do are premium priced for a reason; extremely deep, intuitive user interface, hours upon hours of gameplay, endless replayabilty with almost endless results, and very strategic gameplay just to mention some biggies. Luckily for fans of the genre, Orator Games has just released Blue Libra. Not exactly a 4X game, but a mix between 4X and Galcon type gameplay gives hardcore fans of the genre something for quick plays, with more strategy and depth than any Galcon game, and new-comers to the genre something to help them get acquainted with the style. And at $0.99 ($2.99 for the HD/iPad Version), there’s pretty much no reason not to check it out.

You’ll command the last of the Libra class of carriers to avenge the fall of your home world. Your main goal? Make your way across the galaxy back to your home world, destroying anyone who stands in your way. You’ll need to produce different types of ships, and take over planets and space stations, getting rid of the opposing force in each sector, upgrading your ships and main Libra carrier with multiple upgrades available in the shop, so that you can be sure to have the power and ability to take on anything that might be thrown your way. One wrong move, and you could wind up with a loss.
As for the controls, they’re fairly intuitive. Fleets are all produced by your Libra carrier, and any planets or space stations you take over. These fleets are grouped together in a circle, and can be merged by drawing a line, which automatically snaps to a straight line, no matter how wobbly you draw it, between the two. To move a fleet, simply draw a line to the planet or station you wish to move to. You can cut a whole fleet in half by slicing it, ala Fruit Ninja, and the fleet will split in half with each half having, as close to, half of all ships as it can. This does take away a bit from the strategic element, as your groups of ships can not be split up to best serve the situation that they’re going in to, but instead give “my bigger fleet will take over your smaller fleet” gameplay. This isn’t a bad thing, exactly, as there are still times in the game where you will need to decide before hand what ships to produce to best serve the mission, and how many resources to set up building those ships, but being able to decide exactly what type of ships are sent where would have added quite a bit more strategic gameplay and depth to the game. There are obstacles in some of the sectors, like asteroid belts, which slow you down significantly, and these are best gone around if at all possible, to do this, you’ll just need to draw a line around the obstacle, and stop short of where you want to move to so that the line does not snap to a straight shot. The screen automatically pans while you’re making your line, dragging on the screen, which is very handy. You can set the pan speed in the options menu as well.
There are 15 missions leading you back to your home world, and beating a lot of them will take multiple play throughs. The difficulty curve is great, and increases at a pretty steady rate. There is no online support, but with gameplay like Blue Libra’s, there isn’t much need for GameCenter. Being able to share your final tallies, like how many total ships you lost/destroyed, how long it took you to make it back to your home world, and little stats like this would be nice, but is not really considered the end goal by fans of the genre.
Again, at $0.99, there’s very little reason not to grab it, whether you’re a hardcore 4X RTS fan, or even if you’ve never played a Sci-Fi RTS before, it stretches across a wide length of skill levels, and provides simple yet still depthy gameplay. It’s definitely a title worth checking out, and one that you can easily sink hours upon hours into.
Blue Libra gets a score of 4.5 out of 5.

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November 5, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Defen-G Astro – 2.99 (Innodis)

Defen-G Astro is a new action defense game from Innodis in which you place characters alongside and on top of each other along the 2D levels to protect your tower from being attacked by wave after wave of enemies. The gameplay is simple enough, you select your character from the available characters at the bottom of the screen, and then place them anywhere where a shadow of the character appears on the battlefield. You can tap on the character to upgrade them, up to 3 times, or sell them for a fraction of what they cost, with each character, and upgrade, costing a certain amount of stars. Then you defend the tower behind you while wave after wave of enemies come at you, replacing characters, or units, if the enemies defeat them. It’s like a 2D version of Defense Of Fortune.

The controls are simple, and really, these types of games work extremely well on touch screen devices. Tap, tap, tap tap, tap. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll collect more units, and abilities which are stored on the top of the screen automatically, and can be used by tapping on them once they’re charged. There’s defensive abilities, kept on the top left of the screen, and also some magic spells, which are placed on the top right of the screen. These abilities range from Health and Shields to Extra Stars that when tapped on, spit stars out at you that you’ll need to tap on to collect. These charge during battle, as well as get quick recharges from enemies that drop refill orbs. The characters/units, are also picked up while you progress throughout the game. After starting with 2 units, you’ll eventually build up your units, and be able to select which ones you’ll want to use in each battle.
The graphics in Defen-G Astro are very nicely done, and very polished, with environments being vibrant, but easy to see the action played out against them. Animations are done extremely well, and look great. From the movement to the death animations, everything is done in a very professional manor. The level select screen is placed in space, where you’ll move from star to star going through constellations, finishing each of the levels, and completing the shape of each one. This is kind of strange, because the level select screen shows you battling on stars, but the backdrops for each level are usually snow-caped mountain tops, open fields, or volcano scorched landscapes that don’t really reflect you battling it out on a star. Then again, having a backdrop of space with a couple stars in it would get pretty boring very quickly.
To top it off, Defen-G Astro is GameCenter supported, giving us two leaderboards, one for the campaign mode, and being your total score built up throughout the game, and the other for your high Infinite Mode score. Infinite Mode being an endless battle that you play until your tower is destroyed. However, there are no achievements, so you achievement hunters out there are kind of out of luck. But with the addition of Infinite Mode, generally one of my favorite modes in these types of RTS/Defense games, and the ability to replay each of the levels with one of 3 difficulties, there’s an unlimited amount of replay value, limited only by your desire to play the game. Defen-G Astro is a very polished, very entertaining, and challenging action defense game, one that’s actually quickly becoming one of my favorite RTS games on my device. For $2.99, it’s got tons of content, and loads of gameplay, and is definitely a game that all fans of the genre should pick up.
Defen-G Astro is getting a score of 9 out of 10.
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September 4, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >