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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tilt To Live and Shmup genres have been mashed together a few times, and have had extremely nice results. FlipShip and Blue Attack come to mind right off the bat. Though it’s no surprise really, as the whole Tilt To Live genre is basically bullet hell without any bullets, dodging and weaving through enemies like you would a bullet onslaught in a Cave title. True Axis (Jet Car Stunts) is the most recent publisher to see the potential with this genre, as they’ve released PomPom’s title, Space Tripper, their highly anticipated iOS port of the PSN and PC game, Astro Tripper.

In Space Tripper, you’ll shoot and dodge your way through 14 levels, split up across 4 different worlds, of wave-enemy battles, with quite a few boss fights, and even a task or two to mix things up, all building up to a final boss battle that could very well cause your heart to explode from adrenaline. One of the first things you might notice about Space Tripper, if you’ve never played it before, is that it is set up more like a shooter than a Tilt To Live type game, making it more reminiscent of Blue Attack than FlipShip or any other TTL genre’d title. However, if you go into the game thinking it’s going to play like your typical shooter, you’ll be in for quite a surprise, and maybe even disappointment.

You will need to be careful with how you handle all of the enemies though, as you won’t always have enough time to play cat and mouse with them, because all of the levels have a time limit. This adds to the already fairly high difficulty, and to the adrenaline you’ll pump out while playing Space Tripper. You’re given 3 lives in the beginning, and if you waste those, you’ll have an option to reset your score for one life. Don’t be fooled, even veteran Tilt To Live and Shmup players will have a fairly hard time with the game on Normal difficulty. The game is incredibly fun however, which will give you that ‘one more time’ thought over and over again, until you’ve wasted an hour of your life hammering away at a couple levels. The game is saved once you beat a world though, so you can come back and start a world with the lives that you had when starting that world, even after a game over, and once you finally do beat the game, you can try out the Hard and Very Hard difficulty settings, as well as the Score Attack and Challenge Modes that all provide an insane amount of replay value. On top of that, there’s OpenFeint and GameCenter integration, containing 21 different leader boards, one for each level in Score Attack Mode, one for each difficulty of the Campaign, and one for each of the 4 endless Challenge Levels. Not to mention the 8, incredibly hard to achieve, achievements.

Gamers have been waiting for this iOS port of Astro Tripper for quite some time, and even if you’ve got Astro Tripper, the gameplay in Space Tripper is different enough with the tilt controls that it’s basically a new gameplay experience. You’ll need to change your strategy, as tactics that are memorized, and fairly easy to pull off with a controller, are not to easy to pull off on a device utilizing tilt controls. $3.99 for this Universal game is a great deal, and one that any arcade, old-school, shmup, Tilt To Live, or adrenaline fanatic should jump on immediately. PomPom has definitely shown that they are the equivalent of Cave Inc. within the Tilt To Live genre.

Space Tripper gets a perfect score of 5 out of 5.

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

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

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

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

Mad Rush gets a score of 4 out of 5.

As stated in our review of Chicken Rescue, Ayopa Games recently released two published games last week. The Scrabble meets Tetris type of word game, W.E.L.D.E.R., developed by Highline Games, would be their other title. This world-game has already reached #1 for iPad, is the iTunes game of the week, and is pretty high in the iPod charts, along with sporting a pretty nice trailer, so we figured we’d see what all the fuss was about, and give it a try.

The basis of the game is pretty simple. Swap around tiled letters to make words consisting of 4 or more letters, removing them from the screen, gaining points, while using the fewest amount of moves. The letters are scored depending on their color, with 1 point for lightly colored tiles, 2 for medium, 4 for dark, 8 for red, and then bonus tiles which multiply your score, or give you 10 or 20 points. There’s also wooden tiles which you can double tap and make any letter you like, but they give 0 points, and remove a swap from your available swap amount (which starts off at 25). Your final word score is totaled as the total of all the tiles, multiplied by the word’s length, and then additions or multipliers of the bonuses. There is no time limit, so you’re able to take your time and really come up with the best words you can. After you come up with a certain amount of words, you’ll move on to the next level. For instance, to beat level 1, you need to make 20 words. At the end of the level, the amount of swaps you have is multiplied by 25, and that’s given to you as an end of level bonus score. Sound confusing? It’s not really. Pretty much just make as many words as you can with the fewest amount of letter swaps, and you’ll score big. But as you level up, you’re given additional kinds of swaps. Level 2 gives you 2 reverse swaps, which lets you make words in reverse, draw a line through them, and double tap the word to flip it around so that the word will be counted. More nifty little swap tricks are added as you go up in level.

The addition of GameCenter leader boards for highest score, total points scored, total words, total palindromes (words the same forward as reversed – level, radar…), and biggest word score, along with 47 achievements which will take quite a while to fetch, add quite a bit of challenge and replay value. The graphics, animations, and sounds don’t really mean much in a game like W.E.L.D.E.R., but they are very professional, and fleshed out. The movement of the tiles is smooth, the look of the game is great, and the sounds fit it to a T.

Some players might want to be able to make words diagonally, or in reverse/upside-down, instead of left to right and up to down, but the way swaps are added later in the game, and the different mechanics that you’re given to do as you level up adds so much more to it than making words in any direction ever could. $1.99 (sale price, W.E.L.D.E.R. will go up to $3.99 soon) is a fantastic price for the amount of gameplay you’ll get out of W.E.L.D.E.R.. Highline Games has made an amazing word game, even for people who really don’t like word games have a chance of getting hooked fairly quickly, and Ayopa Games has done a great job seeing the potential in the title, and publishing it. Hopefully we’ll see more great games from both from developer and publisher in the future, because W.E.L.D.E.R. carries with it a lot of future potential. Just giving it a try might end up changing your perception of word games.

W.E.L.D.E.R. gets a score of 5 out of 5.

Casual arcady games with an adventure type feeling are pretty popular among iOS gamers. Unlike the XBOX or PlayStation gamers, the AppStore is not really meant for hardcore gamers. With the current common pricing models developers and publishers have for the AppStore, it’s not surprising that it’s brought in a lot of people who normally would not play video games, or maybe even never played video games before owning an iPod. Ayopa Games, publishing their first two iOS games last week, Chicken Rescue, and W.E.L.D.E.R., has joined the parade of casual arcade publishers.

Chicken Rescue, developed by End Boss Games, a game in which you’ll control a mother chicken through 24 levels, using either accelerometer, gyroscope or virtual joystick controls, while she tries to find her missing children, and bring them all back to the chicken coop while collecting stars, apples, coins, breaking boxes, crates, and avoiding hazards, like pigs, cacti and falling off the edge of land into the water. The virtual joystick can be a tad unresponsive at times, which makes it seem a little clunky, it’s also pretty uncomfortable holding the iPod in Portrait view, instead of Landscape. If gamers were able to tilt their devices and have the game go from Portrait to Landscape, it would help make the game a lot more comfortable to play. There’s also no sensitivity options with tilt or gyro controls, and there really needs to be because the accelerometer controls are pretty touchy.

GameCenter is also added, giving players 4 different leader boards; score, coins, completed levels, and overall completion, along with 8 achievements. This does have some added competition within the game for gamers looking for that extra little push of a challenge. There’s also a store where you can spend your collected coins, upgrading the combo time for collecting flowers, the number of coins found in each level, getting more shields in the levels, making the dash ability re-charge faster, increasing your health, and more. There are IAPs for coins, but you are not pushed towards buying them unless you would like more skins for your Mama Chicken, which cost 1,000 coins or more, and add abilities like increasing immunity time, or having apples restore health, and getting more points per flower combo. A lot of gamers do not like that you can pretty much buy your way up the leader boards, and can be a real deal-breaker when it comes to finally deciding whether or not to make that purchase. But considering it’s more of a kids/family game, it can also be seen as a way to make the game easier for little ones, so it’s hard to bash the developers for this model, especially since if you’re really wanting to get the different skins for your chicken, you can unlock them with in-game money. It will just take you a while to get them, as going through the whole game will usually get you about 1,000-2,000 coins.

In the end, kids with their smaller hands will most likely have a blast with Chicken Rescue. But before it becomes a game that adults will want to play, Landscape mode is a must, along with some tightening up for the virtual joystick, as well as making it more responsive, and adding some sensitivity options to the accelerometer controls. There is enough content and the upgrades are decent, though the leader boards pretty much being able to buy the top scores is a pretty big turn off. We’ve got mixed feelings for the game, because we have kids, nephews and nieces who have played, and enjoyed Chicken Rescue quite a bit, and we’ve had fun playing it with them, but for most of our readers, this isn’t the case. If you have younger children, , and have been looking for another game that you can play with them, that they will find pretty easy to play, and still has enough challenge to keep you interested, or are a more casual gamer, who doesn‘t play games very seriously, Chicken Rescue is a good choice, especially at the current price of $0.99 (which will go up to $1.99 soon), and being Universal. But there’s a few things that need to be added and worked with before it becomes a game that more serious gamers will enjoy.

Platformers for the iOS have really started booming since the extremely successful release of League Of Evil. However, as much as I love platformers, it’s not too often fans of the genre can find a game that brings something new to the table, as the AppStore is getting over-run with “retro” platforming games. Thankfully, there are a couple developers out there that know that it’ll take more than a platform game with retro graphics to really stand out, and Ablemagic’s SpinTrip, published by Clickgamer/Chillingo just so happens to be one of those stand out titles.

You’ll guide a little ‘tisu, male or female (though your choice doesn’t effect the gameplay), through the magical world of Canoo. The evil Gnats have stolen a wise sage’s Shims, and you’ll need to use the power of the Chibs to get them all back. What does that mean in an understandable language? You’ll roll your character around the levels, collecting other characters that lend you their powers so that you can reach previously un-reachable areas to collect as many items as you can while trying to make it to the end of each level.

As for the controls, graphics, physics, and on a more forgiving note, the animations, everything is top notch. The physics do take some getting use to, but once you become comfortable with the idea that you’re rolling your character through the levels, not making them run through each level, it gets very easy to become accustomed to. The controls, set up like your typical virtual controlled iOS platformer, left and right buttons, along with a jump button, work extremely well. Each Chib that you pick up highlights an icon at the top of the screen, and on an iPad, are found around your basic left/right and jump/ability controls. When you want to use that Chib, you click on the icon, which makes them available for use, then tap the icon next to your jump button to activate that Chib. There are three different environments that you’ll progress through, each with it’s own distinctive look, and environmental feel, and along with the perfect animations, helps add to a very smooth, and highly enjoyable gaming experience.

SpinTrip is supported by Crystal for online leaderboards, which Chillingo seems to be using more and more, but it’s also supported by GameCenter, having 2 different boards, one for your Highscore and one for your Awesomeness score, along with 4 basic “find this many” achievements, and one hidden achievement. Each of the 16 levels has a 3 star ranking you can try and snag, but sadly, your star ranking is not shown on the level select screen, so finding those one or two levels that you only got 2 stars on is almost impossible. As always with new gameplay mechanics, there will always be people that wish the game just played like a regular old platformer game, so SpinTrip will not be favored by everyone, especially if you don’t like the idea of only being able to use one ability at a time, and having to collect that ability while going through levels, while having the number of times you can use that ability re-set with each level. But if you’re looking for something new a platform game, and either sick of, or have enough run/jump/goal platformers, SpinTrip is definitely a game worth your time. The game is only $0.99, and Universal, so if you’re still not sure, it’s not going to break the bank if you decide to check it out. It certainly has the potential to become one of your favorite iOS platformers.

SpinTrip gets a score of 4 out of 5.

MTV Networks is not really known for releasing quality gaming titles. Potty Racers, Ski Runner, Bigby: L.A.P.D., these games are not exactly going to end up on any “Top” lists. But with their latest release of Oscura, a platformer developed by Viacom+Chocolate Liberation Front, they might just be thinking of jumping into the high quality iOS gaming ring. And hopefully, they make a big enough roar that they’re pushed to keep going.

The game takes place on an island where dark creatures are tucked away by a magical light held in a lighthouse outpost. Inevitably, the power crystal that harnessed this magical light exploded, scattering shards of the crystal all over the island, and covering the land in darkness. Oscura, as the light keeper, now has to embark on the dangerous task of collecting all of these shards, and restoring the light.

There are presently 7 levels, each taking about 1 to 3 minutes to beat, meaning that you will probably finish the game in about 15 to 20 minutes. This is where a lot of gamers will get turned off, and probably end up passing up this great game. Thankfully, as I mentioned, there are star ratings that you can try and grab once you complete the game, and grabbing all of them is a pretty nice challenge. There are 5 more levels that are said to be coming in the future, and hopefully the onslaught of very low ratings in the AppStore will not discourage the developers, and cause the game to never get updated, because even though there’s an ending for the game after you beat the 7th level, it’ll drive you crazy knowing that the developers had more in mind. There’s obviously more to the game, and Oscura is an adventure that deserves to be complete.

For $1.99, Oscura being Universal, and the amazing look and gameplay in this title, it’s definitely a game that platformer fans should check out. Chocolate Liberation Front has created an incredibly beautiful and well rounded game that is sure to grab quite a few extremely loyal fans. But, if you are not a gamer that goes after star ratings for levels, and is done with a game after they beat the last level, then you will probably feel like your $1.99 was not spent very well. Hopefully there are enough gamers out there that do play certain games to completion, and will try and step up to the challenge of getting every star filled in every level, because it would be a shame if Oscura faded into the pile of thousands of monotonous games floating around the AppStore.

Oscura gets a score of 4.5 out of 5.

Side-scrolling racers have become pretty popular among iOS gamers over the last couple years. They seem to have a perfect amount of casual gameplay mixed with enough challenging high-score chasing to keep almost all gamers satisfied. The genre seems to be growing, though very, very slowly. Generally, with each new addition to the genre, there will be a little upgrade with graphics, some tweak in the gameplay, maybe an added power-up, but never really a huge jump like what POWapp has done with their latest release, Flip Riders. In this side-scrolling, star collecting racer, awesome graphics, tight controls, and some amazing physics have totally set a new standard for the side-scrolling racer genre.

Right now, there are 30 levels spread out across 6 different environments, with 3 stars to earn in each level, and each new environment can be unlocked with every 10 stars you earn. Stars are given to you depending on how many you snagged throughout each of the levels. 100% of the stars in the level will give you 3 stars, between 50% and 99% of the stars will give you 2 stars, and less than 50% of the stars will earn you 1 star. Once you unlock a new world, you can play all 5 of the new tracks in any order you like, so if you get stuck on one in particular, you can skip it and come back to it later, or even skip it all together, going through the rest of the game before coming back to it so long as you get 10 stars collectively throughout the other levels in the world. There are also 5 different characters to start out with, along with 5 more characters that you can unlock, each one becoming available once you open up another world. Each of the original 5 riders you’ll be able to use when you first start up the game has an experience bar that fills up as you progress through the game. This adds quite a bit of replay value, as filling up all of the riders bars will require you to play through the whole game with each of the riders. Something that would be nice to see would be stats and experience bars for the unlockable riders in a future update.

But, we all know that graphics are far from everything when it comes to gaming. Physics on the other hand, can make or break a game from the first seconds of gameplay, and Flip Riders has some of the best physics of any side-scrolling racer I’ve ever played. The rag doll physics along with a perfect feeling of weight for the racers helps create some extremely smooth gameplay. The objects in the world however, do not really have much weight, as you’re able to push trucks off to the side, and sometimes sharks hit bridges and flop around like little stiff fish, but the racers bikes and the way they interact with most objects in the levels, like the bridges, ramps, loops and hills is all pretty damn close to perfect.

With Flip Racers having all of this going for it, it’s pretty hard to find any reasons why people would not like the game. But there are a few things that people might not like. The game can be extremely challenging. Almost every level will take multiple play throughs, each time getting a little further, being able to see what the next obstacle in the level is, only to smash right into it, miss-time a flip, speed into a hazard, or not have enough speed to make the next jump, resulting in you needing to start all the way back at the beginning of the level, needing to go through all the obstacles you already spent quite a bit of time trying to get through already. Dying 20-30 times in one level can be a fairly common occurrence, and the fact that each of the levels almost requires you to memorize them in order to make it through them can take away quite a bit of fun from the gameplay. This does, however, add an insane amount of replayabilty to the game, as it’s not something you can just fly through, and once you do get through it, you’ll have plenty of stars to go back and try and snag. It’s comparable to Reckless Getaway in this challenging, needing to memorize, multiple plays kind of gameplay that POWapps has incorporated into Flip Riders. But, for a lot of gamers, this is the icing on the cake, and can be a huge reason why they’ll end up loving the game. It just depends on your preferences. However, making it so that players can see further ahead of them would help out immensely, maybe being able to zoom out a little bit would help a lot of casual players not get so frustrated with the difficulty of the game.

Right now, Flip Riders is $0.99, but that’s a launch price, and will go up on October 23rd. The game is Universal, and does have GameCenter integration with 13 different leader boards, one for the total score of each world as well as one for the total times for each world, and an overall score leader board. There’s also 21 achievements that will take quite a bit of skill to unlock. This, on top of the already insane amount of replay value makes Flip Riders a no-brainer MUST buy for fans of the racing genre. There’s also a bit of platforming elements added, with the jump button, and it can sometimes feel like a mix of a racer and Sonic the Hedgehog, which is not very surprising, as the developers first game was a platformer, by the name of Shadow Candy: Sugar Rush. POWapps has definitely raised the bar within the side-scrolling racer genre, and with games like this, jAggy Race and Dream Track Nation, the future of side-scrolling racers is looking exceedingly bright.

Flip Riders gets a score of 8 out of 10.