iGamer If you’ve survived the sink estate uprising and still have a job after Global Financial Meltdown II, you might just enjoy one of the recent crop of iOS games on your commute to work.
1. Cut the Rope: Experiments
Cut rope, free candy, feed Om Nom. Like all the best casual titles, Cut the Rope’s simple premise and controls belied highly addictive gameplay. Not content merely serving up additional levels, Experiments introduces novelties to build upon the original’s successful physics-based puzzle template.
New contraptions such as bouncing pads and rope shooters combine with the bubbles and whoopee cushions of the original to provide even more intricate puzzling. And there’s a greater focus on urgency this time around, with time-limited stars and spiders featuring more prominently. Seasoned players won’t take long to chomp their way through the 75-levels on offer, but there’s plenty more updates promised in this sweet sequel.
Price £0.69 Publisher ZeptoLab More info http://itunes.Apple.com/gb/app/cut-the-rope-experiments/id450542233?mt=8 Read the rest of this entry »
Antique Code Show Bullfrog’s innovative titles gave me some of my best 1990s gaming memories. Who could forget Populous and Dungeon Keeper? The pre-cyberpunk aesthetic of Syndicate mesmerised me and gave us Agent Smith before anyone had even heard of The Matrix. This game isn’t complex but as long as I have a Persuadertron, I am going to do well.
Syndicate: appealing to your inner Dr Evil
Syndicate is set in a dystopian 22nd century. Organised crime has infiltrated all business and politics. Rather than become trapped in a post soviet prison camp grafting for one of the ruling syndicates, I decide to start my own play for power. I shall have a syndicate of my own! All I need is black market funding and military industrial complex technology to feed my lust for power. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade has become something of an institution these last few years, ushering in the release of some of the best seen download-only games yet seen; the likes of Limbo, Braid, Shadow Complex and last week’s Bastion to name but a few. Up next is From Dust, a release with a pedigree all of its own in the gaming world, having been developed by none other than Eric Chahi, lead developer of the seminal Another World, which wowed the games-buying public back in 1991.
The hills have mites
While Chahi has been out of the games industry for a while, his return signals a return to what made his earlier games special: minimalist gameplay and beautifully realised visuals. Yet, where From Dust departs from his previous projects is in its genre. This is no side-scrolling adventure, but rather an evolution of the god sim in which players become the ‘breath’, a primordial force with the power to shape the Earth and so aid its inhabitants. Read the rest of this entry »
Review In theory, The Cartel’s contemporary setting is a wise move for the Call of Juarez series. The moderate success of the first two Western-themed games was instantly undone when Red Dead Redemption moseyed into the overlooked genre, rounded up the pretenders and rode them out of town. By relocating to the present day, developer Techland shifts the series away from comparison with Rockstar’s inimitable classic. But in doing so, The Cartel strays into the sights of modern Triple-A shooters, and the comparisons are no more favourable.
Shoes at the door?
By their standards, The Cartel is flimsy and easily picked apart. The mechanics and narrative are functional, but highly derivative and devoid of innovation. Controls feel floaty and bullets weightless, combat is clunky and enemy AI non-existent. And there’s an egregious level of repetition, which means when you’ve played through its opening hour, you’ve experienced pretty much everything on offer. Worst of all, there’s an abundance of glitches and overall lack of polish, which smack of an unfinished game. Read the rest of this entry »
Review In recent years aerial combat games have been in free fall. The genre stalled after the seminal Il-2 Sturmovick and has struggled to pull out of a seemingly irrecoverable nosedive. But, contrary to their dubious quality, the continuing popularity of the Ace Combat and Hawx series proves interest remains sky high for the genre.
Red sky at flight
With no sign of Hawx 3 on the horizon, and with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon not expected until October, the skies are clear for Air Conflicts: Secret Wars to gain temporary air supremacy. Essentially an update of Slovakian developer 3DIVISION’s five-year old PC title Air Conflicts, Secret Wars is a WWII arcade-style dogfighter in which you play as Dorothy ‘DeeDee’ Derbec, a pilot for hire embroiled in the European Theatre of the global conflict. Read the rest of this entry »
