News By Chris OToole at 19:23 on 30/04/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Pinball, iOS, Android, Marvel, Avengers
To celebrate the release of Marvel Entertainment’s The Avengers, all of Zen Studio’s Marvel themed mobile pinball tables are now on sale, the new super-bargain price is just $0.99, so I guess that makes them 60 odd pence for us British types.
Captain America, Wolverine and Thor on iOS, and Fantastic Four, Wolverine and Thor on Android have been reduced from $1.99 to $0.99. The sale ends on Monday, May the 7th, so be quick if you want to try some excellent pinball for a bargain price.
Star Command updates with new trailer and luscious new screens
News By Phil May at 17:05 on 12/04/2012 - 4 comments
Tags: Star Command, iOS, Android, War Balloon Studios, Isometric Space Sex
In this week's episode, Lt Uhuhhuhuhra mates with an alien species that only expresses itself through the medium of extrement.
Face it, if you could have a game on iOS that faithfully married together the genius of Game Dev Story with the cheesiness of Star Trek, you'd be all over it like a fat man on a kid's easter egg collection, right? Right, so it's probably fortunate that Star Command, the cute isometric strategy space game for iOS and Android is coming very very soon. In fact so soon that a new trailer has hit the back of the net. And here it is. It looks brilliant. Hull breaches, sexy babes, alien species, Space Commanders sucking in their gut to flirt with their yeomen, ahhh it's all looking like an essential purchase.
Coming soon to app and android stores, more on a firm release date when we've lovingly brushed the thighs of the developers.
Joe Danger gets all touchy feely on iOS and Android later this year
News By Phil May at 12:23 on 12/04/2012 - 2 comments
Tags: Joe Danger, iOS, Android, Hello Games, Number 1 Super Guy
J-J-J-Joe Danger! The lantern-jawed stuntman's first gaming foray is currently available on PS3 and Xbox 360 and as HelloGames gears up for the sequel, Joe Danger the Movie, they're also tweeting about the iOS and Android version of the original game.
Though there's no release date yet, they're getting all excited about the prospect of releasing Joe Danger in various versions suitable for Android tablets and the iPad.
More mobile-friendly versions of the game are also in the offing. Joe Danger seems like a perfect fit for portable platforms. So why no Vita or 3DS versh? Best ask Hellogames@twitter I guess.
Win a copy of Royal Trouble: Hidden Adventures courtesy of G5 Entertainment
News By Drew Bower at 10:27 on 11/04/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: G5 Entertainment, Free Games, Competition, Giveaway, iPhone
Everyone loves getting something for free don’t they? Our good friends at top iOS publishers G5 Entertainment agree and have given us three iPhone codes for their pretty darn awesome game Royal Trouble: Hidden Adventures to give away. We awarded the game a well deserved 4/5 in our review so it's well worth your time checking out.
The game takes you on a charming Disney-esque adventure with Princess Loreen and Prince Nathaniel as they attempt to escape from the castle where they have been kidnapped. Using your wits and any objects lying around, you will encounter puzzles to solve and eventually uncover the mystery of your capture.
To be in with a chance of winning a code for the iPhone version all you have to do is register an account with us if you don’t already have one. Don’t worry, we won’t send you spam! Then send an email to: drew.bower@allaboutthegames.co.uk along with your AATG username. If you are one of the lucky three picked at random we’ll let you know :)
The closing date to enter is close of play Wednesday 18 April with the winners announced shortly afterwards. Good luck!
Kairosoft release Epic Astro Story - Sim City meets Alpha Centauri
News By Richard Horne at 10:43 on 10/04/2012 - 7 comments
Tags: Epic Astro Story, Kairosoft, Pixel Art, Isometric 2d, Space Colony
It's been a while since we've heard from the guys over at Kairosoft Japan. But that's clearly because they've been busy beavering away on Epic Astro Story - the latest in their series of isometric strategy titles.
Continuing the lovely 2d pixel-art aesthetic they've so well-honed over their last few games, Epic Astro Story sees you attempting, Sim City style, to colonize an alien planet. But in addition to managing the minutiae of strategically positioning every single individual element in order to maximise its effectiveness - typical Kairosoft tropes - there's also now an emphasis on battling aliens during Final Fantasy-esque random battles.
As ever it looks wonderful and utterly charming, but has Kairosoft managed to get itself out of that creative rut that has led to the last few of its games playing out all too similarly. Here's hoping.
Epic Astro Story is available now on the iTunes App Store for £2.49.
Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort – iOS Review
Review By Drew Bower at 11:19 on 06/04/2012 - 1 comment
Tags: City Management, Time Management, G5 Entertainment, Casual, City Sim
Way back in September 2010, G5 Entertainment released the highly acclaimed Virtual City on iOS devices. We awarded it a very respectable 4/5 thanks in main to the involving city management gameplay that didn’t bog down players with too many intricate details. Since then we have seen Virtual City Playground and now finally a full blown sequel, nattily titled Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort.
The beauty of Virtual City comes with its time management style of gameplay. Instead of giving you a blank canvas and saying “build me a working city”, it instead gives you part built locations and a set of goals to achieve. Whilst this may sound restrictive, you are still given a fair amount of freedom on where to place new buildings, to buy and route vehicles and make upgrades.
Unlike most time management games that are aimed squarely at the casual market, Virtual City 2 requires much more dedication in order to get the most out of it. Sure, stages can be completed in less than ten minutes – and in a lot of cases, will need to be in order to purchase precious upgrades – but to gather an understanding of how each decision you make will affect the flow of your city will take much longer to master. You are graded on population, jobs, environment and daily income. Keeping them under close control is a fine balancing act as you try to squeeze in an extra few houses or other feature.
Early stages guide you through the various elements of how running your virtual city works. At the heart of things is the transport network. Buses, garbage trucks and delivery trucks all need to have their routes carefully planned in order to achieve a smooth and efficient flow of people and commodities. The delivery of products between various factories and end destinations is perhaps the trickiest to get under control. Tapping on a building will show you what items are produced and what goods are required inward. When you have a truck correctly inserted into the supply chain a green tick is shown next to the icon which helps to quickly check and correct and missing links.
Each stage has a gold time to try and beat. Doing so earns you points to invest in new buildings, features and upgrades. Completing a level inside the gold time is no easy task, even on the early levels. And this is perhaps my main criticism of the game: there’s no real feedback as to why or how you are doing well (or really bad). For instance, is it better to have 3 garbage trucks collecting rubbish from every house, or should you split them into 3 smaller rounds? There are no indications one way or the other and this is the same for most areas of the game. Just occasionally it would be nice to have your assistant drop some hints, even if this was an optional feature that could be turned on. When you do crack a stage though, it is very rewarding to see your best laid plans flowing smoothly and churning in the money.
Graphically, everything is nice and detailed especially the little animations of various factories and buildings. Despite the small screen and there often being lots going on, it never feels cluttered or obscured. A row of icons along the bottom of the screen gives quick access to your fleet of vehicles, current objectives and build options. Information on vehicles and buildings is also nice and clear with upgrade and route options easy to use.
There’s no doubting the quality of Virtual City 2 and is an easy recommendation to just about anyone, not just time management fans. It’s certainly no push over if you’re going for gold times and mastering will take many hours, but your time will be well spent in doing so. The only downside is the lack of feedback which may deter those accustomed to simpler time management games.
The Pinball Arcade Review
Review By Chris OToole at 19:40 on 04/04/2012 - 6 comments
Tags: THe Pinball Arcade, XBLA, SEN, iPhone, Android
Let's get the obvious question out of the way right from the off. Does Xbox Live Arcade really need yet another Pinball game? After all, Zen Studios has managed perfectly well to carve out a virtual niche for itself with the high quality releases of Pinball FX and its sequel. So will Farsight Studios manage to hit the jackpot, or will it prove to be just another ball-drain? Well, I have to say, on the evidence of The Pinball Arcade so far, Zen is going to have to budge over a bit and share its spoils with the new upstart.
The Pinball Arcade (rubbish title) gives you four tables for your 800 points, and on loading the game for the first time, the difference between this and Pinball FX becomes immediately obvious. Whereas Pinball FX is an amazing pinball game, filled with the sort of bells and whistles you would never see recreated in reality, The Pinball Arcade, by contrast, is very much a life-like simulation. Each table has been meticulously re-created from its real life counterpart and this includes the art, genuine re-recorded sound effects and even the dot-matrix displays. You're also presented with a potted history for each and every table and some excellent how-to-play guides. These excellent tutorials move around the table as you read, pointing out exactly where you have to target your ball to activate a new special feature or game mode. As you can imagine, this is a welcome feature for new players but also a useful addition for hardened pros.
Of course, all of this count for nought if the tables are rubbish, but fortunately Farsight Studios has managed to license four of the most popular and best remembered pinball tables in its initial offering. Tales of the Arabian Nights, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Theatre of Magic, and Black Hole are all presented here, and they all aim to gobble up your virtual coins. The tables all play fantastically, with the ball physics feeling a touch more realistic than in Zen's games. But of course this also has the knock-on effect of it being that much easier to lose your ball - but then you have to remember that these tables weren't just designed for fun - they were constructed to steal your quarters (or 10 pence pieces for gentlemen of a certain age).
What Farsight Studios has achieved here, then, must be rightfully applauded. Especially considering the fact it follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's own failed Game Room project. When you consider that the subject matter is even more niche and specialist, the fact it still manages to come up trumps is even more remarkable. This has clearly been very much a labour of love, and that heart and attention to detail shines through vibrantly. This is a museum of pinball, one which houses the very best tables. And what's best of all, after the initial price of entry you can play each one for as long as you like. We used to have dreams of things like this when we were kids - how lucky we are to be able to experience them now.
For any pinball fan The Pinball Arcade is an essential purchase, heck, for any fan of fun The Pinball Arcade is an essential purchase, and with the promise of two DLC tables a month we can imagine that this museum to the joy of the silver ball is just going to get bigger and better.
Fibble - iPad Review
Review By Flying_Pig at 08:53 on 02/04/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: Fibble, Crytek, iPad, iOS, Puzzler
I would love to have been a fly on the wall for this development pitch at Crytek. As a company known for it’s serious, high-tech first person shooters (Crysis, Far Cry etc), it would take ballsy producer to pitch the game we have here.
Fibble is a bright, bold and cutesy puzzle-platformer – a far cry away from anything this developer has produced before, so the question is whether they’ve managed to deliver another quality gaming experience, or floundered so fat out of their comfort zone.
In short; Fibble is brilliant. It brilliantly blends a simple puzzle concept with some light physics-based platforming, melding it into something accessible yet offering sufficient depth to keep you entertained across all 30 levels.
You control Fibble; a small, legless alien who gets separated from his crew following a crash landing in the attic of a house. As you proceed through the four different areas of the house, Fibble finds these friends, who you must then use in later levels effectively enhancing your abilities. This is essential, as Fibble (the character) is a bit of a one-trick-pony. At the start of each level, you simply draw your finger back and let go, flinging the little blob across the level and watching as he bounces off walls and eventually to the exit.
The magic of this game is in how you indirectly effect Fibble’s movement though the levels; one friend launches him into the air, while another can change his direction. Although simple in concept, the possibilities are endless, and each level adds just enough variety over what’s come before to keep you entertained. Furthermore, while one of the weaknesses of a touch-screen interface is that’s it can be overwhelmed by complex controls, interactions in Fibble are simplicity itself – a simple tap of the screen is always sufficient. The key, and skill, is timing.
While the first half of the game offers a fairly gentle introduction to the game, once you get into the third area, the difficulty really ramps up, with sprawling levels, and criss-crossing pathways. Furthermore, while Fibble’s friends are placed automatically in earlier levels, as you progress, this is something you’re expected to do (albeit on the clearly marked green crosses); deciding which of your found friends to place to ensure a swift journey through the level.
Again, earlier in the game, the level designs are fairly forgiving in terms of getting your timing right, but as you move through the levels you margin for error gets ever smaller, to the point where you need to execute half a dozen or so perfectly timed taps to get safely through the level.
While Fibble HD is priced towards the higher end on the App Store, it really does deliver an enthralling and challenging gaming experience. And while some may complain that 30 levels is hardly a significant number, Crytek does promise another chunk of content in the near future to keep those demanding players satisfied.
What we do have is a very pretty puzzler, with some pitch-perfect platforming and enough depth to keep you entertained right to the end. If this is a sign of things to come from Crytek, then iOS gamers owe a lot of thanks to that ballsy producer.
Crytek's iOS debut Fibble goes game of the week on the app store
News By Phil May at 12:06 on 30/03/2012 - 2 comments
Tags: Fibble, Crytek, iOS, Puzzle, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Physics based puzzler Fibble is Crytek's first foray into iOS gaming. And boy what a doozy it is. Combining console-quality graphics, challenging puzzle levels and a variety of environments, Fibble has shot straight to 'game of the week' status on the UK app store.
Check out the trailer below. Looks pretty smooth. Hopefully we'll be sticking a review together very soon so stay tuned.
Fix-it-up 80's: Meet Kate's Parents – iOS Review
Review By Drew Bower at 10:50 on 23/03/2012 - 0 comments
Tags: G5 Entertainment, World-Loom, Car Modifications, Grease Monkey, Time Management
Ah the 80’s, era of Madonna, Michael Jackson, Airwolf, the A-Team and of course, who could forget such delights as the perm and coloured jumpsuits? G5 Entertainment’s latest time management game, Fix it Up 80’s: Meet Kate’s Parents aims to bring over that nostalgic feeling and relive the era once again.
As the title suggests, this latest edition to the Fix it Up series sees Kate visits her father whence he explains how the family got their start in the auto repair biz. You then play as Kate's parents, Frank and Mary, to purchase, fix, paint, rent, and sell cars in seven different locations.
To begin with you are taught the basic routines on how to fix up broken cars for sale or to rent out. To do this, you simply drag and drop the smoking box of metal into your repair shop and wait for the mechanic to work his trusty spanner magic. Then again with a drag and drop, you take the freshly repaired vehicle to either the sales area or park it in the lot for rental. Along the way you can also give them a fresh lick of paint and add some boy racer spoilers in the mod shop.
Cars left for rental become dirty and thus have to be cleaned before they can be rented out or sold. A quick double tap will send out a sully teenager with his bucket and sponge to give it a clean. Later on you will have access to waxing cars which will stop them getting dirty. This is handy as having a good stock of rental cars is an essential way of gathering piles much needed cash. In fact, I found it more prudent to rent out cars rather than buying, upgrading and selling. This is because repairing, modifying and painting all require a certain amount of expensive spare parts to be used. Thus there seems to be more profit in renting a handful of cars over buying, upgraded and selling.
Each stage has a gold and silver target time to try and complete the goals that are set out. Goals usually take the form of repeating an action a number of times such as wax six cars, obtaining a shed load of cash or stockpiling spare parts. Completing a stage within the silver time will give you a coin to spend, somewhat randomly, on upgrading a diner. If you are enticed by the addition of a new jukebox for your diner, you’ll seriously have to concentrate and focus on the task at hand to achieve even the silver times.
Despite the change of era, it’s difficult to get away from the fact that the game looks and plays pretty much exactly the same as Fix it Up: World Tour. The 80’s theme is mostly portrayed via the storyline scenes with some nice occasional nods during the in game sections. And everything is accompanied by some suitable 80’s style music. Again as before on the smaller device screens, the lovely looking graphics can get rather congested and become difficult to keep track of. That said, it is still very much a high quality time management game well worth picking up, especially if you are new to the Fix it Up series. If you are a fan of the series, or time management games in general, then you will get plenty of pleasure from fixing up cars. However if you are hoping for big changes or a fresh experience then sadly there isn’t much new here. Still, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
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