Activision has released an update for their online first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies. The update adds a Ray Gun, ‘Monkey Bombs’, 6 tiers of in-game point packs and the ability to save/load your progress.  This allows you to skip past those difficult areas in the game via in-app purchases, available at the [...]
Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies updated with new content is a post from: TouchGen



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A love that was not meant to be between royal bluebloods that can’t stand each other is the story of Royal Trouble: Hidden Adventures. Coming from G5, and having the word hidden in the title I immediately assumed it would be another hidden object game. Looking at screen shots can also give this impression, but [...]
Royal Trouble: Hidden Adventures review is a post from: TouchGen



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Our ratings for games we reviewed in January are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.

Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in January, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in January.

5 Stars

Super Crate Box, $ 1.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Vlambeer knocks it out of the park with this ultra-frantic crate collecting game. With great virtual controls, and gameplay that is great for pick up and play mobile gaming sessions, Super Crate Box is a game you shouldn’t miss.

4.5 Stars

Blockwick, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – A really slick puzzle game that you can try for free. After that, level packs of increasing difficulty are sold in bundles of 60 for 99¢ a pop. Don’t let the initial pack it comes with turn you off, think of it more as a really long tutorial.

Hero Academy, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This multiplayer tactical game by Robot Entertainment has become incredibly popular amongst our community, and even was the topic of a recent Penny Arcade comic. If you’re looking for people to play with, hit the forum link and you’ll find tons of people looking for a game.

Run Roo Run, $ 0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – From the creators of Scribblenauts comes this super-fun mini-level jumping game. Most levels will only take a few moments to complete, but thankfully, there’s a ton of them. Clearing a world unlocks some really difficult levels that’ll really put you to the test.

Smash Cops, $ 2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Not only does Smash Cops have great graphics, but it also has a new control method that we haven’t seen before for controlling your cop car. You use your finger to “push” the car where you want to go. It sounds strange, but it works great.

Triple Town, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – There’s a definite learning curve to Triple Town but once you get over that hump and come to grips with how the mechanics of the game works, you’ll be building amazing towns and cursing at bears in no time. Argh, those bears. They ruin everything.

Windosill, $ 2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This iPad exclusive puzzle game originally started its life as a Flash title. It’s aged incredibly well, and feels like a perfect fit for the iPad. Multitouch adds so much, even if you played the original, it’s worth trying again on the iPad.

The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.

As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.

For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer.

Source: Touch Arcade

The Reckless Racing crew are back, and they’re gunning for Mini Motor Racing… After a disappointing turn with Reckless Getaway, Pixelbite have returned to their roots with a straight up, down and dirty, track-based racer. While it does share the same name as its predecessor, and follows a similar style in its presentation – the [...]
Reckless Racing 2 Review is a post from: TouchGen



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It’s Wednesday again, and if you’ve been reading TouchArcade for any more than a week you’ll likely know what that means: Game releases, and lots of them. This got me thinking, surely everyone has heard the old nursery rhyme Monday’s Child, right? That’s something they still tell kids these days, isn’t it?

I think this should be revised, as Wednesday’s child is now full of iOS games, which I’d say is the exact opposite of woe. Or, maybe the reason Wednesday’s child is woeful is because on that particular Wednesday there was a game that cost more than 99¢? The world may never know.

What does this have to do with anything? I don’t know, the brutal truth is I just need enough text to make this image I embedded look right. Now, enough breaking the third wall and on with the games!

Awesome Land, $ 1.99 – Forum Thread – How awesome Awesome Land actually is will largely hinge on its controls. Judging by the trailer there’s an awful lot of retro-y platform-y goodness, let’s just hope managing these jumps isn’t an exercise in virtual control frustration.

Fly With Me, 99¢ – Forum Thread – A flying game published by EA. What you see in the above gameplay video seems to be what you get.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Free – Forum Thread – This “interactive mystery” started its life on the Nintendo DS, and has since made its way to the App Store. It’s free to try, but unlocking all the content will run you $ 9.99.

Gorilla Gondola, $ 1.99 – Forum Thread – This physics game seems to have an interesting gimmick to it in that you control a gorilla on top of a gondola, and jump up and down to make it avoid obstacles. It’s just crazy enough to work.

Off The Leash, Free – Forum Thread – So this tilt-based top-down racing games looks pretty standard from a control and gameplay perspective… Then you add the premise into the mix. Watch the trailer which segues into this OJ Simpson style multi-car police chase to catch a …dog?

Reckless Racing 2, $ 4.99 – Forum Thread – I had an absolutely fantastic time with the original Reckless Racing, and I can’t wait to dive into a sequel. We’ll have a review up of this game as soon as we can.

Spice Invaders, Free – Forum Thread – I’m not sure if they’re making a Dune reference or a Space Invaders reference, but this looks like a pretty slick tower defense game.

Terra Noctis: Free Dreaming, Free – Forum Thread – We weren’t entirely crazy about Terra Noctis in our review. Here’s a free to play spin on the game that you can try yourself and see whether or not you agree with us.

Source: Touch Arcade

Before Space Invaders, before Defender, and even before Asteroids, there was Sea Wolf. Originally created by Midway in 1976, Sea Wolf sold more than 10,000 arcade units, making it one of the most popular arcade games of the ’70s. Now, Sea Wolf is back for iPhone and iPod Touch. Based on a submarine, and viewed [...]
Classic ‘Sea Wolf’ returns in touch and tilt form is a post from: TouchGen



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I hope NimbleBit believes in the saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” because they’ve certainly been the target of a boat-load of industry drama lately with not one but three individual TinyTower [Free] knock-off “betas” landing on the Canadian App Store in the last week. First there was Zynga’s Dream Heights [Free], then Glu’s Small Street [Free], and this morning we discovered another clone by Glu, Lil’ Dungeon [Free]. The main innovation of Lil’ Dungeon seems to be that you’re building down instead of up. Aside from some new graphics, just like the other clones, all of the gameplay elements are identical.

What’s more interesting than Glu mashing the green button on their copy machines is that Zynga actually has responded to the recent controversy. VentureBeat not only scored a interview with Mark Pincus, Zynga’s chief executive of social games, they also managed to snag a copy of a confidential memo he sent around. The takeaway from the interview is this:

In essence, Pincus is not saying that it’s OK to copy someone else’s game. Rather, he is saying that a company can make a contribution to the canon of gaming if it takes an existing game and improves it. That company can reimagine the game and remove all the barriers that stand between the game reaching a billion people.
…

“You should be careful not to throw stones when you live in glass towers,” Pincus said. “When you pull the lens back, you saw that their tower game looked similar to five other tower games going all the way back to SimTower in the early 1990s.” …Read More

In light of this news, I got in contact with NimbleBit’s Ian Marsh for a rebuttal to Pincus’ claims:

It is a smart idea for Mark Pincus and Zynga to try and lump all games with the name Tower together as an actual genre whose games borrow from each other. Unfortunately sharing a name or setting does not a genre make. The games Pincus mentions couldn’t be more different. Sim Tower is a true “sim” with macroscopic management and fine tuning of a buildings facilities. Tower Bloxx is a timing based high score game.

If you take a quick look before “pulling the lens back” as Pincus suggests, you’ll find an innumerable number of details in the game that were painstakingly crafted to be identical to Tiny Tower. These are core gameplay mechanics and rules, not similar settings or themes that games in the same genre might share.

Why are there 5 different business types like Tiny Tower? Why do 5 people fit in an apartment instead of 4 or 6? Why are there VIP elevator riders that perform the same functions as Tiny Tower? Why do businesses employ exactly 3 workers and produce exactly 3 products that are stocked in exactly the same way as Tiny Tower. Even the tutorials at the beginning of the game follow the exact same steps.

All of these things are poorly hidden underneath an uninspired veneer which has become Zynga’s trademark.

It’s hard to disagree with the NimbleBit guys on this one, and it’s equally difficult to find the “improvement” Zynga claims to have packed into Dream Tower. From where we’re sitting, it seems that the main “improvement” that they’re seeing is the Zynga dog in the top left corner of the Dream Tower app icon.

Source: Touch Arcade

The chief executive of Rovio, the company behind the famous Angry Birds franchise, has voiced his opinion on piracy. Mikael Hed says that piracy isn’t the worst thing in the world and that it can actually benefit the company in some ways.  He mentions the poor attempts from the music industry against piracy and how Rovio can [...]
Angry Birds boss thinks piracy isn’t such a bad thing is a post from: TouchGen



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Super Meat Boy creators Team Meat have been critics of iOS devices as well as the App Store itself for quite some time now. If you want to get up to speed, the best place to start would be the Team Meat Blog where Tommy Refenes goes over his GDC rant session, including the Zits n’ Giggles pricing drama, and more. Tommy also mentioned, “I have no intentions on doing anything for iPhone or iPad ever…I hate the platforms and I hate the stores.” Well, per a recent interview with IndieGames.com, Team Meat has changed their tune to “The next game will probably be iPhone. Probably.”

…And that’s all we know about it currently. I really just hope that whatever their next title happens to be is actually a game and not another App Store troll like Zits n’ Giggles. There’s some serious talent at work in Team Meat, and I’m really excited to see what they can do with iOS devices.

Oh, and if you haven’t yet, consider this your official reminder to download Super Meat Boy. It’s available on the Mac, PC, and the digital download area of home consoles. Here’s the trailer:

[via PocketGamer]

Source: Touch Arcade

Sometimes paying to download a game isn’t enough… Has this ever happened to you? You’re excited about the release of a new iOS game, and have been following news before it’s release. Finally, the release day is upon you, and you rush to the App Store to download it. You start playing the game, and [...]
A Freemium Manifesto – Part 2 is a post from: TouchGen



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