games - page 35

Although we’re living through something of a golden age for original iOS games (think Monument Valley and Leo’s Fortune), it’s also a great time for iPhone gamers because we’re seeing ports of so many classic games making their way into the App Store. The latest is Capcom’s tremendous 2008 video game Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, which has just been announced as being set to arrive on iOS in the near future.

Promising a near-exact replica of the PSP title, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite will nonetheless optimize the monster-slaying experience for touch controls, as well as offering support for MFi (Made for iPhone) gamepads and improved graphics. In addition there’s set to be an online multiplayer mode, which is a big part of the game’s appeal.

Less than two months after reinventing the Hitman franchise with the superb puzzler Hitman GO, developers Square Enix Montreal have announced that they’re set to take another crack at a mobile version of Hitman with the upcoming Hitman: Sniper.

This game will take a more classic approach to the stealth-based murder-heavy series by being a game about sniping, similar to the 2012 console game Hitman: Sniper Challenge, which was tied into the release of Hitman: Absolution. Levels in Hitman: Sniper will reportedly feature multiple solutions, with leaderboards that will make the whole thing “massively competitive.”

You could run to the sun and back 160 times with the total meters run in Imangi Studio’s award-winning iOS games, Temple Run and Temple Run 2. Or you could fill 300 Olympic swimming pools with the number of gold coins collected in game (147 trillion of them, to be exact).

One billion downloads worldwide can bring a lot of success, like winning a BAFTA and Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice award in 2012. And, if you’re the company behind two of the biggest indie-hits of the last couple of years, you’re going to want to shout it from the rooftops.

“Having Temple Run reach the one billion downloads mark is a milestone we couldn’t have imagined when we first started out,” said Imangi co-founder Keith Shepherd in a press release. “We’re incredibly grateful to all the Temple Run players and our wonderful team.”

Maybe you’ve just seen the latest X-Men film. A lot of people have, so odds are pretty good. And if it left you wanting to know more about the original Days of Future Past storyline, but tracking down the trade paperback and then, like, reading it sounds like a lot of work, here’s a game you’ll want to check out.

Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past is out now for your favorite iOS device, and it aims to faithfully re-create the source material the way it originally appeared. This means that it’s the assassination of Senator Kelley that brings forth the robopocalypse (that character died in the first film, so he wasn’t available to die in the new one), and it’s Kitty Pryde, not Wolverine, who goes back in time to set things right.

Sure, you can play the whole game as Wolverine if you want, but if you’re a purist, you have a chance to do it “right.”

Microsoft has issued a system update to Xbox One which includes support for external storage, the ability for players to use real names on Xbox Live, and superior SmartGlass integration. To coincide with this, the company has also dropped a major update to Xbox One SmartGlass, its official iOS companion app of the latest generation of its video game console.

The update redesigns the Home section to make it more engaging for players. It additionally lets you see all your TV and app channels in the OneGuide, as well as giving you the ability to control your cable or satellite box and TV with a brand new universal remote control feature.

One of Steve Jobs’ biggest complaints about smartphones in the days before Apple created the iPhone was that they all had keyboards which were there whether or not you wanted them. Much the same has previously been true of previous iOS gamepads — which have either been clip-on phone cases in style, or else wireless controllers you need to carry around with you if you want to use them.

It’s this problem that Razer is attempting to solve with its new Junglecat accessory. Snapping onto your iPhone, the Razer Junglecat adds a slide-out gamepad that connects to your mobile device by way of the lighting port. While it adds a bit of heft to your ultra-thin iPhone (and obviously means that your lightning port remains occupied), it does mean that the gamepad itself can remain safely tucked away until you feel like using it.

As a professional game developer, the big news coming out of Apple’s WWDC keynote wasn’t Swift or iCloud Drive — it was Metal.

In an onstage demo, Epic showed off the power of its Unreal engine after it had been modified to make use of this new Apple framework. Hundreds of fish reacted dynamically to a finger drawn on the screen. Leaves were shaken from a tree, and butterflies flew through the screen.

It was a very pretty demo. But what does it mean for the games you’ll be playing on your iOS device?

Amazon may have let the cat out of the bag regarding a new Mortal Kombat sequel by listing Mortal Kombat 10 on its UK website, available for PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The listing — which has since been removed — suggests that the release would come some time in 2015, although it didn’t mention a specific month or quarter. Since the listing appears to have been premature, it’s not known whether this date could change.

Robert Pfaff is a young illustrator living in Michigan. He’s also a hard-core gamer with a love for all things pixellated, so he decided to combine both passions together and create this amazingly evocative set of digital artwork.

We found his work to be compelling, so asked Pfaff to choose his favorites and tell us a little about what they meant to him.

Pfaff is thinking about printing and selling his work on posters; if you’d like to encourage him, be sure to visit his artist page on Adobe’s portfolio site, Behance.

Source: Robert Pfaff

The proper iOS Game of Thrones was a bit rubbish, with a whole lot of sitting and waiting around unless you were happy to shell out money for in-app purchases. Fortunately the good folks over at Vulture have created a free-to-play game, which is a whole lot more fun.

You play the “Littlest Lannister” Tyrion Lannister, and the aim is to get as drunk as you can in a great approximation of an old-school arcade game. As games go, it’s a whole lot simpler than capturing the Iron Throne. You guide Tyrion back and forth across the screen using the arrow keys of your computer (or virtual controls for your iOS device) to catch as many goblets of wine as you can.

Your Ouya just got a little creepier thanks to the developer of creepy platforming game, Whispering Willows. The trailer (below) shows protagonist Elena as she searches for her missing father through innovative environmental puzzles and supernatural obstacles.

“[Elena] must harness the powers of her heritage,” writes developer David Logan on the Kickstarter page, “utilizing astral projection and other ethereal abilities to find her father before he, too becomes lost to the hopeless morass of the Willows estate.”

If that (and the trailer below) doesn’t have you dusting off your tiny Android-powered gaming cube, we don’t know what will.

Mobile developer Vivid Games has dropped a new trailer for its forthcoming open world actioner Godfire: Rise of Prometheus and — wow!

If I wasn’t excited about getting my Greek mythological badass on prior to watching these tantalizing glimpses of what’s to come, then I certainly am now. In short: the game looks incredible, with epic boss battles, gorgeous graphics, and all the blood and guts you could hope for.

Ubisoft’s highly-anticipated console and PC game, Watch Dogs, came out today. One of the cooler features of the release, though, at least from a mobile gaming standpoint, is an app for both iOS and Android that purports to be more than just a tie-in game, letting mobile players “hack into” the console version of the game to play a bit of cat-and-mouse via the mobile app.

As I grabbed the free Watch_Dogs Companion: ctOS Mobile app for my iPhone today (it’s also on the Google Play store), I was excited to drop into the futuristic setting and actually impact someone’s game.

Unfortunately, the excitement didn’t last long. When I tried to connect via the game’s Quick Match option, which connects mobile players to random console players for some head-to-head action, the app hung on the connection screen.

If I had to whittle down what I love about the LEGO Batman games (and really LEGO games in general) it’s that they can go places with their licensed characters that more serious game franchises can’t.

That’s the case with the just-announced Batman 3, which will be making its way to major consoles, handhelds, PC (and hopefully Mac) this fall.

The game will continue on from the events of DC Superheroes. Subtitled “Beyond Gotham” it follows Batman as he goes on a sci-fi-inspired intergalactic adventure, attempting to thwart the villainous plans of Brainiac who aims to destroy Earth by… miniaturizing cities from around the cosmos with the aid of the Lantern Rings.

If you’re like me, spending $60 on a game these days is rare. I may have too many game consoles connected to my television, and I may have way too many games on my Steam account, not to mention my iOS devices, but every once in a while, a game shows up for the big screen that just makes me stop and start counting out the twenties.

Watch Dogs, coming out next Tuesday across the US for PlayStation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, is one of those games, and if the trailer below is any indication of how it’s going to feel playing it, I would spend twice as much to do so.

“I saw something no one was meant to see so they came after me,” says vengeance-minded protagonist, Aiden Pearce. “But someone fucked up and the wrong person died. Now, I’m coming for them.”

Countless “endless runner” games have made it big in the App Store—all the way back to Canabalt in 2009. Now we have more titles like Tiny Wings and Badland that pride themselves on not only fun, causal gameplay, but immersive design.

The next game in the endless runner camp to make it big could very well be Alto’s Adventure, an upcoming title from Snowman, the small developer behind popular to-do app Checkmark. In an exclusive peek at the game’s artwork given to Cult of Mac, we’re shown the incredible design that’s going into bringing Alto’s Adventure to life.

Phrases like “it’s a comic book brought to life” are usually hyperbole, but that’s not the case for SXPD, a new iOS game which blends gorgeous black and white comic art with compelling gameplay.

Described by developer Little Chicken as “essentially the world’s first true game-comic book hybrid,” SXPD is a racing game interspersed with kinetic Comixology-like comic book interludes — upping the story-driven quota far beyond what we’re used to seeing in video games. In all there’s a 42-page digital comic book included, which is broken down into 6 chapters for you to play through.

If you’re an iPad-owning fan of turn-based tactical games, you’ll be happy to know that popular Nintendo DS game Panzer Tactics DS has received an iPad remake.

Called Panzer Tactics HD, the game puts players in 1939 Europe and allows them to engage in three mission-extensive campaigns — creating tactics as part of the German Wehrmacht, the Soviet Red Army and the Western Allies.

Itching to take on the future techno-war depicted in the hyper-realistic Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise? Well, if you’ve finished off the original Modern Warfare game on your Mac, ported in 2011 by Aspyr, it’s time to lock and load your weapon of choice for the next two installments in the series, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3.

These huge sequels are available now for the Mac platform, on Steam or porting publisher Aspyr’s own GameAgent distribution service. The new Mac versions of the game have all the downloadable content (DLC) packs from each game ready for your first-person shooter marathon.

In the newest Wolfenstein game, out today for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PC, you’ll play as Captain B.J. Blazkowicz, an American war hero out to take on the Nazi regime and the evil General Wilhelm Strasse.

In what might be the best homage to classic gaming I’ve ever seen, the new title has a beautifully recreated level from one of the original iterations of the popular gaming title Wolfenstein 3D, which came out in 1992 and made its way to every computing platform at the time, including the Apple II and Mac OS, and has recently been ported to iOS as well.

The video below shows this awesome throwback to the original game, blocky graphics and all, in what looks to be a dream sequence in The New Order.

Celebrities have been lending their voices and likenesses to video games for years, and you need only look at the voice-cast lists for big games like epic first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops to see how prevalent they are.

But some appearances are more subtle, relevant or just straight-up awesome. Here are seven celebrity cameos that actually belong in their respective games.

Super Monkey Ball was one of the real gems of the GameCube era, and now a version of it is set to bounce its way onto iOS this summer.

But this isn’t your grandpappy’s Super Monkey Ball. According to SEGA, the game takes inspiration from the classic arcade game, pachinko, and features AiAi and the rest of his monkey pals as they attempt to thwart the evil machinations of the dastardly Prof. Boscis.

If you’re an iOS gamer, chances are you’re fed up of games loaded to the gunwales with in-app purchases. The so-called “freemium” trend for games is annoying for two main reasons: One, in many cases it makes games virtually unplayable if you won’t shell out the extra cash for IAPs. Two, it’s misleading because the games aren’t really “free” at all, any more than you could say that it’s free to go to the theater, but you have to pay cash if you want to actually watch a movie.

It’s this second point that antitrust authorities in Italy are taken issue with, under the heading of unfair commercial practices. They’re investigating Apple, Google and Amazon, alongside French game developer Gameloft, for allegedly misleading customers by advertising mobile game apps as free, when they actually require purchases in order to be played beyond a certain point.

I suck at table tennis. Like, it’s embarrassing.

I’m alright at serving, and I can usually return, but if anyone smashes at all or puts any spin on the ball, I fold faster than a laundry robot. I still like the idea of table tennis, though, which is why I’m glad we have video-game versions.

And Table Tennis Touch, which is out now for all of your iOS devices, is easily the best one I’ve ever played.

I know I’ve said it before, but video games hate bricks.

And to that end, here’s yet another title about destroying those square bastards. It’s called Bricks, and it has a novel approach to smashing things that gets as fast-paced and exciting as it does embarrassing to be seen playing.

It’s probably not that bad if someone catches you, but you may raise some eyebrows. Here’s why.