httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9BETZOfwo8
Aralon: Sword and the Shadow by Galoobeth Games is an upcoming open-world role-playing game for iOS devices, and as you can see from the the trailer above, it looks about as close to Oblivion for the iPad as we’re going to get. But for a laugh, check out the original trailer for the game below the cut. Amazing what a bit of spit and polish can do in six months, isn’t it?
Today marks the official debut of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s three-years-too-late response to the smartphone revolution headed by Apple with the release of the original iPhone. By most accounts, WIndows Phone 7’s software is far more advanced than its predecessor, Windows Mobile 6.5, and might even be pretty good… but it’s going to take more than a decent smartphone operating system these days to compete with iOS and Android: namely, a sizable, content-rich App Store with some showcase software for users to download out of the gate.
Early rumors tip the Windows Phone Marketplace to launch with a respectable 2,000 apps… but if news hitting the feeds this morning is anything to go by, those numbers might very well be inflated dishonestly. Microsoft has been prominently advertising several apps as being available on the Windows Phone Marketplace when it launches, including Rovio Mobile’s hit game, Angry Birds. The only problem? Rovio hasn’t even decided on doing a port yet.
Although I’ve always been absolutely terrible at them, I love Sid Meier’s Civilization games, and the fourth game (and its expansions) is probably the most commonly launched app on my iMac after Mail and Chrome. I’ve been eager to here tell, then, of an OS X port of the newest game, Civilization V.
Good news for me and my fellow Civ junkies then, as Mac Rumors reports that an OS X compatible port of Civilization V will be heading to Valve’s gaming digital delivery service Steam within the next few weeks.
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Sega’s long-awaited return to the 2D roots of their most famous speedster rodent is coming to the App Store tomorrow, and as you can see in the trailer above, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 looks pretty faithful to the original Sonic games for the Sega Genesis… you know, before the whole franchise leapt into 3D and was marketed predominantly at furries with masturbatory echidna fantasies.
Looking pretty good, and I know loads of iPhone gamers will be excited about this, but on my part, I’ve never found running at 1000 miles per hour into an undodgable wall of spikes very fun, which seems to be the defining element of the series. I think I’ll probably give Sonic 4 a pass.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31omgvWDTQ
Up until 1996, id software’s Doom engine was pretty much the de facto technology driving the best and most advanced PC computer games on the market, including Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen and Strife. Then id software released their next game engine, Quake, which boasted true 3D environments, and any game that still ran on Doom’s 2.5D engine was barely worth a laugh.
That was very unfortunate for HacX when it was released in 1997. The last commercial game using the Doom engine, HacX boasted some incredible enemy, weapons and level design, but was ultimately as ignored at retail (where it was passed over for flashier games running on truly 3D engines) as it has been forgotten by all but the most die-hard retro gamers.
I was delighted to hear, then, that HacX has gotten a new lease on life, as it has been ported as a free app for the iPhone and iPad. It’s still using the Doom engine, just this time it’s using the updated iPhone engine released by id software’s own lead programmer, John Carmack.
Here’s hoping that HacX can finally get some of the recognition it deserves this time around.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHl6GTls6m0
Capcom’s Dead Rising series for the PC and the Xbox 360 is an acquired taste, despite the fact that it’s central conceit is the chocolate meets peanut butter of zombie games: killing the slavering, flesh-hungry dead in an American shopping mall. Now it’s coming to the iPhone later this year in Dead Rising Mobile, but can Capcom make the series work on a handheld device?
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc
Whether Infinite Lives’ forthcoming Contra-inspired shooter Moral Decay gets pushed live on the App Store has a lot to do with how Apple’s reviewers decided to view the game’s central protagonist…. a bearded man in sandals and Messianic robes who can fly on a rainbow, shouts “Oh my father!” when he’s shot and spends most of the game using an AK-47 to transmutate a constabulary of sinners as multivariate as sumo wrestlers, extraterrestrials and Satan into big, spattering chunks of gelatinous gore.
Here’s the question: will Apple’s reviewers subscribe to Infinite Lives‘ pretense that their protagonist is, in fact, an unassuming dude by the name of Christ T? Or will they decide that Chris bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ of Nazareth and should therefore be censored based upon the sheer principle of the thing?
My guess is the latter, in which case I hope Infinite Lives quickly gets a Cydia release: as long as you like your gaming violent, full of chiptunes and almost panoffensive in its 8-bit religious sensibilities, this looks like a hella fun game.
[via Pocket Gamer]
Much as I love Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series of tongue-in-cheek horror films, and much as I have tried to emulate my virtues after that of its protagonist Deadite slayer Ash Williams, I have never found any of the myriad efforts to translate Army of Darkness‘ appeal to the video game form to be worth anything besides a derisive snort.
So I feel a little foolish getting so excited by word coming from Backflip Studios that they will be releasing a game based on Army of Darkness to the App Store early in 2011.
There’s almost no details so far, except that it will be a tower defense game, which is a surprising but remarkably appropriate choice, and you can expect several hours of Bruce Campbell’s snarling, macho and downright hysterical catch phrases as you blow hole after hole through the medieval dead with your trusty boomstick. Don’t bone this up, Backflip!
Although Valve released their other Source engine titles with astonishing rapidity when they finally brought Steam to Mac earlier this year, but one sad lingering hold out in the games library disgorgement was the team-based zombie-shooter series, Left 4 Dead, with the delay largely chalked up to some bugs in OS X’s graphics drivers that Valve helped Apple iron out.
We’d previously heard tell that now that those graphic issues are fixed, Valve as hard at work to bring Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 to OS X by October… and now, if a casual mention over at Macworld is anything to go by, it looks like that date might have been further locked down to October 5th, along with the latest Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 add-on pack, “The Sacrifice.”
Looks like for us Mac gamers, the Halloween season is going to be filled with even more zombie mutilating than usual. Expect Cult of Mac to organize a few games of Left 4 Dead once it finally hits our platform.
With the App Store’s prohibition on third-party interpreters having recently been reversed, the iOS future is again rosy for Epic Games, one of the biggest names in next-gen engine licensing whose Unreal Engine powers some of the most visually impressive games on PCs and consoles, including the Gears of Wars series, Bioshock, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands, among others.
Following the impressive release of their proof-of-concept demo app, Epic Citadel, Epic vice president Mark Rein has announced that the software development kit for its Unreal 3 Engine will soon add iOS support to the many other features available to its licensees.
This is great news for gamers: Epic Citadel was a stunning demonstration of the graphical power of iOS which was downloaded over a million times in one week… and it wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a game. Native iOS support in the Unreal Engine makes it all the more likely that developers will bring your favorite franchises to your iPhone in the future.
Now let’s hope Epic themselves follow Epic Citadel up with that Unreal Tournament iPhone port they were playing with back in December.
This week’s must-have iOS games features one of the best 2D platformers yet for the iPhone, GTA goodness in high-definition and golfing that claims to be as real as it gets. There’s also some pooping pigeons thrown in for good measure!
Check out a few of our favorite games from the past week after the break.
The classic Grand Theft Auto 3 trilogy — including Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — is finally coming to OS X later this year, according to Rockstar Games.
Look for the long-awaited release of the classic Grand Theft Auto Trilogy (Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) for Mac – most likely later this year. We’ll have much more info and a proper announcement soon.
It’s about time, but don’t mistake the release of these titles as Rockstar finally getting serious about a commitment to Mac. The PC versions of the latest game we are talking about here — the superlative San Andreas — is well over five years old, which means it’ll run just dandy with a Wine translation layer on a modern Mac. Still, something’s better than nothing, although at this point, I’d be happier if they ported Bully.
Rockstar Games’ superb iOS entry into their infamous Grand Theft Auto series has finally hit the iPad with Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD, a native port that improves the already superlative game’s lighting, polygon counts and even the games’ already impressive explosions.
The biggest advantage, though, is the controls: while an up-sampled Chinatown Wars was technically playable (if ugly) before, the control scheme really needed some tweaking for more adept thumb control. The new iPad accomplishes that quite nicely.
Ultimately, it’s a fine update… but it’s hard to recommend because it’s not a universal app. Instead, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD is a whole new $9.99 to spend on a game you probably already own, if you were interested at all to begin with, on the iPhone, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. If this is your first go at the title, though, Chinatown Wars is an easy recommendation: it’s one of the best games on the App Store.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bBv1WkMUFs&feature=player_embedded
Valve Software’s transcendent physics and teleportation puzzler Portal already runs sublimely through Steam for Mac… as long as you have a modern MacBook Pro or iMac. But what if Portal wasn’t a modern game, but a classic Macintosh text adventure? This brilliant mock ad re-imagines Portal as a lost game rediscovered through a lost Saturday morning advertisement, complete with an appearance by a badly puppeted GlaDOS. Brilliant… although that green text really looks more at place on an Apple II, don’t you think?
To their credit, Aurora Feint has always been remarkably blase about iOS 4.1’s built-in Game Center, even though they currently run the business of the App Store’s biggest gaming social network and match-making service, OpenFeint. In fact, they went as far as to say they were “thrilled” about Game Center, boasting about big future plans for the service… despite Game Center’s seemingly direct competition.
OpenFeint’s plans in an iOS ecosystem with Game Center preinstalled on every device are now becoming clearer, and it seems like Aurora Feint have figured out a killer feature that only their service can provide to gamers: the ability to play cross-form multiplayer matches in games that are available on both iOS and Google Android.
The OpenFeint PlayTime network will not only let you play your buddy even if he is shackled to his Android phone, but the software supports real-time video chat, as well as bot support. That latter addition is particularly interesting, as it means that if a player drops in a multiplayer match, an AI-controlled opponent will seamlessly take his place.
This is a smooth move on the part of Aurora Feint giving developers who have titles on more than one mobile platform a strong incentive to bake both Game Center and OpenFeint support into their titles. I just wish, as a player, I could keep my achievement points in both networks synced.
With hundreds of thousands of applications and games already in the App Store, and more and more added daily, it’s often hard to notice some of the great apps that are available for your iOS device. That’s where Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have shortlist comes in: we’ll compile a list at the end of each week to showcase a few of our favorites and pick out the best of the bunch. Check out this week’s after the break!
Omino is a simple platform game recently released for the iPhone & iPod Touch which claims to ‘take you back to your childhood’ with it’s retro feel. It’s clear from the screenshots that its similarities with the old Super Mario Bros. games is uncanny, but is it as good?
Square-Enix’s cute little RPG, Song Summoner was an adorable little time waster back when it was released back in July of 2008 for the Apple iPod. It’s gameplay was a fusion between the tactical, turn-based stategy battles of Final Fantasy Tactics and the creature creation of Monster Rancher, an old PlayStation game in which you created unique Pokemon-like monsters to fight for you by plugging CDs into your console. Song Summoner worked similarly, allowing you to pick any MP3 on your iPod and create a unique soldier to fight for you, with stats and appearance plucked by algorithm from the data of the track.
It was a game I eagerly bought and desperately wanted to love. There was only one problem: even though it was released in 2008, and the iPhone and iPod Touch had been available for over a year, Song Summoner was a click-wheel game, only available on Apple’s non-touchscreen iPod line. Fast forward a year and a half, though, and Square-Enix is finally correcting that misstep: for $10, you can now pick up an updated version of Song Summoner subtitled “The Unsung Hereos” on the App Store. It contains the first Song Summoner came, as well as a sequel that is speculated to have gone unreleased thanks to Apple ending support for click-wheel games. There’s also a free lite version available for you to try.
If you’re looking to do some gaming this weekend, give Song Summoner a shot. The original was a blast despite the control scheme; for $10, I think the touchscreen version should probably be one of the better and more content rich games to hit the App Store this month.