Excellent game ported to unfashionable format

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, PC gaming on August 29th, 2011 by RevStu

Alert viewers won't (or possibly will) need reminding of Forget-Me-Not, a superb neo-retro iOS game we reported on way back in March that crosses Gauntlet with Pac-Man and Robotron and Crossroads. Well, now it's back with a whole bunch of new enhancements, but not on iOS.

The game's author has ported it to the PC and Mac, where you can have it entirely for free. You should do this immediately, unless you're an idiot.

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Namco Week Update

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 24th, 2011 by RevStu

In keeping with their general levels of inept bumbling irritancy, Namco have ungraciously just rendered much of last Saturday's enthusiastic piece about Pac-Man S inaccurate and redundant, by wiping the leaderboards and releasing a new and substantially different version of the game.

Luckily for them the new version is even better, and therefore few will die.

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When Google+ does this, I’ll be interested

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 22nd, 2011 by RevStu

Actually, I probably still won't. Google is one of the most sinister multiglobal corporations on Earth, and it still astonishes me that people will entrust them with their main email accounts. But more importantly, they don't have this.

(It's not that I have a lot of faith in Facebook either, you understand. I'm extremely selective about what apps I let it install and what personal data I keep there, and I pretty much only accept people I actually know in real life as friends, with few exceptions. But games this good are welcome to know my fictitious school history if they want to.)

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WoSland Game Of The Saturday

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 20th, 2011 by RevStu

Is, of all things, a Facebook game. I know! Specifically, it's Pac-Man S.

Namco are on a great run of doing excellent stuff with their old IP these days, and we might easily have been recommending New Rally-X S instead, which is also pretty darn good. But Pac-Man S, which borrows several elements from the Pac-Man Championship games, is arguably even spiffier.

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Awesome game gets awesomer and cheaper

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on August 16th, 2011 by RevStu

Phoenix HD is a high-def remake of the original Phoenix (69p), which is itself one of the App Store's finest shmups, adding Retina graphics, Universal support and an array of very pretty additional background scenery.

Obviously, now that it's a substantially better game, it's gone free forever.

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The iPhone is the new Amiga, Part XX

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on August 13th, 2011 by RevStu

Free today: the inaccurately-named 8 Bit Rally. I actually paid money for this a couple of weeks ago, like some sort of chump, and had been waiting for a spare moment to write about it. I still haven't really got one (I'm so busy lately you wouldn't believe it), so I'll be quick.

It's Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2011.

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Things in games that are true in real life too

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on July 8th, 2011 by RevStu

(From the lovely The Rainy Day 2, free.)

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Questions with no easy answers, #1

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on June 27th, 2011 by RevStu

(From the Angry-Birds-meets-Peggle Cow Trouble, free today.)

Questions with easy answers, #1

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on June 25th, 2011 by RevStu

(From the all-consuming Tiny Tower, free.)

Game I’m best at of the week

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, iOS on June 19th, 2011 by RevStu

(Brought to you in association with Free-App Hero, natch.)

Star Keeper, which is free at the time of writing, is 60 (or 90) seconds of sheer design genius. The simplest of premises (it's a little bit reminiscent of Qix, and not just in the fact that you draw boxes – the way risk grows the bigger the area you try to "capture" is conceptually very similar, as is the simplicity of the gameplay) conceals a game of extraordinary beauty and compulsiveness.

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First there was FAH, now there is a 2.0 of it

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, iOS on June 15th, 2011 by RevStu

Herosoft Ltd is proud to announce a double landmark today: the 750th game featured in Free-App Hero, and the release of two awesome new versions of the app that various sources have described as "fantastic" (Cult Of Mac), "useful" (Pocket Gamer), "wonderful" (iPhone App Review) and "crap" (someone called 'Krakatomato', which we suspect may be a pseudonym).

FAH 2.0 is a major upgrade, offering several much-requested features and some other stuff nobody even thought of asking for. Frankly, it's so stupendously great that we're actually a little bit embarrassed.

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So near, and yet so stupid

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on June 9th, 2011 by RevStu

Namco's first attempt at bringing the Galaxian/Galaga series to iOS, the near-unplayable Galaga Remix, was a game that could have been described as a pig's arse only if you really wanted to hurt the feelings of some pigs. Rarely can a professional videogame publisher ever have demonstrated so complete a lack of understanding of their target platform.

For their second try, though, they've got very nearly everything right.

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Free rubbish, long queues

Posted in free stuff, games, ps3 on June 4th, 2011 by RevStu

If you've been missing it, the Playstation Network is now more or less back up. Expect many errors starting with an "8", but you should be able to batter your way through eventually and access online gaming and the PS Store.

A few handy tips follow for the minimisation of displeasure and rage.

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The eye of the beholder

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on May 30th, 2011 by RevStu

Trust me, in action this is a thing of great and terrible beauty. In fact, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't really care if videogame graphics never got better than this. They get the job done.

It's PicoPico Fighters, it's four quite extraordinarily intense levels of the most startlingly brutal Cave-style retro shmup onslaught you've ever played, it's a microscopic 1MB big and it's free. Get over 200,000 and we'll talk. Go!

Love is the Slugs

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on May 25th, 2011 by RevStu

Triniti Games are an odd bunch of puppies. Not shy of spending a few bob on talented graphics artists, they always seem to run out of budget somewhere very early in the development process, with the result that they have to hire someone whose last work in the gaming industry was making arcade machines in East Germany in the 1980s to write the actual game.

Desert Slug, which has just gone temporarily free, is a Metal Slug knockoff that's without doubt their prettiest effort yet. But have they figured out how to attach a halfway-decent game in there somewhere as well? To find out, and also just for laughs, let's stack it up against the real iOS Metal Slug (£2.99), which is plenty weird by itself.

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