Games people have sent me #1

Posted in games, iOS on June 18th, 2011 by RevStu

Since the sad but wholly predictable demise of Podgamer, I still sometimes get emails from developers with new iThing games. If someone's gone to the trouble of sending a promo code it's rude not to at least take a look, and almost invariably the games turn out to be pretty good. (Because if your game was rubbish, why would you encourage people to play it?)

The likelihood of a review subsequently appearing is approximately sixteen million billion trillion times higher if you don't choose to illustrate the game with fuck-awful App Store screenshots with PR bollocks spewed all over them, but very occasionally if I really like something I'll make exceptions even if you've made me needlessly piss around taking my own pictures like I've got nothing better to do with my time, you fucking idiot.

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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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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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Incredibly new!

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

iCut Deluxe (free today) is actually a pretty spiffy little puzzle game.

I'm just not sure their media cuttings are doing them a lot of favours.

The song restrains the game

Posted in games, iOS, iPad on May 3rd, 2011 by RevStu

Namco's bipolar milking of the Pac-Man brand for iOS continues to be as schizophrenic as ever. Recently they've put out Pac-Chomp, the most listless and dull match-three imaginable (despite having already made two better Pac-themed matching games), but at almost the same time they also released the modestly fantastic Pac'n Jump.

Alert viewers will have deduced immediately that it's a Doodle Jump knockoff, but it's a rather lovely effort that's actually four slightly different games in one, each of them based on a classic Namco arcade line and borrowing elements from it to give the jumping action distinct flavours.

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Why iOS gaming is great

Posted in awesomeness, games, iOS, iPad on April 30th, 2011 by RevStu

Because you can download a game that's already pretty good, frequently for nothing, and then for no good reason a few months later it gets made enormously bigger and better at no extra charge.

The shot above is of a complete new mode that's just been added to Donut Games' rather spiffy Traffic Rush (currently 59p). It's just one of a whole slew of improvements made in the latest update, including an upgrade to shiny Retina graphics, native iPad support and the replacement of Donut's awful web-based leaderboards with proper Game Center ones.

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Waking the dead

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on April 15th, 2011 by RevStu

Or Why Videogame Programmers Hate You, Part 956.

Appropriately enough, with Easter coming up, it turns out that resurrection is a lot easier than you think.

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Unmissablest freebie of the day

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on April 10th, 2011 by RevStu

Is Run Like Hell! Deluxe, probably the finest and almost certainly the most content-stuffed running-man game in the App Store.

Whether your taste is for being pursued by starving cannibals or love-crazed hotties (but only those two things), there's lots of fun for you here.

(This recommendation brought to you by Free-App Hero. Natch.)

Free-App Hero: 500 not out

Posted in awesomeness, iOS, pictures on March 31st, 2011 by RevStu

Sorry updates have been a bit thin on the ground for the last few days, viewers – I've been insanely busy with about eight different things, and probably will be until Monday. One of them was reaching a milestone with the mighty Free-App Hero, which has now featured a frankly amazing 500 games since being released four months ago and written 150,000 words (roughly two novels' worth) about them. Yikes.

Astoundingly, that translates to somewhere in the region of £5 million saved by the app's users since it came out, and all without having to spend hundreds of tedious hours wading through thousands of godawful ad-strewn games written by escaped mental patients in order to find the good stuff.

Anyway, here are some pictures of weird stuff I saw in the park last week.

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iOS freebie of the day

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on March 29th, 2011 by RevStu

Is this extremely zippy line-drawing, trampoline-jumping game with beautiful graphics and almost limitless replay value.

Rather charmingly, it's called A Moon For The Sky. (There's a separate but equally free iPad version, A Moon For The Sky HD, too.)

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Game Of The Last 16 Hours

Posted in awesomeness, games, iOS, iPad on March 23rd, 2011 by RevStu

The world moves alarmingly fast nowadays, doesn't it? But right now, at this particular moment in time and until something else shiny and exciting comes along (probably around lunchtime), this is the best game ever.

With a certain amount of irony, then, (and for no very good reason that I can immediately discern), it's called Forget-Me-Not.

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Where is Jesus?

Posted in games, iOS on March 16th, 2011 by RevStu

Hey! It's time for another WoSblog Challenge! WOO!

We're all familiar with the concept of Where's Wally/Waldo, right? The above is a tableau in similar vein but with a bit of a Biblical theme, taken from the iThing game Where's Jesus? Your job is simple: find the inset character (bottom left) somewhere in the main picture. He usually shows up after you've found three or four others in Level 1 (of 10).

A free copy of Free-App Hero to the winner!

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New ways to spell “Congratulations”, part 75

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS on March 14th, 2011 by RevStu

Those crazy Far East kids really do have trouble with that one, don't they?