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May

Leviathan: Warships Review – You Wouldn't Buy A Speedboat With A Hole In It, Right?

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

The seas are a dangerous place, lads. The Marauders are thick amongst the waves, and you are but an inexperienced young commander, seeking to make a name at the helm of your fleet. Your ships are heavily armed, but it's going to take more than firepower to stay afloat in Leviathan: Warships. This game is heavy on strategy, long-term planning, and attention to detail. As good as some aspects of this game are, the controls threaten to sink it before we even get out of dry dock.

Gameplay

My first impression of Leviathan was that of another top-down real-time strategy game (RTS).

Apr

Dynamite Jack Review: So Good I Won't Cheapen It With A Pun About 'Explosive Fun'

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

In Dynamite Jack, you play the part of a space marine that has been captured by the enemy and forced to work in the Anathema Mines. You don't have time for that nonsense, so escape it is. It seems like your alien captors are not the brightest stars in the cosmos – they leave explosives, flashlights. and keycards laying around everywhere. Lucky for you.

Gameplay And Controls

You start at the lowest level of the mines, and your goal in each stage is to find the exit denoted by a shimmering point of light. You wander around the top-down maze of tunnels and facilities in search of the necessary tools to take you to the goal.

Apr

Ravensword Shadowlands Review: Not Skyrim On Your Phone, But Maybe That's Alright

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

Expansive role playing games are usually the realm of PCs and consoles. Experience systems, loot, quests, massive 3D worlds, and magic are too much for a puny phone or tablet to handle, right? Well, maybe not. Crescent Moon Games was somewhat successful bringing that experience to mobile devices with last year's Aralon: Sword and Shadow. Now the developer has gone back to the land of Tyreas in Ravensword: Shadowland. Is this your next RPG adventure?

Story And Gameplay

You play the part of a mysterious adventurer that miraculously survives an apocalyptic battle. It is not until you begin searching for an explanation that you discover you are part of an ancient and noble bloodline, and the beast that destroyed your comrades still lives.

Mar

The Conduit HD Review: Automatic Shooting Is Not Automatically Fun

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

The Nintendo Wii suffered throughout its life from a lack of good games. The Conduit aimed to bring a solid first-person shooter experience to that console a few years back, and now the game has been ported to Android as a Tegra exclusive. Can a Wii game from 2008 offer the kind of experience we've come to expect on Android? Let's find out.

Gameplay And Controls

In this game you play as Secret Service agent Michael Ford, who is recruited by a shadowy government agency to take out a supposed terrorist group. What follows is a somewhat convoluted and unimportant plot.

Mar

Bladeslinger Review: More Than Just A Pretty Face

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

Bladeslinger is one of those games that makes a splash with impressive trailers and promises of console-level gaming, but how often have we been left heartbroken by similar titles? This game sets out to tell a story, so at least it has that going for it. William Glaston is just your average cowboy with a revolver-gun and robot arm, but things get weird when he returns to his home town of Hammer's Peak to find it overrun with monsters that used to be the townsfolk. The story unfolds as Glaston wanders the seedier parts of Hammer's Peak in search of his brother, and the cause of the corruption.

Mar

Real Racing 3 Review: There Is A Good Game In Here Somewhere

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

Electronic Arts seems to be one of the most disliked game developers on any platform, so it doesn't take much for the internet to rise up in anger against them. The release of Real Racing 3 with its heavy in-app purchases was reason enough to hurl some vitriol at EA. However, the game is free to try and there are a ton of officially licensed cars to drive. So is it really that bad?

Gameplay And Controls

There's no need to bore you with every little detail of how racing games work. I will say that Real Racing 3 has plenty of event types including, cup races, speed challenges, drag races, sprints, and eliminations.

Jan

Ant Raid Review: Lead Your Tiny Minions To Victory

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Games, Reviews

The comings and going of ants are rarely fodder for a good strategy game, but when you think about it, they're tailor made. Ants have lots of natural enemies, a hive-mind social structure for you to command, and ants don't take crap from anyone (ever step on an anthill?). In Ant Raid, you take command of a group of anthropomorphized ants under attack from all sides. Snails, wasps, and all manner of other small-stature troublemakers are out to destroy the colony, and you're the only one that can stop them.

Gameplay

Ant Raid has a very simple concept at its core: keep the colony alive.

Dec

Anomaly Korea Review: Tower Defense Is Dead – Long Live Tower Offense

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

You've probably played loads of tower defense games on Android. There's a reason they're so popular, though. See, tower defense games are fun and hard to screw up. Still, the same old thing can get boring after a while. So it's nice to see Anomaly Korea show up and continue turning the genre on its head like its predecessor did. In Anomaly Korea, you play the creeps trying to get past the towers.

Gameplay And Controls

The backstory is that the aliens have invaded and they are not the nice kind that want to invite us to join a galactic federation.

Dec

Time To Wreck It!: Wreck-It Ralph Review

Posted by Matt Demers in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

As gamers, we've all become familiar with the tie-in title. These are usually released in conjunction with a movie or TV show to widen its exposure, and historically they're usually pretty sub-par.

However, Disney's Wreck-It Ralph subverts this trope because it's in the unique position of being based off of video games. That's kind of hard to mess up.

Wreck-It Ralph is a series of three (soon to be four) arcade games that feature characters and environments from the movie. The first is a direct port of the Fix-It Felix Jr. arcade game that Ralph calls home, the second will remind players of Doodle Jump and other "bounce as high as you can" games, and the third is a very modest twin-joystick shooter.

Dec

Game Review: Shoot Em Up + Rave = Beat Hazard Ultra

Posted by Matt Demers in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

I've been enjoying video games for most of my life, and some of them come with a seizure warning before I start playing. This is to make sure that people who are prone to seizures or headaches know that there is a large amount of strobe effects in the game they're about to start.

I've never felt that been susceptible to the problems the warnings are meant to address, but then again, I hadn't played Beat Hazard Ultra, either.

Beast Hazard Ultra is a shoot-em-up game that uses your music to generate levels. Gameplay-wise, it's a mix of Asteroids and the traditional two-joystick shooters that many players are already familiar with.