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Jan

[Roundup] The Very Best Apps From 2012

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications

As promised, we've got another set of roundups for you this month. This time, though, we're not just looking at last month's best apps and games – we've got a short list of the very best apps and games from all of 2012.

To be sure, poring over all the apps we've covered in the past year was an arduous task. We've picked three entries for each category (in no particular order), but there were certainly more than four new apps worth talking about. To that end, we've also got plenty of runners-up. Without further ado, here's the cream of the 2012 crop.

Jan

ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64 Classic 'Lords Of Midnight' Comes To Android – 'The War Of The Solstice Has Begun'

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Games, News

Breathing new energy into Mike Singleton's 1984 classic the Lords of Midnight, Chris Wild has brought the game to Android. The game, for those unaware, is an epic adventure game – first enjoyed on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 – that takes players (along with three other characters) on an adventure to destroy the Ice Crown and defeat Doomdark, with the option to recruit lords and troops to defeat Doomdark's minions. In the process, players will venture through enchantingly retro environments.

Besides being one of the first games of its kind, Lords featured a graphic technique called "landscaping" to create more convincing perspectives within the game's vivid 2D universe, a technique that's been updated for Android.

Jan

King's Bounty: Legions Comes To Android, Brings Turn-Based Fantasy Strategy Along With It

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

Turn based fantasy games have seen a bit of a resurgence recently, no doubt partly because it's easier to design a touchscreen UI where the action takes place in a menu rather than in wielding a sword. To wit: King's Bounty: Legions. This title gives players a set of characters to command in combat versus an enemy squad to conquer the game board.

The game has some pretty strong creative ties to Heroes of Might and Magic, as the man who designed the original Might and Magic, as well as the aforementioned spin-off, also worked on the first King's Bounty.

Jan

ShaqDown Arrives On The Play Store - All The Mutant Zombies You Can Throw A Basketball At For $0.99

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

Well, that didn't take that long at all. Less than a month after we first heard about Shaquille O'Neal starring in a post-apocalyptic game that features mutant zombies (yes, you read that right), it's already released! The not-quite-sequel to Shaq Fu, a game so bad that people devote actual time and money to liberating it from existence, brandishes an entirely different gameplay style. Whereas the original was a fighting game along the lines of Mortal Kombat, this game is closer to the second week of Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 Weeks To Save The World. That's exactly the kind of feeling I was hoping for going into this game.

Jan

[Game Roundup] Here Are Our Six Picks For Best New Game From December 2012

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Games

Of course it wouldn't be a new month without a roundup of last month's very best games. December, like most months, saw the launch of plenty of great titles. Checking out every last game that debuted in a month can take a long time, though (besides racking up a pretty hefty total). To that end, we have – as always – compiled a short list comprised of six of December's best offerings. No matter what kind of gamer you are, there's something on this list that'll suit your taste.

Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery

Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery is, in a word, awesome.

Jan

Ouya Announces CREATE, A 10-Day Game Development Competition With $45k In Prizes

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

Time to grab the closest energy drink, sit down at your biggest, baddest, multi-monitoriest coding rig and get cracking on some game ideas, devs! Ouya has announced a 10-day competition that will challenge contestants to come up with an Ouya-compatible app from scratch. The shindig gets started on January 14th and from that point, participants will have until January 23rd to submit a playable demo of their original game.

The contest is being put on in partnership with Kill Screen, which will be reviewing the entries. After the initial reviews, some entrants (not all) will even be played by a "team of industry pros" that includes Ed Fries (co-creator of the Xbox) and Felicia Day (no intro needed).

Jan

[New Game] Steampunk Racing 3D Is Wacky Races By Way Of Tim Burton

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Games, News

If you've got fond memories of spending Saturday morning watching the antics of Peter Perfect, Penelope Pitstop, and Dick Dastardly (themselves based on The Great Race from 1965), then you should check out Steampunk Racing 3D. While it doesn't have the same abundance of personality as the Hanna Barbara classic, it's definitely got the cartoonish exaggeration down pat. In this full polygonal racer, you're tasked with navigating your steam-powered contraption through an Industrial Revolution setting while dealing with other racers, with varying degrees of prejudice.

The game takes the typical kart racer approach: various speed boosters and power-ups can be found throughout the tracks, which you can hold in three slots as you go.

Dec

Metal Slug 3 Is On Sale For $1.99 (Normally $6.99), Brings Retro Side-Scrolling Shooter Action On The Cheap

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

You know us, here at Android Police. We have simple tastes. We like old school games, we like getting things on the cheap, and we like things that go boom. Which means that this sale on Metal Slug 3 is right up our alley. While this title is normally around $7, it's available for $2 right now on the Play Store.

This game originally came out for the Neo Geo and its nostalgic graphics have been lovingly recreated for Android. You can also link two handsets together via Bluetooth to play cooperatively with friends. Not bad. Get in on the explode-y action via the widget below.

Dec

Don Bluth Insists On Making Your Life Weirder By Releasing The Laserdisc Classic 'Space Ace' On Android

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

Don Bluth... What happened? You had such a good run. You made film history by actually giving Disney a run for it's money with Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. They were classics! But then Rock-A-Doodle happened. Then Thumbelina. Then...lord forgive me for speaking it's name...A Troll in Central Park. The decline was quick and painful. Before the movies started getting weird, though, Dragon's Lair came out and revolutionized the laser disc gaming industry (no seriously). While that title actually saw some initial success due to the unique tech (and notably high price point at $0.50 per play), the follow-up game, Space Ace, did not do nearly as well.

Dec

Flower Power: Eufloria HD Review

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

My fondest memories of the original Star Wars films were the starfighter dogfights. The first time you see the assault run on the Death Star, or the ill-fated attack on the second before it was finished, it's really cool to watch a bunch of fighter craft flying around, blowing the heck out of each other. Every once in a while, you can get the same sense of scale and calamity in a game - usually of the real-time strategy variety.

Eufloria is a game that manages to capture this sense of chaos, allowing you to zoom out to see the entire asteroid belt you're capable of conquering, or to zoom in completely to see each individual ship firing lasers at targets.