Gameloft’s Hero of Sparta wowed early iPhone adopters upon its launch in 2008 with impressive 3D graphics and hack-and-slash action that rivaled Sony’s God of War series. This week, Gameloft launches Hero of Sparta II ($6.99), a sequel that introduces a new control scheme and iPhone 4-optimized graphics.
Gameloft notes that Hero of Sparta II features overhauled jumping controls, allowing for advanced platforming elements and new aerial combat maneuvers. The game’s fighting system has also been refined thanks to the addition of an “advanced action virtual pad.”
Hero of Sparta II features 12 levels of mythology-themed action. The game is playable on all iOS devices, though iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS owners will enjoy enhanced graphics and improved gameplay performance.
If I had to list three things the App Store needs less of, fart apps, games with zombies, and line drawing as a control method would all be at or near the top. iPhone developer Mutant Games would apparently disagree with that statement, judging by their upcoming game which merges these three App Store cliches in to one unholy abomination of a game which oddly enough looks like it might actually be fun especially considering the sky high novelty value of the game.
In Farts VS. Zombies, you play as a Chuck Norris lookalike with your pants dropped in front of an endless conveyor belt of food with your butt pointed at an incoming swarm of zombies. The foods you eat determine what kind of fart you will generate, and these fart clouds can then be routed around the room by drawing lines for them to follow. The goal of the game is to protect japanese school girls, who you will need to make sure your fart clouds stay away from while you gas said zombies. Your ultimate attack of sorts seems to be some kind of projectile vomit, which can clear entire swaths of zombies and is aimed by tilting your device.
Farts VS. Zombies has both a survival mode and a story mode… And I can't wait to see how the plot unfolds as per the trailer the ultimate battle at the end of the game is against an evil unicorn who may or may not be responsible for sending hordes of zombies your way.
Farts VS. Zombies is still in development, and hopefully by the time it's released Mutant Games will have time to implement some form of doodle graphics as well. For more information, check out the thread in our forums.
Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman has released Gravity Hook HD ($2.99), an endless, high score-based action title featuring many of the addictive qualities of Saltsman’s previous work.
Equipped with a grappling hook, players ascend an endless vertical shaft by attaching their craft to nearby floating objects. Releasing the hook with precise timing will fling the craft upward.
Many objects are fatal to touch while the grappling hook is attached, however, ensuring a challenging experience as gameplay progresses and grappling opportunities become more precarious.
Gravity Hook HD is available as a universal application for the iPhone and iPad, and also includes the original Gravity Hook title as an unlockable bonus for reaching a 500 meter ascent.
As with Canabalt, the full version of Gravity Hook HD is playable online. As an additional bonus, for this weekend only, Gravity Hook HD’s soundtrack is available as a free download from composer Danny Baranowsky’s Bandcamp site.
Semi Secret Software seem to be making a name for themselves as developers of games with great pixel art graphics, fantastic music, and high-score centric gameplay that in the case of Canabalt [$2.99] has kept me coming back for just one more try for the better part of a year now. Gravity Hook HD [$2.99] hit the App Store tonight, and provides much of what I loved about Canabalt, only in a vertical climb instead of a side scrolling run. In the game you play as a lovable little robot with a grappling hook who ascends to, well, wherever he's climbing to, by grabbing on to a randomized series of orbs, reeling himself in, then flinging to the next one. Unlike Canabalt which you could hand to anyone with it running on your phone and say "tap the screen to jump," Gravity Hook HD has a bit of a learning curve as you get used to the physics of the game.
The different orbs you can latch on to have different properties, ranging from the green orbs which you can touch without issue, grey orbs which are chained together and fall if you hold on to them too long, and blue orbs which turn in to bombs and explode if you get near them. You're also able to kick off the wall if you can swing your robot towards one, and mastering wall jumping as well as how to handle the different orb types are all required to get very far in Gravity Hook HD.
Just like Canabalt, Gravity Hook HD is playable in its entirety online for free in any browser with the Flash plugin. We've even embedded it below, just make sure you either have your speakers muted or are in an area where you can play sounds before clicking:
Gravity Hook HD is universal, and looks great on both the iPhone and iPad, although I've found myself leaning towards preferring it on the bigger screen. Scores are tracked online via Semi Secret's proprietary system which breaks scores out in to top daily, weekly, and monthly submissions as well as the best scores of all time. Gravity Hook HD translates very well to touch controls, and while you can play the whole game for free with a mouse, it really is a much better experience with your finger.
Escape to Plastic Beach stars Gorillaz member Murdoc Niccals, who is out to stop 2D’s latest escape attempts at Plastic Beach HQ. Players tilt the iPhone or iPad to navigate Murdoc’s Doom Glider throughout eight levels filled with enemies and obstacles.
Escape to Plastic Beach features art by Gorillaz designer Jamie Hewlett. Voice samples are provided by Gorillaz members, and the game’s background music is taken from the latest Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach.
Gorillaz fans may also be interested in the official Gorillaz Plastic Beach (Free) app released last month, which features artwork and additional information about the band.
Fishlabs' latest addition to the App Store is a modern take on the arcade classic, Missile Command. While we've seen a few games adopt this formula, none have looked as darn pretty as Earth Defender [99¢]. Earth Defender's interpretation of Missile Command on the iOS devices dispenses with the missiles launching from Earth, and opts for a more responsive explosion-on-touch mechanic. The swarms of multi-colored aliens descending on our fair planet won't know what hits them when a well placed bomb explodes in their faces. Of course, where would Missile Command be without chaining; Earth Defender ensuring that explosions from one alien will in-turn kill others nearby, allowing for well placed screen clearing multipliers.
Earth Defender is host to a variety of weapons and a horde of aliens to use them on. Weapons include a few very different effects that will need to be used differently to adapt to the circumstances. The black hole bomb for instance, will suck up the smaller critters, but are usually limited in number. The electrical bomb will zap any enemies near the blast radius and is used almost as a mine to pre-empt attacks. Weapons are gradually updated in size and power too, level-to-level, to accommodate for the greater difficulty.
Enemies generally take the form of two types– those that can be killed by bombs, and those that can't. For the latter, you need to hold your finger over the enemy to charge an electrical bolt from Earth, slowly whittling them down. There are 14 different enemy types in the game; with some of the more interesting ones cloaking at random, or combining to launch a suicide attack against your shields.
To defend against the onslaught, the Earth has 3 shields barriers divided into multiple segments. Enemies target these segments, either with their own bombs, or by very damaging kamikaze runs. If they happen to pierce through any part of the 3-layered shield, an invasion warning begins, indicating the descent of the alien mothership. It's up to you to kill enough enemies to then generate a shield power-up in time, or risk losing the Earth entirely. Power-up drops are fortunately frequent and forgiving, so this really only becomes an issue when you are seriously in trouble.
For all that the Earth Defender description touts its boss fights, we found this to be the weakest area of the game. Essentially, one snake-like boss attacks multiple times (until the final boss), narrowly escaping you each time until you finally dispense with him. We would have liked to see different bosses with different attack patterns that require a more measured use of the various bombs at your disposal. This is a criticism that may be leveled at the game as a whole too, though– as bombs are not selectable and power-ups simply replace the bomb in your possession– allowing for no real strategic use of weapons.
Earth Defender looks and sounds fantastic, and plays just as frantically as Missile Command of old. You will quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies launching at your shields, and the difficulty of the last few levels is considerable. Unfortunately, Earth Defender doesn't escape the feeling that after the first few levels you've seen it all; with the basic gameplay simply increasing in pace. Instead, we would have loved to see levels or bosses that require you to fully explore your arsenal. Still, Earth Defender is a true-to-its-roots Missile Command inspired game; and with 5-finger multi-touch and OpenFeint, should really appeal to fans of the genre.
Admittedly, calling these games “classics” is stretching the term to its limits. Ecco the Dolphin was at least a neat idea in theory; players control a dolphin, and must feed on smaller fish and stay supplied with oxygen while solving puzzles and traversing underground mazes.
In practice, Ecco’s journey is extremely difficult and often frustrating, with many cheap deaths resulting from an awkward control scheme. I still have vivid memories of the final boss — a challenging fight that makes you repeat a particularly maddening level if you lose.
Despite a strong start, the game falls apart quickly, and it’s not at all worth playing through to completion. I can imagine that the iPhone’s virtual d-pad setup would only make the experience that much more infuriating.
Space Harrier II, on the other hand, was a launch title for the Sega Genesis, and shows its age badly. The fact that Sega priced this one at 99 cents instead of the usual $2.99 (and was actually planning to give it away for free at one point) should tell you all that you need to know, if you’re unfamiliar with the game.
In short, it’s a substandard sequel to an excellent arcade game. The Genesis hardware, still new at the time of the game’s release, could not hope to duplicate Space Harrier’s scaling effects, and the resulting game is a sluggish mess.
It’s unfortunate that Sega has apparently canceled its planned Sega Genesis Ultimate Collection app. At the right price — or better yet, if they were released as part of a bundle — these games could have been interesting additions to a varied library of Sega Genesis games. As standalone apps, however, neither game is worth a purchase.
Sega has released a number of classic Genesis games on the App Store- Sonic the Hedgehog [$5.99], Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [$5.99], Golden Axe [$2.99], Streets of Rage [$2.99], and as of last night, Ecco the Dolphin [$2.99] and Space Harrier II [99¢]. In the past we've been increasingly critical of Sega releasing these emulated games, as while the games wrapped in the emulator are undoubtedly classics, the emulator itself leaves much to be desired.
Revisiting these games with my iPhone 4 has revealed that Apple has finally released hardware that is fast enough to properly run Sega's emulator (although I have had weird crashing issues with Sonic 2). If you've got an iPhone 4, the games run substantially better than the 3GS/3rd generation iPod touch, leaving the touch controls as the only issue. If you're stuck in the world of the iPhone 3G or 2nd Generation iPod touch, you're still better off skipping all of these because the performance really isn't that great. The games are playable, yes, but not a good experience by any means.
Anyway, Ecco the Dolphin is an action adventure side scroller released on the Sega Genesis in 1992. In the game you play as a dolphin, ramming in to things and using your sonar to both talk to other friendly sea creatures and interact with various objects in the game world. When I played the game the first time around on my Genesis, I thought it was surprisingly difficult as you need to manage Ecco's air supply while navigating vast underwater mazes. Drowning over and over was not something I was expecting to get myself in to when I first saw the cute box art.
There's a fairly extensive library of clips on YouTube of people playing the game in various emulators:
Ecco the Dolphin is just as much of a classic as the other games Sega has released, and really should be played by anyone who considers themselves a gamer who hasn't yet. If you want to go back in time even further, Space Harrier II was a launch title for the Genesis and debuted with the system in mid-August of 1989. Like most games of the time, Space Harrier II came packed with a nonsensical story where you're searching out a distress call from the 214th sector in the year 6236. You run around on a pseudo-3D checkerboard landscape shooting your laser at anything that crosses your path.
Like Ecco, there are no shortage of Space Harrier II gameplay videos captured from various emulators on YouTube:
Space Harrier II hasn't aged as well as the other classics Sega has released, but it's still pretty cool to take a look at what was considered cutting-edge mind blowing graphics over 20 years ago. But like all these games, the touch controls of the Genesis emulator on the iPhone aren't ideal and the framerate is low on older devices. Because of this, they're all hard to really recommend, but at least they exist in some form on the App Store if you're determined to revisit these classics on your iPhone.
Ever since the demonstration of the iPhone 4 at the WWDC keynote, the far and away most talked about feature has been the stunning Retina Display. When the iPhone 4 finally released, some developers took the opportunity to update their existing games to harness the power of the eyeball burning high resolution. Previously, we've covered games that have added retina support including Real Racing, Flight Control, Archetype, Sword of Fargoal, Jet Car Stunts, Zen Bound 2, and a host of games from Pangea Software. Well it's time to add another to the list as Gameloft's Halo inspired first-person shooter N.O.V.A. has been given the Retina Display treatment as well, along with support for the iPhone 4's gyroscope.
N.O.V.A. wasn't a bad looking game to begin with, but with this latest update it's hard to believe that I ever thought so. Gone are the many jagged edges that are rife within the game, replaced with silky smooth graphical models that can only be possible with the four times as many pixels on the iPhone 4 display. The game literally pops of the screen now (although the voice acting remains comically terrible). I could go on about the enhanced visual clarity of N.O.V.A., but these comparison screens tell the story better than I ever could:
Perhaps an even more intriguing addition to N.O.V.A. is support for the iPhone 4's gyroscope. The gyroscope must be enabled when starting a new game or from the control options, and is actually a combination of screen swiping and movement. Swiping still moves your aim in an extreme manner, so you still pretty much move and turn the same throughout the game. But the gyroscope offers refined accuracy within your current view (unless you are moving your entire body around, in which case your entire view changes with you), and it works beautifully. It can be a little disorienting to get used to at first, but one you do you'll never want to play an FPS game any other way, and this is coming from someone that typically hates tilt-to-aim in FPS games. This slightly cheesy video demonstrates the new controls:
The touch and gyro combination just sings, and makes N.O.V.A. feel like a whole new experience. The new updated graphics are gorgeous, and still impress even for a seven month old game. And there's the always handy iOS4 fast app switching thrown in this update for good measure. Needless to say, if you're an iPhone 4 owner with a copy of N.O.V.A., don't hesitate to grab this latest update and play through one of the better iPhone FPS games all over again.
Sega has released a number of classic Genesis games on the App Store- Sonic the Hedgehog [
Ever since the demonstration of the iPhone 4 at the WWDC keynote, the far and away most talked about feature has been the stunning Retina Display. When the iPhone 4 finally released, some developers took the opportunity to update their existing games to harness the power of the eyeball burning high resolution. Previously, we've covered games that have added retina support including 
