Given the nature of this job, and the fact I make an almost annual pilgrimage to Japan, I’ve been meaning for a while now to get off my butt and learn more of the local language than simply what I need to order a beer.
One of the most popular tower defence games of all time, Fieldrunners has been charming and challenging players on the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, the PSP, PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo DSi since 2008. Subatomic Studios is finally ready to release a sequel, giving fans only a month to get their affairs in order.
I don’t just mean visually, because let’s face it, these days what you’re seeing here isn’t that out of the ordinary. But look at the game mechanics on display, compare them to PC games of the same ilk and wonder why the hell hasn’t anyone done this earlier?
This viral video introduces the iCam, iCutfruit, iRay, and iShoot as well as the long overdue 40-inch iPad.
If Battlezone and, say, Risk had a baby, it’d look a lot like Glitch Tank. Michael Brough’s aggressively retro game turns your iPad into an 8-bit theatre of sci-fi warfare.
We’ve mentioned Namco Bandai’s Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy briefly during the launch of the new iPad, but we never got around to featuring it as a Gaming App of the Day. I don’t know about everyone else, but for me this was because I was too busy playing Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy.
The iPad and the iPhone must be made in China. Ditto for, well, most everything. And it’s not only because of cheap Chinese labour. Or sprawling factories. Or lax regulations. Those are reasons, but there’s another one. And it’s one you might not expect: mud.
The folks behind Brink pull back on the action but throttle up the style with Rad Soldiers, a turn-based multiplayer strategy game for the iPad and iPhone they’re heralding as “guns with friends”. That’s an idea I can get behind.