Like Wolfenstein RPG before it, id Software’s latest venture into the world of Doom has more in common with turn-based dungeon hacks of the 80’s than with the shooter genre from whence it sprang. Don’t get me wrong – there are guns aplenty here – but instead of relying on twitch-fingered accuracy and eagle-eyed precision, Doom II RPG [App Store] shifts the series focus to strategy and exploration. It’s a strange direction for the franchise to explore, but it works.
In each of the 9 levels presented here your goal will be the same; explore your surroundings until you’ve managed to uncover the exit. How you’ll go about that, however, can really differ from level to level. In some instances you’ll need to find hidden keycards. In others you’ll need to power up doorways or use a robot to explore gas-filled rooms. Level design offers up enough variety that things never really begin to feel stale.
The bulk of the gameplay offers up what you’ve come to expect from the Doom franchise – killing demons with big ass guns. Unlike the rest of the series though, you’ll really need to think about which guns to use in which situations and how best to approach your opponents. Sure you could go in guns blazing, but in a turn-based situation with no ability to gain cover you’re just asking to get yourself killed. Little tricks like hiding around a corner after you’ve been spotted to coax an enemy in front of you, or sending in a robot helper to get a good look at a situation before you walk into it, can make all the difference in the world.
Controls are fairly simple and will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Wolfenstein RPG. You’ll be able to rotate your character 90 degrees in any direction with the aid of an on screen D-pad and sidestep by swiping your finger in the direction you want to move. Weapons can be cycled through by tapping your weapon icon, and shooting is done by tapping the screen. If you want to activate your inventory to restore some health or apply some armor, just tap on the health indicator. Everything is kept incredibly approachable, with every action requiring only a single touch.
Like all Doom games before it, the story here is essentially Aliens meets The Gate. Hell has once again opened up in space – this time on the moon – and you’re part of the team sent to investigate. There’s a good deal of sophomoric humor in the writing, yet I was surprised at the effort that was actually put into making the story interesting and providing the world with some depth. You’ll encounter different survivors that provide key information on what you’ll need to do to advance through a level. Computer terminals are found around the complex with emails open that give insight into the events that unfolded before you arrived. They’ve really done a bang up job of framing the story in a way that will keep you more engaged than you might suspect.
I was also taken aback by how well they managed to keep me on the edge of my seat with anxiety and occasionally jumpy with fear. When you remove the real-time components of a game like this and opt to keep the visuals campy and old school, your expectations in terms of nail-biting excitement are set relatively low. Yet time and time again, the level design would lead me into a situation where I was surrounded by demons with seemingly no way to get out.
The game also managed to have a few cheap carnival-ride thrills. In one instance I walked into an empty bathroom to refill my holy water gun in the toilet. Let me stress again — the room was totally empty. But when I looked in a large mirror on my way to the exit there was a zombie standing right behind me! Sure these are cheap carnie thrills here, but it made me jump nonetheless.
Silliness also manages to sneak its way into the game more often than I’d expect. Shooting a demon with holy water, for example, will make his eyes bug out like a Looney Tunes animation. Searching the corpses of demons will occasionally turn up useless items like human fingers and pocket lint. It’s the sort of stuff that would have made me laugh when I was 12, and for some reason it still manages to illicit a chuckle out of me. This is a game where you can throw toilets at hellspawn — who wouldn’t crack a smile at that?
As you can probably gather from the bulk of this review, Doom II RPG is a game that left me tickled pink from beginning to end. Still, we’d be remiss to not mention the few questionable design decisions that popped up from time to time.
I loved that enemy sprites were cut and paste from 1994, but they looked a little too fuzzy when you got up close. Couldn’t they have been cleaned up just a little for their 2010 re-introduction? Doom II RPG is also in desperate need of an auto-save feature. Each level would take a minimum of 30 minutes to complete, and on more than a few occasions I forgot to save and ended up having to replay huge chunks of the adventure. Also, for a Doom title, the game world is seriously lacking in the satanic scenery found in previous games of the franchise.
Still – with so few complaints, Doom II RPG is a game I enjoyed from beginning to end.
Id's Doom II RPG [$3.99] was released yesterday, and so far has had an overwhelmingly positive reception in our forums. Much like Wolfenstein RPG [$1.99], Doom II RPG is a turn-based 3D game chock full of crazy humor, items to loot, and enemies to slay.
Here is some gameplay footage of the first few moments of the game:
We're still powering through the game for our full review, but right now, it's safe to say if you like silly turn based RPG's, Doom II RPG is a worthy purchase.
Today, an iPhone port of the well-reviewed mobile title DOOM II RPG [App Store] from id Software LLC appeared in the App Store. Doom II RPG was created by the same team that brought us Wolfenstein RPG and offers a turn-based take on the Doom universe:
The forces of Hell have invaded our dimension once again, and only you can stop them from their ultimate goal—conquering Earth!
A mysterious distress signal calls your team—two hardened Marines and a rookie scientist—to a Union Aerospace Corporation research facility on Earth’s Moon, but you were unprepared for what awaits you. The forces of Hell itself have taken hold of the station and its inhabitants! Zombies and demonic monsters roam the halls, killing all who cross their path. Your backup squad is dead. Mysterious scientists conspire against you. Even the facility’s AI cannot be trusted. You are being hunted from all sides. Now, you must fight to survive, and try to stop the invasion—and uncover the truth—by any means available. The fate of all humanity is at stake!
The game challenges you to choose one of three available characters through which to take on a veritable menagerie of Hell-spawned beasts. Cacodemons, Cyberdemons, Spider Masterminds — they're all here for your goring enjoyment.
Among the game's features as listed by id:
Battle through 9 maps, spanning the Moon, Earth, and Hell itself. Over 8 hours of gameplay!
Over a dozen unique weapons to find, plus improvised weapons such as Sentry Bots or even plumbing fixtures.
Eleven different enemy types—each with multiple, increasingly-powerful forms—plus four bosses.
Auto-mapping feature and mission-tracking PDA functions ensure you’ll never be lost again.
Customizable controls; change the size, style, and placement of the control inputs.
Three levels of difficulty will give players of all skill levels a challenge.
Detailed graphics and complex levels which take advantage of the power of the iPhone.
As with Wolfenstein RPG, the pace of Doom II RPG game is entirely different than the first person shooter versions that we all know. We'll offer a closer look in time, while first impressions are being collected in our forums.
Isaac Newton's Gravity [App Store] is Namco's latest foray in to the casual puzzle aisle in the App Store. Originally released as Professor Heinz Wolff's Gravity for the PC in late 2008 then a simultaneous Wii and DS release in early 2009, Professor Wolff (A real scientist who even had a brief appearance on the Ali G show and his own British television series.) was apparently given the boot for Sir Isaac Newton himself. Aside from this scientific swapperoo and half as many levels, very little seems to have changed aside from obvious interface modifications to adapt the game to the touchscreen.
The game involves solving physics puzzles by arranging blocks and other objects on each of the 50 levels to hit a switch. Pressing the play button on the top right of the screen causes a ball to shoot out and if you positioned everything right, hit the various objects you strategically arranged to fall over, knock in to each other, or otherwise cause some kind of chain reaction that involves something mashing the goal switch.
As it stands right now, Isaac Newton's Gravity is a fairly basic physics game with better than average graphics and controls which can get a little finicky at times. The real magic is apparently coming in the 1.1 update. According to Jon Kromrey, the GM of the Apple games division over at Namco, the 1.1 update will be hitting the streets sometime in February or March which will allow players to share custom made levels they create online instead of the current implementation which only allows players to create custom levels then share them via Bluetooth.
In the meanwhile, if you enjoy these types of games, Gravity will keep you scratching your head for quite a while, especially if you have someone local to trade levels with.
Bight Games has recently released their latest game Fleeced [$3.99] into the App Store and in celebration has dropped the price of Puzzlings [App Store] to free.
Puzzlings is an incredibly well done matching game that we reviewed in July.
At its core, Puzzlings is a Match-3 but offers both swapping and rotating mechanisms to achieve matches. Instead of just swapping adjacent tiles, however, you are able to reverse entire lines by simply dragging your finger across. Draw a square and that entire field will rotate. The controls for the game work very well with the iPhone's touch screen interface and the game does exude a console level of quality. The game adds difficulty by introducing larger shapes (2×1 and 2×2) that can only be moved in specific ways.
Overall, we described it as an incredibly well executed game, though the difficulty ramped up a bit slowly. It's still easily worth a download for free and should offer hours of fun.
Due to a change in publishers, Puzzlings is now called PuzzlingsXXX in the App Store.
Now the game that they are promoting with this effort is a new one called Fleeced [App Store] which was just released into the App Store. The game pits you in a back and forth battle trying to tear down the walls of your opponent's llama pen.
The early responses to the game have been very positive, and we have a full review cooking.
With the release of Shadow Complex on Xbox Live Arcade last August the genre created (and in the opinion of some, perfected) by Nintendo's Metroid series was revived. In the wake of that game's success, 3G Studios brings us The Deep [App Store], a Metroid-inspired game with a twist; players are thrust into the wet suit of a scuba diver exploring the depths of the oceans.
The Deep opens with the tale of a vacationing scuba diver on a tropical island. Some guy who is permanently stuck in the Captain Morgan pose briefs players with a text-based tutorial, and the scuba diver (who you'll come to find is quite sarcastic) is driven towards a local store where an eccentric store owner awaits with the first quest. Thus begins a pattern that will become quite familiar to players as they progress; there are three different islands in The Deep, and each one contains a single villager and a very unique shop owner, each of whom tout some very strange demands in quest form.
After accepting a quest, players can leave an island and drop out to a large map, where all of the levels that have been unlocked are selectable. Upon selecting a level, the actual gameplay starts and the exploration, light puzzle solving, and Metroid references can begin. Like Metroid, The Deep is all about exploring environments and finding important items that allow access to other parts of the map or give unique abilities to the main character. A large red boulder, for instance, can't be destroyed until a player has collected the level three bomb upgrades, so plenty of secrets are saved for second or even third runs through the many levels and areas in the game.
The scuba diver is controlled via a virtual thumbstick when using the default control scheme, and this works perfectly, unlike the alternative touch-based option. While there are numerous threats to the diver in the form of sharks, deadly swordfish, and giant alien brains (the game gets pretty crazy towards the end), there is no health meter to be monitored during play. Instead, the diver's air tank steadily runs out of air, which can be easily refilled by returning to the surface. Taking damage from the underwater creatures will take off precious seconds from the total timer, so avoiding them is a must if any progress is to be made, as dying will reset all of the progress in a level to the moment the diver entered it last.
In a particularly wise design decision by the developers, each level works as a sort of hub for about three separate areas, each of which is its own contained puzzle. In this way players can generally make it through one area, collect an important item, return to the surface, and then immediately head for the next in-level area. This gives the game a nice pace and makes for a great sense of urgency at all times, as a few mistakes in an area means that the diver will need to be especially quick in order to finish collecting all of the goodies in an area and make it out alive.
The various shops on the three islands offer tons of upgrades which can be purchased with the treasure that can be found so abundantly throughout The Deep's levels. Substantial oxygen tank upgrades, increases in swimming speed, better flashlights for those deeper, dark areas, and better suits to keep the diver from taking much damage from enemy encounters all add up to make a nice reward for finishing a level, as well as provide big incentive to explore areas and collect more gold.
There's something inherently fun about upgrading a character to make them faster or stronger for second runs through levels; I'm sure fans of Hook Champ will attest to this. The Deep successfully delivers that feeling of fun, all the while providing tons of enticing reasons to play more, like the allure of extra hidden gold or sidequests that span multiple levels.
Worthy of special note is the humorous, self-referential dialogue between the characters from the islands and the scuba diver. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion at the well-written quips from the island natives, and I feel that they give the game an extra layer of personality. While no text in the game is voiced, the music is pretty good (although it can be hit or miss at times), but it can't match up with the quality of the art, which is made all the more appealing by the high quality of the animation, especially in regards to the diver.
The Deep is not without fault, although its issues are not major. A little variation in some of the puzzles (which almost exclusively deal with flipping different colored switches to open doors) would have been nice, and I really wish that there was a way to check an individual level's stats to see if any of the hidden collectibles haven't been collected, but these are very small issues when one considers the fact that the game is an absolute blast to play. I do have one strong suggestion for the developers, and that's to change the design of some of the shops (the ones that require you to scroll right a really long ways for no real reason to get to the shop owner). That's just annoying.
All of my complaints against The Deep are absolutely trivial when I look back and consider the amount of fun that I derived from playing through the game. Unique level designs, the pleasant art, and that addictive, upgrade-focused exploratory gameplay kept me captive for hours. The comparison might be a slight stretch due to the fact that the levels are in no way interconnected, but I feel that fans of great games like Super Metroid or Shadow Complex will absolutely fall in love with this game. This is a hidden gem that should not be kept a secret.
iPhone developer The Voxel Agents has recently released Train Conductor [App Store], a pick-up chaos management game that should get the attention of Flight Control and Harbor Master fans.
Train Conductor, like the other aforementioned titles, involves safely getting a series of vehicles to their designated destination. In this game, the vehicles in question are trains and, as such, it's not a matter of drawing an arbitrary path to said destination, but routing the trains from track to proper track.
Each screen is filled with up to five, numbered, parallel train tracks. After a brief warning signal, numbered trains enter the screen along these track — in both directions — and the task at hand is to draw connecting tracks to get each train to its designated track. A tap on any train stops it on its track, and a fast-forward control allows for moving the game along when all on-screen trains are sorted. It sounds like a more simple take on the formula than that of the better known time management games in the App Store — and in a way, it is — but as the developer's video illustrates, things can get hectic pretty fast.
In all, there are eight progressively harder levels across four Australian locales. Certain levels feature a few twists, such as especially long and fast Gold Rush Trains, Demon Trains, and even Ghost Trains in the Graveyard Shift mode where spectral trains don't collide and action ramps up fast. Plus+ network integration tracks global awards and leaderboards.
iPhone gamers on the go will find Train Conductor to be a game particularly well-suited to quick, pick-up play sessions. It's right into the action and in moments you're in the heat of the connecting track shuffle. In assessing the game for this writeup, I found it hard to put down and expect to spend some real just-for-fun time with Train Conductor over the next few months.
iPhone gamers with a penchant for spending some virtual time on the wing, rejoice. Glu Mobile's highly anticipated Glyder 2 [link] has hit the App Store.
We first saw the original Glyder earlier this year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco shortly before it made its App Store debut. We were immediately impressed by the game's casual flying dynamic, unlike anything in the App Store at the time. Many, including all of us here at Touch Arcade, consider the game to be the iPhone's answer to Nintendo's excellent Pilotwings. The game garnered quite a following, and looking at our forums, it seems the sequel is destined to do the same.
In Glyder 2, Eryn, who was ever so unfortunately thrown through a dimensional rift in the original Glyder, has again found herself in a foreign dimension and needs your help in unlocking the mysteries of her new environment in order to make her way back home. Poor, poor Eryn. But, then, her misfortune is your gain as an iPhone gamer.
Glyder 2, weighing in at four times the filesize of the original, brings a great deal of new content to thrill those who found themselves addicted to the original:
Six new worlds to explore
Character customizations (new wings and new outfits can be acquired and worn)
18 new mini-games and puzzles
A seventh mini-world that involves flying faster and faster through an obstacle course across a tiny atoll
24 goals to unlock
Over 450 crystals to collect
Over 40 achievements to unlock
In all, it's a lot to play with. All six of the game's core worlds are generally larger and more detailed than those of the original game yet, as with the original, the framerate is solid and the animation silky smooth.
Gameplay in this sequel is pretty much the same as in the original Glyder. You, the player, control Eryn who is equipped with a da Vinci-esque set of wings that allow for gliding flight across various worlds. The goal is to collect a large number of floating crystals of various types in order to open a portal to return Eryn home. The occasional pockets of thermals (corridors of updraft air) and speed boost power-ups help keep the action at high altitude while an array of mini-missions keep the gameplay nicely varied. Flight control is handled via accelerometer, with a re-calibration feature on the main game screen as an addition in this sequel.
Like the original, Glyder 2 is a sprawling game. All game worlds are immediately accessible by simply flying out of one, across a great expanse of sea, and into another, without break or load time. And once a new world has been entered, it can then be chosen as a starting point from the game's world map.
Glyder 2 is best described as "more of a good thing," as opposed to a dramatically new game. All that was right with the original is right with the sequel, but with the addition of a number of nice touches. Flight characteristics can be altered by equipping various new sets of wings that can be collected throughout the game's various worlds. Different looking outfits can also be collected, to add a bit of variation to Eryn's appearance.
Unfortunately, another element of the original that is the same in this sequel is the rather repetitive musical track. Thankfully however, this time around you can choose music from your iTunes library to listen to during gameplay. A welcome addition, indeed.
See our gameplay video for a look at the action across various worlds.
Glyder 2 delivers a fanciful, aerial questing experience to your iPhone or iPod touch. It, like its forerunner, is a highly enjoyable game that's challenging, and at the same time, relaxing. Yet, contrary to the case of many games' sequels scenarios, the existence of Glyder 2 does not invalidate the original as a viable and enjoyable purchase. Yes, there's more to see here, but really Glu brought us "most of the way there" with Glyder, and I think that fans of the genre should find enjoyment with both titles.
When John Kooistra, the developer of Blue Defense and Blue Attack, announced his upcoming real time strategy game, Red Conquest [App Store], fans went crazy. Kooistra has developed quite a following over time, and expectations were high for this prequel/sequel to the Blue games.
One of the big talking points for Red Conquest is the fact that it ties together the story of Blue Defense, Blue Attack, and this game into one comprehensive whole. Aside from pre/post-battle text dialogue, the story is largely told through the use of cutscenes with zero talking. Quite frankly, the cutscenes, while cool in concept, fall flat due to the arguably weak art direction that was taken as well as the fact that the story itself is pretty difficult to make heads or tail of.
Red Conquest does not feature a ton of different unit types, but it covers all of the necessary bases. Harvesters collect resources from floating rock formations, Cruisers and Battleships serve as combat units, and Carriers serve primarily as support units. All units are initially created from the Base unit, but can also be created from the Foundry unit, which is created by the Base. You'll be playing as the Red team throughout most of the game, but it is possible to play as the Blue team in multiplayer (the differences being that Blue units cost less resources to create, take more time to create, and do not heal automatically).
The core gameplay of Red Conquest can be extremely complex for first time players, with multi-touch menu navigation being required for such simple actions as moving a small group of units. While I really believe that they're some of the most well thought-out RTS controls on the iPhone, the learning curve at the beginning of the game is just too intense.
The tutorial can be blamed for a majority of the problems that players are likely to experience, as it's one of the most confusing tutorials that I've ever seen. In it, players are thrown into a level containing three "elders," all of whom offer differing kinds of advice on how to play the game. This is all fine and well, but instead of letting players know when they've done something correctly, the elders just randomly blurb out instructions, ignoring all player interaction. This was extremely confusing for me, as I didn't know if I was supposed to do what the elders were telling me until they told me I could stop, and I had no idea why I would use any of the controls that they were pointing me towards.
Shortly after this tutorial, players are tossed into a level that, while easy for experienced players, can be incredibly difficult to the uninitiated due to the almost instantaneous bumrushing of the A.I. opponents on the player's base. Only after reading up on the Red Conquest Strategy thread in our forums and watching the below video did I manage to get a full grasp of what the correct strategy should be on that particular level. I say all of this as a guy who is intimately familiar with the concepts behind RTS games; I can kick nearly anyone's tail in Age of Empires II, and I've always been a big Starcraft fan. If Red Conquest was this difficult for me, I suspect newcomers to the genre don't stand a chance.
I began to really like Red Conquest after I spent some extended time with it, and I see a lot of potential for the game as more content is released for it over time. The ability to play with bots in multiplayer or up to 8 human players is a real feat, and something that I think really enriches the game and gives it some long-term viability, but the current lack of online play is a real bummer. The campaign is fairly short, but the inclusion of the 16 challenge levels and the promise of more content to come likely makes up for that.
Those who are not fans of RTS games are not likely to enjoy Red Conquest, as it's really packing a complete RTS into a small, complicated control method that only genre veterans are likely to figure out. For those who stick with it and master the controls, one of the most complete, well-made RTS experiences on the iPhone await, but some real patience will be required.
John Kooistra's latest game Red Conquest has finally arrived in the App Store. Red Conquest is a real time strategy game set in open space.
Take command of your fleet with a user interface designed specifically for the mobile platform! Casual players of RTS games will appreciate the ease of managing their units with simple multi-touch controls, while RTS veterans will love the variety of advanced macro- and micromanagement options for tactical warfare.
The developer's trailer and walk through video show how the action goes:
First impressions are starting to be collected in our forums, and we'll spend some time with the game and report back.
Like Wolfenstein RPG before it, id Software’s latest venture into the world of Doom has more in common with turn-based dungeon hacks of the 80’s than with the shooter genre from whence it sprang. Don’t get me wrong – there are guns aplenty here – but instead of relying on twitch-fingered accuracy and eagle-eyed precision, Doom II RPG [App Store] shifts the series focus to strategy and exploration. It’s a strange direction for the franchise to explore, but it works.
I was also taken aback by how well they managed to keep me on the edge of my seat with anxiety and occasionally jumpy with fear. When you remove the real-time components of a game like this and opt to keep the visuals campy and old school, your expectations in terms of nail-biting excitement are set relatively low. Yet time and time again, the level design would lead me into a situation where I was surrounded by demons with seemingly no way to get out. 
With the release of Shadow Complex on Xbox Live Arcade last August the genre created (and in the opinion of some, perfected) by Nintendo's Metroid series was revived. In the wake of that game's success, 3G Studios brings us The Deep [
Each screen is filled with up to five, numbered, parallel train tracks. After a brief warning signal, numbered trains enter the screen along these track — in both directions — and the task at hand is to draw connecting tracks to get each train to its designated track. A tap on any train stops it on its track, and a fast-forward control allows for moving the game along when all on-screen trains are sorted. It sounds like a more simple take on the formula than that of the better known time management games in the App Store — and in a way, it is — but as the developer's video illustrates, things can get hectic pretty fast.
In Glyder 2, Eryn, who was ever so unfortunately thrown through a dimensional rift in the original Glyder, has again found herself in a foreign dimension and needs your help in unlocking the mysteries of her new environment in order to make her way back home. Poor, poor Eryn. But, then, her misfortune is your gain as an iPhone gamer.
In all, it's a lot to play with. All six of the game's core worlds are generally larger and more detailed than those of the original game yet, as with the original, the framerate is solid and the animation silky smooth.
Glyder 2 is best described as "more of a good thing," as opposed to a dramatically new game. All that was right with the original is right with the sequel, but with the addition of a number of nice touches. Flight characteristics can be altered by equipping various new sets of wings that can be collected throughout the game's various worlds. Different looking outfits can also be collected, to add a bit of variation to Eryn's appearance.
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