Flight Control. Firemint kick-started the path-drawing genre, and Flight Control remains the best game of its type. You guide aircraft to landing areas by drawing paths, taking care to avoid the single collision that ends the game. For extra challenge, try the navy level with a lazily rotating aircraft carrier and super-fast jets.
Orbital. In Orbital, you fire orbs into the play-area; when an orb stops, it expands until it reaches an obstacle. An orb’s number dictates how many times it must be hit by subsequent orbs until it explodes. Strategy therefore relies on you carefully picking your spot, aiming to create chain reactions and take out several orbs with one shot. Both beautiful and absorbing, Orbital is a textbook iPhone game.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars. Rockstar Games didn’t get the memo either, so they went ahead and shoved a grubby, violent city full of gangland warfare into your iOS device. Matching the same game on PSP and DS, Chinatown Wars has you trying to survive turf wars, shoot-outs, high-speed chases and drug deals. But if it all gets a bit much, you can steal a taxi and earn a semi-honest living carting fares about Liberty City.
WestBang. WestBang’s tap-based gameplay mechanics go back to the dawn of videogames, in that it’s ultimately a simple reaction test. Doors open, and you have to shoot bad guys (but only after they draw-after all, good guys play by the rules) and avoid dispatching innocents. It’s reminiscent of Sega’s classic Bank Panic, but offers better graphics and more characters, along with added fun and depth.
Castle Smasher. Although it looks similar to a simplified and angular Angry Birds, Castle Smasher plays rather differently. The game’s firing mechanism (for lobbing stones at castles) is more precise, and you also have to defend your catapult guys against attacking knights. Randomly generated levels provide limitless gameplay after you work through the well-judged challenge levels.
Beyond Ynth. Beyond Ynth is a puzzle-oriented platform game which tasks a bug with collecting gems to bring back light to his kingdom. Each level comprises a number of ‘boxes’ that must be entered and correctly rotated in order to proceed; grabbing gems requires some serious puzzle-solving abilities, and one wrong move often means death by lava, ice or fire. Mercifully, the latest Beyond Ynth update does away with the ‘start the level for the 50th time’ mechanic, enabling you to rewind progress past errors. Even so, it’ll take you many hours to grab those gems.
Infinity Blade. In screen-grabs, Infinity Blade visually resembles a free-roaming RPG, but it’s in fact a block-and-parry beat ’em up, akin to Karateka or Punch-Out!!, but with glorious modern-day graphics and huge swords. Basic RPG-style levelling up provides a little extra depth, enabling you to gradually tackle stronger foes during each ‘bloodline’, and the gestural sword-fighting controls are great.
Scrabble. EA’s take on the world’s most famous word game is a good one, with a great-looking board, a decent solo mode, pass-and-play and local network play. Scrabble has some minor dictionary niggles, and EA needs a slap for not providing turn-by-turn online games, but otherwise this is a first-rate boardgame conversion.
Tiny Tower. The main point of this resource-management game is to build a tower, complete with floors of apartments, entertainment, eateries, retail shops, and so on. The addicting gameplay blends well with the retro 8-bit graphics and a quirky elevator music-style soundtrack. Game Center integration helps players find new “Bitizens” to face off against in this freemium title.
Hanging With Friends. Zynga’s social and silly adaptation of the classic game hangman has some innovative wrinkles to please the Facebook and iOS generations. Players can use the Instant Replay function, for instance, to see your opponents fail or succeed at solving your word. Turn-based gameplay also lets players tap into the casual title on their own time.
League of Evil. Based on the classic NES series, League of Evil actually has more in common with Mega Man. It is also arguably the most addictive and challenging side-scrolling game you will find on any mobile device. The game has all kinds of obstacles waiting to kill your character in each of its short, quick levels, and requires a lot of skill and precision in its controls to get past them all.
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