The App Mob

So what is Star Command actually like? Is it fun? Is it deep? Yes, and developers have found a way around the constraints of fitting games with console depth into mobile. There really are no excuses left. Ravensword, Game Dev Story, The World Ends With You, and Junk Jack have all found ways to keep gamers on their iPhones for the 40 hour standard.

Star Command was announced with a similar promise, and what it actually gives us is a glimpse of an unbelievably good game. You start out with your captain, ship, and some crew members. You can assign crew members to various jobs in different rooms, though they have to be utilized in a certain way when you get into the big ship-to-ship battles. The touch controls work great, and the pixel art graphics are very charming. Even the soundtrack is jamming in its own way. The ship battles are a blast (no pun intended), and there are some killer (pun intended) zombie battles.

The problem with Star Command is that I’ve essentially just described the entirety of the game, save for the fact that you can fly to other planets. But that’s currently just a way to add a feeling of freedom to the player. The difficulty also ramps up pretty quickly, and your entire crew can be violently decimated a few missions in if you make even the most minor tactical error.

It’s a hard, sometimes brutal game, but it’s also fun to play. It just needs that next few batch of updates to really make the players feel like their zooming through space making their own decisions.

Star Command is available now for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad for $2.99.

It's a fun space adventure that gets difficult quickly and keeps you on that fairly linear path until the end.

My experiences with Blitz Brigade are always good and maybe that's why I am so fond of the game. I'm not sure if everyone just sucks at it or if I actually have some skill but any time I play Blitz Brigade I get the most kills on the team. But that is beside the point. Blitz Brigade is also a beautiful game. The graphics are a mix between Team Fortress and something like Far Cry with it's jungles and deserts and what not. It is one of the best looking shooters I've seen on the iOS platform.

The game controls with the standard virtual thumbsticks we've come to know and...hate, but it's still very fun. The aim assist makes the game super fun and very playable. When you are not doing awesome at matches you are using your earning to upgrade your characters weapons and uniforms.

Like I said, Blitz Brigade is great. I think everyone should play it. It is very impressive and works great on the iOS device but the one thing I am longing to do with it is download it on Android and use the MOGA Pro controller with it. I think being able to control it with a regular style controller will make this the ultimate on-the-go first person online multiplayer shooter.

Like mentioned above Angry Birds Friends is all about the competition. The main framework of ABF is built around the social framework of Facebook. You can't play this game and fully enjoy it if you don't log in with your Facebook account. You can play the tutorial and the practice sessions but if you don't log in to your Facebook your missing the whole point of what makes Angry Birds Friends so special.

The game may be a little confusing at first but the tutorial does it's best to help you understand what the game is about. Basically Angry Birds Friends is a weekly tournament. Each week brings new levels and a new tournament. Each tournament consists of 6 levels that you can play over and over again until you perfect. That's the goal, to get the highest combined score over all 6 levels. So an ideal situation would be that you score pretty good in each level, it adds up all the scores and gives you one overall score. Well, you're friend comes along and does way better than you and you can see this in the friends score list on the side. So what do you do? You go back to that third level you were having trouble on and try to perfect your destruction until you score big and get the edge over your friend.

Now, I should point out that Angry Birds Friends is free. The reason it is free is becaue they charge you for powerups. Powerups help you do better in the game. Some powerups give you better accuracy, more destruction, faster speed, etc. You can spend your coins to buy new powerups or you can actually spend real money if you run out of coins. The perk to winning the tournament, if not only to brag to your friends, is also the prize of coins they give you at the end. In the first week I won the tournament and got 200 coins to spend on whatever powerups I wanted. This will help me get that edge over my friends in the next tournament.

The way Rovio handled Angry Birds Friends is genius. It gives you a handful of levels to perfect and play over and over for a week until you get that perfect score. Then it rewards you by showing you how much better you are than your friends and if that isn't the case it pushes you to do better than them. Overall this game is great. The only problem is not many of my friends are playing it. My guess is they see it and say "Oh another Angry Birds game" but they don't realize that it's much more than just another Angry Birds game.

Buy Sorcery!

  Angry Birds Friends-It's Angry Birds. The mechanics will be quite familiar to fans of the series. This is the Facebook game where you play against your friends in tournaments. It does, admittedly, increase the longevity of the franchise, which is in need of a bigger facelift than simply Bad Piggies.

Buy Angry Birds Friends

Get familiar with green slimes, like any good RPG gamer.

The gameplay is what makes Slayin stand out above its ilk in the App Store. There are a lot of IAPs (you can even change the style of the on-screen NES-like controller), but you'll be having too much fun, well, slayin' slimes and imps you won't care. The default character is the knight, who you control with two directional buttons and one large jump button. Don't be fooled by the look of the on screen controls, they work perfectly. You buy items from a merchant who appears as you level up. He'll sell you swords, armor, and healing items. There are bosses to take down, reminiscent of some classic NES brutes. Also adding to the playability are objectives like killing a certain number of enemies or killing a boss without taking any damage. If you get into games like Punch Quest or Joe Danger you'll immediately get comfortable with the system. You unlock other playable characters like a wizard and a knave who have their own weapons to discover. The IAPs are the only thing that detract from this otherwise excellent game, especially considering it's a paid title. 

Slayin is available now on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad for $0.99. 

The amount of content more than justifies the small price tag. If you've a penchant for pixel swords and green slimes, you'll find plenty to like here.

This is Bartz. Bartz is a male character.

Final Fantasy V’s original character designer Kazuko Shibuya returned to put a fresh coat of paint on the iOS version of the game. Some parts are pretty, some look generic, and some are just plain head-scratchers (Bartz’s character portrait is the undeniable face of a woman). If it’s nostalgia you’re looking for, then the graphics aren’t going to matter much anyway, as the same gameplay that made Final Fantasy V one of the most dynamic in the series is here in spades. The combat is a standard attack-magic-heal JRPG affair, but it’s as addictive as it ever, and they’ve even added an auto button for lower level grinding. There is a lot of grinding, so if that’s not your thing, the other features may not be enough. Thankfully, Final Fantasy V’s job system makes the grind very interesting and gives it plenty of depth. You can make your party a group of hybrids with whatever skills you want them to have through a leveling system that increases separate from the basic strength/defense system. Final Fantasy V is the spawn of Final Fantasy III and the father of Final Fantasy Dimensions. It also bears close resemblance to the excellent job system of Final Fantasy Tactics, so its influences are spread to and come from every corner of Square Enix’s star franchise. It also features one of the first appearances of the active time battle (ATB) systems, which have enemies attacking while you’re still getting your thoughts together. Depending on which side of the JRPG fence you sit on, it adds another layer of strategy to battle.

The story isn’t the strongest in the wide world of Final Fantasy, nor is it the weakest. It’s full of humor, betrayal, and yes, love. It’s a favorite among longtime fans, so the mechanics and writing are all well documented. Final Fantasy V is still just as good on iOS as it ever was, and the the addition of the extra dungeon and job classes from the Game Boy Advance version puts even more meat on its already meaty bones. It is a port though, and with it comes some port problems. The on screen directional pad is all over the place on smaller devices. While this isn’t something that will get you killed (this is a turn-based RPG), it’s an annoyance which could have been handled better; Final Fantasy Dimensions was a clinic on how to handle the d-pad on a touchscreen. Why they couldn’t implement the same scheme here is puzzling, especially considering the price. The game is $15.99 on the North American App Store, which seems like quite a bit for a mobile app (and a game that was released in 1992). Whether the price is worth it is really going to be up to the player. There’s certainly fifteen dollars worth of content here, more if you consider the overall quality of the title. Some fans have played FFV to death, and they’re not the ones who are going to be rushing to download it again, especially if they own the definitive GBA version. No, the game is directed at people who can’t get their hands on the classic through legitimate means. If you’ve never played it before, and you can afford it, it’s a no-brainer. It’s Final Fantasy V after all, and the only real issues are the control pad if you own a smaller device and the bizarre character portrait revamp. Neither of these issues keep it from being being unpleasant or unplayable, and the quirks will be just another chapter in the book for Final Fantasy.

3. Dead Nation - From the people that created Super Stardust HD, Dead Nation is one of my favorite PSN games. Imagine a top-down zombie shooter with great visuals. The cool thing about Dead Nation is that it supports up to 4-players. I think Dead Nation could definitely work on an iOS device.

4. Journey - I shouldn’t have to say much about this game. If you don’t know what Journey is then you need to turn on your PS3 and download it now. Journey is one of the best games on the PS3 and its simplicity would work well on the iPad.

5. Torchlight 2 - I’ve been playing Torchlight 2 with my cousins a lot lately so I just had to drop this one in there. Torchlight 2 on iPad would be an ambitios project but I think it could work. They may have to scale it down a bit but I think it would be awesome to be able to play Torchlight 2 on-the-go.

3. Letterpress - Part word game, part strategy game Letterpress is a very different spin on most of the word games you've been playing. Letterpress is great because its more about tile placement than it is the length of words you are creating. Most games go back and forth for a while but it's that last tile that gets you that win. Letterpress is also very minimal looking which is great. Themes are a cool addition as well.

2. Clash of Clans - I did not playing this game until this year but because it was released in 2012 I felt it appropriate to add it on this list. Clash of Clans is highly addictive. If you are a fan of Age of Empires or any RTS type games then you will love Clash of Clans. The game is freemium which means you can play for free but if you pay money you can get more cool things. Clash of Clans is a very polished, full-featured game. You can start your own clans, attack other clans, and  upgrade everything. The only thing that bothered me was that the further you get in the game the longer it takes you create things. Be prepared to wait anywhere between 12 hours to 2 days for most of the later upgrades. That is, unless you want to put down some real cash.

1. Happy Street - Happy Street gave me that Animal Crossing vibe at one point and I loved that. I was addicted to this game like no other game and I always wondered when I'd get burnt out and I never did, until recently, now, even with all the updates I will not go back. I am officially burnt out on Happy Street. If you are not familiar with the game, go give it a download, it's free.If you have a Mac computer you can download it in the Mac App Store for free as well. Happy Street is a great game, just think Animal Crossing with a 2D view and a lot more inventory and business management. The game has almost limitless expandability so expect to put many hours into it. It even has somewhat of a story. For more information on Happy Street check out my review here.

Being a huge fan of "Where's My Water?" I was excited to see what the Disney team had cooked up with Mittens. At first glance I thought the art style looked cool enough to give it a shot.

Mittens is very similar to Cut The Rope in that you have to slice objects to get the cat to fall, bounce, and traverse across the screen. Just as in Cut The Rope, and most games these days, you are to collect 3 gems to get a perfect score.

Mittens may be cute but I'm actually not a fan of it's art style. Something about it makes it feel a little cheap to me. Secondly I'm starting to tire of Cut the Rope type games. The thing with Mittens that bothered me is that it was hard to tell where the cat was going to land. Sometimes the cat would bounce on the board you just cut other times it would fall straight down. I'm also not a huge fan of the overall gameplay and how it works. I never felt anything was really consistent. For these reason I did not play very far in the game.

Overall I am kind of dissapointed with Mittens. Where's My Water? felt fresh and new but Mittens just feels contrived. It tries to be like Cut the Rope but just feels flimsy and inconsistent. Disagree with me? Sound off in the comments below.

Fetch is a point-and-click adventure type game that has you trying to find your dog Bear who was captured by robots. The first thing I noticed with Fetch was the awesome art-style. This is what caught my eye enough to make me spend the $4.99 that the game costs. If anyone knows me I am a sucker for great art direction. Fetch is a very visually pleasing game.

The gameplay is standard, tap the object to interact with it. In Fetch almost everything can be interacted with even if it doesn't play a part in the story. For example, when you are in the city you can tap on signs to make them light up or when you are in the sewer you can tap on bubbles to make them pop. Fetch is very interactive. My only real disappointment with the game is that it's not very clever. The puzzles may be fun but nothing ever pops out as clever in the spirit of my favorite point-and-click adventure games such as Machinarium or Tiny Bang Story. I'm also not a huge fan of the sound design, it feels a little cheap. The computerized female voice that you hear throughout the game just sounds poorly done and it bothers me every time I hear it. 

All-in-all though Fetch is pretty cool. Like I said, it has a great art style and the game is fun enough to keep playing. The only thing is, with so many games going so low in price the $4.99 price tag may be a little too much for this one. Based off of how other games are priced in the App Store I'd say the ideal price for Fetch would be $2.99. 

If you like this type of game I'd say go for it, if you are a little hesitant then I'd say wait for a price drop. Either way the game is worth playing.

As of right now Fetch is only available on the iPad. Click the link to download: Fetch™ - Big Fish Games, Inc