In my own personal experiences with iOS gaming, there are three things that I have come to love: Nautical themes, a quirky lovable protagonist, and the always enjoyed options of hats. Well thanks to Mr. Crab by Illusion Labs, all of my criteria are met on the surface, which just leaves the ever present question, is it fun?

The game is a fast paced climb the tower/maze game. Mr. Crab will constantly scuttle along the cylindrical tower, bumping into walls will cause him to turn around, and tapping the screen will allow him to jump. On his way to the top of the tower, players are tasked with picking up all the little crabs that are hidden throughout the level, and these are essential for gaining three stars on each stage. And that’s really about it as far as the basics go. There are enemies that will knock Mr. Crab down a level in the tower that can be taken care of with a jump to the head, and there are portals that will drop rolling obstacles in your direction. Honestly, this gives the game a very nice classic feel to it that harkens back to the days when we had Jumpman jumping over barrels thrown by a renegade ape.

The biggest challenge that Mr. Crab offers doesn’t come from the game itself, but is actually on the players themselves. Due to our titular hero’s fast scuttle pace, and the tower’s environments, the hardest task is just trying to remember where you are and where you’ve been as you rise through the level. This isn’t necessarily a problem, as it ensures the game is fast paced and always keeping the players on their toes. The biggest problem with the game is that its mechanics are fairly limited. After the first couple levels, there isn’t really anything new to challenge the players. All the mechanics are introduced early on, and later levels just become aesthetic changes. However, the gameplay is engaging, so yes it’s more of the same, but it’s more of a solid gameplay that works and is still fun.

To me the most fun levels were the games boss battles, which have Mr. Crab going up a tower once again, only to have his path impeded by a large creature. These bosses take a lot more hits to the head before their defeat, and the constant strafe around them as you prepare to strike is very satisfying. The game is a treat to go through just to get to the next boss battle.

Overall, Mr. Crab is a pleasant addition to any iDevice’s game library. It’s a fun visual treat, with quick gameplay that’s easy to get sucked into. Depending on a gamer’s tastes, it might be hard to stick with all the way through, but it’s a fun experience well worth checking out.

The Good

+Easy to master gameplay

+Well designed levels

+Fun boss battles

The Bad

-Slightly repetitive gameplay

-Sometimes hard to keep track of where you are

The Verdict

Fun and carefree, with just enough challenge to keep people hooked. Scuttle off and give Mr. Crab a chance today.

One of the things I love most about iOS gaming is that the games can fill just about any niche. If you want to help a panda reach his girlfriend through use of cannons, you can. If you want to just relax on the beach and flick bottle caps at ice cubes as they fly in front of your face, thanks to BigPixel Studio’s new title, Bottle Cap Blitz, you can do that too.

Bottle Cap Blitz is a game that is pretty easy to sum up. You are at some sort of beach resort, chilling near the bar with an ice cold drink. Ice cubes will fly in front of you, and you have one minute to rack up the highest score you can. Bottle caps are launched by tapping almost anywhere on the screen and they will shoot off in that direction.

Combos are award for hitting multiple ice cubes at once, and at the end of the game players are rewarded coins and experience points based on how they did. Earning enough experience points will earn level ups, and most levels introduce a new mechanic such as pebbles that will hurt your score if hit with the caps or various fruit frozen inside ice cubes that will grant different effects such as cherry bombs to clear the screen or watermelons to slow down time. Coins are rewarded in very small increments, and there isn’t really anything to spend them on besides different bottles caps that function primarily as an aesthetic change.

The music is basically a charming island rhythm that never overstays its welcome, giving the game a very calm relaxed feel and is well accompanied by the sound effects of the beach and the constant crunch of the ice cubes shattering. The visuals are an enjoyable beach scene that feels alive with random cruise ships that float by in the distance and palm trees that seem to sway in the wind. Really though, the biggest thing to note is the ice cubes themselves. They are beautifully rendered and the semi-transparency of their surfaces show very well as they spin by in front of your eyes.

Bottle Cap Blitz is a fairly simple what you see is what you get type of game. It’s a great title for if you have a minute to spare now and then. There may not be a lot of content to fill it out, but what is there works so well that it’s hard to have any real complaints. It’s the sort of game where you can talk about things it could or should have, but on the whole none of it is really needed because what you have is still a full and enjoyable experience. Bottle Cap Blitz might not have the long lasting charm that will keep you coming back again and again after you’ve played so many rounds, but the inclusion of new mechanics as the game progresses makes it a worthwhile time killer that is loaded with charm and fun.

The Good

+Beautiful visuals

+Accurate Physics

+Noteworthy Soundtrack

The Bad

-The ratio of coins you earn vs. cost of shop items

-A few more modes of play might be nice

The Verdict

It looks good and it plays well, so grab yourself a drink, pop it open and relax with some Bottle Cap Blitz.

The artillery genre is one that I’ve always had a particular fondness for. There’s just something satisfying about using your resources at hand and shooting them across the map to cause as much chaos as you can to your opposing forces. Dragon Blast by NPC Games brings a fairly interesting spin to this, but unfortunately, its status as a freemium title manages to hurt it more than it helps it.
Dragon Blast has players in control of a dragon whose eggs have been stolen by local dimwitted villagers, and is out to use her special brand of fire based justice to get them back. The premise may sound a bit similar to anyone who has ever been anywhere near any of the eleven thousand Angry Birds products, but the game itself actually does differ quite a bit, and the story is presented in a rather charming cutscene at the start of the game.

To play, players move the dragon up and down on a vertical axis on the left side of the screen, and then tap on the right side to shoot a fire ball. This allows players to shoot from just about any possible angle, and adds a lot of elements of strategy to the game, especially in the later levels when more mechanics become introduced. Many of the villagers move around the map, making timing important for some of the puzzles such as burning a bridge that an enemy has just walked onto, or blasting away a chain causing heavy rocks to fall on top of a wandering knight. There are enemies that can block the fireballs, and there are certain obstacles that can only be destroyed with certain charge shots which must be picked up.
Sadly though, Dragon Blast suffers from a lot of small problems and a handful of bigger ones. It seems to be very easy to accidentally waste a shot by having the angle be slightly off only to have the fireball bounce harmlessly against a wall. The grunts and murmurs of the villagers can become repetitive and grating very quickly, and this isn’t helped by the games lack of soundtrack during the levels. Also, upon completing a level, there is no option to just hit a button to restart it. That may seem like a minor complaint, but when I complete a level without getting three stars, the first thing I want to do is try that level again to see if I can get them.

On the subject of restarts, that brings us to Dragon Blast’s biggest fault. As a freemium title, the game institutes a lives system, and attempting to restart a level during a bad run will count as a failure, removing one of these lives, and once they’re all gone, players must either wait for them to replenish or pay an in-app purchase to receive more. There also seems to be a limit of three, so players can’t just accumulate them either. I can’t help but feel as if the game would have been better off just being a paid title that eliminated the freemium model that hurts it so much right now.
At the time of writing, there is supposedly an update being applied to the game that will eliminate some of these freemium issues and possibly tweak the gameplay a bit more. Perhaps this upgrade will fix the majority of the problems and help the game become a more enjoyable experience. As it stands right now, Dragon Blast is a fun take on the artillery genre that is easy to recommend picking up, but hard to recommend playing until the aforementioned update has been released.

The Good
+Creative puzzles
+Fun designs on both the dragon and villagers

The Bad
-The way the lives system is in place
-Repetitive sound effects

The Verdict
Dragon Blast needs a lot of work, but has the potential to be something far more engaging than it currently stands.

You guys might remember that I rated the soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed 3 Liberation as one of the year’s best. I mentioned that Winifred Phillips was able to masterfully switch between tones and genres and praised the opening track in particular. Well, it seems like I wasn’t the only one who thought this. Phillips recently won a Game Audio Network Guild award for the score at the Game Developer’s Conference. The main theme received the award for best “2012 Best Original Vocal Song – Choral”

You can read the full press release after the break.

WINIFRED PHILLIPS WINS GAME AUDIO NETWORK GUILD AWARD FOR ASSASSIN’S CREED III® LIBERATION

San Francisco, April 9, 2013 – At the 11th annual awards ceremony that took place during the Game Developers Conference, game composer Winifred Phillips won a Game Audio Network Guild Award for her music score for the Assassin’s Creed® III Liberation video game (Ubisoft®). The Game Audio Network Guild Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, March 28th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The “Main Theme” music of Assassin’s Creed III Liberation won the Game Audio Network Guild Award in the category of “2012 Best Original Vocal Song – Choral”. Winifred Phillips composed the entire score for the Assassin’s Creed III Liberation video game, which was released for the PlayStation Vita in October 2012.

The Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) Awards show is an annual celebration of excellence in game audio. The Game Audio Network Guild presents G.A.N.G. Awards to individuals, projects and products that represent the highest quality and achievement of the past year.

Winning the Game Audio Network Guild Award is another accomplishment in the long string of accolades that Phillips has received for her music score for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation, which has also won a Global Music Award, a Hollywood Music in Media Award and a GameFocus Award. In addition, Phillips’ music for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation was nominated for a Best of IGN Award, a GameSpot Special Achievement Award and a G4TV X-Play Award. Phillips received a “Best Composer of 2012″ Award from GameMusic.net for her music for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation. Also, both Higher Plain Music and Artastic Gaming have honored the music of Assassin’s Creed III Liberation with a “Best Soundtracks of 2012″ award.

Simultaneous with the release of the game for PlayStation Vita, Ubisoft Music released the music of Assassin’s Creed III Liberation as an official soundtrack album. Comprised of 26 tracks totaling 68 minutes of music, the soundtrack is available on iTunes, Amazon.com and other online retailers. Phillips’ original score for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation has been described as “a stealthy success” by Kotaku, “sweeping” by IGN, “killer music” by MTV Multiplayer, “superb” by GameZone, “spectacular” by Hard Reset, and “fantastic” by Gaming Examiner.

Assassin’s Creed III Liberation includes key pillars of the franchise that fans of the series know and love, including combat, free-roaming navigation and a rich story full of intrigue and twists, delivering a true Assassin’s Creed experience to the Sony PlayStation® Vita. Gamers play as the series’ first female protagonist, Aveline. A woman of conviction, Aveline is fighting for freedom in 18th century New Orleans – a city on the brink of a rebellion as the Spanish Empire imposes its new rule.

For more information on Assassin’s Creed III Liberation, please visit the Assassin’s Creed official Website: http://www.assassinscreed.com

About Assassin’s Creed:

About Assassin’s Creed: Initially launched in 2007, the first five Assassin’s Creed games have sold more than 55 million units worldwide, and the franchise is now established as one of the best-selling series ever. Recognized for having some of the richest, most engrossing storytelling in the industry, Assassin’s Creed transcends video games, branching out into other entertainment experiences including comic books, mobile games, novels, as well as a feature-length movie currently in development.
© 2007-2013 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

About The Game Audio Network Guild

The Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) was founded in 2002 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and recognition of game audio for the interactive arts. G.A.N.G.’s mission is to promote interactive audio and educate the public by providing information, instruction, resources, guidance and enlightenment to both game audio professionals and listeners throughout the world. The G.A.N.G. Awards Program provides a platform for the recognition of excellence in interactive audio through the Annual G.A.N.G. Awards Process and Awards Show. The Annual G.A.N.G. Awards are designed to praise outstanding achievement in the varied areas of the interactive audio industry. The G.A.N.G. membership votes for the winners, creating a true peer-based celebration of the industry.

About Composer Winifred Phillips

Winifred Phillips is a composer for video games, television, radio and film. Working with award-winning music producer Winnie Waldron for all her projects, Winifred Phillips’ game scores include God of War, The Da Vinci Code, Speed Racer, multiple games in the LittleBigPlanet franchise, and many more. She is a two-time winner of the Hollywood Music in Media Award. Her other awards include an Interactive Achievement Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a Global Music Award, and multiple G.A.N.G. Awards from the Game Audio Network Guild. For more information about Winifred Phillips, follow her on Twitter (@winphillips), or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/winifredphillips), or visit www.winifredphillips.com.

“What is this game? Perfection, friend. Or at least as close as we’ll get til judgment day.”

I usually distance myself from other reviews so I can go in unbiased. Sure I was hyped but I was ready to keep it in check. I then realized that it was impossible to visit any gaming site without seeing “10/10 AMAZING. 9/10 UNFORGETTABLE. 5/5 ASTONISHING!”  Well, after playing through it, I can safely report that all of this praise is true.

If you look at it from the cover, Bioshock Infinite doesn’t seem to have an in-depth story. You play as Booker Dewitt, a man is deep in debt with all the wrong people. Your mission is to rescue Elizabth from the flying city of Columbia. In return, you will be granted a clean slate and be wiped of your debts. Your path is barred by the familiar tropes of religious zealouts, slavers disguised as flourishing entrepreneurs, and veteran soldiers who can’t get past what they did in war. Pretty standard fare, right? What makes these characters and story stand apart is how you learn about them. Exploring the various environments will reveal backstory via radios, loud speakers and audio logs. What appear to be charactertures quickly resonate with you as you begin to truly understand what is motivating and fueling these characters to be so eccentric.

I’ve played through the game twice already, once on medium and once on 1999 mode and I’m still digesting the inner complexities of the story. That’s the sign of a great game as it doesn’t hold your hand or give you a concrete explanation for every event. It requires you to do something that few other games can attest to; think.

There’s no other way to say it than this game is absolutely gorgeous. There are a few bad textures here and there but Columbia is a fully realized paradise. Rather than have you explore a city that has been destroyed and is already in ruins, you’re exploring a city at the peak of its time. Throughout the game, you will explore different sections of the city which more resemble its underwater counterpart. This lets you really immerse yourself in a world that you see slowly descending into madness.

I don’t how they do it, but the guys at Irrational know how take make any song fit into their games. From odd choices like “Fortunate Son,” a street quartet rendition of “God Only Knows” and even “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” to haunting choral versions of “Will the Circle be Unbroken” every piece of music just fits. Sure, you can nitpick about having music from the late 1900s in a game that takes place in 1912, but they’re all redone to sound authentic.

The gameplay retains many of the core concepts from Bioshock 1/2 with a few tweaks. Vigors replace plasmids but they serve the same purpose and you use salts rather than atom to power them. Unlike in Bioshock, you have the ability to change your vigors on the fly which makes you think on your toes about the current situation. Fire may have worked wonders at the start of combat but you’ll have to rethink that strategy if an enemy immune to it enters the fray. A major change is that you no longer find health and salt packs.  Instead, you find health packs, salt bottles, and food to restore your health and salts.  Weapon loadouts have also changed in that you can only equip two guns at once. It takes some getting used to but you’ll quickly find a favorite combination and won’t notice.

In terms of difficulty, it’s well balanced. On all difficulties, there were never any unfair challenge spikes. Once you complete the game on any difficulty, you unlock 1999 mode. This mode is not for the faint of heart and offers an incredibly challenging, but rewarding, experience. Not only are enemies and encounters much more challenging but you find less supplies overall  and you are required to pay money if you die. If you don’t have enough to revive, that’s it. What this equates to is a mode that keeps you on your feet. The mode forces you to be strategic about everything from ammo to vigor and weapon upgrades. You’ll quickly find a favorite combo and stick with it. If you’re a masochist, you can unlock 1999 mode right off the bat with the Konami code.

Rather than serve as an annoying escort mission, I’m looking at you RE4, Elizabeth serves a purpose in the gameplay. During combat and general exploration, she will scavenge for supplies like money, health and ammo. Later in the game she also gains the ability to pull in a variety of things from a tear. You can only have one tear active at a time but they give you a wide array of support like health packs, friendly turrets and cover. This adds a surprising amount of depth to the combat. Are you willing to blow your cover and dash over to that shiny RPG? Is it really worth the risk of dying and losing money? Or maybe you’re low on health and you have no choice? This all adds to the strategic and rewarding combat.

The biggest disappointment with Elizabeth is that her interactions with the environment never live up to what was promised. Many of the E3 demos showcased her walking up to displays in the world and picking things up, trying on masks, etc. In the game, this only happens once or twice. Most of her interactions involve letting you know that she has ground supplies or telling you that a lockpick is on the ground.

If there are any complaints, it’s that the game has a few visual glitches. There tends to be a lot of texture pop ins, and you’ll occasionally see objects clipping through each other. On the audio end, it’s easy to miss some of the Vox logs because story dialogue overlaps it. However, you can go back and listen to them from the main menu so this isn’t a huge issue.

A game like Bioshock Infinite is a rare experience. Not since the original Bioshock and, before that, Half Life 2 has a game offered such a full experience. This is a game that everyone owes themselves to experience. No game is absolutely perfect but Bioshock Infinite is the closest we’re going to get for awhile. The flaws that the game does have aren’t detrimental to the overall experience.

Bioshock Infinite was released on March 26 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This review is based off the PC version.

In some ways, reviewing only the multiplayer aspect of a game is a daunting challenge in itself because so much relies of the game relies on how well your opponents play it as well. This is doubly true for StarCraft, where everything is finely crafted to complement everything else in the game without being obviously out of place. Even heavyweights like the Dawn of War and Blizzard’s own WarCraft 3 had their own problems with game balance, with the Necrons and Orks taking clear advantages over the other races.

The downside to fine balance means that newer players will be at something of a loss because of a lack of knowledge. How would one know how to deal with a huge group marines that come barging in the door at the five minute mark unless they’ve lost to it multiple times before realizing that simply putting down a few forcefields or Banelings is enough to deal with it? It’s a game of experience as much as it is really fast fingers, shredding the keyboard like a Petrucci solo.

And luckily, that’s one of the biggest improvements in Heart of the Swarm. The in-game tutorial support can be considered extensive by pessimistic standards. The original nine micro-management challenges remain but are helped out by a fleshed out Vs. AI mode which acts as a sort of multiplayer league simulator, where the game constantly matches you up against adequate AI until you’ve graduated to facing the most advanced it offers. It basically simulates the online experience without the daunting knowledge that somewhere across the continent someone has evidence that they’re better than you.

The AI settings are more intricate than before as well, featuring unique rush and unit builds that one would find in multiplayer games. The offering is significantly better than the “RUSH!” philosophy the AI seemed to always use before. It has the side effect of also helping prepare new players better than any challenge ever could.

So for new players, Heart of the Swarm is a godsend for not just learning how to play StarCraft 2, but learning how to play RTS games in general. As a traditional RTS, StarCraft has always been a great gateway game into the genre and Heart of the Swarm just makes it even easier.

For the experienced player, Heart of the Swarm offers so much more to the multiplayer than just AI. There is now the Unranked Multiplayer, where one can off-race and practice builds without any fear of tarnishing their official standings.  Cross-regional play is now allowed, though one has to log into the other continent’s servers to access it. On top of that, the Rewards are now more fleshed out with portraits, a levelling system, and skins for units.

In terms of the game itself, everything is much faster in Heart of the Swarm compared to Wings of Liberty. Small unit-specific upgrades like the Siege Tank’s Siege Mode and the Raven’s Seeker Missile are gone, the Reapers have been completely changed up in terms of function, and the Ultralisk damage output has been increased. This has already resulted in a heavier use of all these units, which (apart from the Siege Tank) were barely ever used in Wings of Liberty.

The new units also serve to push the game along faster. Where before the Terran and Protoss armies were susceptible to the Brood Lord/Infestor combination that Zergs were putting out, units like the Tempest and even smaller ones like the Widow Mine are introduced to keep the other races in the game. The new Oracle and Mothership Core units help the Protoss to finally harass the other races where before it would have been mid-game at earliest for most players, and the Hellbat helps the Terran deal with clumps of light units that would otherwise pick apart their front lines. The Zerg are not left forgotten, their new Swarm Hosts give them great amounts of zone control, and the new healing ability for the Mutalisks helps keep their harassment from being more than just a small phase in the game. The Viper adds some interesting new spellcasting abilities for the Zerg as well, with its (hilarious) pulling mechanic and Blinding Cloud ability.

As an experience, Heart of the Swarm feels more rewarding and complete than Wings of Liberty. While crushing feeble humans online with the superior evolutionary prowess of the Zerg has always felt suitably satisfying, the levelling system brings with it a sentiment of progress along with the sense of achievement. Even new players will find themselves more engrossed with a more palatable experiencing fighting off AI that feel like people instead of just preset timings for early rushes.

As an expansion, Heart of the Swarm does everything one could possibly expect out of it and more. Blizzard took many of the complaints to heart and put out a product that should be held as an example of a proper expansion. The $40 price point may be steep for some, but the expansion offers extensive amounts of improvements both in its campaign and its multiplayer.

Every journey must begin with a single step, and when you’re playing West Legends, an RPG from Axion Logic based on the literary classic, Journey to the West, you’ll find your first, fifth, ninth, seventieth, and even two thousandth step to be an enjoyable one.

West Legends plays akin to an action RPG where your characters wander out onto the battlefield and enemies will come at you from the sides. Tapping a character and guiding them to an enemy will cause them to go attack, and thankfully they will also automatically attack enemies that are close enough to them. This may not matter much in early levels, but in later stages with clusters of enemies, it’s nice to know the characters have some survival instincts. You start off with three characters; Goku, the monkey king, Sanzo, the noble monk being guided on his journey, and Pigsy, no further explanation needed. The three characters work well with Goku’s close combat, Pigsy’s ability to shoot projectiles, and Sanzo’s ability to keep the party healed at all times. There are several more characters to unlock through play, allowing players a fair sense of customization in their party.

The world map is divided up into different stages, each with its own title and humorous description. Some of the later levels seem to drag on a bit longer than you’d expect, but the gameplay keeps the player busy so it rarely becomes overly tedious. After each level, players will receive an item or piece of equipment to buff their characters, and soul orbs can be collected in battle to buy new equipment. However, the cost of items against the amount of soul orbs you collect means you will have to do a fair amount of grinding.

So the gameplay is fun, the story is clearly tested and true, and the game illustrates important events through small comic book segments generally before and after the level. Aside from that, each character is well designed with a sense of personality to them. The soundtrack is good, but unfortunately can start to feel a bit repetitive after a while. I would say my biggest complaint comes from the exploration of the world map. If you want to go back a few levels and maybe grind some, you’ll have to play all the levels backwards to get to it, and then play them again to get back to where you need to go. This can be a bit grating, though it does always provide money and experience, so one could argue that it balances out.

West Legends is one of those unique games where most people who play it will probably find their own fair share of nitpicks, but I feel that by looking at the sum of all the parts, it more than makes up for any minor complaints one would find. This is one fantastic journey that shouldn’t be missed.

The Good

+Smooth constantly moving gameplay

+Interesting characters with unique skills and powers

+The nice level of attention and detail into adapting this from the original work

The Bad

-Fairly repetitive soundtrack

-Double tapping a hero will set them to be healed, but double tapping an enemy does nothing.

-More of the comic book story segments would have been nice

The Verdict

No monkeying around, this is a solid RPG game with a lot of meat on its bones. Axion Logic really has something special here.

This is a review of the single player campaign. I’ve never been very good at the multiplayer so I would be a poor judge of the new content. We will have a separate review for that aspect of the game posted soon.

When Blizzard originally announced that Starcraft 2 was going to be split into a trilogy, there was an uproar. Screams of betrayal and accusations were aplenty. Wings of Liberty was a noble start but in terms of story, but I felt like it could have been much better. While it was in no way a bad story, it felt like an average beginning to a trilogy. Heart of the Swarm, on the other hand, just seemed to hit all the right notes.

From the unit animations and physics, to the way the environments interact and the cutscene quality, the presentation and overall visuals received a massive overall. Small details in the cutscenes like hair and skin just look much better. They even touched up the details on the creep like how it interacts with hills and gave it a more oozy and fleshy look. Overall, the quality was a huge improvement over Wings of Liberty.

The gameplay remains much the same this time around but there a few major changes to the campaign. While Wings of Liberty focused on a more mercenary theme with money management and buying upgrades, Heart of the Swarm introduces some light RPG elements. Unlike with Raynor in Wings of Liberty, Kerrigan is playable in every mission and comes with perks of her own. Completing main and bonus objectives during a mission will grant Kerrigan levels. As she gain levels, not only does Kerrigan’s power increase but she gains access to new abilities. You can freely choose which abilities to equip in between missions. These range from passive damage buffs to the ability to call in a group of zerg reinforcements. Think of it as an improved version of the heroes from Warcraft 3. You can breeze through the easier difficulties without much micromanagement but on Hard and Brutal, you’ll need to think ahead and decide which abilities will suit the next mission.

Going along with the leveling system, you can also complete bonus missions which allow you to upgrade and evolve your units. Every unit has three different upgrades which, like Kerrigan’s abilities, can be changed between missions. Adding to this, you periodically gain access to evolution missions which allow you to permanently evolve units. These evolutions range from new abilities to increased strength. For example, the zergling has two evolutions, the raptor and swarmling. The raptor grants increased damage and the ability to jump up and down cliffs. The swarmling creates 3 zerglings from a single egg and the morph time is instant. Unfortunately, these can’t be switched once you choose an evolution so you’ll have to thibk carefully about your style of play.

If there are any complaints it’s that the missions don’t feel very different from its predecessor. The game occasionally mixes things up with boss fights that involve some on the fly thinking but, overall, the missions feel very status quo.

In terms of story, it had a proper mix of cheese and seriousness. It’s easy to dismiss some of the dialogue as cringe worthy. While Raynor and Kerrigan share some cliché scenes that involve kissing and comparing shooting a rifle to riding a bike, they also share some serious scenes that really tie the over arching story together. In particular, one scene near the end of the game has some serious heart tugging potential.

I was originally skeptical about Starcraft 2 being a trilogy but if Heart of the Swarm is a sign of things to come, then bring on Legacy of the Void!

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. Whale Shark meets Dog. They fall in love. Dog gets kidnapped by evil people. Whale shark chases evil people into space to rescue beloved dog and has to dodge missiles being launched from aforementioned evil people. We all know that classic love story, right? Well Astro Shark from Unit9 does a great job explaining that story through a short video and then we’re off in space controlling the shark and blowing up rockets.

Once you’re out in space, controls become a fairly simple one touch system. The shark flies around space, and tapping an object will cause him to start circling it. Releasing your finger or the asteroid shattering after being held too long will send you off in whatever direction you’re facing.

But there’s more to the game than just free floating around the planets. The kidnappers now know you’re onto them, so they’ve wasted no expense sending out rockets after our love struck leviathan. They aren’t a big deal at first, pretty easy to outrun, and they’ll just be kind of there, but the later levels really do require the player to take full advantage of the game’s mechanics to outfox these things. Missiles can be destroyed by circling certain icy asteroids or through other methods of getting them to blow up. Quick thinking and quicker fingers will be necessary to get around in some of the later, more challenging levels.

The three star system in this game is actually really interesting in that it’s a series of challenges that just stems across the entire game rather than specific things you may need to do in one particular level (I discovered this when I apparently had earned stars in levels that I hadn’t even gained access to yet) and that works really well in this sort of game. There will always be a small heart target on the edge of the screen which helps guide players in the direction they need to go to reach their poochy paramour. Each level ends with a fun variety of other space animals unfortunately informing the shark that his dog is on another castl-er…planet.

Really, Astro Shark pulls off a lot of the beloved staples of an iOS game. You have an intriguing premise, an enjoyable main character, an interesting world explored through use of the touch screen mechanics, there are stars to unlock, a beautiful soundtrack (like really beautiful) and a steady difficulty curve. Right now the closest thing to a fault is that there are only eleven levels currently available, but given the intense experience and collecting all the stars, the content here is still well worth looking into.

The Good

+Wonderfully melodic soundtrack

+Simple mechanics that make for a challenging game

+One of my favorite premises in recent video games

+Enjoyable take on the three star system

The Bad

-The ramp up in challenge can get quite overwhelming quite quickly

The Verdict

Astro Shark is certainly an engaging iOS title. Well recommended if you’re looking for something new.