Category: Game Releases

It’s been a great week for mobile gaming all round – lots of premium releases, Apple Arcade, and yeah, some high-profile ‘freemium’ releases that seem to have really taken off as well. We missed out on an update last week so there’s quite a bit to catch up on, but honestly most of it has dropped this week vs. last week.

Out Now

Aeon’s End (iPad & Android) – $8.99

Aeon’s End is a pretty interesting co-op deck-building experience. Up to four ‘Breach Mages’ must band together to defend their home from inter-dimensional horrors hell-bent on its destruction. Like most deck-builders you start off with a basic deck and must improve it with purchases from a central market (Dominion style, not Star Realms).

The order in which you discard cards is important as you don’t shuffle your discard pile when it runs out, and as well as improving you deck you need to improve your mage by unlocking more spell slots. I’ve dabbled around with the physical version and it’s pretty neat, with the challenge coming from the ‘Enemy’ deck as defined by whichever enemy you chose to face, as well as a randomised turn-order each round.

The digital adaptation has been handled by Handelabra, of Sentinels of the Multiverse fame, and is currently only available for tablet devices.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-LEiMbxnvI?controls=0]

Yellow & Yangtze (PC)

This is more of a quick FYI to let you know that Dire Wolf Digital have released the next game in their wave of digital board game ports – Reiner Knizia’s acclaimed Yellow & Yangtze. It’s currently only out on Steam Early Access, but Dire Wolf have already stated that an iOS and Android release is due “in the coming weeks”.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAd3LWqrrn4?controls=0]

Dear Esther (iOS) – $4.99

Not really my thing, but I know indie classic Dear Esther is highly respected for its visuals and atmosphere. ‘Walking simulators’ can sometimes be used as a derogatory term, but it pretty much sums up what you’re getting with this game. It’s a short and sweet affair that’s been out for a while, and now it’s finally on iOS

Developers The Chinese Room allegedly want this to be a prequel of sorts for one of their upcoming titles, Little Orpheus, which is due to hit Apple Arcade next year. It requires iOS 9 or later, but it does work on Phones.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NlWiXzanNI?controls=0]

Versus: Unfriendly Frenzy (iOS & Android) – $5.49

Something else we missed from past couple of weeks is a new indie real-time strategy game called Versus: Unfriendly Frenzy, from ZeMind Game Studio. It’s “fast-paced” take on the genre with three factions, outlandish units, head-to-head multiplayer as well as a single-player campaign. We’ll try and take this one for a spin as soon as we can, but here’s a trailer to give you a quick impression.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ny1TNTSIeg?controls=0]

Call of Duty Mobile (iOS & Android) – Free

You already know this it out of course, but just re-stating for the weekend crowd – Activision have finally released their latest mobile adaptation of the insanely popular first-person shooter franchise on mobile.

As much as I hate to admit it, it’s not terrible. The way they’ve adapted the controls means that you won’t be fragging with the kind of precision you see in pro-teams, but there is an art to manipulating the controls. It also rewards careful, forward-thinking players who can predict enemy movement and make sure they’re already waiting with a shot lined up. It’s a bit too run-and-gun for my personal tastes – reminding why I stopped playing the franchise after Modern Warfare 2, but if you’re even a little bit curious I’d suggest checking it out.

Monetisation can be a bit ‘in your face’ when you log-in, otherwise it leaves you alone. It uses a variation of the battle-pass system you see in Auto Chess games, so you still get free stuff and you acquire more guns as you level up through play, but if you buy the battle-pass you simply get more stuff as you rank up. You level up guns by using them, or by using level-up tickets you can acquire. Levelling up guns gets you more attachments, but you can still wreck even with the starting M4, if you’re good enough. The worst thing you have to worry about right now is people using Mouse/Keyboard.

Updates & News

It’s been a bumper week for news from all quarters, some of which we’ve covered ad-hoc (Bad North! Yay!) but the rest we’ll try to summarize here:

• Sensor Tower is reporting that Mario Kart Tour has become Nintendo’s most downloaded mobile title, getting 90 million downloads in its first week. Monetisation hasn’t been as big a success story, as it’s only third place behind Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run.
• Something we missed out on the other week, but Void Tyrant got a huge 1.1 update that added a bunch of new content and a new class. We weren’t its’ biggest fans, but it’s nice to see this kind of support. You can check out the full patch notes on the iOS store page.
• If you’re a fan of Bastion and didn’t catch the news, the current ‘Version’ on iOS is being delisted and replaced with a new one. This is mainly to do with developer Supergiant taking over the publishing of the game on mobile but if you want to read up on the full story and what it means for current iOS owners, please read this.
• Xenowerks Tactics now has a release date and is available for pre-order on iOS and Android. There’s also a new trailer.

Sales

Holy Potatoes! A Sale!?

All of Daylight Studios Holy Potatoes! games are on sale on iOS, Android too, but they only released A Weapon Shop!? on that platform so it’s not like there’s much choice there.

Beholder 2 (Review) – $3.99

Beholder 2 is on sale for only the second time since launch, and its cheapest price yet. The sale is only on iOS, but there is a free-trial version on Android if you want to give it a go.

Other iOS-only sales include Legends of Andor, Terra Mystica and Card Thief. All really good games available at a pretty decent price.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

By Joe Robinson 03 Oct 2019

The first This is The Police tried to replicate the fine line Hollywood has been walking for decades when it comes to its portrayal of the men and women of small town American police forces. It failed, as it lacked any of the subtlety of of high minded critique or clever charisma of a sharp satire. Its’ melodrama, though noir in spirit, was flaccid and rote in practice. It felt filthy all the time, and never for any reason other than ‘because it could.’

This is The Police 2 is better in almost every way than the first. But it’s still weighed down but much of the same issues.

Part of that weight is the returning Jack Boyd. No longer Police Chief of Freeburg, he’s found himself on the run from the federal government thanks to his heavy involvement with his former city being smothered by organized crime. Circumstance gets him arrested by the local police in nearby Sharpwood, and eventually he becomes the right hand man for Sharpwood’s Chief of Police, Lilly Reed.

TITP2 breathlessly breezes past this incredible narrative contrivance to reintroduce us to the dirty cop that can’t help but do dirty things. Conveniently, Sharpwood’s PD is filled to the brim with chaotic cops that are one or two bad shifts away from being criminals themselves. The streets themselves are filled with people who seem to do the most outrageous criminal activity you’d ever heard of in at town like this.

All this is to say that TITP2 still makes no effort to make anything or anyone feel redeemable in this story. Jack is still mostly a trash bag of a human. At no point in the hours of time I spent playing did I want him to succeed. If I could have called the feds on him myself, I would’ve. All of the characters you meet are either obnoxious cops, excited to abuse their authority to bully locals; douchey agents that’ll stop at nothing to impede you; and slimy criminals trying to bleed you dry in exchange for your freedom.

Maybe the one exception to this is Lilly Reed. Even then, she is initially framed as the new female boss attempting to wrangle her out-of-control team. TITP2 almost pretends that she might be the centerpiece in a story about a women’s struggle in an male-dominated career field. And yet, as soon as we meet her and her plight, its bulldozed away by Jack and his bullshit. She’s relegated to nagging nanny status, when she’s included in the story at all.

The story itself is told in well-imagined, lo-fi moving comic book frames. If you’ve seen stills from the recently released Untitled Goose Game, think that kind of abstract art, but with a darker hue. Sometimes, scenes will be fully animated cartoons that are totally fine, if not a little awkward. The scenes that end up in motion never seem like they were providing much more of a particular punctuation to the sequence. It begs the question, why are they there at all?

They look great, but these cutscenes are almost always too long. Many of these exposition dumps have the incredibly arduous writing to thank for their length. Dialogue often goes waaay too long. These character exchanges are clearly inspired by movies like Reservoir Dogs, but completely lack their tact or brevity. They are at least well acted. Even John St. John’s reprisal of Boyd feels more nuanced and refined this time around.

These overlong sequences predictably book end the nitty gritty of TITP2 – deploying officers for daily duties. This was always the most interesting part of the first game, and it remains so here. Knowing what cop is the right one for a particular call is a little easier to discern now that individual officers have statlines that cover more than just this abstract idea of ‘professionalism.’ Officers with high Negotiations should be the ones attempting to talk people out of foolishness, for example. This is a way more reliable way to make sure your officers come home at night.

Another addition to the formula are full on, XCOM style tactical battles. You can assign a squad of officers to assault a location, SWAT Style, when the situation calls for this sort of large scale attention. The same non-lethal and lethal options you have available in the normal mode – through equipment or individual skills – are available here as well. The stats play a dual purpose here – each rank your officer has in a stat will unlock an ability to be used on these maps. Cops with a high enough strength can kick doors in, for instance.

The sort of reward you get from these battles are hit and miss. They can be pretty challenging, and your officers can be killed pretty easily should a shootout happen. Patiently taking targets out quietly usually is the best way to go, but there really is no reason to prioritize non-lethal over lethal, outside of personal preference. The game doesn’t seem to care how you handle suspects, so long as you walk out in one piece.

That’s the sort of cynicism that This is The Police 2 is drenched in. In one way, the simple addition of this mode feels completely out of place and unnecessary. It’s indicative of maybe an overarching issue in this sequel: adding things that don’t do anything to make the game better, while not really addressing anything that made the first game unbearable. It expands its own mythos, but still refuses to make any salient commentary regarding any of the themes it’s playing in. Like Boyd himself, Weappy’s crime series is hopelessly irredeemable.