Like a girl who can't help dating bad boys, I've had my heart broken by Gameloft super hero titles before. More than once, in fact. So I went into The Amazing Spider-Man 2 fully prepared to be let down again, only to find that it's really good. With slightly tighter controls, it could even be fantastic. Or amazing, if we want to keep the right adjectives with their respective franchises.One thing that sets this game apart from its Gameloft brethren is that there's no genre confusion. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is unabashedly an action-adventure game, thrilling in the freedom that the web-spinner has at swinging through New York and showing off his acrobatic skills at every chance.Spidey's objectives in each level are a mix of open world encounters and planned events that drive the narrative. Thanks to a gang war that is engulfing New York, there's no shortage of random crimes to stop, and the random missions do a good job mixing things up. You'll find yourself stopping robberies, taking injured police officers to the hospital by webline and simply signing the occasional autograph for starstruck citizens.
Along with death and taxes, the only other certainty in life is that casual gamers love farming. It's a good thing too, because otherwise Zynga's FarmVille 2: Country Escape would be showing up unfashionably late to a party the company started itself with FarmVille back in the halcyon days of Facebook gaming. As it is, this fully mobile installment has much improved graphics and a fair bit of charm, but at the expense of the creative freedom that made the original such a monster hit.This is the part where I'd usually go into the setting and object of the game, but this one should require little explanation. You've got a family farm to fix up, so you've got to get busy growing crops and harvesting resources from plants and animals, most of which can be crafted into more complicated and lucrative products at the appropriate stations: the dairy churns out milk products, the windmill can grind grain into flour, etc.
The Simpsons: Tapped Out was released for iOS in the first quarter of spring 2012, and later on Android in 2013. Not only has the Springfield-themed city-building game remained a consistently popular download since its launch dates, but it's also one of the top-monetizing free games on the App Store and Google Play.So it's not at all surprising that TinyCo looked over in EA's direction and said, "Say - look at what they're doing!" before taking pictures and frantically scribbling on a pad of paper. What is surprising is that it's taken this long for a Simpsons-style mobile game to get wrapped up in a Family Guy skin and slapped on the digital market."Sadly, the wait hasn't been worth it. With its aggressive panhandling for in-app purchases, long wait times, and (mostly) flat jokes, playing Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is as sad as watching Rupert the teddy bear grow soggy in a torrential rainstorm.
There was a time - let's call it "the nineties" - when Solitaire was seemed like the most popular PC game of all. Not because people loved it, mind you, but because it was free and came bundled with Windows. Still though, people grew to love it. As a classic card game that we're all familiar with, the "just one more game" pull of solitaire has always been hard to avoid.Despite its popularity, solitaire went years before it got a truly decent upgrade. Plenty of gamemakers had tried, mind you, but it took Big Fish Games to really hit on a winning formula. Combining elements of golf and cards, the original Fairway Solitaire debuted back in 2007 and has since been followed by a litany of releases. You probably know it best by its second iteration, which became something of a cult classic after its port to mobile devices back in 2012. If you've played either of these, there's a good chance that you already know that Big Fish + solitaire is a winning combination.Fairway Solitaire Blast is the latest release in the franchise, and the first that's built from the ground up with mobile gamers in mind. In fact, at the time of this writing, it's a mobile exclusive.
If hope springs eternal, then very few places see it sprout as often as in the garden of mobile games based on super hero movies. Gameloft is trying again with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, learning something from its past missteps but still not hitting the mark with something that's as awesome as it seems it could be.As the movie by the same name hasn't been released in the U.S. yet (lucky overseas audiences!), there's no way for me to tell you if the game contains spoilers. What I can relay is that New York is under attack by multiple criminal conglomerates with acronyms for names, and Cap has to lead S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into the fray to set things right. Presumably, the Winter Soldier is also involved at some point.It's easy enough to put Steve Rogers' legendary skills into action, tapping on enemies to attack them hand-to-hand or swiping to target them with a thrown shield. Just like in the comics, Captain America can make some nifty tosses that ricochet off surfaces and hit multiple targets. There's an option to use a virtual thumbstick and attack button instead, but only masochists would want to do that.
I imagine a fair number of people were of the "oh great, another Star Wars card game" opinion when Star Wars: Assault Team was announced, and I can't say I blame them. But while it does make use of a few unfortunate monetization techniques, it's actually not a bad time. In fact, it's kind of clever.As with most Star Wars games these days, Assault Team just can't seem to avoid using notable characters from the movies. On the one hand, as a fan of the franchise, I think it's about time to start exploring the expanded universe a bit more (or even create new characters entirely). But on the other, I can see why LucasArts would want to stick with the names most of the general public will be familiar with.It all starts with Han Solo finding himself trapped on a Star Destroyer and fighting his way to freedom. As he blasts through teams of Storm Troopers during the tutorial missions, he'll start to round up a decent team of fellow prisoners - as well as reunite with Chewbacca of course - and then it's on to the game proper.
As modern games get tougher, greyer, and grittier, we can count on Korean-made role-playing games to get cuter. Hello Hero, a free-to-play social RPG by Fincon, might be the most adorable game to exist up to this point thanks to its myriad recruitable monsters. The ability to sway baddies onto your side makes Hello Hero a fun game to settle into for a while, though character growth can be excruciatingly slow if you're not willing to pay for it.Hello Hero takes place in a monster-plagued world that's troubled by demon worship. Heroes are needed to put things right. Preferably, a lot of heroes led by you.Your party travels across several maps, each one marked with battlefields. When a battlefield is entered, your heroes stand on the lower left side of the screen, while the bad guys stand on the upper right side (as is proper custom). The heroes and monsters then exchange blows.
An invasive, shadowy substance known only as "the Blight" is creeping its way across the universe. One research vessel, outfitted with a mostly-naked Gekkian scientist, a random equipment generator, and an endless supply of clone explorers, has set out to understand and stop the Blight before it completely takes over. A nearby planet, shattered after a long-dead explosion, is putting off a Blight-resistant signal. Your assignment, as clones one-through-infinity, is to survey the planet, seek out the signal, and deal with any other bizarre challenges sent your way. There will be plenty.As a randomized survival RPG, Shattered Planet thrives on the unexpected. From the armor your clone wears down to the planet to the results of enemy encounters, nothing is directly under your control. A typical trip begins on your spaceship hub, where you can use R.O.S.A., the equipment generator, to create weapons and armor. But you can only tell it what value of equipment to produce—bronze, silver, or gold—not specifically what item. You can also buy consumable items from the "Crystalobot," a friendly vending machine that sells a variety of randomized goods ranging from healing items to pet companions.