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Five... freshly picked iOS gaming apps

The latest from Apple's amusement arcade

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iGamer If you've survived the sink estate uprising and still have a job after Global Financial Meltdown II, you might just enjoy one of the recent crop of iOS games on your commute to work.

Cut the Rope: Experiments

RH Numbers

Cut rope, free candy, feed Om Nom. Like all the best casual titles, Cut the Rope's simple premise and controls belied highly addictive gameplay. Not content merely serving up additional levels, Experiments introduces novelties to build upon the original's successful physics-based puzzle template.

New contraptions such as bouncing pads and rope shooters combine with the bubbles and whoopee cushions of the original to provide even more intricate puzzling. And there's a greater focus on urgency this time around, with time-limited stars and spiders featuring more prominently. Seasoned players won't take long to chomp their way through the 75-levels on offer, but there's plenty more updates promised in this sweet sequel.

Cut the Rope Experiments Cut the Rope Experiments

Reg Rating 85%
Price £0.69
Publisher ZeptoLab
More info Cut the Rope Experiments on iTunes

Reckless Getaway

RH Numbers

Underneath the slick cartoon graphics and vehicular mayhem, Reckless Getaway is essentially an updated version of a Tomytronic 3D game. With acceleration taken care of automatically, you're limited to swerving your getaway car left and right as scenery and traffic hurtle towards you. The major difference, however, is that you're not trying to avoid traffic here, but attempting to cause as much carnage as possible.

In a game of risk and reward, stars are earned by ramming into cars and scenery, pulling off insane jumps and collecting coins scattered along branching, hazard-filled routes, but they're easily lost by sustaining too much damage and wrecking your own car. It makes for an unpretentious blast of fun, especially early on when learning the most profitable routes. But with little to distinguish between the game's 16-levels, gameplay soon becomes repetitive. Not so much Reckless Getaway, then, but feckless throwaway.

Reckless Getaway

Reg Rating 60%
Price £1.99
Publisher Polarbit
More info Reckless Getaway on iTunes

Next page: Quiz Climber

Latest Comments

GoF II - Is it worth it?

To be honest, if you have to ask then possibly not. It is, after all, one of the more expensive games on iOS.

On the other hand, if you're a dedicated space cadet who's spent hundreds of pounds on similar games over an embarrassingly long period of time, and across more platforms than you can remember, then price doesn't even come into it.

GoF II is the best iOS space game by a massive margin, and arguably walks all over some of its more expensive PC and console based brethren too. If you love the genre enough then you will love this game regardless of price.

As an aside: something not often mentioned in GoF II reviews is the feature that lets you share a full game save state over OpenFeint with any other devices registered to the same account. You really can play on the iPhone then switch seamlessly to the iPad and carry on. It's such a staggeringly useful feature that I can't understand why more developers don't do something similar with their universal apps. I'm looking at you, Rovio.

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Galaxy on Fire 2

A 3rd recommendation for GoF2 here... I managed to rack up about 14 hours of gameplay on holiday, after getting hooked. It's a little fiddly played on the iPod/iPhone, but stunning on the iPad. It does play like an updated Elite, with less messing around than the original GoF.

Looking at the AppShopper activity, it was last discounted to £2.99 in April. You could hold out, but I don't regret having paid normal price for it. I wouldn't think twice about a similar game+price on Steam.

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But is it worth 7 quid?

That second sentence there got me very interested until I saw the price...

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Reckless Getaway...

..really is a lot of fun to play.

Unfortunately, as El Reg reported earlier, after a couple of hours play I was filled with an unquenchable desire to go out and rob some Banks. Well, I say 'unquenchable' - not strictly true. But I have still hit a bit of wall in that I can't find ANYWHERE to spend my ill gotten gains on Flat-screen TVs and Mobile phones! Wassatallabout eh? Now sitting here, surrounded by bags of loot, I have found the time to contemplate my actions, reflect on what went wrong and think of the children. BAN THIS FILTH IMMEDIATELY!!!

And second to the AC first poster - GOF2 rules. Once I got the experimental mining drill, a decent ship and one of those warp drive doo-hickeys to go collect Void ore I was in Han-heaven.

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Galaxy on Fire 2

Absolutely amazing, had spent hours on it over the last two weeks — think Elite updated for touch devices... http://www.galaxyonfire.com/

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