Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/24/ten_top_mobile_games/

Ten top new games for phones ’n’ slabs

August Bank holiday weekend time-wasters

By Alun Taylor

Posted in Personal Tech, 24th August 2013 10:08 GMT

Product Round-up Time to once again take a paddle in the duck pond of mobile gaming and burn some time with a selection of the more interesting titles to have rocked up in recent months. All the games were played on Android devices – mostly the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, which is a near perfect size and shape for mobile gaming – but you can find all of them bar one in the iTunes App Store too.

I’m not one to get into the usual mobile OS mud-slinging, but writing this piece highlighted what a barren wasteland you encounter when you look for games on BlackBerry 10 and to only a slightly lesser extent Windows Phone 8. Not one of the titles reviewed here is – officially, at least – available for BB10 and only two are to be found running under WinPho 8. If you want evidence that the mobile OS wars – from a gaming perspective at least – are all but over and that iOS and Android have won, here surely it is.

The titles here have only one thing in common: I enjoyed playing them. So no apologies if your favourite title or genre doesn’t get a look-in. Another thing that struck me while compiling this list was the impressive level of diversity and quality now available to mobile gamers. From traditional first- and third-person shooters to racers to runners to puzzlers to games that can’t be pigeonholed, it’s starting to be a bit of a golden age for mobile gaming. Well, for most of us.

Contre Jour

Reg Hardware retro numbers

Thanks to a certain similarity to World of Goo and Cut the Rope, Contre Jour feels a wee bit familiar the first time you play it – but it’s much, much more than a copy or a pastiche. It has been around on iOS and Android for a while, but WinPho 8 users can now play it too – and it’s still as good as it ever was.

The game centres around a blobby creature named Petit which has to collect lights and find its way towards a swirly exit. But instead of moving Petit itself you manipulate the surrounding environment by morphing the landscape and using various bits of organic gadgetry like tendrils – some elastic, some not – and pulleys.

Contre Jour

Environmental as anything

There’s plenty of originality on display, with each screen refreshingly different from the last. There is an impressive variation in the elements available to move Petit about, each of which you will need to master before having to combine them in the more advanced levels.

With 100 screens spread over five chapters, there’s a lot of gameplay on offer, while each level includes three lights to collect, making it a tough challenge for high-score perfectionists. Excellent graphics, physics and music round out this highly recommendable title.

Price £1.49 (Android) / £1.99 (iOS) £2.29 (WinPho 8)
Download Android, iOS, WinPho 8

Finding Teddy

Reg Hardware retro numbers

A point-and-click adventure rendered in arty pixilated graphics, Finding Teddy will probably divide audiences because it’s not fast, it’s not exciting and until you start to get your head around the way it works, it can be downright infuriating. To play you simply navigate a small girl through a rather dark and disquieting world in search of the titular bear that is half-inched by a huge spider in the opening cut-scene. It’s quite a slow-paced game but a double-tap makes the wee lass scamper between rooms at double-time so you can crack on with your exploration.

Finding Teddy

Bear essentials

Along the way items have to be collected to solve puzzles and placate some disturbingly unpleasant monsters who would otherwise kill the wee lassie stone dead in rather graphic style, though you always regenerate just before you cop it.

Music plays a big part in the game. Some characters will sing a tune – the notes appear over them for the less musically acute – which has to be repeated later on to progress. This is a feature that you will either think is a stroke of gaming genius or a catastrophic waste of time. I’m in the former group obviously, which is why this rather unique game makes the list.

Price £2.30 (Android) / £1.99 (iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Freeze

Reg Hardware retro numbers

I have a soft spot for dark and twisted physics puzzlers that look like they were penned by Tim Burton in one of his grimmer moments – and that describes Freeze to a tee. The aim here is to rotate the various maze-like prison cells so that the curiously eyeball-like hero of the piece incarcerated therein can slide, roll or freefall to the exit portal and then on to the next level. And next. And the next. With 25 fiendish levels free and the next 25 costing only 60p this isn’t a game you will be finishing quickly.

Freeze

Oh, eye

The devilry comes with the freeze button. Hit it and your eye stops dead, even when hanging in space, but the cell can still be rotated – allowing you to roll hazards around the arena until your exit path is clear. The problem is that you can only use the freeze button a limited number of times, so you need to be sure to use it only when you have to, not when you just can’t be arsed figuring out the proper solution. Freeze won the 2013 Indie Prize Award from the Casual Games Association and it’s not hard to see why.

Price £0.69 (Android & iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Granny Smith

Reg Hardware retro numbers

Manticore’s follow-up to the popular Sprinkle is an impressive physics-based racer that sees you hurtle through levels collecting coins and apples, getting bonus points for grace and poise, and hopefully beating the larcenous little runt who's also trying to pinch the eponymous roller-skating Granny’s apples. It sounds simpler than it is. For instance, when you jump you also barrel roll forward so you need to make sure you are the right way up when you touchdown or you crash-land head first and lose all your coins.

Granny Smith

Sk8r Grn

It’s the same story when you use your walking cane to slide along wires – try to hook on while upside-down and you plummet earthward in a heap. More often than not, missing a leap will involve restarting the level – it’s a game that really does require familiarity with each level so your first couple of goes will just be sighters unless you get lucky. As with Sprinkle, some may find the ersatz 1950s soundtrack and graphics a bit too twee but there’s no doubting the originality or the sense of achievement when you manage a perfect level.

Price £1.59 (Android) / £1.49 (iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Hero of Many

Reg Hardware retro numbers

The developer may say that the organisms in Hero are water creatures but, let’s be honest, they look an awful lot like cartoon sperm. Don’t let the onanistic design put you off because this gothic underwater adventure is a cracker.

With no instructions, you are left to work out the mission for yourself: to whit, navigate your white mote through an aquatic cave system collecting white light powerups and flagella-like followers, and either avoid, flee from or fight the black wriggly things who are out to eat you as the tactical situation best dictates.

Hero of Many

‘I can’t have babies. My insides are all wrong’

Controlling the game couldn’t be simpler: you just drag your finger around the screen and the mote and its followers move in that direction. The physics engine is so perfectly calibrated that charging rocks to move them out of the way is something you can spend hours doing and hang to game’s final objective. There’s an excellent orchestral soundtrack too. The only drawbacks are that, at £3.19, it’s not cheap and there’s currently no iOS version. Give it a month or two and I suspect both those issues will be resolved.

Price £3.19 (Android Only)
Download Android

Hundreds

Reg Hardware retro numbers

Simple name, simple idea, but not so simple to beat. The aim of Hundreds is to complete 100 levels by tapping or holding grey circles until the numbers inside increase to the point where one of more more circles adds up to 100.

The combined total is shown in the middle of the screen for the arithmetically challenged. The tricky bit is that as the numbers increase so the circles increase in diameter and glow red. If a red circle touches anything else on the screen you have to restart the level. Sounds simple enough and the early levels are indeed as easy as falling off a wet log in a hurricane.

Hundreds

Number shark

But from around level 10, things start to get rather more, not to say fiendishly, difficult. The number of circles starts to increase which clutters up the playing field, then they start to join together so you have to tap both joined circles to make them expand and they start bouncing around the screen like dervishes on coke and moving faster and faster. By level 25 you’ll be taking a dozen goes to get the total to 100 and move one. By level 40 you’ll be going slowly berserk. By level 60... let me know in the comments, I haven’t got past 59 yet. This is the very essence of casual gaming.

Price £3.25 (Android), £2.99 (iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Into The Dead

Reg Hardware retro numbers

A variation on the endless runner game, the idea here is to dodge zombies while running at them from a first-person perspective. The challenge comes with the ever-increasing density of the undead and their unwelcome habit of looming up out of the long grass or from behind trees. Run into one head on and you die. No second chances, no saved progress. Back to the start you go, my lad. With only gradual changes in direction available it’s a game that requires forethought as well as agility.

Into The Dead

Walking dead

While there's a decent selection of weapons – including a chainsaw, a shotgun and even an Alsatian dog – ammunition is a scarcity and supply dumps are often beyond reach due to that limited ability to change direction. Thanks to the sombre, fog-blanketed landscape and the blood-curdling gurgles from the zombies, gameplay is nothing if not atmospheric. The controls are excellent and you can happily ignore the in-game purchase options without limiting your enjoyment.

Price Free (Android & iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour

Reg Hardware retro numbers

OK, the plot is a load of macho cobblers, the dialogue reads like it was written by someone who is not a native English speaker, and you need plenty of space (1.8GB) and money (a fiver), but MH4:ZH still delivers an impressive dollop of full-on FPS action but on your tablet rather than your Xbox or PlayStation. Graphics and sound are both very impressive, though the more power your device has and the higher its screen’s pixel density, the better it will play and look.

Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour

Do jarheads really talk like this?

The controls aren’t what I’d call perfect but you can move them around on the screen until you find a layout that is at least useable in the heat of combat. The single-player campaign is one of the best that Gameloft has delivered recently and sees you flip between US Special Forces and the inevitable terrorist opposition, sometimes playing both sides of the same firefight. At least the latter are home grown libertarian-types rather than stereotypical Arabs or Russians. Yes it’s sound and fury signifying nothing, but it’s very impressive sound and fury.

Price £4.99 (Android & iOS) / £5.49 (WinPho 8)
Download Android, iOS, WinPho 8

Real Racing 3

Reg Hardware retro numbers

RR3 has received a lot of stick for the inordinate amount of in-app purchase options with which it presents the player, but that’s a little unfair because the game itself is free and you don’t really need to part with penny one if you’re prepared to progress at a slower pace. And so good is the gameplay that earning your dues hour after hour really isn’t a hardship. Realism is the key here, and RR3 delivers it aplenty. I was particularly impressed by way in which the different cars actually behave differently on the track and the absence of any silly nitro-boost nonsense.

Real Racing 3

Hunt the Shunt

The game includes a multitude of event types, including cup races, speed challenges, drag races, sprints and eliminations. There’s a decent selection of tracks, ranging from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to Brands Hatch to Suzuka, and all points between. You also get 45 cars and several levels of control complexity ranging from the insultingly easy to rather complex. A special mention needs to be made of the accelerometer-controlled steering – it has been calibrated to absolute perfection – and the option to time-shift race real opponents and Facebook friends.

Price Free (Android & iOS)
Download Android, iOS

Shadowgun: DeadZone

Reg Hardware retro numbers

What we have here is some third-person shoot-’em-up carnage with live opponents from the Shadowgun team at Madfinger Games. The design, soundscape and graphics will be familiar to anyone who has played Shadowgun proper but that’s no bad thing as the original game is still something of a feast for the senses. The controls are also very well thought out, making it an easy game to play and master.

Shadowgun: DeadZone

Doooooom

While the game itself is free there are lots of in-app purchase options to hasten your acquisition of a host of personalisations and upgrades, from weapons to armour to body type. That does mean that you’ll very often end up fighting faster, tougher people carrying bigger guns but that’s all part of the challenge in my book. The best thing about DeadZone is that it just works – games never seem to crash, stall or freeze, respawning never takes more than five seconds and you never have to wait long to be signed into a server. Online combat really doesn’t get any more convenient.

Price Free (Android & iOS)
Download Android, iOS