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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic arrives on the iPad, and the Force is with it
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is the kind of game that's almost too big to be playing on the iPad. It's easily 30 hours long, with extensive attribute, skill, and combat systems, and it has some of the best storytelling BioWare's ever done, all set in the epic pre-film Star Wars universe. This is a monster of a classic game, and like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Baldur's Gate before it, it seems like cheating to play this game on Apple's touchscreen tablet, like you're somehow breaking the laws of mobile gaming physics, if such a school even exists. And yet, it works. Aspyr Media is the company responsible here. It's been porting games to the Mac for a long time, and with Knights of the Old Republic has decided to start bringing what it calls "catalog Mac experiences" to iOS. Presumably, the rights were snagged from BioWare and LucasArts, and now there's a very well-made $9.99 port of one of the best Star Wars games ever assembled, running on the iPad.
Evilot takes Plants vs. Zombies to Triple Town
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Plants vs. Zombies has long been one of the most popular titles on the App Store (or any platform it's been released on, really), but PopCap has only recently revealed a sequel set to arrive in another month or so. In all that time, then, it's not surprising that game developers have "borrowed" PopCap's casual tower defense formula, where you build up units in lanes to defend against an oncoming horde. Samurai Bloodshow is one of the best pretenders to the throne, and there are other games like Legendary Wars that took PopCap's premise and ran far with it. Evilot also belongs in the second category. It's a recently released iPad game that has a very clear resemblance to the longtime battle of flowers against the undead, in that enemy troops come in by lanes from the right, and you need to build up units to defend treasure on the left. But while Plants vs. Zombies uses a straightforward currency system to build up its units, Evilot borrows a core mechanic from another great iOS title: Triple Town.
Zoombies is a fiesta of undead carnage
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Say the name High Voltage, and your first thought might be the Conduit series of first-person shooters (or this). While the studio is indeed known most recently for The Conduit, one of its other ideas has been languishing for quite some time, namely Animales de la Muerte. Originally slated for WiiWare, and then for XBLA and PSN, the game has finally found a home on iOS. Renamed Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte, the game tells the story of two children who must save a Mexican zoo from being overrun by a horde of zombified animals. To do this, the kids utilize every available tool of destruction, ranging from axes to shotguns, roman candles and even the occasional dollop of guacamole. Zoombies is the most festive zombie game I've ever played, and it's also one of the most immediately entertaining.%Gallery-188503%
Portabliss: Mosaique (iOS, Android)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Puzzle games tend to fall into one of two categories. There are the fast and frenetic ones, where you watch pieces smash into one another, pushing your mental and physical reflexes as far as they can go before a wire is crossed and it all comes crashing down, hopefully after you've set a new high score. Then there are the Zen puzzlers. These are slow, asking you to plan the best moves for the highest score. You examine the board, analyzing its patterns and discerning how best to eliminate all those pesky blocks or orbs or gems or what-have-you. Mosaique falls into the latter category, presenting a deceptively simple game of destroying colored blocks. At no point will it bring you either the stress or exultation of a Tetris or a Puzzle Fighter, but sometimes that's okay. Sometimes you want to sit back, relax, and watch as everything falls into place.
Portabliss: Hiversaires (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Why am I here? What do these weird symbols mean? What is this place? Hiversaires poses more questions than it provides answers. It's an adventure game where the player is provided no context for what is happening, thrust into a beautiful monochromatic world and forced to poke and prod through one strange area after the next.%Gallery-187336%
Portabliss: Robot Unicorn Attack 2 (iOS)
Is it possible you haven't played Robot Unicorn Attack yet? It's by far Adult Swim's most popular onilne Flash game, and not only is it available to play for free (in a few different forms) in your browser, but it's about a robot unicorn collecting fairies and dashing through star crystals while the 2009 remix of Erasure's "Always" plays in the background. Seriously, you better have played this.The game's also spawned three different versions on iOS, including the original, a Heavy Metal version, and a special Christmas edition. But now the full numbered sequel has arrived on iPhones and iPads, and it's made by PikPok, the developers behind the excellent Monsters Ate My Condo games.I'll hit the sourest note first: "Always" isn't in this one. At least not right away.
Portabliss: Fist Face Fight (iOS, Android)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Fist Face Fight is a simple, fast-paced tap-to-punch game in which you defend a heart from attacking ninjas. You act from an overhead perspective, keeping tabs on the heart at the bottom of the screen and directing a disembodied fist while ninjas and other hazards encroach from all sides.By tapping around the screen, Fist Guy (as he shall be called from now on) will strike out at that spot in a straight line and rest. Anything in Fist Guy's path will be be punched, even the heart.%Gallery-185164%
Portabliss: Fish Out of Water (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Halfbrick's Fish Out of Water launches on iOS today and it's unlike any of the studio's previous games. It's a much more casual experience with a far more simple premise that is, by all appearances, aimed at capturing a younger audience.The goal of Fish Out of Water is to see how far you can fling a fish across the ocean. Your score is calculated across three tosses, factoring in both distance and the number of times your fish skipped across the water.%Gallery-183894%
Portabliss: Gemini Rue (iOS)
Gritty, futuristic adventure game Gemini Rue started as a student project by Joshua Nuernberger. Nuernberger received help from Wadjet Eye Games, the husband and wife tandem of Dave and Janet Gilbert, who helped bring the point-and-click adventure to Steam in October 2011. The game runs on the Adventure Game Studio engine, which was first created in 1999, back when the notion of porting games to a mobile device wasn't at the front of developers' minds. Janet spent eight months adapting the AGS engine to iOS, and Gemini Rue is the first attempt at bringing one of Wadjet Eye Games' adventures to the platform. For a first attempt, it's quite impressive.Gemini Rue has players controlling two characters located across a stretch of space from one another in the distant future. Azriel Odin, an ex-assassin, is searching for his missing brother. The other playable character, Charlie, starts the game with his memory being erased after a failed escape attempt from an unknown testing facility. Each piece of the mystery unravels at a good pace. The initial puzzles provide the backdrop for the game's well-conceived universe, itself an intriguing, nearly relatable Earth-like world full of crime. As the story progresses, the plot thickens and twists in a mostly expected manner before dropping a hefty, deep series of concepts on the player at the end.If you think that sounds like a vague explanation of Gemini Rue's story, you're spot-on. I can't unveil the plot in good conscience; it simply needs to be played. It isn't ground-breaking by any means, but the tale is wholly enjoyable and worthwhile to anyone who enjoys dark sci-fi.%Gallery-185147%
Portabliss: Kersploosh! (3DS eShop)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. The nice thing about really cheap games is that I can recommend them based on just one neat thing. If a game costs under $5, I can be really tolerant of annoying parts in favor of the cool parts.Kersploosh! isn't a bad game at all. But I like it entirely because of the localization.%Gallery-181144%
Portabliss: Interlocked (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Interlocked isn't so much a puzzle game as it is a tranquility generator. It seats you on a plush antique couch with an invitingly thick fabric. In the corner, pleasant and unassuming melodies dance from the tinny speaker of an old radio. In your lap, an ornate wooden block full of interlocking parts sits, waiting to have its secrets laid bare.No other extravagantly phrased scenario better encapsulates my direct feelings while playing Interlocked on my iPad. It's an unassuming puzzle experience where you manipulate an object and attempt to disassemble it in as few moves as possible. It's a methodical, yet serene puzzler, one that makes excellent use of the 3D space to pose some serious challenges when attempting to break down these blocks.%Gallery-178316%
Portabliss: Ikachan (3DS eShop)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Ikachan is a perfect snack-sized game. Coming in at around two hours, it offers a concentrated dose of pure Studio Pixel exploration.A precursor to Cave Story, It's the same kind of lovingly pixelated subterranean environments, the same kind of mysterious, mute protagonist dropped into a society in the midst of a power struggle, and the same kind of discovery of previously inaccessible spaces via new abilities that Pixel perfected in Cave Story, but in a miniature form you can enjoy start-to-finish in a single sitting. With a cute lil' squid as the hero.%Gallery-177672%
Portabliss: Noble Nutlings (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Take the character designs and look of Angry Birds, and put them in a game with the physics-based driving of a Trials or Motoheroz game, and the result is Noble Nutlings, the most Finnish game ever made.The Angry Birds resemblance is no coincidence. Noble Nutlings is the first game from Boomlagoon, a developer founded by Rovio's former lead artist, server designer, and web programmer. Your protagonists are still a trio of spheroid critters, each a primary color. However, instead of birds in a slingshot, the Nutlings are chubby lil' squirrels in a wagon.
Portabliss: Fluidity: Spin Cycle (3DS eShop)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. The only thing a wizard loves more than wizardry is meddling in others' affairs. So of course a great wizard decides to use his magic to bring a storybook full of creatures and imaginative places to life. And of course things go awry and it's up to you to clean old robesy's mess up.In Fluidity: Spin Cycle, you play as Eddy, an amorphous pool of water. Eddy is a water spirit on the hunt for rainbow spirits trapped within each page of the wizard's book, and he locates each one by overcoming various physics-based puzzles and challenges.
Portabliss: The Walking Dead: Assault (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Like many of you out there, I'm a sucker for anything with zombies in it. I've read The Zombie Survival Guide and I've have mapped out my own plans to deal with a zombie invasion countless times over. I've read a ton of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic – yes, I'm that guy.Where Telltale's The Walking Dead is about player choice and guarding a young innocent against the evils of a post-apocalyptic world, The Walking Dead: Assault throws players into a different, albeit just-as-important scenario of a zombie world: how to take out the undead.%Gallery-172809%
Portabliss: Angry Birds Star Wars (Multi)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. I'm not the only one who played Angry Birds, wasn't that impressed, and so avoided the series evermore until the day Angry Birds Star Wars showed up. Admittedly, some of our group only returned to deride this new game's pop-culture union, which represented how big bags of money can lure you to the dark side (again).Not me, though. As much as I like Star Wars, I've never liked the series that much. As much as I was unimpressed by Angry Birds, I wasn't that unimpressed. So a combination of the two was curious to me, rather than potentially rage-inducing. I figured I didn't have much to lose beyond three bucks and a few hours. Happily, they weren't wasted. %Gallery-170698%
Portabliss: Borderlands Legends (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Somewhere, at any given moment, I imagine the team at Gearbox is popping champagne and fiercely patting each other on the back after striking gold with Borderlands 2. Not only is the game a commercial success, but it's also a critical darling (read our review, for example!) – a far cry from the developer's previous major release.After loads of DLC and the inevitable three-quel, where can Gearbox go to capitalize on the money train that is Borderlands? A jaunt over to Apple's explosive iOS platform sounds like a good fit, and publisher 2K Games along with developer 2K China have done just that. The idea of playing the "mini-game" version of Borderlands didn't interest me right away, but Borderlands Legends turns out to be a perfect fit for the series and brings the franchise full circle to one of its biggest comparative franchises, Diablo.%Gallery-169067%
Portabliss: Liberation Maiden (3DS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. The adage "leave them wanting more" immediately came to mind upon completing Liberation Maiden, a feat which took a little under two hours to accomplish. Level 5 and Grasshopper Manufacture's 3DS eShop shooter is engaging enough to whet the palate, but the ideas presented by its design don't feel like they have enough time to mature.It's almost like the development team started out with the design document for an entire, full-length shooter, and then decided to only made the first five levels. Thankfully, those five levels are exciting, twitchy arcade fun with Level 5's trademark of polish and Suda 51's sense of style.%Gallery-167532%
Portabliss: NightSky (3DS eShop)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. I can never think, or write, about NightSky without using the word "meditative." So I'm just going with it. NightSky is meditative in the extreme. It throws calm and serene imagery all up in your face. It's not overly easy; rather, the combination of clever level placement, soothing music and subtly beautiful visuals make the whole experience more ... well, meditative.When the 3DS port was first announced, Nicalis producer Tyrone Rodriguez told us it wouldn't display in 3D. However, the final game does include stereoscopic visuals. "We tried it and it looked better than we thought," Rodriguez explained to Joystiq, simply. "But then we had to ditch the gyro," referring to plans to use tilt controls.%Gallery-169349%
Portabliss: God of Blades (iOS)
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. White Whale Games took worldbuilding seriously in God of Blades. Well, maybe "seriously" isn't the right word. God of Blades takes place in a world inspired by pulp fantasy novels, Roger Dean, and '70s album covers; a world of alien rock outcroppings, odd-colored skies and demonic sword-fighters. Levels are introduced by mocked up sci-fi or fantasy book covers, and bosses come with names like "Koz the Hungerer, wielder of Boneblister."It's not entirely serious, but White Whale Games is committed to this world. And then you run through it at top speed, waving a sword around.
