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More app sales: King of Dragon Pass, Swords and Soldiers and Crescent Moon RPGs
We'll do one more big app roundup post today before the holiday weekend. The App Store freeze went off as scheduled yesterday, so devs can no longer change their prices or upgrade their apps until next week, but in addition to the sales already covered so far, there are still a few more apps on sale worth pointing out for you: Konami's got the charming Gesundheit on sale, 99 cents on the iPhone and $1.99 on the iPad. The very well-reviewed King of Dragon Pass is 20% off, $7.99. I already mentioned Chillingo having most of their titles on sale, but it's worth mentioning as well that Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Swords and Soldiers are both on sale. Com2Us has put all of its titles on sale as well, including the popular Tower Defense: Lost Earth. Crescent Moon's got Pocket RPG iPhone edition down to a buck, and it's done the same with Rimelands and Aralon, two excellent games. Polarbit also has a bunch of fun titles on sale. And Telltale has big discounts going on its titles as well. As I said yesterday, there's lots more out there, so if there's an app you've been wanting, chances are that it's on sale. Unfortunately for smaller developers, I just checked the top paid apps on the store, and EA has claimed most of the spots already, with Angry Birds and Sega filling out most of the other real estate. It looks like Electronic Arts is all set to ring in the holidays with another huge batch of app sales, as people open up those new iPhones and iPads over the weekend.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Pocket RPG
Crescent Moon Games made the excellent Aralon for iOS in the past, and that was a full-fledged RPG, featuring a whole world to explore and lots of gear to collect and quests to complete. Now, the company's gone back to the fantasy well to deliver another hack-and-slash style RPG game, though this one is a little simpler (and a little more focused on just the dungeons). Pocket RPG is exactly what it sounds like: A colorful dungeon-crawler with three classes, a fun and slick style and some great dual-stick gameplay. If there's an issue with this one, it's probably that things are a little too simple. Each level is its own contained world, which means you're leveling up what's basically a separate character in each. Gameplay itself is pretty mindless, too -- there are a few special encounters to break things up, but you're pretty much just using a few different abilities over and over against the enemy hordes. Still, Pocket RPG is plenty of fun, and the game's being updated steadily with new features (not to mention that it comes with full Game Center integration, and it looks particularly great on the iPad). Right now, the title's on sale for just US $4.99, and if you enjoy plumbing through dungeons of all kinds (and come on, who doesn't?), it's an excellent experience.
Another week of big iOS releases: Real Racing 2, World of Goo, lots more
As expected, the App Store has released another round of new apps, and since we're right in the middle of the busy holiday season, there are a ton of great and long-awaited games to play either out today or coming this evening. Telltale has released the first episode of its Tales of Monkey Island series on the iPad, continuing the storyline from the classic game. Gameloft's Uncharted-like Shadow Guardian will be available this evening, as will NOVA 2, the sequel to last year's popular FPS. We saw a preview of both a little while back. Sega is bringing the old Altered Beast game to the App Store, and it's probably just as bad as you remember. Eidos has surprised us with a release of the Xbox Live and PSN title Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, arriving on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad tomorrow. Should be a good one -- reviews were excellent on the previous platforms. Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD is a really impressive fully 3D action RPG to play through, available for $6.99 on the App Store soon. Real Racing 2 is coming out this evening. I got to play an early build, and I can tell you that it's fantastic -- one of the best racing games on the App Store. Riven: The Sequel to Myst arrived on the store last night. Classic adventure title The 7th Guest is now out on iPhone for US $2.99 and iPad for $5.99. World of Goo is also due out on the iPad tonight, and this version is supposed to be one of the best. EA's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is arriving on iOS in a streamlined version, but it's going to be on sale for just 99 cents, so that's nice. Duke Nukem 3D isn't a new game, but it (and the iPad special edition) has gone free recently. A few apps are updating for the holidays: both educational astronomy app Star Walk and destructive worm simulator Super Mega Worm have special Santa-related updates out now. Man oh man, that's a whole lot of great games to play. Most of these apps aren't quite out on the App Store just yet (though some of them are available in New Zealand, where it is already tomorrow), but they should all be live on the US store by 11:00 PM Eastern time.
