Tehra Dark Warrior by StormBASIC games is almost finished! They have recently released a better look at the game with the concept, genre, and key features, as well as several screenshots. A better description of Tehra Dark Warrior:

1. Game concept

“Tehra: Dark Warrior” is an action 3D game, set in a fantasy world where you fight as Tehra, (a hybrid creature that’s part human, part devil) against monstrous creatures, Orcs, undeads, and a horde of other beasts, before facing Bacdar, the King of demons.

2. Genre

The game is conceived as a classic action hack’n’slash and adventures, based on a fantasy world. Our heroine, Tehra will progress along the game increasing her combat skills, magical power and being able of becoming a more brutal evil version, with extraordinary power.

3. Key Features

• Tehra has two sides as a character: a human and a devil one.
• Easy to play. The player will get the controls in a few minutes.
• Player magic and combat skills evolution.
• Great history mode and challenging minigames include a survival style game for fast-playing.
• Online community, powered by AGON. Check your position at the worldwide leaderboards! Geolocation is supported!
• Defeat enemies and complete levels to win Awards and unlock Challenges. Show them to your friends using Facebook or Twitter.
• Hours of gameplay.
• NextGen 3D graphics, with use of OpenGL|ES 2.0 shaders for special effects as Bloom, Shockwaves, etc. (if hardware supports it, such as iPhone 3GS version).

And the screenshots:

This game looks amazing so far and we can’t wait for it to drop – we’re probably going to lose a lot of productivity for it. Thanks a lot, StormBASIC. Here’s a gameplay video to entice you even more:

Fleeced! – Shear Terror is an action strategy game from Bight Games.

You and your brother are in a feud – you have walled yourselves off with a llama in order to protect yourself from “llama fur banditos” (Made that name up myself!) who just want to get into your secret garden and shave your poor llama. On top of that, your brother is firing cannon balls at you and your wall in order to make your llama naked first, but that isn’t happening on your watch! Oh no, you’re going to build cannons faster, stronger, and better than what he has, and you’re going to shoot the crap out of his walls faster than he can repair it!

You're damn right it's on.

Well, that’s the plan anyway. The name of the game is simple: protect your llama from that big burly bandito, make your brother’s llama vulnerable, and repair your walls in a bid to have the last llama standing. You will have four cannons at your disposal: a regular cannon, a double cannon, a buckshot cannon, and a cannon so big that I have to call it the BFG. Each cannon has its distinct advantages and strengths, those which mostly consist of being able to blow up walls and make your brother fall flat on his bum and make him look a fool. You can upgrade your cannons to upgrade their strength – which actually makes a pretty big difference!

So those cannons do have a pretty single minded purpose – blow up walls. Those walls however – starting with hay walls – can be repaired as long as you run up to it and hit the repair button. You can also upgrade the walls to strengthen them and make your repair jobs less frequent and necessary.

BOOM BABY!

I do have a confession to make however – I never once upgraded my wall. Alright well, I upgraded my hay walls to wooden walls during one of the stages, but I was actually trying to repair them and I ended up upgrading them by accident. Why did I never upgrade my walls? Well, I developed a strategy for the game where I was able to make the banditos shear my brother’s llama prett much consecutively – thereby winning the game for me almost instantaneously. It’s cheap, but who needs defense when your offense is impeccable?

Fleeced! is a very awesome game. The story itself is short, which could be bad, but I had a blast playing through it. All of the dialogue in between stages was great, even including a reference to a certain Black Eyed Peas song that I will leave up to you to discover. (Boom boom boom. Oops.) The game mechanics themselves are brilliant – simple joystick-like movement controls with your left thumb and an array of buttons for your right thumb, and you tilt the device to aim your cannon shots. One of my beefs with the controls is that, should you ever get an OpenFeint achievement, you’re going to be rendered useless in the short time that the achievements appear on screen because you can’t seem to use the controls at the same time! Not really a huge issue – except that one time where I was running to repair a damaged wall and I happened to get an achievement, so I stood there looking braindead while one of those banditos managed to break their way into my pen and shear my poor llama!

Keep laughing it up fatso, I've got my cannon pointed at your gut for next time!

Graphically, the game is alright – decent quality (for the iPhone) 3D graphics that were very smooth on my iPhone 3GS, as well as great drawing for the characters in between stages. The music and sounds are also great. There was also a multiplayer arcade option for up to two players, but as of this writing I couldn’t seem to connect to the Internet option, but in the meantime, you can still play it over wifi and bluetooth. Blow up your friends’ walls and make them suffer!

Overall, I completely loved Fleeced! – Shear Terror. I loved it so much that I just recommended a bunch of my friends buy it so that I can wreck their faces in this game, taunt them, and then wreck their faces again. I feel ashamed that I am so addicted to this game – but then it does center around llamas, so I think that balances everything out. A game this polished and fun only deserves one thing from us – a Golden Tap!

Score

MustTap Score: Golden Tap

The best of the best; everything about this is perfect.

Bottom Line
Fleeced! - Shear Terror is just addictive. Better than a drug, and you can get your daily dosage of llamas while you are at it. In fact, you hate llamas if you don't play this game. Fast-paced action strategy game that will keep you playing for hours!

Screenshots

Inkvaders is a side-scrolling action game from Games Faction and published by Chillingo.

Imagine all of those campy science fiction movies where aliens are coming to invade the Earth and asking to be taken to your leaders, you know the ones, with the big lightbulb heads and bug eyes? Alright, take those aliens, and put them into a comic book with a macho hero who has a huge arsenal of guns at his disposal. Great, now… put that onto the iPhone as a playable game.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY?!

That just about sums up Inkvaders. This great side-scrolling action game has you blasting your way through three different settings with many levels in each area, collecting power ups and cash so you can purchase the next big gun for your arsenal. You spend much of your time blasting through aliens or jumping with your jetpack, and the goal is simple: survive and make it to the end of the level.

At your disposal are a huge array of weapons that you can purchase via vending machines peppered throughout the levels, and you generate cash by killing those aliens or collecting moon rocks for money! On top of that, health and ammunition boxes are pretty easy to find – just tap them to grab them. The coolest part was this purple box with the capital letter ‘R’ on it which, when activated, starts up the “Rush” where a huge number of aliens will run toward you and it is your task to pop some caps into said alien asses.

The art direction is fantastic, it’s very comic book-style, as I mentioned earlier and the screenshots really do not do this game any justice. The backgrounds are all animated and detailed, and the quality of the art work is just astounding. The sound of the game is amazing – the sweet sound of your shotgun splattering the brains of the closest aliens next to you, your jetpack firing as you jump over an alien only to put a bullet in the back of its head, and the intense music that gets you pumped up to commit the previous acts of murder.

If I were to complain about anything, it would be about how repetitive Inkvaders can become – you’re basically just holding onto the right arrow and hitting the shoot button whenever aliens come onto the screen. With that said, the variety of weapons definitely compensates for this as you’re just obliterating aliens in as many ways as you feel fit. Speaking of which, the weapons available in Inkvaders are just great, they all have their different strengths and weaknesses that will come into play.

Don't mess with the guy with the chaingun.

Overall, Inkvaders is incredibly fun but without much depth to it. I would imagine that once you finish it, there really isn’t much incentive to go back and play it again unless you enjoy the mind-numbing alien massacre – which I did. Definitely a very fun game, so we do suggest you check it out!

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
A great side-scrolling action game where you blast the crap out of aliens with as many weapons as you can afford and carry. Want to blow up aliens and have a couple minutes to play a stage? Inkvader is what you need.

Screenshots

Just learned that a great looking game by the name of Doodle Army by Chad Towns just hit the app store a couple of days ago. Check out this gameplay vid:

Reminds me of Metal Slug with stick figures. Definitely worth checking out!

Just learned that the fantastic retro-style side-scrolling action game, Hook Champ from Rocketcat Games just had its update hit the app stores! Here are the features of this update:

* New challenge level set: The Forbidden Hats! Put your hooking skills to the test like never before!
* New ’simple’ ghost mode allows you to gauge your progress when racing a friend or competing against your own best time without being distracted by the in-game avatar.
* New cosmetic-only DLC character: Bounty Hunter Zelle! Zelle is equal to Gunny in abilities, but has her own sense of style and new dialog. Zelle also features her own collection of incredibly fashionable hats!
* Change: Rope lengths tweaked to create a smoother experience for beginning players.
* Bugfix: Personal best run ghosts now saved even if ghost display is turned off.
* Bugfix: The Addiction hat achievements and Celebrity local scores achievements should be properly awarded now.
* Performance: Stunning performance enhancements across the board on both older model iPhone/iPod Touch devices and newer 3GS models!
* Even more hats!

Here’s a gameplay vid for those who are curious as to how it plays:

Get out and grab it – another update is coming soon!

Gold Keeper is a simple new arcade game which is guaranteed to steal a few minutes of your time, so long as your gold doesn’t get stolen first. Developed by iDiwo Team.

The Game

Gold Keeper is designed as an arcade style beat’em up that puts you in the shoes, er, hooves of a demon looking to keep his gold from the greedy hands of the local human village. Sounds backwards, doesn’t it? In this case it’s not, and that’s part of the charm of the game, but we’ll get to that later.

Don’t think you want to be standing there, little buddy.

After putting an emulated joystick and single button in the corners of your horizontal iPhone, the game begins. The entirety of the game takes place in a single square room with holes in each corner, and your gold in the middle. Your demon is free to roam wherever he pleases, and your single button executes his basic attack. From the corners of the screen, two types of villagers will enter: armored and unarmored. The unarmored villagers go straight for the gold and then attempt to leave from the hole they came in, and the armored villagers are in it for your blood. The object of the game is to kill the villagers before they can leave with any of your gold, or before they kill you themselves. Your health is dictated by a single bar on the left end of the screen, and another bar, your special attack gauge, is on the right. The latter is done by pressing a large orange button next to the special attack gauge once it fills up, and when performed your demon will unleash a single-hit kill move to all enemies in a certain radius of you. Villagers will occasionally drop one of two items which are only meant to refill those two meters. That’s it. Sounds simple enough, right? Well it should, because this game isn’t meant to be complicated – just mindless arcadey fun.

As the game progresses, things will gradually get more difficult. More villagers will spawn at a time, and every minute or so a message will appear stating that villagers have gotten stronger. By this, they mean that they’ll either be hitting you harder or be able to take more hits than before. This increase in difficulty is offset by the fact that your demon gets powered up over time, as well. After a few minutes he is equipped with a hammer – giving him more reach and more power – and a few minutes after that is given a hatchet. The hatchet is the final weapon you receive, and certainly makes killing villagers that much more bloody and satisfying. However, from that point on the difficulty will rise exponentially, as you aren’t given anymore power-ups to balance the rising power of the villagers.

As a game with such little depth, it’s apparent that it’s only goal is to supply the player with short time wasting sessions, and I can proudly say that the game achieves this gloriously. While you won’t come away from this gameplay reflecting on how great it was, it will certainly distract you from that short-but-smelly bus ride or final stretch of Philosophy 101.

Graphics

Oh snap, owned.

Gold Keeper goes the extra mile in terms of one dollar games and provides you with fully 3D polygonal visuals. This is a nice surprise, and the overall experience benefits greatly from it. Simple arcade games can suffer if what you’re looking at isn’t visually appealing. Fortunately, this isn’t the case with Gold Keeper. It’s color palette may not pack a punch (the colors you’ll be seeing are mostly gray and red), the art is inspired, and the visuals and movement are smooth. Blood spews from every villager you murder, and the special attack actually comes with a nice explosion effect. The terrain of the cave has a great texture that stands out and gives great realism to the otherwise comical demon endeavor. Another nice surprise was in the animation work of the demon. Even though he only has one basic attack, the developers put in multiple animations for this attack (each with their own range and hitbox properties) so that the game was just a little less repetitive. Little additions like this are much appreciated, as it shows that even though the price of the game is dirt cheap, there was some love and effort put into it that makes it feel like a more expensive one.

Sound

A single track fills up the game’s soundtrack, and while it’s not a stand-out piece of orchestral work, it’s simple, and works well with the tone and style of the gameplay. The ability to listen to your own music while slicing villagers for minutes on end would’ve been nice, but this feature unfortunately isn’t available (I still wait for the day that this becomes a common feature…grr). Sound effects do the job: slicing a villager with a hatchet sounds like slicing a villager with a hatchet. Unfortunately, the game’s biggest downfall is in the voice of the demon. I’ll keep this simple: I don’t want to hear my character reciting a famous Joker line from The Dark Knight every time I kill someone. There’s a lot of killing going on in this game, and hearing those words repeated over and over again almost made me turn my entire phone off. Fortunately, we have the option to turn just the sound effects or music off if we desire, so this drawback can be remedied at a cost.

Additional Comments

Simplicity never means perfection, and Gold Keeper is no different. The game does suffer from some frustrating flaws that give the game difficulty that I don’t believe was intended by the developers. One example of this is the fact that the player must always keep a keen eye on his health bar, as it’s very difficult to tell when your demon actually receives damage. There is no consistent sound or visual cue that represents health depletion aside from the meter itself, and this often left me surprised at how far down my health was without even being aware of it. The second and more concrete example is the useless special attack. The special attack is meant to work as a means of clearing large amounts of enemies that are close to you for tactical or desperate means, but it doesn’t work for either because the attack takes about 10 seconds to come out. All the while, the enemies that are close to you are hacking away at your health, and even if you manage to kill them before you die, you’ll be lucky to recover even a fraction of that from a health drop. On the bright side, if you manage to hold your own and believe you’ve accomplished a great feat, the game does offer worldwide leaderboards, so if you’re looking to turn this game into more than what it’s meant to be, you’ll at least be able to show off your talents.

Conclusion

Minor flaws aside, Gold Keeper is a pleasant (or should I say devilish) game which holds firm it’s arcade principles and uses them to deliver a solid experience that will easily kill time…and villagers. iPhone games are already in the thousands, and out of those thousands, it’s simple, casual games like Gold Keeper that show the virtues of mobile gaming. For your 99 cents, you could do a lot worse.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Gold Keeper is a devilish game that has a light-hearted charm. It's simple arcade gameplay is executed well enough to justify the price. Pick it up if you want to kill ten minutes with something new.

Screenshots

Cube Runner is an action game written by Andy Qua.

The Game

Avoid the colored blocks at all costs. Because! They’re blocks!

As an older game in the iPhone’s ever-expanding library, Cube Runner is one among a wave of many that use the phone’s tilt functionality, a feature undoubtedly included with games in mind. Nowadays, “tilt games” are far from ubiquitous, and this fact would lead one to assume that customers have gotten over the idea of rocking their devices back and forth to play. Cube Runner, however, is far from gimmicky and is a solid example of a good tilt game.

Basically, you are in control of a ship or an airplane or something else that an arrow might represent. Yes, the game’s graphics are simplistic enough that your in-game avatar is all but an arrow. Your task is to guide this arrow ship through a zone of obstacles, which happen to all be squares. Your ship/arrow/aircraft moves at a constant rate while your tilting turns you left and right, allowing you to weave back and forth through the squares. Each “level pack” consists of a semi-organized placement of squares along the “track,” and the game ships with three: easy, medium, and hard.

Seems like I have crashed into a wall and disintegrated. Oh well.

There is an intended learning curve to the game, especially to someone new to the idea of tilt games. A new player will undoubtedly die at least the first few times through, and the fact that you have to repeat from the beginning every time can be a source of frustration. The controls are fair, but rely on the often imprecise accelerometer. As such, it’s hard to say whether anyone can adjust to the gameplay.

Graphics

“Minimalist” and “industrial” are putting it one way, but I prefer to call it lazy. The graphics consist of box, box, box, box box, box, and your space ship. Or rather, your triangle. Meanwhile, I appreciate that the game maintains a high frame rate, but boxes spawn into your view way too close. While this particular flaw might be a design decision to keep the difficulty up, would it really have hurt to add a few textures here and there?

Sound

The game has one musical track that plays for the duration of your current life, with no sound effects to distract you other than the one when you crash into a box and die (how would there be any? you’re just navigating through textureless squares, after all). I’m a fan of music in games, especially music that befits the game, and so I actually like the track in Cube Runner, if only for its techno influences that match the game’s visual style.

Conclusion

Cube Runner is a fun little game, and while I wouldn’t quite call it addictive, gamers will surely feel the need to fine tune their tilt skills a bit more every time. I would probably like to see a game with a higher budget with Cube Runner’s gameplay, but for the very reasonable price of $0, I don’t think you can go wrong. If there’s one feature that I would have included, it would have been online leaderboards – I need to show people how far I made it on Hard!

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Cube Runner is a nice and simple tilt game with which to pass the time on train rides, but gamers expecting anything more should look elsewhere.

Screenshots

Mega Man 2 is one of the finest gaming accomplishments of the 8-bit era and was developed by Capcom.

The Game

I’m sure that if you’re reading this review you know the story already, but just for the sake of formality, let’s first go over what we’re talking about. Mega Man 2 puts the player in the robotic legs of a futuristic hero as he battles countless enemies and eight vicious bosses in his quest to stop the evil Dr. Wily from controlling the world. The game utilizes simple run, jump, and shoot mechanics in a sidescrolling world, but also sets itself apart by awarding you with different gun variations each time you defeat a boss. It’s unique in that you can have just as much fun trying to figure out which scenarios are best for each gun as you can just trying to make it through levels using only the default buster shot. Mega Man 2 truly is brilliant in it’s design, but it’s also famous for it’s difficulty. Like most iterations of the Mega Man series, players will find themselves having a heck of a time getting through the pixel-perfect platforming, numerous bottomless pits, overwhelming enemy spawns, and (mostly) insane boss fights. Unlike most games that withhold this sort of difficulty, Mega Man 2 has always managed to give the player a fun experience, and as such, it is regarded by all critics as a gem that should be treasured forever.

You’re now hearing the Mega Man 2 title theme.

If you’re a Mega Man fan, or fans of video games in general, you’re undoubtedly aware of the hugely popular Mega Man 2 game which debuted on the original Nintendo Entertainment System roughly 20 years ago. Most gamers will say that it is their most memorable Mega Man exerience, and rightly so. Mega Man 2 is packed with intense action, incredible platforming, a glorious soundtrack, varied stage themes, and an overall nostalgic experience which has justified countless ports and inclusions in anniversary packs – not to mention helping to spawn a franchise that would remain to this day with an insane amount of sequels and spin-offs.

When I first saw Mega Man 2 appear on the iPhone app store, my eyes lit up like a little boy in a video game store. The idea of hopping into a stage on the go, hearing the music, enjoying a romp through the pits and enemies, using my buster-shot… it seemed too good to be true; unfortunately, almost immediately after I made my five dollar purchase, I realized I was right. Mega Man 2 on the iPhone is a prospect that is simply impossible to execute properly, and this release proves it.

To understand why the idea of a good iPhone version of Mega Man 2 is impossible requires just one play of this game. It boils down to two big reasons: First, as previously mentioned, Mega Man 2 is a difficult game. Even if the port was perfect, the precision controls required for the platforming and shooting cannot be emulated on the iPhone’s touch screen. What we get with the controls of the iPhone version is the typical “fake” joystick and buttons on the bottom of the screen controlled by touch. These controls work, but aren’t reliable enough to allow for a successful and frustration-free experience. Second, to help alleviate the difficulty and lack of accurate controls, changes would need to be made to the game. The developers realized this, but failed to see that the changes that were made completely change the game experience altogether.

Changes to the gameplay are horrendous. While some changes were accidental, such as enemy spawn rates, other changes give the impression that the developers were trying to baby you through the game because they were aware of the fact that the game is unplayable. Health drops are never a worry, extra lives drop at least three times per level, the B button has automatic turbo functionality, Mega can take more damage and dishes out more damage, knockback when taking a hit is reduced, longer invulnerability time, the list goes on and on. These changes completely break the game, and I found myself able to literally rush through entire stages without worrying about health or firing a single shot. The worst change of all, though, is that Mega Man now jumps higher and falls slower than a feather, allowing him to float freely across almost the entire screen. To compensate for this travesty, Mega Man’s surroundings move slower than molasses. At first you might think the game’s framerate is lagging, which would be inexcusable, but instead, the game is meant to be played at a constant FPS of negative thirty. That may not make sense, but neither does this port.

Graphics

Did I mention all of the bugs?

On the upside, the aesthetics of the game remain intact, and in screenshot form, this is the exact same Mega Man 2 as the original. The pixelated side-scroller has a moniker that has become very famous, and I don’t doubt that some of you out there have a t-shirt with this 8-bit boy’s face on it (I see you smirking.) The game can be played in both portrait and landscape mode, and the emulated arcade board has a background taken straight from the game’s original box art. This nod of fan-service brought a smile to my face and almost made me forget that I wasn’t playing the same game that I remember.

Sound

Mega Man 2’s soundtrack is amazingly well done, and extremely nostalgic for long time gamers. The nerd inside me even compels me to divulge that I have a few ringtones on my phone taken straight from the game. It’s almost become a sign of nerd status to be able to recognize each boss theme, and the amount of remixes, dedications on YouTube, and officially licensed discs is enough to tell you that this is a game whose music will continue to be remembered throughout the ages. It pleases me to tell you that every bloop, bleep, jingle, and song makes it’s triumphant return on the iPhone. It displeases me, however, to tell you that the game’s slow performance and chugging nature occasionally cuts out sound effects or pieces of the song during action.

Additional Comments

It’s not how you remember it.

As if it wasn’t bad enough, my experience with the game was also riddled with bugs. Standing in lava, and being unable to jump off of a cloud in Airman’s stage are some of the highlights. At the very least, these bugs should have been removed in later updates. Sure enough, later in the game’s life, a “Classic” mode was added to the game. I was hopeful, and while it did remove some minor bugs, it more importantly took out several of the forced changes that made the game more easy. By doing so, the inaccurate controls became even more prominent, and the game remains unplayable. While it’s nice to know that the developers saw it fit to try and fix some of the issues (Most of which they caused themselves,) it is all for naught. Mega Man 2 on the iPhone cannot be fixed.

Conclusion

As stated several paragraphs up, there are two main reasons why this game cannot be executed on the iPhone. In the default setting, you will fall victim to both, but even with the classic update, you’re still getting hit with the first reason: that the game cannot be controlled well enough to enjoy. If it’s not one reason, it’s going to be the other, and this dilemma seems somewhat impossible to avoid. In the end, Capcom is a business, and Mega Man 2 on the iPhone is obviously nothing more than easy money for them. It looks like Mega Man 2, and it sounds like Mega Man 2, but there are too many faults in it’s execution in gameplay to be Mega Man 2. As a gamer, it’s your job to recognize these faults and do your part to help the industry. In this case, your role is clear: don’t buy this game.

…Unless you want a really cool app icon on your home screen… or are looking for a “Mega Man 2 Soundtrack” app that has a very convoluted menu system… it is only five dollars… someone slap me.

Score

MustTap Score: Rusty Tap

It works, but I still wouldn't drink from it.

Bottom Line
This is one of the few Mega Man games worth skipping, bug-ridden with horrible controls, you definitely should pass on this.

Screenshots

Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor is an action RPG developed by Com2uS.

The Game

DUDE! That mushroom just talked to me man!

Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor is an action RPG that feels like a throwback to the classic ones on the SNES. The game is very simple. You get a quest, with little knowledge of where to go, you finish said quest and then you get a new one. The part that will turn most people off of Inotia is how it gives you little or no direction of where to go. It isn’t that bad, but do not expect the game to hold your hand and take you from place to place. Even though Inotia is an RPG, it does not have much of a plot. For some people, a good plot will help keep them going, even if the gameplay is not that great, but do not expect anything from this game. A brief glimpse you do see into the plot is the video that plays at the beginning of the game. On the other side, Inotia has a good skill system where you can allocate points you gain by leveling up to make them better. It is not too deep, but it adds a very nice touch to make it feel more RPG-ish.

The combat and controls in Inotia is fairly decent. You run around by tapping on where you want to go. You also engage in combat by tapping on what you want to fight. Once you start fighting something, your character starts to auto-attack his foe. The only input the player has are using special skills, using potions, or running away. Inotia is a semi-forgiving game, but the combat isn’t. If you are fighting something that gives you a small challenge, and another monster starts to attack you, you are probably going to die if you do not run. The difficulty of the monsters can ramp up quickly, so moving on to another location can be a pain if you are not prepared for it. This all being said, a fair amount of grinding is necessary in Inotia if you want to be successful. It is not so bad, but with the ever increasing difficulty per area, just going through it is never enough. Unfortunately, if you are not a fan of grinding levels, you will probably hate Inotia after just a short time with it.

Graphics

Inotia’s graphics seem like they were pull straight from the SNES days. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but most people prefer good graphics these days. The sprites all do look good and have a certain uniqueness and charm about them, and the environments never felt repetitive or anything of that sort. The graphics are not bad, but some more work could have been put into making the game look better overall.

Sound

The audio department of Inotia is one of its major weak points. The music is just a loop, which makes itself very obvious by pausing when it finishes a loop and is about to start over. The sound effects are not great either: they are simple and generic for everything that you do. The only positive thing about the sound is that it is there.

If the mushrooms and blobs don’t get ya’, them fairies and dingos will.

Additional Comments

Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor is a good game, despite this review, but the main point is that some people will love a game like this and play it for a long time, but others will be turned off after the first few minutes. This may sound like most games, but those who enjoy the game will be outnumbered by those who do not. Test the waters with the Lite version and see if this game is for you.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, some will like Chronicles of Inotia, others will not. The game is not revolutionary or anything of the sort, but will be enjoyed those who like action RPGs that require grinding and training to get further in the game. The game is currently on sale for $0.99, and there is a lite version, so give it a shot.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor should only be recommended to people who like retro action RPGs and don't mind grinding levels.

Screenshots

Golden Axe was originally developed by Makoto Uchida and has now been republished by SEGA.

The Game

This menu is a stain on the fabric of human achievement.

Golden Axe is an early side-scrolling hack and slash set in a medieval fantasy world. It’s so early, in fact, that I was barely even born when it was released on its original arcade platform, the System 16-B and if you can remember that platform, you are probably getting a bit old to be playing games now, but bare with me. The game was later released for the Mega Drive/Genesis which I believe it is better known for. If you have played this game you’re in for a nostalgia trip. It’s basically a direct port of the original, with a horrible out of place menu added to it. If you haven’t played Golden Axe, read on, I’ll try and explain the basic premise, followed by how it translates onto the iPhone.

When you start the game you are presented with a choice of characters, each slightly different in attributes… By which I mean they either have more powerful magic, or a longer range melee attack. Each character has a name, but I have no idea what they are, and its fairly irrelevant anyway, so they will be referred to as follows. Blue Thong-Clad Male is basically a well balanced character, with a good mix of magic, and melee range. The second choice is Red Bikini Steroid Lady who has much more powerful magic, but lacks in range. The third choice is the Body Conscious Green Dwarf, who- as you guessed- has the longest range melee, with the weakest magic. Now it all sounds like a great balance, but seeing as you can only recharge your magic by kicking imps in the shin and stealing it- and they only come around occasionally during a level, and once in between levels- it means that using magic is often unreliable. I would recommend using the Body Conscious Green Dwarf, as it makes kicking imps in the shin easier anyway.

Oh, ok.

Once you have chosen a character you are greeted with a monologue explaining that Death Adder has captured the King and Princess and is keeping them inside their castle. Also the characters mutual friend Alex was killed in the battle… I don’t know if i haven’t got far enough into the game to understand the relevance of that statement or if it is to be taken at face value. You soon meet your first foes, a man with a mace and a man with a handful of blueberries. This is usually the point where I accidentally press the ‘A’ button and set off my magic lighting, killing them and wasting the attack…

Unleash the METAL!

Combat equates to button mashing until your enemy is vanquished. Your enemies counter your attacks by charging at you or using jumping attacks, both of which are available to you albeit awkward to use. There are also ridable beasts in the game that you can hijack if you knock an enemy off. It almost seems pointless using these beasts though, as you can also be knocked off with great ease and the beasts will run away once it’s been ridden 4-5 times. Magic attacks attacks are a ‘Get out of jail free’ card.  Each character has a different attack, with the Blue Thong-Clad Male using earth spells, Red Bikini Steroid Lady using fire, and Body Conscious Green Dwarf using lightning. These magic attacks freeze gameplay and damage all enemies on screen. Unfortunately using a magic spell uses all of your potions up. Spells become more powerful with more potions and as stated earlier you get these potions by kicking imps and stealing them. This means there no way of spreading the attack out, which makes the female character (who can carry the most potions) almost useless.

How do you get your kicks?

There is a fair amount of different enemies, bosses and beasts to go up against, but after a few levels the enemies are just different in color, and slightly harder, rather than varied. Golden Axe gets quite stale after the first few levels, and with no real dynamics in combat its going to get repetitive. When you run out of health you lose a life, when you run out of lives, you have a choice of whether or not to continue. You can then continue with no penalty. This basically means you are going to be frustratingly mashing and grinding your way through the game. It’s not that there isn’t fun to be had, there are few more satisfying things than flaming an imp with a fire breathing velociraptor and collecting its potions, or throwing an enemy boss twice your height (or three times, depending on which character you choose) across a level.

Graphics

It would be unfair for me to slate this game on its graphics, even if they were unattractive. But lets face it, apart from the low resolution the graphics hold up well. I’ve always found that games made slightly before the transition from 2D to 3D hold up quite well versus early 3D games (See Diablo, Diablo II). The problem with the visuals comes into play when you take into account the menu. Now I wasn’t expecting anything terribly complex, but it just looks plain awful. It’s a strange orange color with no theme. It could only possibly look more out of place if it was made with images of rabbits holding  staplers. Hopefully this will be updated soon.

Sound

All the sounds are from the original game. They will definitely bring you back if you’ve played Golden Axe before, and it helps to seal the retro in. They only used around 3 different sound clips in Golden Axe, and just varied the speed to make them sound slightly different, for example the female scream is just the same as the males, but played quicker to change its pitch. It gives an insight to how developers dealt with their limitations 20 years ago. There is music throughout the game, and it will probably drive you to the point of insanity after a while, but you can listen to your own music if you like. I recommend a Hardcore-Norwegian-Techno-Death-Metal playlist.

Additional Comments

You have a choice of control methods in Golden Axe. You can use accelerometer based controls (but don’t… Really.) or an onscreen control pad. The buttons for the controls are laid out similar to a Mega Drive/Genesis controller, with the D-Pad on the left and buttons A, B and C on the right. The A, B and C buttons are unfortunately crushed into the corner due to the space limitations of the iPhone screen. This can often mean that your fingers take up a lot of screen space, so SEGA have given you the choice to play in full screen mode, or a windowed mode, which takes the buttons off of the playable screen.

Conclusion

Golden Axe is a nostalgia trip for anyone who played the original, and really shows how timeless a simple game can be. 20 years on, it does seem very tired and dated in terms of gameplay, but it’s a respectable game and a true arcade classic. Less than perfect controls and a gaudy menu shouldn’t detract an old fan, but if you were looking for a fresh new game for your iPhone, save your money- there’s plenty-more modern games out there.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
A true arcade classic returns onto the iPhone.... With some issues. Gaudy menu's and unfortunate controls will hinder your enjoyment, but it's a faithful port of the original.

Screenshots