Every Thursday sees the biggest game releases of the week in the iTunes App Store, because the end of the week corresponds with Apple’s updates to its New and Noteworthy listings. So we stand by diligently each week to see what games make their way to iOS each week. Leading the charge today is Touchgrind BMX, a 3D game that’s all about doing bike tricks; up next is Demolition Dash, a 2D sidescroller in which you play a Godzilla-type monster on a rampage; and Back to the Future Ep 3, the latest update to Telltale Games’ Back to the Future series. We’ve also got the skinny on Galaxy Tales, an app that turns your iPhone into a multimedia journal. Check them out below.
Touchgrind BMX (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
Like its predecessor, Touchgrind, Touchgrind BMX is a game in which you place your fingers on a BMX bike to simulate riding it. You’ll ride through various courses by holding two fingers on the bike to ride it and moving your fingers back and forth to steer. Swiping up, down, left and right executes tricks, which you can chain together to rack up high scores.
Great physics and 3D graphics are the claim to fame for Touchgrind BMX, and the game packs lots of unlockables you can find and use in your play along the way as you complete challenges. Touchgrind BMX also lets you save replays of your best runs and upload them to YouTube for others to watch, as well.
Demolition Dash (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
After thousands of years asleep, Zilla the lizard monster is awake and ready to tear some stuff up. You control him in Demolition Dash, a game that combines the 2D sidescrolling runner genre with the rampaging monster game genre; the result is controlling Zilla’s inexorable run from left to right through cities, dodging deadly authority figures while using his killer roar to blow stuff up.
You get scored in Demolition Dash by how much you can destroy along the way. To that end, you have Zill’s roar, which blasts everything within a given radius. Points also rack up when you jump and grab balloons scattered throughout the game’s 24 levels. Great cartoon graphics make Demolition Dash stand out, and it packs Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements to keep you interested.
Back to the Future Ep 3 HD (iPad) $6.99
Telltale Games’ video game Back to the Future sequel gets the third of five episodes for the iPad this week, adding more time-travel hazards for Marty McFly to navigate with the help of players. The point-and-click adventure continues the story of Marty as he searches for Doc Brown in 1986, and takes the heroes to Hill Valley’s past as well as alternate timelines along the way.
With some great production values and interesting, engaging environmental puzzles along the way, Back to the Future Ep 3 HD is a great game for fans of the series, and has had consulting help from Bob Gale, one of the original Back to the Future writers. It’s a high-quality game for players who like logic and story over action and mayhem.
The Galaxy Tales (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
The Galaxy Tales basically turns your iOS device into a private, multimedia diary in which you can document events in a variety of media types, all while keeping the end product private, should you so choose. The app lets you combine video, audio, photos and text to create whatever you want, but specifically cuts out sharing options for services like Facebook and Twitter in order to keep your thoughts private.
Updates to The Galaxy Tales are already planned and will include a lot of new features; the first will let users create location maps to go with your tales, while the second will allow users to upload their tales to the Internet and share them with a special private link. The price goes up with each new update, however.
