Another simple and yet crazily addictive title from Halfbrick, Jetpack Joyride, just hit the iTunes App Store. It’s packed full of content, yet manages to be simple and easy to play. It’s that combination that makes it our top iPhone game this week, but there are quite a few worthy entries just behind it. Read about all of them below.
Jetpack Joyride ($0.99)
Seems like I’ve been waiting on this game for months. Ever since I got a chance to play it at E3 this year, I’ve been watching the App Store for the latest release from Fruit Ninja creator Halfbrick. Now that it’s finally out, Jetpack Joyride doesn’t disappoint. At its core, it’s a one-touch endless running title in which your character just goes from left to right, picking up speed until he runs into something and dies. But Halfbrick has packed in a lot to enjoy, not the least of which is the jetpack that you can fire by touching the screen, lifting protagonist Barry Steakfries into the air to dodge objects. All kinds of power-ups, achievements, challenge goals and unlockable content adorn the game. Halfbrick’s developers said in a trailer that Jetpack Joyride packed “a thousand hours of play time,” and I tend to believe them, yet it’s still simple enough to play for five minutes and put down.
Star Legends (Free)
The spiritual successor to Spacetime Studios’ mobile massively multiplayer online game, Pocket Legends, Star Legends recreates the formula of World of Warcraft-style computer games, but on the small screen. And in space. The game is highly streamlined to make it easy to play in short bursts, just like its predecessor, but just like Pocket Legends, you can expect tons of content to come out for Star Legends over the long run. In the meantime, Star Legends is building a big community just like its fantasy-based counterpart. There are a lot of people to play with and a lot of quests to complete and loot to gather.
SPY mouse ($0.99)
Firemint, the developer behind Flight Control, has found a new way to use that game’s control scheme in a stealth title. Your job in SPY mouse is to guide a mouse through various buildings to snatch cheese from under the watchful eyes of patrolling cats. To do so, you’ll have to use timing and brainpower to outsmart your feline opponents, and you do so by drawing the mouse’s path with your finger. It works exceedingly well, with your score in each stage based on how efficiently the mouse travels, how safe he remains, and how quickly you complete each stage. The line-drawing mechanic makes understanding the game easy, but each new level is an exercise in patience, watching patterns and predicting how the enemy will react.
Hector: Ep2 – Senseless Acts of Justice ($4.99)
It’s not a game for kids – in fact, with the swearing and the gross-out humor, it’s not a game for all adults, either – but Telltale Games’ Hector: Ep2 strikes some pretty great notes in the puzzle-solving point-and-click adventure genre. It’s also pretty hilarious at points, and a great time if these kinds of games are your bread and butter. Ep2 takes what was started in Hector: Ep1 and greatly improves upon it, working in some pretty smart and fun puzzles. Enjoy the pop culture references and insults of overweight and ornery Detective Inspector Hector as he conducts an investigation searching for a terrorist in the terrible little town of Clapper’s Wreake.
Madden NFL 12 ($6.99)
Madden NFL 12 is, on the one hand, more of the same in the Madden franchise. If you already have Madden NFL 11, you probably don’t need to spring for this update until it drops in price, because it’s not necessarily too different from the last iteration. That said, if you like Madden’s big-boy console counterpart, you’ll dig this scaled-down but still robust version of the game, and Madden 12 has been updated and improved since its last go-round. It also has updated rosters and new features brought over from the console releases to make it an overall better game. This really is the full Madden experience on a smartphone or tablet, and that makes it worth checking out, especially if you haven’t intercepted the Madden NFL series before.
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