This week’s big games dump on the iTunes App Store includes some quality choices. A big update to weaponized racing title Death Rally – its seventh – adds multiplayer to the addictive racing and shooting action. There’s a new version of Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja, branded for the upcoming movie Puss in Boots, and it brings new ways to play the App Store favorite. Worms Crazy Golf also reworks the classic Worms formula – a 2-D strategy game with earthworm characters – into a 2-D golf game, and Robo5 takes inspiration from puzzle game Catherine to create a block-climbing title with a cool robot aesthetic.
Death Rally update (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Top-down racer Death Rally is one of the more addictive and fun games in the iTunes App Store. It already brings lots of racing and vehicle fighting action to players, with a bunch of courses, cars and weapons to upgrade with your winnings. Plus you get to blow up other drivers, which is always fun.
But now Death Rally has become even better. The game’s seventh content update finally brings online multiplayer to the game, allowing you to thrash other drivers with missiles, flame throwers, machine guns and more. The update also adds in new weapons and paint jobs for your car, which you can earn by racking-up additional victories.
Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Lots of big-name games have gotten movie tie-ins lately, like Angry Birds Rio and Doodle Jump’s tie-in with the movie Hop. Now Fruit Ninja has a movie franchise to go with it – Dreamworks’ Puss in Boots. Luckily, the tie-in game Halfbrick has created isn’t just another rehash of Fruit Ninja, but integrates old with new.
The old part of the game is the Survival mode, in which users just swipe at fruits to slice them while avoiding bombs flying through the air. Miss three fruits and you lose, just like if you hit a bomb, which are the same rules for regular Fruit Ninja. But the Challenge mode offers some interesting additions to Fruit Ninja, requiring players to complete objectives and avoid bombs in various levels. Fruits will bounce off surfaces or fly in formation, for example, and there are lots of different challenges to take on. It’s this new mode that makes Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots feel fresh, and worth another dollar.
Worms Crazy Golf (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
For years, Worms has been a cartoony turn-based strategy game in which you control earthworms and have them use massive firepower to defeat other earthworms. Worms Crazy Golf takes out the guns and trades them for golf clubs, putting players in a series of 2-D, side-scrolling courses with lots of weird obstacles – including sheep, cliffs, floating platforms and groundskeeper worms.
The game includes three courses with 18 holes on each one, along with achievements and leaderboards care of Game Center. Worms Crazy Golf also has a local hot-seat multiplayer mode that you can play with as many as three friends by passing your iPhone or iPad back and forth.
Robo5 (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Taking a page from Catherine on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Robo5 is a series of block-climbing puzzles in which you need to scale a 3-D structure to reach the top. In order to do that, you’ll climb a stack of blocks from bottom to top, occasionally pushing or pulling those blocks to get them into position so they can be easily climbed.
You’re scored in each level of the game on how fast you solve each puzzle and what power-ups you’re able to pick up along the way. Robo5 includes 40 levels over five chapters, as well as a cool, slightly comic-like art style. It also includes Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
