Another Thursday brings a fresh crop of big games to the iTunes App Store. Leading the charge is Order & Chaos Online, a new title from Gameloft that emulates the immensely popular World of Warcraft. We also recommend checking out the ball-rolling platformer Gears and Unpleasant Horse, a goofy and edgy title from a spin-off label of Plants vs. Zombies maker PopCap.
Order & Chaos Online (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
Developer Gameloft is known for emulating popular video games on consoles and PC on a smaller scale, and it has done so again with Order & Chaos Online, a 3D massively multiplayer role-playing game that’s a whole lot like the incredibly popular World of Warcraft. When you start up Order & Chaos Online, you’ll be allowed to create your character — a human, elf, orc or undead — and then join up with other players to go on adventures and complete quests.
Like other massively multiplayer games, Order & Chaos charges a monthly subscription fee. The first three months of play are free, with the game running at $0.99 per month or $1.99 every three months. Gameloft has put a lot of effort into its latest title, though, with Order & Chaos appearing to be a huge game with plenty to offer and lots of socializing possible.
Gears (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Swipe and tilt your way through 27 3D platforming levels in Gears, a game in which you control a ball and have to move through levels quickly and efficiently, without rolling off the sides of the narrow bridges and spinning gears that give the game its name. Through each level, your task is to collect powered gears along the way, carefully navigating the level so that you don’t miss any or fall to your death, and make it to the end before time expires.
Gears features Game Center integration to allow you to track your scores on its leaderboards, and features both swipe and tilt controls. Graphics in the game have also been optimized for the iPad 2 and Retina displays.
Unpleasant Horse (iPhone, iPad) Free
Unpleasant Horse is the handiwork of 4th & Battery, a developer spin-off of Plants vs. Zombies maker PopCap games. As its name suggests, the game isn’t quite so innocent as PopCap’s other titles — the titular horse is unpleasant because it goes around squashing other flying ponies and birds in this side-scrolling casual title.
Your goal as the unpleasant horse in Unpleasant Horse is to jump from object to object and go as far as you can without falling to the ground — which is, incidentally, covered in meat grinders. Tapping sends your horse jumping from cloud to cloud, scoring points, and you get more points if you hit other winged ponies and ride them down into the grinder, jumping to safety at the last second. It sounds gory, but Unpleasant Horse isn’t so bad, as it packs cartoony graphics to mitigate the violence. Even so, it’s probably not a great choice for young children.
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