It’s Thursday, and that means a mess of big releases have hit the App Store — and we’ve picked out a few favorites to populate our Fresh Games list this morning. Leading the pack is a castle defense game based on the cult classic Army of Darkness, which runs with its movie license and ends up being a lot of fun. After that is HECTOR, a new offering from the makers of Back to the Future for iPad, and a riff on Missile Command called Chromanids.
Army of Darkness Defense (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Armies of undead, medieval soldiers and a time-traveling Bruce Campbell with a shotgun and a chainsaw for a hand — sounds like the perfect premise for a game. And that thinking is why the cult classic Army of Darkness has made its way to iOS as a 2D castle defense title, complete with audio clips from the film and weapons and items inspired by the story.
Army of Darkness Defense packs 50 waves to fight through, in which you’ll control Army of Darkness’ main character, Ash. You’ll pummel enemies with medieval prosthetics and a shotgun, while also summoning more medieval troops to help fight off undead enemies. You also get Game Center support for your buck, allowing you to unlock achievements and see how your scores stack up on worldwide leaderboards.
HECTOR: Ep 1 HD – We Negotiate With Terrorists (iPad) $3.99
The makers of point-and-click adventure games such as Back to the Future, Telltale Games, are at it again with HECTOR: Ep 1 HD – We Negotiate With Terrorists for the iPad. Unlike Back to the Future and similar Telltale titles, HECTOR is a little…raunchier. It follows the story of a foul-mouthed British detective as he works to defuse a hostage situation by wandering around his town, fulfilling the terrorist’s demands.
HECTOR combines Telltale’s signature environmental and story puzzles with a strong sense of humor and a very adult storyline. This is the first of three episodes in the HECTOR story, more of which are slated to hit the App Store sometime this fall.
Chromanids (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Remember Missile Command? The game had you manning a stationary missile turret, firing defensive ordinance at incoming nukes aimed at your cities. Chromanids is like that, requiring you to fire missiles from your stationary turret to intercept enemy ships of varying types and speed before they can take you out. But Chromanids changes things up by adding three color panels — tap one and it changes the color of your turret and missiles to correspond with incoming ships.
In order to effectively defend yourself, you’ll have to quickly match the correct color with fast reflexes and deadly accuracy. Things get harder as more waves of enemies come for you in Chromanids, combining the primary colors to make new enemies, or coming as ships that need to be shot with two different colors in succession.