Grab your mini figures and your magic wands, because the conclusion to the Harry Potter saga is upon us, in iOS LEGO form. It’s Harry Potter: Year 5-7, and it includes lots of things to do, including kicking Voldemort’s butt and learning the ins and outs of magical combat. It’s the week’s best game, and it’s joined by some pretty great titles that you should also grab this weekend. Check them all out below.
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
The follow-up to the first LEGO Harry Potter title, Years 5-7 wraps up the story of Harry Potter as seen in the films, and brings a console-level action experience to the iTunes App Store. At its core is the story-based experience in which players work through to take on Voldemort and learn and master new skills. The game has been optimized for touch controls and there is the ability to score points, which can be tracked on LEGO Harry Potter’s Game Center leaderboards. The game also includes a “duel mode” that has players pitted against a single opponent in magical combat.
Brainsss (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
First there were games about killing zombies; now there are games about being zombies. Brainsss is one of the latter, and it’s something of an action-strategy game in which you command a zombie horde that moves through various levels, gobbling the brains of nearby humans and adding them to their zombie army ranks. As such, you’ll need to be careful about how you allocate your zombie forces, using them to box-in the faster humans so that they can’t flee, and in general thinking about how to clear each level as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s refreshing to play as the other half of the zombie game equation for once, and Brainsss supplies some interesting strategy-type puzzler moments.
Ski Safari (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Endless runner-esque Ski Safari is hard to put down once you pick it up. The game has you running away from an avalanche by skiing down a mountain, but you’re not particularly fast. To increase your skills, you need to perform tricks – namely backflips – as well as collect coins and enlist the help of animals and machines you can catch on the way down. Ski Safari is just complex enough to be interesting, with lots of different ways to score points and lots of mini-objectives to complete, but it’s still simple enough to be fun and easygoing. Tapping the screen makes you jump, holding on the screen makes you flip, simple as that. The goal is to land as flush with the ground as possible in a manner similar to Tiny Wings. Ski Safari will keep you coming back to beat a new mission or score more points, so be warned.
Saving Private Sheep 2 (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Physics puzzler Saving Private Sheep 2 takes elements of the Angry Birds formula and rethinks them. Instead of just flinging an object at destructible objects, Saving Private Sheep instead has you passing your ammunition to various points and people to prepare your offense. Along the way are plenty of collectibles you can grab to increase your score at the end of each level, but the real challenge is getting yours hedgehog missile to the spot where it can be fired at an enemy wolf, who has swallowed a sheep whole. Get there, score points along the way, and don’t lose too many hedgehogs – those are your goals.
Polymer (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
The goal of puzzler Polymer is to create completed groups, starting with an enclosed end and including as many pieces as the players can until a timer runs out. The goal isn’t to match the game’s polymers by color or any other characteristic, just whether they’d fit onto other polymers in order to score points. It’s an interesting take on the standard match-three gameplay type, with all your polymers arranged on a grid that requires you to slide each tile – and all the tiles in the same row or column – along with it. The more you play, the more polymer pieces and game modes you unlock.
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