Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson have titles among this week’s best games, and the games bearing the two sports giants’ names live up to the reputations they’re trying to support. Our favorite game was the deep and engaging Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, the latest Tiger Woods game and a powerful edition in the series. Following that was an updated version of the NES classic Punch-Out!, which just about every nostalgic gamer will fall in love with, and Death Race, another 1990s throwback that’s received great treatment on iOS. Read about them, and more, below.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
Yup, you get to take on Tiger Woods — again — in this new iOS update of the biggest golf franchise in gaming. Everything has been made better this time around with Tiger: touchscreen controls allow for a lot of precision for the angle and power behind your shots and the addition of spin to the ball, and you can play as Tiger Woods or as one of a handful of other PGA tour personalities. There’s also a multiplayer element that lets you compete against Facebook friends in “Closest to the Pin” challenges, allowing you to see how you stack up in virtual golf against your friends. There’s lots to do here, with beautiful graphics and plenty of depth — golf fans will be pleased.
Death Rally (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
Shooting stuff and racing — two awesome concepts — married in Death Rally with high-quality graphics. It’s based on developer Remedy Games’ 1996 PC original, giving you a top-down perspective on race tracks as you blast away at your opponents. The more races you win, the more money you earn, which you can dump into new cars and weapons you unlock along the way to make them more powerful and dangerous. The better your performance in races and the more cars you scrap along the way, the more money you’ll pull down. Death Rally is already pretty fun, but Remedy has pledged future updates with more tracks and a multiplayer mode, which will make this a very full package.
Mike Tyson – Main Event (iPhone, iPad) Free
A modern OS update of the Nintendo Entertainment System classic Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! is on-hand in Mike Tyson – Main Event, and that’s very much something to get excited about. Take to the ring with virtual buttons on the iPhone or iPad’s touchscreen and pound away at your opponents by using blocking and dodging to dance around their punches, then come back with stinging hits. You get 10 fights for the cost of nothing, along with taking on the champ, Mike Tyson, at the game’s climax. You can also earn money to purchase new gear and clothing along the way.
Snowboard Hero (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
Navigate alpine slopes with tilt controls, perform tricks and rack up high scores in Snowboard Hero, a 3D snowboarding game sporting the kind of gameplay you might expect to see in EA Sports’ SSX series on console platforms. Each course has a different requirement — like finishing quickly, slaloming through gates or performing cool tricks — and the better you do on each one, the more cash you earn to buy new equipment for your snowboarder. As time goes on and you improve, you’ll also unlock new characters, each with differing stats and specialties. There’s a lot of the kind of gameplay here that players would expect from a full console or handheld release, which makes Snowboard Hero a great example of a strong game on iOS.
Trenches Free For All (iPhone, iPad) Free
Trenches was already a great 2D castle defense-style game on the iPhone and iPad. In it, you had to summon various types of troops to defend your half of a World War I battlefield from attacking German forces, by hiding in trenches, reinforcing them, and using them to launch attacks on the German line. Eventually, you take over the enemy position and finish the level, by recruiting different kinds of troops to take on the German opposition and employing special attacks like artillery strikes. Now all that cool gameplay, as well as multiplayer and Game Center support, are available to players in a free, ad-supported version. If you don’t already play Trenches, there’s no reason not to grab this version.
