When we reviewed the ASUS ZenFone 2 — or, at least one of them — this year we noted that for an unlocked phone, this thing sure had quite the bloatware. The company sure loves packing on those feel-good additions where possible but this one might just take the cake, especially when we’re talking about the fuss iOS is ...
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Samsung is the biggest mobile phone manufacturer by volume and most of those phones, it turns out, end up selling for less than $250 or $200. Insurgent competitor Apple definitely has the profits from planting fat margins onto its products. It’s also been closing the gap in shipments, but it still has a ways to go.So, the chaebol may ...
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The success of WhatsApp is a bit of a miracle. Despite lacking any ties to an existing platform or major service, the messaging app managed to grab the interest of smartphone users in a way few other apps have, and the massive user base it grew to command was enough to convince Facebook to spend a jaw-dropping $19B acquiring the company last year. In the time since then, we’ve seen WhatsApp expand beyond text to also ...
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It’s Christmas Eve, and unsurprisingly, that means a lot of the tech news world has already packed up for the holidays and dialed things back to skeleton-crew levels. While that has the result of not a ton of new action going on, it’s thankfully giving us a chance to catch up on some of the events of the past few days that managed to slip by on first pass. We’ve already been looking at some new Marshmallow updates hitting devices today, and now we’re checking in with one that started landing a littler earlier this week, as NVIDIA delivers Android 6.0 to its Shield ...
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The idea of being able to access certain online services without that data counting against your monthly wireless data allotment is a super-controversial one right now, with moves like T-Mobile’s BingeOn program bringing what’s known as zero-rated data to the public’s attention. Even as the FCC starts taking a closer look at the practice, more and more players are interested in getting involved themselves, and Verizon’s recently indicated that it’s looking into sponsored data ...
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Watch today’s Pocketnow Daily as we talk about the Google Play year-end deals in both apps, streaming music and even books. Then we discuss the the unlocked HTC One M9 and how you can get Android 6.0 Marshmallow today, in addition to another update coming to the HTC One A9. Then we discuss the possible Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4 and what to expect. YouTube follows as the company isn’t happy with T-Mobile’s way of degrading the quality of its video. We end today’s show talking about how a Chinese carrier pretty much told us when the iPhone mini will launch.All this and ...
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Microsoft is not having a ton of luck when it comes to the company’s own hardware lately; as if the issues with the Lumia 950 XL weren’t bad enough – problems so bad they’re driving some retailers to stop sales – we’ve also seen some seriously glitchy operation from the company’s latest Windows 10 devices, with both the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book suffering from all manner of unwanted ...
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How many mobile operating systems can the market sustain? Right now we’ve got two major players, a third with a lot of potential (and serious backing), a fourth that just can’t seem to die, and a fragmented assortment of hangers on, none yet to achieve real mainstream success. 2015’s been especially hard on those upstarts, and in recent weeks we haven’t just seen Sailfish OS hit hard times, but Firefox OS throw in the towel, with
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Nintendo, not wanting to be left out of the Christmas festivities, brought one of Mario's greatest outings to the Wii U.
Super Mario Galaxy is out now on the Virtual Console for $19.99 (approx. £13/AU$27). The downloadable version requires a Wii Remote and Nunchuck controller to play just like the original Wii version, so make sure you have those on hand before you party like it's 2007.
The release of Nintendo's critically-acclaimed platformer fills in a gap left on the Wii U after the release of its successor, Super Mario Galaxy 2, made its way to the Virtual Console almost a year ago.
Not only is one of the portly plumber's best games back for a new audience, but the Christmas Eve release also ensures a last-minute gift idea for the Nintendo devout in your life.
We get it: 2015 is almost over and you don’t want to start a new year with your phone still running Android Lollipop. And while manufacturers are coming along nicely with distribution of Marshmallow updates, sometimes it feels like whatever phone you carry is always coming up last on that list. For Samsung Galaxy S6 owners, an early chance to make the journey to Marshmallow arrived a couple days back, as users first in South Korea, and later in the UK, were invited to ...
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Some of you are too young to remember the early days of computing. Back in the 1980’s most of us ran MS-DOS. In this environment your user interface was a black screen with a flashing white cursor (or some other color combination). From there you’d type a command to launch whatever program you wanted to run. That program might have been a word processor, a spreadsheet, an encyclopedia, a game, or some other “app”. Not only could you only run one program at a time, you had to exit out of it if you wanted to switch to another one. Yeah, try writing a research paper ...
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For advertisers, Christmas is the busiest time of year. When else is there an event that makes almost everyone happy that you can tie your brand to?
Better still, Christmas is in the public domain so it isn't like Santa or Jesus can sign an exclusive deal with McDonalds or Coke for the rights each year (although there are some conspiracy theories...)
So we thought it was about time to take a look back, at some of the best and worst festive TV mobile device adverts. But here's the thing… we're leaving it to you to decide which is the best and the worst.
To paraphrase the well known meme, infamous 1980s hardman Chuck Norris doesn't mortgage his dignity for a quick buck… he had no dignity in the first place.
And so we start in the Czech Republic where the action star appeared in a campaign for T-Mobile (which still exists outside of the UK). In the below advert, someone tries to demonstrate their dominance over Norris… with predictable conclusions.
The campaign ran across a number of adverts - each as presumably hilarious in Czech as the last.
If you're looking to meet someone special this Christmas, then make sure you've got a stupid massive phone strapped to your wrist. The Samsung Galaxy Gear will make you irresistible, according to this video from Samsung's 2013 "Are you Geared Up?" campaign.
Want a woman's number? Why not secretly ask for it under the false pretense of demonstrating a feature on your smartwatch? But of course, if you really want to endear her to you, then don't forget to take crappy secret photos of her from behind as she snowboards downhill.
What is it about rubbish 80s celebrities and T-Mobile? In this video for the company that now forms half of EE in the UK, a group of acapella singers (who apparently featured in an earlier ad), for some reason visit David Hasselhoff in his pantomime dressing room, and sing a medley of Christmas songs together.
At least this was 2010 - if it had happened a couple of years later it would have been the grimly inevitable Christmas Gangnam Style parody.
We didn't mean to feature quite so many contributions from T-Mobile, but say what you will about the company but it knows how to make a Christmas impression. And this might be the weird one yet.
This video features actual US CEO John LeGerre sitting in a big chair in front of a roaring fire - Jackanory style. But then his Christmas tale takes a rather more polemical turn than you might expect - attacking rival phone networks and ending with a sweary crescendo. Merry Christmas… we guess.
This ad from Samsung's "Christmas round ours" campaign last year features the bulky Gear S hidden in between twee family scenes suggesting you should submit to the power of Samsung and all of its many, many products.
But what's more remarkable is that it literally features guys in the pub joking about how heavy and massive the Gear S is - and how strong you have to be to use it. Self burn?
Another Samsung advert and this one is a rather risqué approach to promoting the Galaxy's NFC file transfer functionality on the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2.
In the video, the elves transfer a video for Santa to watch while on his sleigh… and then Mrs Claus does the same, and recommends he probably not watch it while at work. Filth.
Apple's 2013 Christmas advert is a surprisingly wholesome affair. No ultra-trendy hipsters dancing here - this time it is all about family. In the ad, we see a family sat around a TV watching clips that had been shot on an iPhone - with all of the emotion that entails.
Of course, what it doesn't show is the 20 minutes of hassle while they have to work out how to pair the iPhone with the Apple TV, and then the Wi-Fi dropping out after streaming demands too much bandwidth.
Samsung has announced the Galaxy A9 in China, and it sports a huge 6-inch screen and massive 4,000mAh battery, proving the rumors correct.
While the Galaxy A9's 1080p Super AMOLED display positions the new handset firmly in the phablet category, the screen is also 2.5D curved glass.
With metal frames and a glass back similar to the Galaxy S6, it also sports a 13-megapixel primary camera and a front-facing, 8-megapixel secondary camera.
The handset is powered by a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 652 processor, along with 3GB RAM and an impressive 4,000mAh, which dwarfs the Galaxy S6's 2550mAh battery.
Users will get 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot, and an embedded fingerprint sensor in the home button.
Pricing has still yet to be announced, which might not matter as, though the Galaxy A9 will be available in China later this month, there's no word yet on if, or when, it'll be released in other regions worldwide.
No-one predicted the meteoric rise of gaming on iOS, and we're not sure anyone knew what the iPad was for at all when it first appeared.
However, Apple's tablet has become a very able gaming platform. With more screen space than the iPhone, games have the means to be more immersive. The iPad's therefore a perfect platform for adventure games, strategy titles and puzzlers.
But, just like the iPhone, there are so many iPad games that it's tough to unearth the gems and avoid the dross. That's our mission here - to bring you the very best iPad games, mixing traditional fare with titles that could only have appeared on a capable and modern multi-touch device.
Often, platform games have you reach new places by majestically leaping about and occasionally jumping on a cute enemy's head. Not so in Shadow Bug, where a deranged insect ninja speeds about by slashing foes with swords. To be fair, he's surrounded by horrors, and so perhaps stabbing someone in this nightmarish world is simply a way of saying hello.
This means of getting around — just tap to move to an enemy and slice them up — infuses Shadow Bug with a Sonic-style manic pace, but the game is also about puzzle-like pathfinding.
It's an interesting combination, although Shadow Bug is never afraid to shake things up, with one early set piece finding the slashy insect merrily bludgeoning its way across the landscape while driving a kind of ramshackle tank that squashes everything in its path.
The idea behind Dreii is apparently to explore skill, logic and friendship, happening by way of you controlling strange flying creatures that pick up shapes using tethers. These shapes must be stacked to reach a light for a few seconds, after which point your floating avatar briefly celebrates before moving on to the next challenge.
Even the earliest levels are quite engaging, due to the delicate controls and slightly bouncy physics. But Dreii revels in throwing curveballs. Before long, you find yourself faced with levels that require multiple people to complete — only you can barely communicate with other players who enter the room.
Imagine assembling flatpack furniture with several friends, while everyone's gagged and wearing boxing gloves and a jet-pack and you're most of the way there.
Traditional platform games often fare poorly on iPad, but Traps n' Gemstones bucks the trend. Its approach is resolutely old-school, from the on-screen controls to the Metroid-style gameplay that involves exploring a huge interconnected world, opening up new passageways by finding and correctly using objects.
The theme, though, is more Indiana Jones. A little chap, armed with a whip and with a fedora on his head, leaps about a pyramid, grabs loot, and gives mummies and snakes a good whipping. Interestingly, the game simultaneously manages to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers.
Progress doesn't reset, meaning you can keep getting killed but gradually work your way into the bowels of the pyramid. But your score reverts to zero when you come a cropper; getting into the thousands is therefore a big challenge for those who want to take it.
There's a hint of classic iOS puzzler The Room about _PRISM, although this game propels the concept into a futuristic sci-fi setting. Each of the 13 puzzles finds you staring at a floating shape in a star-lit void. Close inspection reveals buttons, switches and levers. Manipulating these transforms the shape before your eyes, and you keep fiddling and delving deeper until a crystal is given up.
It's a quite meditative experience, although it's also quite easy and fairly short. Still, the sense of discovery throughout is frequently enchanting, even if you do sometimes end up playing finger Twister to reach a number of switches, or spinning a shape multiple times for a lever you could have sworn was visible earlier.
Love You to Bits has a heart as big as a thousand iPads. It's a tap-based adventure that finds a little space explorer trying to retrieve pieces of his android girlfriend that have been scattered across the galaxy.
The mechanics are right out of classic point-and-click gaming, essentially having you amble about 2D locations, unearth items and then drop them in the right spot.
But the game is so relentlessly creative and inventive with its environments — full of dazzling visuals, references to movies and other games, and increasingly clever mechanics and ideas — that you can't help but love it to bits yourself.
The little monster at the heart of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, wants some friends, and so sets about making them from crisp snow covering the ground. But as the game's title states, making snowman is hard — largely because of strict rules governing the monster's universe. Snowmen must comprise precisely three balls of gradually decreasing size, and any snowball rolled in the snow quickly grows. A Good Snowman therefore becomes a series of brain-bending puzzles - part Soko-Ban, part Towers of Hanoi - as you figure out how to manipulate balls of snow to build icy friends for a monster to hug.
You get the feeling creators of classic vertically scrolling shooters would sit in front of AirAttack 2 in a daze, dumbfounded at what's possible on modern home-computing devices. That's not down to the gameplay, though: like its predecessor, AirAttack 2 is a straightforward shooter - you're piloting a fighter in World War II, downing enemies while optionally yelling "tally ho" at an annoyingly loud volume.
But this World War II is decidedly different from the one that occurred in our reality: Germans own limitless squadrons and building-sized tanks (versus the Allies, seemingly relying on a single nutcase in a plane to win the war). It's the jaw-dropping visuals that really dazzle, effortlessly displaying swarms of enemies to down, colossal bosses to defeat, and a destructible environment to take out your frustrations on. For the low price (not least given that there's no IAP whatsoever), it's an insane bargain.
The first Badland combined the simplicity of one-thumb 'copter'/flappy games with the repeating hell of Limbo. It was a stunning, compelling title, pitting a little winged protagonist against all kinds of crazy ordeals in a forest that had clearly gone very wrong.
In Badland 2, the wrongness has been amplified considerably. Now, levels scroll in all directions, traps are deadlier, puzzles are tougher, and the cruelty meted out on the little winged beast is beyond compare. Still, all is not lost - the hero can now flap left and right. We're sure that comes as a huge consolation when it's sawn in half for the hundredth time.
We mention The Room and its sequel elsewhere in this list, but The Room Three is the best entry in the series yet. Again, this is a somewhat Myst-like game of exploration and puzzle-solving, figuring out how to escape your environment by utilising everything around you.
But there's more freedom this time round, with multi-room locations, surreal and deeply strange moments that find you sucked into the very puzzles you're trying to solve, and the creeping menace of The Craftsman, a malevolent nutcase who initially leaves you locked in a dungeon, and then tasks you with freeing yourself from the confines of the remote island on which you're stranded. One to play in the dark, with rain pouring down outside - if you dare.
This single-screen platformer initially resembles a tribute to arcade classics Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros., but Drop Wizard is a very different beast. It's part auto-runner, which might infuriate retro-gamers, but this proves to be a brilliant limitation in practice. Your little wizard never stops running, and emits a blast of magic each time he lands. You must therefore time leaps to blast roaming foes, and then boot the dazed creatures during a second pass. It's vibrant, fast-paced, engaging, and — since you only need to move left or right — nicely optimised for iPad play.
Every release of Football Manager for iPad has found the series moving a little closer to the PC incarnation. Now, Football Manager Touch 2016 gives you something that marries the complexity and depth you'd expect from such a title with an interface suitable for a tablet. There are some flaws: long load times; a certain amount of fiddliness; a whiff of IAP lurking to 'boost your bank balance'. On the whole, though, this is more 'top of the league' than 'own goal'.
Since it rebooted Robotron-style twin-stick blasting, the Geometry Wars series has been the go-to game for a session of duffing up hordes of neon ships. Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved takes the basic concept and wraps it around 3D shapes lurching and spinning in space. It disorients but brings a new dimension (pun intended) to the genre, and is one of the prettiest and noisiest games on the system. If you're armed with an iPad Pro, you even get a co-op mode.
A murder mystery inside a rickety old PC, itself inside your iPad, Her Story is one of the most intriguing titles around. It plonks you in front of the L.O.G.I.C. Database, a creaky old system that returns snippets of police interviews in relation to search terms. Helpfully, you can only access five at once, even if there are many more results (the joys of 1990s interface design!), but this forces you to delve deeper. Before long, you'll be scribbling notes, eking out clues from every other sentence, and realising there's more to every mystery than meets the eye.
One of the most beautiful games we've ever seen, Icycle: On Thin Ice also has a penchant for the surreal. It features naked hero Dennis, peddling through a strange and deadly post-apocalyptic frozen wonderland. Each level feels like a scene from a Gilliamesque animation, but on venturing further into madness, you'll note how tight the level design is — any failures are down to your fingers rather than the game. At the tail end of 2015, seven new locations arrived, so you could discover what happens at the end of the end of the world.
Much in the same way Hitman GO reworked a much-loved franchise for mobile, Lara Croft GO transforms Tomb Raider into a dinky turn-based boardgame of sorts. It shouldn't work, but the result is wonderful — all minimal, breathtaking visuals, and smart puzzles that present a challenge but rarely stop you for too long in continuing your journey. Most amazingly, it feels like a proper Tomb Raider game, with moments of wonder, and palpable tension when you mull over whether your next move will send Lara tumbling into the abyss.
Because of the nature of touchscreen controls, there's a tendency to slow things down on iOS. ALONE… throws such caution to the wind, flinging you along at Retina-searing speed as you try in vain to save a little ship hurtling through rocky caverns of doom. This is a game that's properly exciting, and where every narrow escape feels like a victory; that all you're doing is dragging a finger up and down is testament to you not needing a gamepad and complex controls to create a game that genuinely thrills.
It turns out the future will involve hoverboards, only it'll be robots piloting them. In Power Hover, all the humans are gone, but so too are the batteries that power your robot village. So you hop on your flying board and pursue a thief through 30 varied and visually stunning levels. Whether scything curved paths across a gorgeous sun-drenched sea or picking your way through a grey and dead human city, Power Hover will have you glued to the screen until you reach the end of the journey.
A love letter to trees. A game about the beauty and joy of cultivation. These aren't words that would usually scream 'amazing game'. But Prune is a unique and frequently remarkable experience. It starts simply, teaching you how to prune a tiny branch, so a plant can grow to reach the sunlight and blossom. Before long, you're responsible for cultivating huge trees that arc past poisonous floating orbs, dealing with fragile foliage in unforgiving cities, and coaxing unruly underground weeds towards their prize.
If you've ever felt a bit angry at the end of a long day in the office, take solace in the fact you've never felt quite as miffed as the stars of The Executive. Stress levels have reached the point everyone's mutated into monsters. Fortunately, the CEO's remained cool-headed and can now become the karate-kicking superhero he always wanted to be. Cue: 120 hand-crafted levels where you dart about the place, kicking werewolves in the face, leaping between floors, and marvelling at the bewitching ridiculousness of it all.
At some point, a total buffoon decreed that racing games should be dull and grey, on grey tracks, with grey controls. Gameloft's Asphalt series dispenses with such foolish notions, along with quite a bit of reality. Here, in Asphalt 8, you zoom along at ludicrous speeds, drifting for miles through exciting city courses, occasionally being hurled into the air to perform stunts that absolutely aren't acceptable according to the car manufacturer's warranty.
At its core, Badland echoes copter-style games, in that you prod the screen to make your avatar fly. But the hazards and traps are devious and plentiful: imaginative and deadly contraptions in silhouette, ready to eliminate any passing creature. Your retaliation comes in cloning your flying monster, and figuring out how to manipulate the environment to bring as many clones home as possible.
We've lost count of how many gem-swappers exist for iOS, but PopCap's Bejeweled has a long history, which brings a maturity that's reflected in this iPad release. Along with a polished standard mode, where you match three or more gems with each swap, there's Diamond Mine (dig into the ground), Butterflies (save insects from spider-ronch doom), and Poker (make 'hands' of gems).
This fantastic platform puzzler stars a bug who's oddly averse to flying. Instead, he gets about 2D levels by rolling around in boxes full of platforms. Beyond Ynth HD hangs on a quest, but each level forms a devious test, where you must figure out precisely how to reach the end via careful use of boxes, switches and even environmental hazards.
A pilot finds himself trapped inside a tiny area of space frequented by an alarming number of deadly asteroids. You must stave off death for as long as possible. Bit Pilot is the best of the iOS avoid 'em ups, with precise one- and two-thumb controls guiding your tiny ship, effortlessly dodging between rocky foes — until the inevitable collision.
As much a warning about digital surveillance as a word-based puzzler, Blackbar is a unique and compelling iOS classic. The game comprises single screens of communications, many involving your friend who's gone to work in the city, which you soon learn is part of a worryingly oppressive society. Your job is to literally fill in the blanks, while becoming immersed in a stark dystopian reality that's fortunately still peppered with warmth, humour and humanity.
Blek is akin to shepherding semi-sentient calligraphy through a series of dexterity tests. Each sparse screen has one or more dots that need collecting, which is achieved by drawing a squiggle that's then set in motion. To say the game can be opaque is putting it lightly, but as a voyage of discovery, there are few touchscreen games that come close.
In what we assume is a totally accurate representation of what boffins in Geneva get up to, Boson X finds scientists sprinting inside colliders, running over energy panels and then discovering particles by leaping into the abyss. It's equal parts Super Hexagon, Tempest and Canabalt, and it's very addictive indeed.
Botanicula is another excellent adventure from the brains behind Machinarium, this time featuring a little group of tree creatures on a quest to save the last seed from their home, which is infested with parasites. Puzzles abound as you keep the seed safe while marvelling at the gorgeous environments. Although the point-and-click-style mechanics might be familiar, Botanicula is nonetheless a unique and joyful gaming experience.
CRUSH! is deceptive. At first, it appears to be little more than a collapse game, where you prod a coloured tile, only for the rest to collapse into the now empty space. But subtle changes to the formula elevate this title to greatness: the tiles wrap around, and each removal sees your pile jump towards a line of death. So even when tiles are moving at speed, you must carefully consider each tap.
Device 6 is first and foremost a story — a mystery into which protagonist Anna finds herself propelled. She awakes on an island, but where is she? How did she get there? Why can't she remember anything? The game fuses literature with adventuring, the very words forming corridors you travel along, integrated puzzles being dotted about for you to investigate. It's a truly inspiring experience, an imaginative, ambitious and brilliantly realised creation that showcases how iOS can be the home for something unique and wonderful.
Eliss was the first game to truly take advantage of iOS's multi-touch capabilities, with you combining and tearing apart planets to fling into like-coloured and suitably-sized wormholes. This semi-sequel brings the original's levels into glorious Retina and adds a totally bonkers endless mode. Unique, challenging and fun, this is a game that defines the platform.
First Strike bills itself as the fun side of nuclear war, but there's a sting in its tail. The game mixes Risk-like land-grabs, a Civ-style tech-tree, and defence akin to Missile Command, your missiles aiming to intercept incoming strikes. Sooner or later, though, you realise the only way to win is to go all-out, sacrificing territory and obliterating your opponents. Just like the classic Missile Command, First Strike remains a playable game, but it's one with a chilling message that comes through loud and clear — at least when it's not buried under radioactive crackles.
Forget-Me-Not is like one of those ice creams you get with every kind of candy imaginable, but instead of sugary treats, the sprinkles here are all the best arcade games of old. There's Pac-Man dot-munching, Rogue dungeon-roaming, nods to Caterpillar, Wizard of Wor and more. It's a glorious, madcap neon-drenched slice of perfect arcade fare, deserving a lofty position in gaming's history alongside the more famous games that inspired it.
We loved the original Frisbee Forever and this sequel is essentially more of the same. Fling your plastic disc away, guide it through hoops, collect stars, and make it to the finish line. What makes Frisbee Forever 2 really stand out is the lush locations you get to fly through, including ancient ruins and beautiful snowy hillsides.
It's great to see Square Enix do something entirely different with Hitman GO, rather than simply converting its free-roaming £D game to touchscreens. Although still echoing the original series, this touchscreen title is presented as a board game of sorts, with turn-based actions against clockwork opposition. You must figure out your way to the prize, without getting knocked off (the board). It's an oddly adorable take on assassination, and one of the best iOS puzzlers.
There are other famous swiping games on iOS — Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja spring to mind — but Icebreaker has oodles more charm, loads more character and, importantly, better puzzles. The animated, cartoon-like world feels alive under your fingers as you cut ice blocks, rope, slime and more to return helmeted chums to a waiting boat.
A roller-coaster ribbon of road winds through space, and your only aim is to stay on it and reach the highest-numbered gate. But Impossible Road is sneaky: the winding track is one you can leave and rejoin, if you've enough skill, 'cheating' your way to higher scores. It's like the distillation of Super Monkey Ball, Rainbow Road and queue-jumping, all bundled up in a stark, razor-sharp package.
There is a hint of Lemmings in Kiwanuku, this sweet-natured action puzzler.. You must guide a little tribe to freedom, using a magical staff to make bridges from the citizens themselves. They're left behind as you bolt for each level's exit, presumably thrilled at their assisting your escape, if less thrilled that they're now forever fused into an unused pathway across a yawning chasm.
Who knew you could have such fun with a five-by-five grid of letters? In Letterpress, you play friends via Game Center, making words to colour lettered squares. Surround any and they're out of reach from your friend's tally. Cue: word-tug-o'-war, last-minute reversals of fortune, and arguments about whether 'qat' is a real word or not (it is).
A boy awakens in hell, and must work his way through a deadly forest. Gruesome deaths and trial and error gradually lead to progress, as he forces his way deeper into the gloom and greater mystery. Originating on the Xbox, this Limbo fares surprisingly well on iOS, with smartly designed controls. Its eerie beauty and intriguing environments remain hypnotic throughout.
A game that could have been called Reverse Pool For Show-Offs, Magnetic Billiards lacks pockets. Instead, the aim is to join like-coloured balls that cling together on colliding. Along the way, you get more points for trick shots and 'buzzing' other balls that must otherwise be avoided. 20 diverse tables are provided for free, and many more can be unlocked for $1.99/£1.49.
In Monument Valley, you journey through delightful Escher-like landscapes, manipulating the very architecture to build impossible paths along which to explore. It's not the most challenging of games (nor does it have the most coherent of storylines), but each scene is a gorgeous and mesmerising bite-sized experience that showcases how important great craft is in the best iOS titles.
Racing games are all very well, but too many aim for simulation rather than evoking the glorious feeling of speeding along like a maniac. Most Wanted absolutely nails the fun side of arcade racing, and is reminiscent of classic console title OutRun 2 in enabling you to drift effortlessly for miles. Add to that varied city streets on which to best rivals and avoid (or smash) the cops, and you've got a tremendous iOS racer.
This superb arcade puzzler is at times microscopic and at others galactic in nature, as you use the power of physics and time to move your 'mote' about. Some levels in Osmos are primordial soup, the mote propelled by ejecting bits of itself, all the while aiming to absorb everything around it. Elsewhere, motes circle sun-like 'Attractors', and your challenge becomes one of understanding the intersecting trajectories of orbital paths.
The iPhone's a bit small for pinball, but the larger iPad screen is perfect for a bit of ball-spanging. Pinball Arcade is the go-to app for realistic pinball, because it lovingly and accurately recreates a huge number of classic tables. Tales of the Arabian Nights is bundled for free, and the likes of Twilight Zone, Black Knight, Bride of PinBot and Star Trek: The Next Generation are available via in-app purchase.
Yes, we know there's a Plants vs. Zombies 2, but some dolt infected that with a pointless time-travel gimmick and a freemium business model. The charming, amusing, silly and sweet original remains where it's at. For the uninitiated, in Plants vs Zombies you repel zombies with the power of hostile plants. Countless other defence titles exist for iOS, but PopCap's classic is still the best.
QatQi starts off a bit like Scrabble in the dark, until you figure out that you're really immersed in a kind of Roguelike mash-up. So although the aim is to make crosswords from a selection of letters, you're also tasked with exploring dungeons to find score-boosting stars and special tiles.
In Royal Revolt, the king is dead and his siblings have stolen his kingdom while the prince was at school. Unfortunately for them, he was studying magic and is now out for revenge. The game itself is a real-time-strategy effort with some seriously cute and well-animated graphics.
This sort-of-Tetris has you drop sets of coloured blocks into a well. Tactics are of paramount importance, since you can move only one block for each new line of junk that's introduced. Slydris therefore becomes an ongoing challenge, a deceptively deep slice of strategy, gravity, block management and combos.
If you find catharsis in smashing things, Smash Hit will leave you in a totally blissed-out state. You float through the void, lobbing metal balls at glass objects, clearing a path and chaining collisions. Over time, the paths become increasingly complex, the camera begins to whirl, and the shots get very demanding, depleting your meagre resources. A single one-time 'premium' IAP upgrade exists should you want to start out on any sections of the journey you've managed to already reach.
This fantastic word game starts off easy. You get a grid of letters and remove them by dragging out words. Your only foe in SpellTower is gravity, letters falling into empty space as completed words disappear. But then come new modes, with ferocious timers and numbered letters that won't vanish unless you craft long enough words. And there always seem to be too many Vs!
A regimented game set in a world of microbes, Splice is all about arranging said microbes to fit within predefined outlines. Restrictions abound, based on binary trees, forcing you to think ahead regarding where to drop your microbes and when to splice them. Grasp the basic mechanics and the game opens up, but it never relinquishes its devious edge, later introducing freeform microbes, and those that grow and vaporise.
Ah, Super Hexagon. We remember that first game, which must have lasted all of three seconds. Much like the next — and the next. But then we recognised patterns in the walls that closed in on our tiny ship, and learned to react and dodge. Then you threw increasingly tough difficulty levels at us, and we've been smitten ever since.
The original Monsters Ate My Condo was like Jenga and a match-three game shoved into a blender with a massive dollop of crazy. Super Monsters Ate My Condo is a semi-sequel which takes a time-attack approach, shoe-horning the bizarre tower-building/floor-matching/monster-feeding into a tiny amount of time, breaking your brain in the process.
If you've often thought golf would be much better if it was played on Mars, or in a giant castle, or in dank caverns with glue-like surfaces, Super Stickman Golf 2 is the game for you. Its side-on charms echo Angry Birds in its artillery core, but this is a far smarter and more polished game. It also boasts two equally brilliant but different multiplayer modes: one-on-one asynchronous play and frantic multiplayer racing.
Apple's mobile platform has become an unlikely home for traditional point-and-click adventures. Sword & Sworcery has long been a favourite, with its sense of mystery, palpable atmosphere, gorgeous pixel art and an evocative soundtrack. Exploratory in nature, this is a true adventure in the real sense of the word, and it's not to be missed.
There's something wonderfully old-school about The Room, in its Myst-like exploration and sense of mystery. But this is a truly touchscreen experience, with you investigating inexplicable boxes with seemingly infinite nooks and crannies, which unlock to present yet more secrets and routes to explore. An obscure narrative is woven throughout, along with plenty of scares. Devour it greedily, preferably at night, in a dark room, and then take on its more expansive sequel, The Room 2. And when you're done with that, there's The Room 3...
Threes! is all about matching numbered cards. 1s and 2s merge to make 3s, and then pairs of identical cards can subsequently be merged, doubling their face value. With each swipe, a new card enters the tiny grid, forcing you to carefully manage your growing collection and think many moves ahead. The ingenious mix of risk and reward makes it hugely frustrating when you're a fraction from an elusive 1536 card, but so addictive you'll immediately want another go.
Trainyard is another devious puzzler that at first seems a cinch. Initially, you merely drag tracks to lead trains between stations of the same colour. But then rocks enter the fray, along with colour-mixing and train-splitting. Before you know it, you've 14 stations, seven trains, hazards aplenty and an aching brain from figuring out how to get all the trains home safely.
This sweet, endless title stars a bird who loves to fly but doesn't have the wings for it. Instead, she uses gravity, sliding down hills and then propelling herself into the air from the top of adjacent slopes. Meanwhile, in another mode, her offspring are happily racing, bounding over lakes, eager to earn the biggest fish from their mother. Whichever route you take, Tiny Wings is a vibrant, warm and friendly experience.
You can almost see the development process behind this one: "Hey, fingers look a bit like legs, so if we put a skateboard underneath…" And so arrived one of the finest iOS sports titles, with you using your fingers to roam urban locations and perform gnarly stunts. Admittedly, this game is tricky to master, but it's hugely rewarding when you do so, and video highlights can be shared with your friends. The game's also a great example of touchscreen-oriented innovation — Touchgrind Skate just wouldn't be the same with a traditional controller.
We do like a good zombie yarn, as long as we're not the subject matter, having just had our brains eaten. Walking Dead successfully jumped from comic to TV screen, and it's just as good in its interactive incarnation. The first part of the story is free, and you can then buy new episodes; if you survive, season 2 is also available.
It didn't begin life on the iPad, but World of Goo certainly makes sense on it. A bewitching game of physics puzzles and bridge building, the title also has real heart at its core. Through powerful imagery, haunting audio and the odd moment of poignancy, you find yourself actually caring about little blobs of goo, rather than merely storming through the game's many levels.
Year Walk preceded the same developer's iOS masterpiece Device 6, but is equally daring. It's a first-person adventure of sorts, with more than a nod towards horror literature and, frankly, the just plain weird. It's unsettling, clever, distinctive and beautifully crafted — another unmissable and original touchscreen creation.
More pinball! This one's a bit less realistic than Gameprom's efforts, but Zen Pinball is very pretty, with a bright and exciting free table, Sorcerer's Lair. Further tables are available via in-app purchase, including some Marvel-themed and surprisingly great Star Wars efforts, but the sole freebie should keep pinball addicts happily sated for a while.
Asus is heading into the New Year with a resolution to reduce ads, announcing that future mobile devices put out by the company will ship with AdBlock Plus installed on its proprietary web browser.
Shutting down advertisements is nothing new in the mobile sphere. Eyeo GmbH, the company behind AdBlock Plus, put out browsers of its own for iOS and Android.
What makes Asus' decision unique is that Adblock Plus will be integrated into its own browser and devices will ship with the ad-filtering software activated as the default. Some users could buy an Asus phone or tablet starting in early 2016 and never realize that ads are being removed.
While Asus has a relatively small installment base for its own browser, reportedly around 15 million users, positive reception could entice bigger browsers like Chrome or Safari to take ad-blocking measures of their own.
Similar to using AdBlock Plus on desktop browsers, non-obtrusive ads approved by the software will be visible, allowing web outlets to receive revenue. However, non-vetted ads like pop-ups, which are particularly annoying or potentially rife with malware, will be shut down.
