Set throughout the world’s best surfing destinations, the game uses Billabong’s top professional surfers Andy Irons, Taj Burrow, Joel Parkinson and Tiago Pires as ambassadors for the game, who share helpful tips on how to rip and get tubed on waves for maximum performance.

Billabong Surf Trip is the first licensed surfing game on the App Store, and if you believe the press release, there are over 20 different maneuvers you can execute on that piece of wood.  Billabong Surf Trip is slated for a fall release, and we’ll have more information as they become available.

(Click to enlarge screenshots)

Good news for people with iPod touch 2nd gens though: your device is included in the compatible devices list.  This is mostly due to the fact that the iPod touch is a little bit faster than the iPhone because of the lack of phone capabilities.

So for those holding an iPhone 3G or lower, don’t be expecting anymore love from Apple anytime soon.

Solomon’s Boneyard is a prequel to Solomon’s Keep, taking place 23 years before the events of the previous game. Players step into the boots of one of seven young wizards selected by the Wizarding College to end Solomon Dark’s burgeoning reign of terror. Unfortunately for you, failure is inevitable. Anyone having already played Solomon’s Keep already knows that Solomon survives to become a powerful and malevolent sorcerer, and so it makes perfect sense that the Wizarding College’s initial attempts to put him down should come to naught. Indeed, the college’s High Wizard hardly imagines him to be a threat at this point, saying “There’s no promotion in a job this small … [but] maybe our young Mr. Dark will even put up enough of a fight for you to gain a level or two.” And so it is that the Wizarding College, rather than sending a more qualified wizard to perform the task, instead sends a junior wizard: you.

The nature of the game makes perfect sense within the context of the history of the Solomon series. Solomon’s Boneyard is a dual-stick survival action game in which you fend off ever increasing hoards of undead and demonic creatures for as long as possible. Ultimately, you die. And die you must so that Solomon shall live to appear in Solomon’s Keep twenty-three years on. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put up a good fight.

To begin, players choose from amongst four wizards: Sirmin the Wizard, Lucritius the Fire Mage, Aliss the Witch or Morth the Icebender, each possessing different primary and secondary attack skills. Sirmin fires enemy-seeking magic missiles and Aliss casts lightning magic; as their names would imply, Lucritius and Morth cast fire and ice magic respectively.

Despite its lackluster and repetitive environment, Solomon’s Keep managed to shine in having one of the deepest, most robust leveling systems of any game of its kind. Solomon’s Boneyard dutifully follows in that vein with more than thirty skills to master, a new perks system, and the new ice-based primary skill set. On attaining a new experience level, players are offered a random selection of skills from which to choose a single upgrade for their character. Upgrades include the ability to strengthen or otherwise improve attack skills, increase life or mana, increase mana recovery, casting cost, movement speed and more. And because skills are presented at random, your character will never grow the same way twice!

Gold collected during play is persistent and accumulates over the course of many games. When beginning a new game, gold may be spent to unlock perks with which to customize and strengthen your characters, allowing you to increase in power the more you play the game. Gold is also used to unlock the games three additional wizards — Wegnus, Griselda and Vorpus — who possess multiple primary attack skills and who can, beginning at level 5, weld their attacks into powerful new magics.

Likes:

Leveling: Solomon’s Keep had one of the best leveling systems of any game of its kind, and Solomon’s Boneyard takes the concept even further with perks. Mixing and matching skills and perks, developing your character into a devastating beast of a wizard, and smashing the undead hordes beneath the forces of your spellcraft is simply awesome.

The Boneyard: My only complaint against Solomon’s Keep was that the floors of the keep were all identically bland, consisting of nothing more than cold gray stone. By comparison, the boneyard is a magnificent environment. Massive trees surround the boneyard, their branches hanging over and obscuring attackers from view. Gravestones and statues stand solemnly in place, cutting into the glow of your staff and throwing long shadows across the cold earth. Open graves yawn in darkness, and cobblestone footpaths swarm with skeletons and their ilk.

Characters: Solomon’s Boneyard generously provides you seven characters from which to choose after unlocking the three hidden wizards, each with different primary skill sets. I just wish six of them didn’t insist on wearing the cliche, pointy wizard’s hat. Morth at least has good sense to wear a cowl.

OpenFeint Achievements: Ten achievements await, totaling 1,000 points!

Dislikes:

Only One Environment: Like its predecessor, Solomon’s Boneyard has only a single environment, that being the titular boneyard. And while that boneyard is a good deal more atmospheric and impressive than Solomon’s barren keep, it does get old quickly. A few more maps could certainly do the game some good.

Not Much New: If you’ve played Solomon’s Keep, you will be well familiar with nearly all of what Solomon’s Boneyard has to offer. The same enemies and skills as before make a return, and I’ve seen nothing new in my time with the game aside from Morth’s ice spells. Rather than a full game unto itself, it plays more like a dismembered bonus mode from Solomon’s Keep.

Overall, Solomon’s Boneyard is an excellent title and well worth its $0.99 price tag. Fans of dual-stick shooters, survival titles or Solomon’s Keep will definitely want to pick this one up. The depth of the skills and perks makes this one of the coolest survival games in the app store, and beats the hell out of Minigore. While it offers little new content over its predecessor, there are few bones to pick with what’s here. It would have made an excellent DLC survival for Solomon’s Keep, but stands just as well on its own as a separate app.

My only remaining hope is that the third iteration of the series will dispatch our wizards on an epic RPG journey through new and varying environments, full of exciting new foes and challenges! How about it, Raptisoft?

Solomon’s Boneyard is developed by Raptisoft, and available for $0.99. Reviewed at version 1.0 on an iPhone 4.

Firemint has announced that more than three million copies of their infamous line-drawing game have been sold over a period of 18 months; Flight Control stayed within the top 30 paid apps chart for most of the time.

Along with selling over three million copies, Flight Control has landed more than two billion planes, which is 5,000 times more than the landings in L.A.X.  While I don’t see this type of runaway success appear for many games on the App Store, Flight Control’s success is well-deserved and still my favorite line-drawing game.

If this is your first time hearing about Flight Control, be sure to check out our review of Flight Control HD.  You can also check it out on the App Store for $0.99 and the iPad version for $4.99.

Also released today are a few new snazzy screens from Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus.  It seems to have updated graphics and a few other tweaks, as well as another great storyline.  We are anxiously awaiting the release, which should be later this Fall.

Daniel: August was just a month that was waiting to happen.  July nothing really ever happened, but the end of summer ended with a bang with releases such as Dodonpachi Resurrection, Monster Dash, Mirror’s Edge for iPhone, and Zombie Highway.  All of the game I mentioned above have stolen my heart from day one, and it’s safe to say that those are the games that I’ve been playing the most.

August did contain some flops though such as MapleStory: Thief Edition and Knight’s Rush, both of which I did not enjoy at all.

Matt:  August slammed the app store with new releases, with several titles making my shortlist of brilliant releases. Monster Dash channeled Canabalt’s excellence and infused it with mummies, zombies, demons, vampires and machine gun jetpacks! How could you go wrong with that?! Quell blew in like a spring shower on a sudden wind, proving itself as one of the app store’s most transcendental and satisfying puzzlers, with a near perfect difficulty curve. Guns’n'Glory managed to put a new spin on tower defense, breathing new life into a tired genre and in great style. With its western theme, irreverent humor, sweet SNES-era graphics and universal iPad support, Guns’n'Glory is a band of outlaws threatening to steal my heart. The long anticipated Knights Rush finally hit, delivering on the promise of More Games’ nearly year-old promotional title A Quest of Knights Onrush. It’s beautiful and tons of fun, and we expected no less. iShoot 2 has also arrived, the sequel to the smash-hit artillery titles that stands as one of the app store’s greatest success stories, and which led to the rise of free “lite” version releases of games. A dutiful sequel, it improves upon its predecessor in nearly every way, featuring improved graphics and sound, an excellent score, a revamped weapon systems, upgradable tanks, a new campaign mode, Bluetooth multiplayer, universal iPad support and more. If you don’t love it, then you don’t deserve to play it. And speaking of the iPad, Square Enix has finally blessed us with Chaos Rings HD, a game so spectacular and so pretty that I almost don’t mind paying another $16 for the exact same content I already own at a lower resolution on my iPhone.

And Chaos Rings isn’t the only title to receive the HD treatment this month. Highborn HD, Heavy Mach. 2 HD, Air Attack HD, Princess Fury: Arcade Adventure and Hero of Sparta 2 HD all played their part this month in making the iPad a drool-worthy gaming platform. Dinosaur hunting adventure Carnivores also received universal iPad support this month, finally graduating the T-Rex to a screen-size worthy of his terrifying stature.

And finally, because I’m a total fan-boy, I simply cannot rest without giving 100 Rogues an honorable shout-out for the month of August. Quabbus the shopkeeper opened for business this month, adding a whole new dimension to the game. And the fine folk at DinoFarm Games have yet more in store for us to come, so don’t for a moment think I’ll cease singing the game’s praises anytime soon.

My only regret is that few of these games actually received coverage here on the site this month. What can I say? The app store isn’t the only thing that’s been busy. In the meantime, have a banana.

Evan: August was a month with lots of good game releases, but only two games really captivated me- Madden NFL 11 by EA Sports, and Solipskier.

Madden has incredibly good graphics and takes the football gameplay standard to the next level by introducing Gameflow. I have always loved playing football games, but gotten annoyed selecting defensive plays (and occasionally offensive ones). Gameflow analyzes the current situation and picks the best play for you, making the game a very continuous experience. Not only this, but stellar controls, audio, and a few game modes really make the game the most realistic sports simulation available on the iDevice.

Solipskier got a “Buy” in our review of it, but it’s another title where I really just can’t help myself from coming back for more. The side-scrolling “go as far as you can” style gameplay has started to be overused, but this one has something original. You draw the hills of snow so your skier well travel to the right height to pass through flags and tunnels, making your speed faster and faster, rather than following the popular format where you just tap the screen to jump until you fail. Along with a killer soundtrack and very fun pick up and play gameplay this really is a fun title.

Travis: After the drought that was July we saw almost a total reversal of fortune in August. I spent a good amount of time playing a great variety of games this month. I couldn’t even begin to pick a single favorite so I’ve decided to just list off my favorites: Monster Dash, Knights Rush, Meow Meow Happy Fight, Solipskier, Guns’n'Glory and Dodonpachi Resurrection. Since my associates have already mentioned some of the above I will focus on the ones not already discussed.

Monster Dash is a side-scroller a-la Canabalt that differentiates itself in a few critical ways. The first obvious difference is the addition of a gun/weapon system to shoot the monster that are scattered all across the field. The incentive to return over and over again is greatly enhanced by the amount of different stats the game keeps track of through its extensive statistics tracker. With its recent addition of a motorcycle to ride (and of course stats to track associated with it), it’s clear that there is a good future ahead for updates for Monster Dash as well.

Meow Meow Happy Fight caught my attention right away with its very colorful art. This twin stick shooter chose an arena style battle system that I found original and quite engaging. The Japanese-culture centric style feels very natural and fresh. It takes a few battles to get the hang of the game, but once you do it becomes very difficult to put down. I found myself coming back to it throughout the month and will continue to do so for quite some time.

Dodonpachi Resurrection is the next big arcade shooter from Cave Co. that, like Espgaluda II, will absolutely dazzle you with some of the most incredible effects you will ever see displayed on your iDevice. Not surprising at all that it requires 3Gs equivalent powered devices to run at all. If you like insane arcade shooters this game is a shining example of the glory that is the original “shooter”.

]]> http://nodpad.com/2010/09/03/august-favorite-games-of-the-month/feed/ 0 http://nodpad.com/2010/09/03/august-favorite-games-of-the-month/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NoDPad/~3/IDjOYQGMZtU/ http://nodpad.com/2010/09/03/first-impressions-of-rimelands-hammer-of-thor/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:10:18 +0000 Daniel http://nodpad.com/?p=10155 Rimelands takes place in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, in which the world produced so much pollution that it created a thousand year period of winter.  While many people failed to survive, some did through the use of “Steam Fountains”, fountains of energy and heat that moved the machinery and gave the people warmth.

Hammer of Thor is the first in the Rimelands series, and the first one seems to be based just after the thousand year cold spell, in a world that’s starting to recover.

You are casted as a treasure hunter who’s grandma is obsessed with collecting treasures, so your job is to go out there and find as many as possible, along with finding out about your past.

The game as a whole looks great, even though it is a bit pixelated on the iPhone 4.  The controls do need some time of getting used to, but they shouldn’t be too much of a problem.  Combat is based on a turn-based method, meaning you attack, then your enemy attacks.

Your damage is controlled through dice, which show two skulls, one skull, a shield, and an ‘X’.  The two skulls represent the most damage, while the ‘X’ means no damage.  You also have the choice to chose between three paths: a melee fighter, ranged, or magic.

Most of the quests in the beginning seem to be retrieving items from the dungeon(s), along with picking up odd quests from people in the village.  I haven’t gotten too far into the game yet, but from what I see, it looks to be promising.  The only thing that I don’t know is how much content it has, but it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

We’ll be having our review up soon, but for now, be sure to check out Rimelands: Hammer of Thor in the App Store for $4.99.

As you progress and get more money, you can visit the store and get some killer upgrades.  These can range from weapons like claws much like those found on Wolverine, to armor covered in spikes and different outfits.  You can even purchase items that allow you to adjust the third-person view to first-person while roaming through the giant environment, and change the distance of the camera to the player.  Another thing available for upgrade in the store are your fighting stats, but there is yet more to unlock- the moves.  In the battles you can do a slew of different combinations utilizing the punch and kick buttons on screen in conjunction with the virtual joystick.  The amount of moves is pretty incredible, you can go a whole battle and not use a quarter of them!

Likes

Brawler: The iDevice did not have a proper brawler that delivered until Corporate Fury came along.  With a funny (yet crude) premise, and a well deserved 17+ rating, this game is easy to recommend for those who love mindless violence.

Loading Times: I really dislike loading times in-game.  Thankfully, Corporate Fury loads the entire environment for you when you resume/start your game, with no lag when switching to battles in the arenas.  Once you start it won’t stop until you quit- the game flows right along.

Amount of Content: With a HUGE environment to explore, and many NPCs to interact with, the player can explore for a long time before discovering everything.  The fighting system also allows you to earn some big bucks, which you can put to use to purchase tons and tons of items/upgrades/moves from the store.  If you upgrade your luck stat you can get some pretty fun items by defeating random people around the workplace, such as a Pumpkin Mask and a Pig Mask.

Audio: Corporate Fury has a full soundtrack which really drives the game and enhances the atmosphere.

Graphics: While not the best graphics I’ve seen on the platform, these are certainly higher end.  The fighting animations for each move are superb!

Dislikes

Storyline Length: Unfortunately the storyline really doesn’t last too long, if you take your time there are maybe 4-5 hours of gameplay.  Maybe I’m really great at it, but I doubt it.  Once you beat the final boss, there are actually a few secret bosses to defeat, but they won’t take too much longer.  Thankfully, though, you can’t explore even close to the full environment in that amount of time!

Corporate Fury is a fun take on the brawling formula with a very silly and crude premise.  The atmosphere of the game is pretty dark, and quite amusing, as the player must kill their bosses to advance in rank.  The unique story could be longer, but the amount of unlockables is so high that this is easy to recommend with our highest rating.

Corporate Fury was developed by Swinecrafters LLC., and I played through version 1.1 on my iPod Touch 1G running OS 3.1.3.  It is available on the appstore for $1.99.

I would wreak havoc.  And that’s exactly what Pigeon Squadron helps you all to do: take revenge through the glorious weapons known as pigeon droppings.

Your job is to aim and shoot your pigeon droppings on innocent bystanders and vehicles.  While I have yet to the play the game, the teaser trailer is a bit funny and had me laughing.  The game should be arriving anytime soon, so be sure to be on the look out.

On a side note, did you hear that Kings of Leon cancelled their show because a pigeon pooped into the bass player’s mouth?  Ridiculous.

While OpenFeint playtime is still in private beta (which you can apply for now), it hopefully shouldn’t take too long.  With Game Center and Playtime all coming soon, it’s safe to think that online multiplayer will finally be able to be implemented in most games.

We’ll be following OpenFeint Playtime’s development, and hopefully we get our hands on it soon.

If you’re a developer and want to check it out, be sure to find it on their website here.