Halfbrick and Sony Pictures are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters with a spooktacular update to Monster Dash.
Now you'll get to play as Dr. Peter Venkman, proton pack and all, as he fights ghosts on New York City rooftops. You'll also get new daily events including the new “Who You Gonna Call?” challenge where you get to bust Slimer. Additionally, Halfbrick has added an offline mode to the game so you can play anytime you want.
You can download Monster Dash for free on the App Store now.
The holiday season is upon us, and Australian developers Halfbrick have decided to make their complete iOS catalogue free for a limited time to celebrate. Listed below are the games on sale, listed the only way games should at this time of year: to the tune of 'Deck the Halls.'
Deck the Halls with Age of Zombies,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
'Tis the season to Fruit Ninja,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Troul the Fish Out Of Water!,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
See the Monster Dash before us,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Strike the harp and join the Colossatron,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
All of these are free for now,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Halfbrick makes some pretty great games. Games like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. In fact, I'm betting there's a pretty good chance you've already played many (if not all) of their games. But if you haven't, now is the best possible time to fix that.
If you've played Halfbrick's Monster Dash, you will be aware of the game's wisecracking protagonist, Barry Steakfries. What you may not be aware of is that Monster Dash is not the character's debut - he first appeared in a PSN Minis game called Age of Zombies, that was a top-down shooter that involved time traveling and snarky humor. Why am I telling you this? Because iOS gamers will get to experience this game for themselves this October.
Age of Zombies is a dual-stick shooter (although coming from the PSP, this is the first time it will actually be controlled with dual sticks), that has you killing zombies across various time periods, from the age of dinosaurs to samurai Japan, all the way to the future and all with zombies. The game is level-based, but there is a survival mode for each time period that you can play in once you beat each age's boss. Assuming it is unchanged from the PSN Mini, you can expect plenty of hilarious (and occasionally profane) dialogue to set up the game's ridiculous story, and plenty of humorous Barry Steakfries one-liners, which are actually spoken by the character, instead of being just lines of text as in Monster Dash.
What is most interesting about Age of Zombies for iOS is that it is Halfbrick's first universal app, with graphics in high-resolution for the iPad. While it is unknown if it will also support Retina Display graphics, the game's interface and menus have been redesigned for the iOS touchscreens. As well, the game now features global leaderboards, a feature not present in the PSN version. With a nebulous release date of 'October,' fans of Monster Dash's protagonist and fans of twin-stick shooters will likely want to keep an eye out for Age of Zombies for iOS.
Halfbrick, having already invented and mastered the object slashing genre with their popular app Fruit Ninja, are about to unleash their take on another casual gaming genre, albeit one more familiar to iOS gamers. Monster Dash is Halfbrick's newest game, and is an endless horizontal platformer, similar in nature to Canabalt.
Monster Dash stars a sarcastic antihero named Barry Steakfries, who should be familiar to fans of Halfbrick's PSP games, as he was the protagonist of the arena shooter Age of Zombies. In this game, he is running forward, shooting zombies, mummies, vampires and other types of supernatural horrors that cross his path. You have two commands - jump and shoot - and a health bar that allows you to track the damage you take from enemies and spikes before dying. You can pick up additional health and various weapons as you constantly run forward, including my new favorite weapon, the machine gun jetpack, which fires downward as it propels you upwards.
Monster Dash provides several different random locales for you to run forward in, although the only key difference is the visuals, but you will see different level types every 1000 meters. Every time you die, you get a humorous one-liner from Barry Steakfries, sporting similar smarmy and sarcastic humor as was in Age of Zombies (which still hasn't been confirmed for iOS yet, despite being a perfect fit considering the popularity of twin-stick shooters on the platform), along with the ability to check OpenFeint leaderboards and to tweet your score. Monster Dash is an intriguing attempt to bring some more action to the endless platformer genre, which gamers will get to play starting August 19th.
From the half insane minds of Halfbrick studios (Fruit Ninja, comes Monster Dash, a fast paced action runner that looks like Canabalt with guns.
From the press release, "Just two buttons controls the action – jump and shoot. The action speeds up and changes gears with every new world, but thankfully there are weapon and health pickups to get Steakfries (Barry Steakfries, the main character) into serious action mode. Blast your enemies with the one shot Pacifier, electro-charge your way to victory with Mr. Zappy, and look out for the ultimate in raining destruction – the Machine Gun Jetpack!"
In typical Halfbrick fashion, they have a great, semi-live action promo video to get you good and excited for its August 19th launch. Hope you like it!
Be sure to also check out the additional screenshots after the jump.
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