Tag: Port »

This isn't a review of Death Stranding on iOS so much as it is an announcement that I will not be reviewing it. I posted some impressions earlier this month about the release where I mentioned my intent to finish it, but I just... can't. This is not from a lack of desire, to be clear. It's from this port being particularly awful in a crucial way: managing saves.

Every time I boot up Death Stranding on my iPad, I have no idea if it will actually load my most recent save. Sometimes after the 90+ second load time I am right where I left off. Sometimes, the game seemingly accidentally loads an old save and I just have to go into the system menu to reload to the more recent one. And at other times still, my most recent saves appear to have completely vanished.

Death Stranding has wandered its way onto iOS, and considering it is yet another beefy and demanding title for iOS devices to handle that seem to be trickling out as of late, I took the liberty of trying the game out for myself, recording my first stretch of gameplay with it, and drawing up some impressions to share with anyone who might be interested in picking it up.

Read on below for some detailed analysis and info of the game at first blush, otherwise feel free to watch or scrub through the video posted above to see for yourself what it seems like.

Ports or coversions of games from one platform to another can be quite tricky. This is especially true when porting games to phones and tablets, as these titles have to be designed with workable touch controls and account for smaller screen sizes.

It’s rare these days for a console or PC game to grace the App Store in a totally unplayable state, but it can be hard to find games that make their transition to mobile look easy. It’s even rarer when a mobile port comes out and it’s just so dang slick it feels better than it did on its original platform, but these games exist. Here are five of them:

Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic II just released on the App Store, and it's not exactly pretty. To be fair, this is over 15 years old, so bringing it to mobile likely has its challenges. That said, the second installment in the Knights of the Old Republic series comes to iOS with a janky control scheme and some bugs that disrupt combat.

Check out the video above where I get through the first real challenge of the game: fighting the mining droids on Peragus. In it, you'll see some struggles with movement, collision issues with combat maneuvering, and even a strange bug that locks your character in place after combat.

From there, you can pass over shelling out $9.99 for this game and pick something else up. This is not the port you're looking for.

No belated April Fools jokes here. Wayforward and Disney Interactive have just released DuckTales Remastered onto the App Store.

This remake of the NES classic (and game with one of the best soundtracks of the era) includes a new art style, 3D backgrounds, difficulty tweaks, tutorials, voice acting, expanded levels, unlockable art galleries, and so on. It was also something of a hit on consoles when it came out last year; and now it's on iOS.

We'll have a review ready later today, but if you just can't wait you can download DuckTales Remastered right now for $9.99.

Good news, comrades! Word has been getting around that the dystopian paper-shuffling simulator Papers, Please is bound for iPad. Actually this news has been circulating for what feels like forever. But the wait is finally over. It's been announced that Lucas Pope's game about the mundane activity of checking paperwork at a border checkpoint (which is anything but mundane, really) is officially coming to iPad. Tomorrow.

If you haven't played Papers, Please for yourself yet, you'll have the opportunity in only a few hours. In the meantime, know that it's a surprisingly dark and somewhat disturbing story about an oppressive government, dangerous extremists, a rebellion, and a hapless paper pusher who gets caught in the middle. That, and lots and lots of cross-checking passports.

Papers, Please will be $5.99 once it releases tomorrow (12/12), and will go up to $7.99 after the weekend.

Fans of Kate Walker, clockwork automatons, or adventure games in general take note: Syberia is now available on the App Store - in full.

The game follows Kate Walker, a lawyer from New York, who must travel to across Europe in search of an inventor named Hans. Of course, what was supposed to be a simple matter of getting a few signatures and overseeing the sale of an old factory will turn out to be far more complicated (and interesting) than that.

Whereas before you could only download the game in separate parts, now you can get your hands on this classic in a single app. So all that surreal, almost Myst-like adventure is yours for the taking. And you can finally keep it all in once place.

This new, full version of Syberia is available now as a universal download for $6.99.

Pretty much out of nowhere, Square Enix has just sort of gone and dropped Tomb Raider II onto the App Store.

The (debatably) superior sequel wowed plenty of gamers when it first came out by adding more of just about everything. Plus it's got that training course at Lara's mansion with the old butler who passes gas like clockwork - I'm not kidding, he totally does. Well, I think it's a perk, anyway.

Flatulence aside, the second game takes Lara to all sorts of new locations like Tibet and Italy. More locations also means more types of enemies (yetis and tigers and... wait, yetis??), as well as some new weapons to dispatch them with. Oh, and vehicles. That was sort of a big deal at the time. But perhaps the addition that will interest you most is the new list of achievements.

You can download Tomb Raider II off the App Store now for $1.99.