Campbell has been writing about games for the majority of his adult life and made the jump into covering mobile games in 2013. He is always on Twitter when he's not playing games.
Connect with Campbell:
Game Center: namestolen
Twitter: @campbellbirds
:: COOL CAT
:: REASONABLE RPG
:: DEVILISHLY DERIVATIVE[img id="107756" alt=""]
Every day, we pick out a curated list of the best mobile discounts on the App Store and post them here. This list won't be comprehensive, but it every game on it is recommended. Feel free to check out the coverage we did on them in the links below to further vet these discounted games before you decide to buy:
Games marked with an asterisk(*) denote that the entire developer/publisher’s catalog is discounted, despite the fact that all of their games may not be listed here.
:: DEATH ISN’T FUN
Wordle is seemingly taking the internet by storm as of late. The little daily “guess the word” game has been popping up all across social media timelines in the last couple of weeks, and for good reason. It’s a fun little exercise that is satisfying to complete, easy to make a daily ritual, and easy to share online to compare results.
Now, Wordle is easy enough to play on your phone as it is, but just in case you’re looking for some more games that can satisfy in a similar way between daily resets, here are some incredible mobile games that can do just that.
Continuing the trend begun last year, I wanted to model some Game of the Year awards through categories in addition to simply ranking my personal favorites. Between now and the dawn of 2022, I'll be updating this page regularly with new entries for each category, so make sure to check in and see what titles win which awards.
For each of these categories, I'll choose a winner and mention some notable runner-ups. Any game nominated or chosen for any of these cateories is then eligible for the final category, Best Game, which is the culminating category where I will construct a ranked list of my favorite games from this year.
In case you missed it, I am on a quest to rank every Apple Arcade game there is.
Over a year into the Apple Arcade experiment, I’m adjusting my approach to these rankings to make it a bit less cumbersome to update and read. For the most part, this means the number of updates on previously released games will decrease, and the text below each entry will be kept to a brief-yet-accurate justification for its positioning.
This has less to do with the pace of Apple Arcade releases and more to do with the fact that the general quality of games on the service simply isn’t what it should be. In the time that one release comes to the service, multiple high quality games hit the App Store that you don’t have to pay monthly upkeep for. Unless something drastic changes with the service, my opinion on it probably won’t change much. With the most recent update bringing older established titles to the service, Arcade is certainly the strongest it has ever been, but additional shakeups like this will need to keep happening to finally sell me on the service.
Anyway, on with the ranking updates:
Game ranking updates for 12/21:
:: A LOT OF ALIEN :: A LOT OF ALIEN :: Read Review »Feral Interactive's next ambitious mobile port is 2014's Alien: Isolation, a survival horror game where you play as Amanda Ripley (Ellen Ripley's daughter), developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. We got some advance access to the mobile version of the game and have been working our way through it. See the video above for a healthy chunk of the game in action, as well as some additional impressions below.
The first thing to note about this game is that it is pretty technically demanding. If players want to experience Alien: Isolation on iOS, they will need the following:
:: MECHANICS OF MEANING
:: BARE BONES
:: DRIVING GAME 3
:: MULTIPLAYER MUST-HAVE :: MULTIPLAYER MUST-HAVE :: Read Review »Rocket League has finally made its way to mobile, albeit in a slightly modified form. Rocket League Sideswipe pits teams of two against each other in a sport where the object is to use cars to knock a gigantic ball into a goal point. Since its launch earlier this week, we dove into the game to get a sense of how it stands in comparison to the original Rocket League as well as a standalone mobile experience. Watch the video above to view some extended gameplay of it and read on below for our thoughts on our time with it so far.
It seems the primary goal for the creators of Rocket League Sideswipe was to make an experience that feels as frenetic and tense as traditional matches of Rocket League but in a streamlined format that is easier to play in bursts and while using touch controls. For the most part, it seems developers Psyonix nailed this goal. By making the playing field a flat, 2D space and shortening matches to 2 minutes, Rocket League Sideswipe feels super satisfying to control and easy to play on-the-go whenever you have a few minutes.
