Tag: Port »

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.

Ubisoft's tear-jerking puzzle adventure, Valiant Hearts: The Great War has just been announced for iOS.

Set during World War I, the game puts players in control of several different characters as they endure all sorts of hardships in an attempt to survive. And some of them may not achieve that goal. So you've been warned: there will be sadness.

The controls have been reworked for touch screens, naturally. You can check out the video below to see it in action.

There's been no word on a price yet, but it stands to reason that Valiant Hearts: The Great War will be a premium release when it comes to the App Store on September 4.

2K Games has officially announced that Bioshock is coming to mobile. The announcement is an exciting one, although there’s also this pervading sense of worry - even anger - that some seem to have about it. So I’d like to take a few moments to try and explain why being able to play Bioshock on your iOS device ain’t so bad.

1 - Rapture in Your Pocket

Some people have asked me why I’d even want to buy a graphically inferior version of a game I probably already own for as much (or possibly more) than I could buy a “better” version for, and the answer is simple: portability. Of course it looks better on the systems that have high-end specs and lack a 2GB install cap, but I’m not about to drag my console of choice and a TV around with me everywhere I go.

Being able to play Bioshock on my phone - even if it’s not graphically up to par with the other versions - means I can return to Rapture any time I want. If I’m traveling, waiting in line, have downtime and no PC/console handy, and so on, I can simply pull out my phone and start throwing plasmids around.

2 - No In-App Purchases

This is another concern/assumption I’ve seen a lot of and it makes me sad. There’s this automatic (and severely biased/unfair) notion that mobile games must include in-app purchases. This is simply not true. There are a number of premium games on mobile that don’t offer any sort of in-app purchases, a couple of which have even come from 2K Games.

Remember XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization Revolution 2? No in-app purchases. So when 2K says Bioshock won’t feature any in-app purchases there’s little reason to doubt them.

3 - More Games Means More Games

Mobile ports of big-name, AAA games tell us one very important thing: mobile ports of big-name, AAA games are possible.

Just about anyone who doesn’t immediately write-off mobile as a gaming platform (perhaps they were bitten as a child?) will admit to thinking things like “I wish this was on iPhone/iPad, then I could play it whenever I want!” With each successive port of a big-name game, the more likely we are to see more of them. It doesn’t have to be big AAA games, either. There have already been ports of other less 'mass-appeal' favorites like The World Ends With You and Dragon Quest VIII, and in the case of the former the port is even arguably (not really arguably) better than the original.

The original Bioshock is pretty much the greatest video game adaptation of an Ayn Rand novel in existence. It’s also a pretty darn awesome game in its own right. And it’s coming to iOS later this summer.

No joke: Bioshock on iOS is a direct port of the classic first-person adventure/shooter. The whole game - all the areas, enemies, dialogue, memorable moments, hidden cats, etc - has been made to work on the iPhone and iPad. There’s even that odd dip in the right-hand staircase in the lighthouse when you find the bathysphere.

The visuals have been scaled-back a bit, of course. Otherwise there’s no way it would clock in at just under Apple’s maximum download size of 2GB. That’s not to say it looks bad, though. There may not be dynamic shadows or fog effects, and the textures may be a lower resolution, but Rapture still the super-creepy underwater dystopia we’ve all come to know and love.

The port supports MFi and other bluetooth controllers, but also sports a set of touch controls that have been optimized for the experience. Naturally a controller is the more comfortable of the two options when it comes to a game like this, but the touch interface is about as accessible as I could’ve hoped for.

Bioshock doesn’t have a concrete release date or price just yet, but it will be available later this Summer as a premium release with no in-app purchases.

Word over at Board Game Geek is that Czech Games Edition has recently announced that work on its iPad port of Galaxy Trucker is almost complete. Kind of.

It's about ready to go now, but the developer would like to spend more time refining the online multiplayer as much as possible - and polish up everything else while they're at it, of course. It's hard to find fault with that logic, especially considering that this multiplayer framework will be used in many of their future releases.

Galaxy Trucker will be coming to the iPad in the beginning of September later this year. A digital version of Through the Ages is also planned.