Never Stop Sneakin’, the part-comedy-part-action take on Metal Gear Solid’s Tactical Espionage Action formula, is now available on the App Store with full Gamevice support.

Although the overall presentation is incredibly reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, the gameplay has been heavily simplified. Most actions are handled automatically, with player input mostly limited to deciding where to move. There is strategy involved in sneaking past guards, making your way to objectives, and timing your combat strategies to enemy positions, of course, but for better or worse, all of it feels incredibly simplified.

The biggest place Never Stop Sneakin’ differentiates from the formula is in its levels. Almost everything is procedurally generated here, which means no two games will play exactly the same. Procedural generation gives a nearly endless amount of variety in the way levels will be structured, which should increase replayability.

Never Stop Sneakin’s appearance on the App Store should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. Dust: An Elysian Tail, The previous game from developer Humble Hearts, was a mobile exclusive years, and even on console, Never Stop Sneakin’ looked and felt like something that would be right at home on mobile. Unsurprisingly, just like Dust, Never Stop Sneakin’ runs great on iOS and has excellently-implemented Gamevice support.

If you’re looking for a casual-friendly take on the Metal Gear Solid formula, this is as good as it gets on mobile.

• Download Never Stop Sneakin’ for iOS

This is huge news. Perhaps the biggest thing to hit mobile gaming in years. Fortnite, Epic’s extremely-popular Battle Royale game, is coming to the App Store soon! In fact, it is available now, in an invite-only beta release! An Android port should follow in the near future.

This isn’t merely a Fortnite-themed mobile clone, either. This is the real, true version of the PC / console game. It will support cross-platform play between mobile versions and PC, PlayStation, and even Xbox. And because this is a real version of Fortnite, it will even receive weekly content updates and patches at the same time as the other versions.

Gamevice support will not be included in Fortnite at launch, and is not currently supported in the beta. Epic plans to support controllers later in the future. They have concerns about keeping things fair, and are considering requiring mobile gamers with controllers to be kept in the same matchmaking bucket as console gamers, rather than being able to play in the mobile-only lobby.

Epic is looking for additional beta testers to try Fortnite on iOS, before the game goes into wide release. Sign ups are live, so be sure to head to the Epic site and get yourself on the list. Epic will be adding testers over the coming months, but the earlier you sign up, the better chance you’ll have of trying Fortnite early.

Because this is such a new game, in such a new genre, you’d be forgiven for not knowing why this is such a big deal. But make no mistake, this is one of the biggest games in the world right now, and a watershed moment in mobile gaming. Here’s a little history…

Fortnite is part of the somewhat-new Battle Royale game type. The idea is, a bunch of players spawn on a giant map, collect weapons, and try to be the last one standing. The map periodically shrinks its borders, which forces everyone into conflict, which prevents camping. It’s a clever take on the last-man-standing deathmatch game type, which perhaps explains why literally everyone seems to be playing a game like this these days.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) was the first of these games on the scene. Throughout its 2017 early access period, PUBG managed to grow from its humble origins as a ARMA 2 mod to over 30 million sales, even overtaking DOTA2 in having the most concurrent players on Steam.

Fortnite was originally launched as a pay-once premium game, called “Save the World”. In this game type, you build a base, then go on missions to collect resources, get back to your base, and use those resources to survive against waves of monsters. Epic founder Tim Sweeney described it as “Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead”. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell well. Shortly after PUBG hit the scene, Epic released a free-to-play, retooled version of Fortnite, which aped the PUBG Battle Royale formula. Since then, Fortnite has taken off like a rocket, even managing to surpass PUBG’s concurrent player record.

Oddly, PUBG’s developers and Fortnite’s developers are both partly owned by the same company, Tencent. Tencent is relatively unknown in the West, but they’re a massive game publisher in China. What’s more, they’ve made a huge push into mobile gaming.

In addition to launching PUBG clones of their own, Tencent has already launched two official versions of PUBG on mobile (for some reason). Sadly, neither have Gamevice support, and we have no idea if support is coming. So in a way, Fortnite is their fourth attempt at a mobile Battle Royale – hopefully this experience will translate into a great mobile release.

Being able to play the real Fortnite, with a real Gamevice controller, against the real console and PC releases, is about as good as it gets for mobile gaming. And it seems like this dream is going to become a reality very, very soon.

If you have any questions about controller compatibility, or want to voice your support for Gamevice and Fortnite, get in touch with Epic on Twitter or on their web site. If the folks at Epic see how much enthusiasm there is for controller support, hopefully it will encourage them to implement it sooner!

Alto’s Odyssey, the sequel to one of the best games of 2015, Alto’s Adventure, was recently released on iOS. Since then, I’ve had a hard time putting it down.

Side-scrolling auto-running platformers are certainly not a rare game type on mobile. Between Jetpack Joyride, the Rayman series, the original Alto’s Adventure, and countless others, most of us probably own a few games like this already.

The biggest way Alto’s Odyssey differentiates itself from the rest of the field is through its beautiful, relaxing, peaceful atmosphere. Everything about the presentation – the gentle sunrise, the use of simple silhouettes against smooth background colors, the perfectly-matched sound effects – the whole thing creates an almost zen-like feeling.

The other big way Alto’s Odyssey differentiates from the rest of the games out there: quality. Everything about this game feels like its been tested, polished, and retested hundreds of times, until it couldn’t possibly be improved any further. It is a rare feeling these days, where the trend is to launch games in an incomplete and buggy state, then push a bunch of updates to bring things up to par. Alto’s Odyssey feels like a game that is perfect exactly as it is, and although I’m sure it’ll receive the occasional update, absolutely nothing about it needs an update.

Honestly, I could go on and on about why this is such an amazing game, but there are enough stories like that already. Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a wonderful article describing the feelings and emotions this game can engender. TouchArcade gave Alto’s Odyssey their game of the week, and a glowing review. Review aggregator Metacritic currently lists Alto’s Odyssey at a score of 91 out of 100. Our Twitter timelines are full of people posting their high scores and commiserating over bad-beat stories.

Everyone is playing and loving Alto’s Odyssey, and that fills me with enthusiasm about the state of mobile gaming. Premium games – games where you pay an upfront fee to get a great experience – have always been what I gravitate towards, as a player. When one this good comes out, and does this well, it lends creedence to the model of selling great games. ArsTechnica has a great interview with Alto’s creators about just how much went into making such a great mobile game, which is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in premium mobile gaming, and some of the ways in which Alto’s creators approached iOS.

Games this good don’t show up often. An extremely polished, pay-once, premium game like this is a bit of an anachronism in 2018. If more games take a page from Alto’s Odyssey, I think the App Store would be a much better place.

• Download Alto’s Odyssey for iOS
• Download Alto’s Adventure for iOS

After 3 and a half years of teasing, Oddworld: New n’ Tasty has finally hit the App Store, with full Gamevice support. And it’s as good as you could possibly hope for.

The story of Abe’s Odyssey – originally criticized for being quite dark – has aged well. Abe is enslaved as a factory worker at a facility responsible for processing meat into a variety of food stuffs enjoyed by the aliens that make up this universe. One day, he stumbles upon a meeting between the higher-ups, where they reveal that because they’ve harvested almost every other creature into extinction, they’re planning on grinding up Abe’s species into a new meal – “New n’ Tasty”.

As dark as that premise sounds, things never devolve into self-seriousness. Abe’s aww-shucks demeanor and overall positivity keep the tone grounded as a dark comedy. In fact, while replaying this iOS port, I was most struck by how much Abe reminded me of Jar-Jar Binks – who came several years after Oddworld was released. Almost like if Jar-Jar was transported into Soylent Green, and then superimposed over a story about escaping from slavery. Yeah, it’s a weird tone. But it works.

Previous games in the Oddworld franchise have been ported to iOS before, and work great with the Gamevice. Unfortunately, while these games are perfectly competent, they also never quite captured the magic of what made the original Oddworld so special. They were in-universe spinoffs, but that is all.

New n’ Tasty is a ground-up remake of Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey. Whereas the original was a great looking game for the original PlayStation, its pseudo-3D visuals and low resolution graphics don’t quite convey the sense of wonder they once did. New n’ Tasty fixes this. Visually, this is about as good as 2.5D platformers get.

Gameplay, on the other hand, is almost completely unchanged. Oddworld has always been a complex game, blending strategy and platforming, and taking full advantage of pretty much every button on your controller to command a deep set of actions. This gameplay, while complex and difficult, holds up perfectly well. If you’ve ever played Flashback, or any of the classic Prince of Persia games, Oddworld feels like an expanded version of that type of game, with the same difficulty you’d expect.

Oddworld’s challenge is mitigated somewhat by a few modern features. Quick saves are probably the biggest – you can quickly save your place, and reload from exactly where you left off, rather than relying on checkpoints. Far from feeling like the developers are just throwing a bone to casual gamers, these quick saves actually enhance the gameplay experience, removing frustration points that hurt the original release.

If you have fond memories about playing the original Oddworld, or if you want to see what all the fuss is about, and why so many people consider Oddworld such a cult classic, now is a great chance to pick it up and see for yourself.

• Download ‘Oddworld: New n’ Tasty’ for iOS

Fez just hit the App Store yesterday, and I’ve been having a blast with it all day today.

Considered a modern platforming game classic, and the primary subject of the critically-acclaimed film Indie Game: The Movie (93% on Rotten Tomatoes!). Fez presents itself as a classic 2D pixel-art platformer, but quickly changes things up by introducing a novel new 3D perspective shifting mechanic.

Using the shoulder buttons, you can shift the camera between 4 views, revealing new perspectives on the 2D platforming world you inhabit. Changing the camera perspective flattens every axis back into two dimensions. As a result, platforms that would be far away along a Z axis in a three-dimensional world can be brought right next to each another when flattening back to just the XY axi.

This is a difficult mechanic to describe, but it quickly becomes second-nature during gameplay, and is a novel, unique take on bridging three dimensional and two dimensional platforming games.

I know this one is a hard sell in writing, but if you’re a platforming game fan, you need to take my word on this one – there’s a reason Fez has gotten as much acclaim as it has. It may look like a bunch of other indie games, but Fez is one of the most important games to hit the App Store.

• Download Fez on the App Store

If you’re a car person, GRID is probably an essential buy. While many mobile racing games strive for a more casual, arcade-friendly experience, GRID is all about realism. Original developers Codemasters spent a long time trying to make the handling of every car feel true-to-life, and while I can’t speak for the accuracy of how it would actually feel driving these cars on these tracks at high speeds, it feels right.

Many of the courses in GRID are directly based on famous real-world circuits. Courses not based on real racetracks, such as the city locations, still match the feel of the locations. You’ll be driving on these tracks in a variety of real-world licensed cars, for that added dose of realism.

Porting studio Feral Interactive really went all-out with this iOS version. GRID has lost absolutely nothing in its transition from console to mobile, and in some ways, actually looks better than it in its previous life on the PS3 and Xbox 360. This shouldn’t be a surprise – modern iOS devices easily outclass previous-generation consoles. But far too often, developers seem to struggle to take advantage of this power, and release games that simply show off what the hardware is capable of. GRID bucks this trend.

Quite simply, GRID is a breathtakingly beautiful game. Installing the optional (but free) DLC texture packs make it even more beautiful, but either way, you’re looking at one of the best games ever seen on iOS.

Unfortunately, GRID doesn’t quite run as good as it looks. Despite limiting itself to only the most powerful iOS devices available, GRID is capped at 30fps, and occasionally stutters trying to reach that. This is unfortunate – modern iPads run natively at 120fps, and racing games, in particular, really benefit from a high frame rate. Maybe future updates will solve this problem.

Perhaps the best part of GRID is one thing it did not gain in its transition to mobile – a new business model. There are no freemium currencies here, no wait timers, no ads, no nonsense. This is a serious, console-class experience. For a one-time fee, you get the whole game. There are quite a few DLC packs available with additional content, but in a welcome break from expectations, these DLC packs are entirely free. Yes, you can install all the extra courses, cars, and HD textures you want, for no added fee.

If you’re a fan of racing games, GRID is an essential buy. And if you’re a believer in premium, console-class games, GRID is one of the best examples yet of a real-deal, top-flight, no compromise console game on mobile.

• Download: GRID Autosport

Morphite, an incredible new sci-fi action/exploration game, was just released on iOS, as well as PC and a variety of consoles.

It is impossible to talk about Morphite without mentioning the game that serves as its obvious inspiration: No Man’s Sky. Both are space exploration games, both feature procedurally generated planets, both are played from a first-person perspective, both require you catalog procedurally-generated plants and animals with a scanner – it’s clear that Morphite wouldn’t exist without No Man’s Sky.

With that said, Morphite is no mere clone of No Man’s Sky. Morphite brings something No Man’s Sky mostly lacks: a clear focus and direction. Where No Man’s Sky is all about exploration and wandering, Morphite both a directed storyline and a clearly-defined (and fully voiced) protagonist. It also features a more action-oriented gameplay style, with a focus less on exploration and more on Metroid-style action-platforming. I don’t want to understate what a difference this makes – to many people, Morphite’s presentation as a more traditional “game” will actually make it preferable to No Man’s Sky.

Morphite is also a beautiful game. It doesn’t attempt to mimic No Man’s Sky’s massive scale and photorealistic textures, which would likely be impossible on mobile, instead opting for a low-polygon aesthetic. This gives Morphite a retro vibe, but one that doens’t feels cheap. Colors are vibrant, but not cartoony. Environments strike the right balance between atmosphere and detail. And there are multiple graphics options in the settings to tweak the balance between visual effects and framerate (I personally recommend disabling cinematic effects, which make everything seem washed-out).

Anyways, I’ve been a massive fan of No Man’s Sky since it launched last year – it is one of my all-time favorite gaming experience, and it’s one I’ve put more time into than almost any other games I own. Morphite is its own game, but it scratches a similar itch. I’m looking forward to putting many, many hours Morphite – I’m giving this one a strong recommendation. And if planned features like cloud saving, procedural temples, and multiplayer end up getting added, that recommendation will only get stronger.

• Buy Now on iOS

Hot on the heels of last week‘s amazing releases, Gameloft’s new multiplayer shooter Modern Combat Versus is finally out of its lengthy soft launch and in wide release on iOS.

Like the rest of Gameloft’s games, Modern Combat Versus follows a predictable strategy: take a popular PC or console game, and bring a mobile-focused facsimile of it to a mobile audience that might not be familiar with the real thing.

Modern Combat Versus is straightforward in this matter. It takes the overall feel of one of the “near-future” Call of Duty games, adds gameplay structure reminiscent of Overwatch or Team Fortress 2, and sticks a timer-based unlock system on pretty much every aspect of progression. Unfortunately, Modern Combat VS does not borrow Call of Duty’s epic storylines and incredible polish, nor does it borrow the colorful (and brilliantly balanced) character roster of Overwatch or TF2. Most important of all, Modern Combat lacks any of the the polish and heart of the games it is obviously “inspired” by.

Anyways, that’s just my opinion. TouchArcade gave this one their Game of the Week designation, and it’s also sitting at number 3 on the Top Free Games chart right now, so a lot of people definitely seem to be enjoying it.

The good news is, you can try Modern Combat Versus out for absolutely nothing, right now. Even if you get fed up of the timer system and quit playing after an hour or so, as I did, you’ll at least have received a download’s worth of enjoyment. And really, what else can you ask for in a free game?

• Download Modern Combat Versus on the App Store
• Download Modern Combat Versus on Google Play

After more than a year of anticipation, The Witness is finally out on iOS

The Witness is a modern puzzle game masterpiece, cut from the same cloth as exploration-puzzlers like Myst. You’re alone on an island, with the only interaction with the world around you through a series of puzzles. Solving these puzzles is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the world around you.

Every puzzle in The Witness takes the form of a superficially simple maze. Draw a line between one spot to another – easy, straightforward, clear. It gets difficult fast. Each group of puzzles adds its own rules, its own language. The gameplay is in solving the trick behind each puzzle, learning the gameplay mechanic it is teaching you, and bringing it with you to ever more difficult puzzles.

Solving puzzles is key to exploring the island. Groups of puzzles unlock new areas, these areas containing even more puzzles. Over time, it becomes apparent that these puzzles, the act of solving them, and the exploration of the island itself, weave together into an intricate narrative – the details of which I won’t be spoiling here. Suffice it to say, if the intelligence of the puzzles and the beauty of the island aren’t enough to make you want to play, solving The Witness’ mysteries probably will be.

Narrative and exploration aside, In any good puzzle game, the biggest reward you can possibly get is the satisfaction that comes with solving the puzzle – the “ah hah!” moment, where everything falls into place, and you finally understand what the puzzle is all about. The Witness is full of this feeling. Every series of puzzles in The Witness incorporates a unique challenge. Some of these challenges are quite clever, and require a great deal of thought to solve. And solving them feels great, because outsmarting the game feels great.

The Witness is a rare gem. It won’t appeal to everyone, but if you’re a fan of puzzles and exploration games, you owe it to yourself to give this one a try.

• Buy The Witness on the App Store