5261

I three-starred all levels in the first Tiny Heroes campaign except for the last two, and I can’t figure them out. I can’t beat Rat Race at all, and Ranger Danger just barely. Do you need those unlockable defenses to properly play Ranger Danger?

5262

Since everyone here is completely useless, I looked up Rat Race on the company forums. Turns out you need to exploit a pathing quirk to beat this level… the heroes will generally ignore a blocked passage and never think to enter from the other direction.

Ranger Danger apparently requires the Repair Defense feature which you get in the second campaign; with that ability I could finally three-star this level, too.

A few maps into the second campaign, I must say I’m getting rather tired of Tiny Heroes. I have a ton of defenses but can only equip a handful of them for any given level, which means lots of restarting while trying to figure out just what I’m supposed to do. The game is really getting hectic now, too, since defenses are so brittle and constantly have to be replaced as a flood of heroes is rushing through the dungeon. The first levels were the most fun, sadly it went downhill from there.

5263

I can’t vouch for it 100% at this point, but there’s a game called Tactical Warrior that has some potential and you should nab while it’s still free.

It’s a turn-based tactical RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem/Gladius. Extremely generic, but it seems to have tons of battles and is party-based. You start with a pair of fighters (two monks, a knight type dude and a brawler, etc.) and can select among several missions available at the first hub. After getting through a few of those a new hub unlocks, and there are other unlocks like an item shop. Characters gain experience based on whether they participate in battles (you pick your team before each match, and not all battles allow the whole party to fight) and get more if they survive the battle, and at the end of each match you get an item (selectable from among three), new party member, or map unlock. When characters level up you can pick a new active or passive skill for them, or level up one of their existing skills.

Combat is straightforward and pretty bloody. The maps are cramped and peppered with terrain that blocks movement, often letting you establish chokepoints but sometimes leaving you exposed. Party members with whirlwind or other attacks that hit everything in a square or a line do just that – they hit everything, including your own party members, so you need to plan things just right to take advantage of those sorts of moves. Ranged combat is balanced by giving those attacks a minimum range, and for archers the minimum is generally five squares so the most powerful ranged attacks get neutered quickly by aggressive enemies.

All attacks revolve around Stamina, which is used to both move and trigger active abilities. You often have to rest after a big attack, or switch to a much less potent attack that costs less stamina. Lots of abilities screw with the enemy’s stamina, or make your attacks cost less stamina for X turns, opening up a lot of potential for buff/debuff tactics.

I’ve only played five missions, and while most of them are X vs. Y deathmatches there was one where the object was to destroy the enemy’s flag before they destroyed yours, so I’m guessing things get mixed up a bit as the game progresses. As mentioned, it’s extremely generic, but it’s also solid and simply plays better than a lot of the slick but shallow iOS games I’ve tried, and anyone interested in this sort of thing should get it ASAP.

EDIT: Checking the App Store, I see this developer released a tower defense game called Staunch Defense that looks interesting, and seems to share Tactical Warrior’s crappy-graphics-and-generic-names-but-solid-underlying-design esthetic. It incorporates 20 towers, various buildings, and tech trees. I shall nab it and report back forthwith…

5264

Sorry to go little offtopic but didn’t want to create another thread. I have a question, given that the 3Ds and Vita have poor battery life of 3h to 5h, how many hours do you guys get of the idevices on average, running a game? Only could find tests for video that I’m certain don’t tax the system all that much.

5265

Uh playing a game I would say I get like 7+ hours. I mean its a phone too so I don’t play for like 7 hours straight but I can use the phone very heavy all day and only need to charge it at the end of the day. I guess I could test it with a very intensive game and see how long it lasts but I am not sure I could actually play the thing for that long straight.

5266

On the iPod touch, games can easily drain the battery in 1-3 hours. Depends on the game, of course…

5267

It depends on the game, but it’s not any better on iPod or iPhone. You can’t play Infinity Blade for 10 hours.

The exception is the iPad, which can get 6+ hours even for intensive games, at for a while until the battery loses some life. Even that won’t get the full though, like it can if you are just watching video.

5268

Yes, iPad battery life is fantastic.

5269

I three-starred Ranger Danger without the defense repair ability. I mainly relied on two things: mimics eat Epic heroes with one bite, and Rangers of any stripe have no defense against floor spikes. For example, if you put a mimic right where the first Epic Ranger is going to enter, it’ll get eaten. The mimic will die shortly afterward, but it’s worth the breathing space. If you don’t take out that first Ranger early, he can do a lot of damage.

I lost interest about halfway through the second campaign. It’s not so much the trial-and-error nature of the game since tower defense games usually require that sort of play. My main issue is that I feel the game lacks depth. The game revolves too much around ballista and spike trap combos, with far, far too many of the other defenses being highly situational or of no use at all, like the Looker. I got stuck on Death from Above, and while I could skip it as it’s a challenge level, I found I just didn’t care.

5270

That’s also true, most levels are solved easily with the standard nest of ballistas plus some auxiliary defenses. I found that the levels were either routine or infuriating, but rarely interesting.

5271

I bought Quarrel for the exorbitant by iPhone standards price of $4.99. It’s really polished and really fun, but it has no multiplayer and is just screaming for it.

5272

Mega Mall Story also proved disappointing to me. The big problem is that it’s ridiculously easy. The first couple of years are kind of interesting while cash and hearts are in short supply, but it gets into this runaway state where you’ve got more of both than you know what to do with, long long before the game ends. I ended up with 5 stars after 8 years out of the 15 allotted. Not that the game finishes then, you still have to play the entire 15 years to finish, it’s just that you’re only really playing for score after that.

Periodically the game would announce that I had a rival mall, but all that meant was that my profits would drop from $5 million a month to $2 million until the rival went under. Which they all did without any action on my part. Not that the game really gives you any way of affecting that struggle.

If the first game was too easy, the second way in the “beyond easy” category. It’s a misfeature that the game lets you keep all your research from earlier games. The game is only interesting when resources are scarce, and if you don’t need to spend hearts on anything but the handful of milestone items that don’t carry over, half the game goes down the tubes.

For a polished game, it has a lot of nasty niggling interface issues. Many of which would probably be major headaches if the game weren’t so easy. It also bugs me that the shoppers refuse to visit pay phones, bathrooms, vending machines and the like, but again that’s washed out by the trivial difficulty level.

I seem to recall reading that this is a problem with Kairosoft’s “Story” business simulations in general, that they’re too much aimed at the casual gamer who wants an automatic victory while appearing to require decisions. I don’t know if that’s true, since this is the first “Story” game I’ve played.

EDIT: my second game (which I don’t know why I finished) finally ended. $345 million at the end of the game, some 10,000 hearts earned over the course of the game. I mostly just glanced at it every now and then after the first 7 years to deal with prompts, and level-up any stores that needed it.

5273

+1 for this, enjoying it a lot

5274

This news item from TouchArcade has me pretty excited. I can’t wait to play Alternate Reality: The City on iOS. I adored that game back in the day.

Also, M.U.L.E.! Looking forward to these.

5275

So, Staunch Defense. First, click that link and get it, because it is only a buck right now and you’re going to get it eventually and you will kick yourself if you miss this sale.

It is an ugly tower defense game with masterful design. You get the little path and the baddies that walk down it, but similarities to most other TD games end there. Want to place a tower? Well first you have to buy a research lab (Stone, Fire, Lightning, or Plant), each of which can be further upgraded a few times to unlock new towers.

OK, so now you can spend gold to buy a tower, right? Not quite. Gold is just one resource. You also have to win or harvest stone, wood, energy, and plants required by various towers.

So now you can place the tower, right? No. First you have to purchase some land on the game map, which is divided into several color-coded plots. Choose wisely, because each plot also contains resources, and you can build mines on them to harvest whatever resource type is on that square. You can also build cottages that generate gold, fire pits that boost towers in an area slightly, engineering huts that boost adjacent towers dramatically, and walls that block monsters and can be repaired (or regenerate, if you place vine walls).

Time to place the tower? Not quite. You should visit the Tech screen, where you can invest in special tower upgrades, gain access to new buildings, fortify walls, and make other specialized improvements.

Now you can place your tower.

5276

That game looks seriously gnarly. Tactical Warrior by the same author (which looks just as gnarly) is currently free, by the way. I’m getting both.

5277

I wrote up a bit about Tactical Warrior on the previous page. It’s the same story: Surprising design depth under the sub-par visuals and Git-R-Done interface.

There’s also a lite version of Staunch Defense, if you want to get a feel for it.

5278

Ooh MULE.

5279

If you’re interested in a more shooty affair, an iOS version of Hypership Out of Control hit the app store last week for $0.99. (Can’t post the link, as I’m still under 50 posts.)

If you’re not familiar with the original XBLIG game, it’s a bit of an “evade-'em-up” variant on the typical SHMUP formula, where the focus is shifted from shooting down hordes of ships to evading tons of asteroids and walls. In a sense, it’s like a SHMUP version of Canabalt, complete with super-fast scrolling. Pretty cool.

5280

I just fiddled around with the demo. “Gnarly” is a serious understatement. “Hideous crap” is closer. Not only is the terrain painful to look at, the monsters, towers, and the button icons just this side of stick figures, but there aren’t even placeholder-level missile animations. Creeps getting near towers just turn keep moving until they turn into dots because they died. Which means it’s not even ugly but functional, because you can’t tell who is getting shot and who isn’t.

It’s also a plan-test-debug game. Generally speaking tower defense games give you some time to react if a wave doesn’t go as you plan. This one appears to be completely hands off during the actual progress of a wave. So if you weren’t correct about your layout, you cannot make a correction further down the path while they move forward.

I love resource management games, but this looks like it should have been a free browser game. Heck there are plenty of Armor games that have at least as much to them.