Price: $2.99

Publisher: Polarbit

Reckless Getaway by Polarbit sets a new bar for excellence in 2D/3D driving on the App Store.  The game revolves around you dodging cops and obstacles yet the real fun comes by destroying your surroundings.  As the getaway car for a bank robbery (shown in an opening cut scene), the game puts you in several different vehicles in a quest to get away.  All the while a great soundtrack puts you in the mood to drive.

The controls are very well done and you will be able to pick them up quickly.  Weaving in and out of traffic earns you points (as does hitting cars and knocking them off the road).  Throughout the levels you will have several different vehicles at your disposal and each handles based on the size of the car.  The controls are incredibly responsive which allows you to make last second decisions like whether to jump a pit using the ramp or bypass it using the nearby dirt road.

The graphics are great and look very smooth on my iPhone 4.  Despite the utter destruction of the environments as you drive past at maniacal speed, you won’t notice any slowdown and the details all look fantastic.  The sound is also well done.  The music in the background gives you a fantastic back beat to the getaway and the crashes and explosions throughout are all well done as well. The production value on this game is incredibly high and a pat on the back should be given to the sound and graphic guys at Polarbit.

The real meat of the game is making a getaway and earning points.  You start with the possibility of earning 4 coins.  Each time you wreck you lose a coin with no way of gaining it back during that level.  These coins are important because getting enough allows you to unlock the next 4 levels of the game.  This is worth noting because as the game becomes more difficult in later levels, these coins are increasingly hard to get.  You’ll find yourself going back to an old level and replaying it a ton of times just to gain the 4th coin you missed the first time around.  That being said, it does provide a fun system of unlocking and rewards a player fairly consistently with new levels.

You’ll also find powerups as you’re driving through each level, each one providing some additional benefit to your car.  These help you rack up the points quickly which in turn help you earn towards those four coins mentioned above.  In all, the game is a blast to play yet won’t take much more than a few hours to finish.  Regardless, for just 3 bucks Reckless Getaway it is well worth it and I highly recommend buying it.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Price: $2.99

Publisher: Fallen Tree Games

I’m embarrassed to say that there is a game on my iPhone that has sat there for months.  Literally.  I received it to review and it got accidentally thrown into a folder never to be seen again.  Until now.  Not only is that game worth playing but quite frankly, it’s fantastic.  I present to you, Quell.  An unbelievably relaxing puzzle game that is soothing, yet increasingly difficult.  Like any good puzzle game the gameplay mechanics are easy to learn but hard to master.  If I would have played this game right away, it would have easily been my favorite puzzle game of 2010.

The presentation including the sound, art and especially the music are top notch.  Diving further into the music specifically, it is seriously fantastic.  Like some of the best mood altering music I have ever heard in a game.  It immediately sets the tone of the game to a slow, rainy day where you are staying indoors and relaxing by a fire.  It is seriously impressive.

The actual mechanics of the puzzles are fantastic as well.  Your job is to slide a rain drop through obstacles throughout a given level.  The main crux of the issue is that you have to collect several pearls on each level and the game counts how many moves it takes to reach them.  Your job is to do it in as few moves as possible.  The game saves a record of how many moves each level takes and offers quite a few awards or achievements for meeting movement goals.  There are also a ton of levels in the game and you should easily get a few hours of enjoyment out of Quell.

There are a few objects that can slow you down from meeting your goal.  As the levels become more difficult, bushes will crop up in your path after crossing a path just once sometimes causing you to have to restart the game because choosing the wrong path made the puzzle impossible to beat.  Don’t worry though, if that happens, a friendly message pops up and lets you know.  If you are ever truly stuck, the awards you earned in previous stages can be used to unlock the entire level and move on.  I recommend not doing that.  ‘Cheating’ in Quell would only be cheating yourself. 

In summary, this game is relaxing, yet difficult enough, to cause you to think through each move.  The entire presentation is top notch.  I only wish I had seen this title earlier so I could tell you all about it.  Now that I have, get in a comfortable chair, load up the App Store and download Quell for $2.99.  You’ll be glad you did.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Price: $2.99

Publisher: Remedy

Reviewer: Cody Sharp

I remember playing RC Pro Am for the NES for hours at a time when I was younger.  If you aren’t familiar, it was a racing game that gave you the added ability to upgrade your vehicle with weapons, nitro, a better engine and more.  It was entirely awesome.  Even now I’ll open up the old NES emulator and play it.  After playing Death Rally, there may no longer be any need to.  The iPhone has finally got a game comparable to the original 1988 title.

Death Rally offers beautiful graphics, several tracks, tons of different modes and a lot of different cars.  Each of the cars can be upgraded with weapons (new weapon parts can be collected as you race), a faster engine, better handling or upgraded armor.  The sound within the game is top notch and so is the overall production quality.

The game does have some issues with camera angles as it offers two but for whatever reason will intermittently switch back to the other angle from time to time.  I prefer the second camera which follows along with the action right above your car while the first angle gives you more of an overall 45 degree view.  Nevertheless, besides this hiccup, the game runs smooth on my iPhone 4 and offers hours of gameplay options.

Remedy has already released several updates for the game including new cars, weapons and the like.  A game like this is easy to pick up and play and I have been playing it a lot over the last couple of weeks while riding the stationary bike in rainy/cold Indiana.  Take a bit of a leap and pick up this $3 title today.  No other racing/action game on the iPhone has yet to do RC Pro Am justice like Death Rally does.  Pure fun.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Price: $2.99

Publisher: [adult swim]

Amateur Surgeon 2 is one of the latest games from the people that create Adult Swim.  It’s weird, it’s funny and kind of…icky.  That all being said, it gives you the ability to practice being a doctor without going to school for 6 years and doing a 4 year residency.  All you need is some household products to cut and repair and people desperate enough to use you as their surgeon.

Utilizing a pizza cutter to quickly cut open a bullet wound, you use your kitchen tongs to pick up the bullet.  Then you simply use a spool of thread to do the stitches and a lighter on the bullet hole to suture up the wound.  Easy peasy.  Quickness and accuracy are the name of the game in this digital, horrific version of Milton Bradley’s board game, Operation.  Using your technical knowledge (like how to slice a pizza), you deftly fix one patient up at a time.

The game is a follow up to the aptly named Amateur Surgeon that came out a year or two ago.  There is a storyline you can follow along but you can skip it at anytime.  Each successful surgery gives you the ability to buy better equipment which will make your operations go smoother and have less chance of catastrophic failure resulting in death.

The graphics are cartoony, which in this case, is a good thing.  I’d rather not see realistic simulations of glass shoved into someone’s intestines.  The sound effects along with the music are well done and don’t repeat too much.  The game offers a number of patients that have progressively more difficult issues.  Each patient has only a set time limit to live but you can use injections and a car battery to bring their vitals back for a little extra time.  Each successful surgery is rated on and A to F scale and if you anything like me, you’ll find getting anything about a C is pretty challenging.  This game can definitely be difficult and certainly not for little kids.

Overall, the game is fun and offers a good amount of gameplay for just a few bucks.  Anyone looking for a more grown up version of Operation or that just ever wanted to be a surgeon but didn’t have the smarts, money or dexterity, this game is made for you.  Besides, cutting a pizza has never been so fun.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars