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High score chasers are always a huge hit or miss venture with me. When I saw Shoot the Zombirds come out in May of this year, I never thought it would be the type of game that would remain on my iPad for as long as it has. If you have played Infinite Dreams’ previous title, Shoot the Birds, you were probably inclined to pass this one by as, for me, it was not one that really embraced that gaming nerve that we all love to caress. Not so for me with Shoot the Zombirds as something about it looked interesting, I thought I would give it a try, and have been gratified ever since.

Like its predecessor, Shoot the Zombirds has you controlling a pumpkin-man type entity whose sole purpose is flinging arrows at pum-kid (you see what they did there!) stealing Zombirds with his trusted bow and arrow. The mechanic is pretty simple, pull back anywhere on the screen, aim, and let er’ rip. The environment is top-notch and set against a Tim-Burton-esque blood-soaked haunted house/graveyard; probably the pumpkin man’s sanctuary. It sounds simple, and it is, but the game becomes quite addictive with enticing Game Center achievements, tantalizing Grave Store power-ups and clothing, and just plain regalement when you ‘Sausage’ two to three Zombirds on your armaments. It can get pretty addictive when acknowledging all of these factors.

The Zombirds vary quite extensively from fat, big, and slow to small and very quick. And the small suckers don’t show up several waves in, as you will have to be combating with them as early as the second wave. And yep, they are pretty tough to hit. The Zombirds make one initial pass and let them fly by, they are going to kidnap one of your pum-kids. You are only allotted a certain amount of pum-kids, another Grave-store item upgrade as well, so taking out any of the fowl with your kin is certainly your primary objective. The participant is also only provided with a certain amount of arrows; the only way you can retain or increase your quiver is to make those shots!

The Grave store items are super cool with power ups like ‘Rain of Pain’ where you can summon a swarm of target-seeking day-saving burning arrows, and the ‘Quiver of Plenty’ where you get infinite arrows for a certain amount of time. Coins are gained via achievements and by shooting these little skulls that traverse the screen from right to left. Power-ups exist to increase their frequency as well. The GC achievements are really well integrated to bait the user to that ‘one more round’ feeling. There is the standard IAP, but I have never remotely felt pulled in that somewhat adverse direction.

If you are looking for a casual pick up and play, laugh out loud a little, make some Game Center achievements score chaser, you may just find what you want in Shoot The Zombirds. It really triumphs in what it sets out to do, and it reminds me alot of something like Temple Run as far as it’s addictive qualities, and for its’ shear pick up and play nature.

Casual games have grown significantly in popularity over the last couple of years. Angry Birds is almost always #1 in the AppStore’s charts, followed by loads of other casual games. Weather you attribute this to heaps of people having iPhones and access to the AppStore when they previously were never really into video games, or that loads of people just want to relax when playing games instead of really getting sucked into something that can take over parts of their lives, you can’t deny that casual games are a huge driving force for the AppStore. Thankfully though, there are loads of developers out there that know that iOS gaming has drawn in tons of hardcore gamers as well, and are doing their best to produce games that appeal to both the casual and hardcore crowds. Foursaken Media happens to be one of these development teams, and their latest release, Mad Chef, is a prime example of a perfect mix between hardcore and casual gaming.

The controls are simple; tap. Yup, tap on pieces of food flying through the air to throw your utensil at them. But it doesn’t stay that simple. You’ll take control of a street-side fast food vender in a big city, trying to feed the masses. As customers walk up to your cart and give you their orders, your sous chef will be tossing up every different kind of ingredient you’ve got in your fridge, and you’ll need to tap on the correct pieces of food that will combine to make your customers orders.

Graphics-wise, there is a feeling of the same type of look from Bug Heroes, but the environment and objects are much more vibrant, with tons of color. The gameplay is very smooth, with no slow-down, even during the rush hour stages, where there’s food on pretty much every single little part of the screen (you’re also able to just tap away, as the customers eat whatever you can give them).

With Mad Chef being Universal, and only $0.99, having GameCenter integration with 8 different leaderboards and 18 achievements, and basically endless replayability. Mad Chef is a game that every gamer should check out. Seeing more game-modes in the future would be a very nice addition, and maybe even some multiplayer, being able to compete against players around the world to see who can make the most money in a set amount of time would really set Mad Chef apart from the pile of casual arcade games in the AppStore, but with Foursaken Media’s extremely great support of their previous games, it’s pretty safe to say that they aren’t finished with Mad Chef. Here’s hoping it grows and truly becomes something special in the future.

Magic Cube’s Infect Them All holds a special spot in my heart. It was released around the time I started loosing faith in casual iOS gaming. More and more developers were diving into the IAP scene, making games that pretty much showed gamers how they were truly viewed as consumers instead of gamers or fans. Then along came Infect Them All from a company I previously hadn’t heard anything about, and I was hooked.

Now, after hours upon hours of gameplay with Infect Them All, Magic Cube’s sequel, Infect Them All: Vampires has just been released. There’s not too much of a difference between the two titles, they both include a Campaign, Infinite Campaign, Survival, and Blitz Modes, they both control the same with either tilt or virtual joystick options, can both have a whole lot of enemies on the screen at once, both have 50 Campaign levels, awesome boss battles, and more. The biggest difference you’ll notice at first is that ITA: Vampires gives your character a special ability. With your first character, you’re able to attack humans by hitting an attack button, causing your vampire to jump and slash twice in the direction you’re tilting or pressing on the joystick. After you attack humans, a reaper will appear above all of them that were in your way, and you can either let them die, or jump on them quickly to infect them, making large groups of humans easy targets.

As in the original Infect Them All, you will need to infect a certain amount of humans before Survival and Blitz Modes are unlocked; 5,000 to unlock Survival, and 7,500 for Blitz. It does seem like quite a bit, but after you get through the first couple of levels, infecting 30 humans a stage is not too hard, and much, much more (up to about 75) in the later levels, all of which are re-playable, will unlock the extra modes in no time. The two extra characters are also unlocked based on how many humans you infect. The first character unlocks at 1,000, and the second at 3.000, so you’ll have all 3 characters to play with before you unlock the extra modes, giving you adequate time to upgrade all their skills and abilities before taking on the harder modes.

Infect Them All: Vampries is supported by GameCenter and OpenFeint, having leaderboards for each of the game’s modes, and 23 achievements. Considering you can re-play levels, the main boards most gamers will be competing on will be the Survival and Blitz boards. But if you want to play and re-play levels, trying to get into the top 10 or so scores for the Campaign Mode, get ready to sink a good 40 hours into the game. At $0.99, it’s a great buy, especially if you enjoyed the original Infect Them All.

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Worms. They are absolutely repulsive creatures used only to gross out people and to be placed in your parents spaghetti. But they seem to be used often as cute protagonists so I guess they have something going for them. 
In this new worm filled adventure you star as a worm with a rocket on its back. Unfortunately at the party you are sleeping at, three jokesters light the rocket on your back causing you to be brutally propelled out of the window and into the world. It is your job as the player to take control of the worms path and make sure he doesn’t hit any obstacles on his flight. This is accomplished by taping the upper or lower part of the screen. By tapping the bottom of the screen you dive into the ground and by tapping the upper part you jump to avoid obstacles.  Obstacles are placed in various different locations, requiring you to think fast to avoid making the wrong move. Some are embedded halfway in the ground allowing you to either jump or dive to avoid them while others take up all of the above ground area.  Unfortunately after you have played through a few games all of the obstacles become fairly easy to avoid and not even your ever-increasing high speed makes these any more deadly. Also no new obstacles are introduced later in your never ending run so you can get bored of them easily. Also scattered among the level are power-ups which can do one of three things. Either give your worm another life, a helmet, or let him destroy anything in his path. You lose life’s by running into obstacles so its always a good idea to pickup a health or a helmet  pick-up.
By completing certain pre-determined missions you can unlock new rocket types which don’t really do much other than look cool. If thats incentive enough for you to play hours and hours of this game then you really need to find something better to do with your time.  Another annoying feature of this game is its achievment system. They choose to use something called Kiip points. Apparently you can redeem these Kiip points for real world items from certain companies. This system miserably fails for this game as you can only use them for Kodak pictures and is a big nuisance when playing the game.

Overall this is a sub par endless runner which feels like a rip off of Tiny Wings and the original Worms franchise. I give it a 1/5.

Casual arcady games with an adventure type feeling are pretty popular among iOS gamers. Unlike the XBOX or PlayStation gamers, the AppStore is not really meant for hardcore gamers. With the current common pricing models developers and publishers have for the AppStore, it’s not surprising that it’s brought in a lot of people who normally would not play video games, or maybe even never played video games before owning an iPod. Ayopa Games, publishing their first two iOS games last week, Chicken Rescue, and W.E.L.D.E.R., has joined the parade of casual arcade publishers.

Chicken Rescue, developed by End Boss Games, a game in which you’ll control a mother chicken through 24 levels, using either accelerometer, gyroscope or virtual joystick controls, while she tries to find her missing children, and bring them all back to the chicken coop while collecting stars, apples, coins, breaking boxes, crates, and avoiding hazards, like pigs, cacti and falling off the edge of land into the water. The virtual joystick can be a tad unresponsive at times, which makes it seem a little clunky, it’s also pretty uncomfortable holding the iPod in Portrait view, instead of Landscape. If gamers were able to tilt their devices and have the game go from Portrait to Landscape, it would help make the game a lot more comfortable to play. There’s also no sensitivity options with tilt or gyro controls, and there really needs to be because the accelerometer controls are pretty touchy.

GameCenter is also added, giving players 4 different leader boards; score, coins, completed levels, and overall completion, along with 8 achievements. This does have some added competition within the game for gamers looking for that extra little push of a challenge. There’s also a store where you can spend your collected coins, upgrading the combo time for collecting flowers, the number of coins found in each level, getting more shields in the levels, making the dash ability re-charge faster, increasing your health, and more. There are IAPs for coins, but you are not pushed towards buying them unless you would like more skins for your Mama Chicken, which cost 1,000 coins or more, and add abilities like increasing immunity time, or having apples restore health, and getting more points per flower combo. A lot of gamers do not like that you can pretty much buy your way up the leader boards, and can be a real deal-breaker when it comes to finally deciding whether or not to make that purchase. But considering it’s more of a kids/family game, it can also be seen as a way to make the game easier for little ones, so it’s hard to bash the developers for this model, especially since if you’re really wanting to get the different skins for your chicken, you can unlock them with in-game money. It will just take you a while to get them, as going through the whole game will usually get you about 1,000-2,000 coins.

In the end, kids with their smaller hands will most likely have a blast with Chicken Rescue. But before it becomes a game that adults will want to play, Landscape mode is a must, along with some tightening up for the virtual joystick, as well as making it more responsive, and adding some sensitivity options to the accelerometer controls. There is enough content and the upgrades are decent, though the leader boards pretty much being able to buy the top scores is a pretty big turn off. We’ve got mixed feelings for the game, because we have kids, nephews and nieces who have played, and enjoyed Chicken Rescue quite a bit, and we’ve had fun playing it with them, but for most of our readers, this isn’t the case. If you have younger children, , and have been looking for another game that you can play with them, that they will find pretty easy to play, and still has enough challenge to keep you interested, or are a more casual gamer, who doesn‘t play games very seriously, Chicken Rescue is a good choice, especially at the current price of $0.99 (which will go up to $1.99 soon), and being Universal. But there’s a few things that need to be added and worked with before it becomes a game that more serious gamers will enjoy.

Casual arcade games have become a staple of the AppStore over the last couple years, so it’s no surprised that this is the genre a lot of developers start off with. OrionArts has chosen this path, and done so wisely. Their first release, AirHead Adam, is a well thought out, easily accessible, perfect for all ages yet still challenging addition to the casual arcade genre.

In the game, you’ll control Adam as he searches the galaxy for his beautiful lost girlfriend, traveling through space in a bubble filled with air. You’ll need to guide Adam by tapping next to his bubble to push him in the opposite direction and gather air bubbles to keep him breathing, and stars to get upgrades. There’s also various hazards and obstacles in each level that you will need to destroy or avoid in order to progress through the game. Rocks, aliens, and space ships that shoot at you are around corners, and sometimes you’ll get boxed in by one, two, or all three of these. To get out of it, you’ll need to tap on Adam, and drag in the direction of the object you want to destroy, and he will shoot out some of his air in a bubble that will explode when it hits whatever object you’ve aimed at, and if you hit a space ship, collectable stars come flying out of it. You’ve got to be careful though, because this takes away from your air supply, and running out of air is a game over.

This brings us to the IAPs. Now, at first, these might turn you off. Chances are, you’ll earn about 120 or so stars in the first 4 levels, and in the shop, upgrades to power-ups are all 1000 stars for the first upgrade, and more after that, and new characters are 4500 stars. With that, you might start thinking that it will take until level 30 or something to unlock one upgrade. However, at the end of your game, when you die, you are given the option to redeem stars that you have earned throughout your game while achieving various achievements. Things like getting 20 bubbles in a row, or 15 stars in one level, and these add up VERY quickly. At the end of my first game, I made it to level 9 on the easy levels, and ended up with 1500+ stars after everything was said and done. So gamers are not pushed as hard towards the IAP as you might think at first.

AirHead Adam is supported by OpenFeint and GameCenter, as well as having FaceBook and Twitter options to upload and share your high-scores. Within OF and GC, there’s a whole slew of leader boards to try and top, including ones for Best Overall Score, Best Overall Time, Total Easy Mode Score, Total Normal Mode Score, Total Hard Mode Score, your Best Time In Easy, Normal, and Hard, your Best Overall Fast Time, Top Bubble Combo, how many total Stars Collected, and more, along with 47 achievements. You can play the game slow and steady, collecting all the bubbles you can, or fast and dangerous, collecting only the minimum amount of bubbles, and getting to the end of each level as quick as you can. Both ways of playing have leader boards, and with that, it adds quite a bit of replay value on top of the leader boards, because you’ll want to go back and see how quick you can get through the levels if at first you went slow, getting the highest bubble combo you could, or go through slow, getting as many bubbles as you can if you flew through the levels the first time. There’s loads of planned updates, and right now the game is priced as free, so it’s definitely worth checking out, as even if you don’t buy any IAP stars, there’s plenty of gameplay to keep you entertained, as well as challenged. OrionArts has definitely proven that they know exactly what it takes to make a cute, fun, challenging casual arcade game that’s good for all ages, as well as keeping it full of gameplay even though it’s free, while giving gamers the option to support them through IAPs that are not necessary to complete the game. If they keep up this basic model with future games, they could very well be sitting pretty on top of a fairly large list of titles.

AirHead Adam gets a score of 8 out of 10.