Touch Arcade:
Nearly one full year ago, the original PewPew was released onto the App Store during the height of dual-stick space shooter popularity. Despite the massive influx of similar games around this time, PewPew managed to gain some notoriety for its retro-inspired vector graphics, responsive controls, frantic game modes, and the reasonable price tag of free. Many players even commented on feeling slightly guilty for having scored such a quality game for nothing at all. Luckily for them, and for the rest of us, the chance to show monetary gratitude is at hand as PewPew 2 is now available for $1.99. It expands upon everything that made the original so successful and adds a challenging single player campaign, enhanced graphical effects, and a couple of other neat surprises.
The arcade shooter is a style of game that I love, but which went out of fashion in the last decade as improved hardware led most developers to embrace the immersion of a first-person or third-person perspective.
Fortunately, the constraints of mobile hardware have caused resurgence in the genre, and there’s a hoard of titles to choose from. Perhaps too many, as with tower defense, picking out the really great games from the schlock isn’t easy. That’s why Matt at Makeuseof.com rounded up the five absolute must-play arcade shooters for iOS.
2011's ten best Android games so far.
Here's my list:
Order and Chaos Online
Backstab
Nova 2
Starfront Collision
Mr Karoshi
Battleheart
9 Innings Pro Baseball 2011
Symphony of Eternity
Plants vs Zombies
Cut the Rope
Pocket Gamer - “Dodge, duck, reverse aim, snatch extra shield, avoid exploding square, too late, game over, tap retry”. Thus goes the internal monologue of the PewPew 2 addict.
The original Pocket Gamer Silver Award winner proved bedroom coder Jean-Francois Geyelin could affectionately ape the pixel-perfect precision of twin-stick shooters like Geometry Wars on Android touchscreens.
