Touch Arcade

Mikey Hooks does exactly what you'd hope from a sequel: keeps everything about the original that worked while at the same time adds some new mechanics and ideas to offer a new experience. It fires on all cylinders, and if you're a fan of the previous games you don't even need this review to determine if you should get it or not–you probably have already bought it.

Knightmare Tower doesn't so much drastically wring minutes out of you as much as it quietly and neatly absorbs them. Less painful extrusion, more fluffy sponge. Time and obligations blithely fade into the background, their importance blunted. I should probably tend to the coffee in my press, slowly bittering, but... eh. It can wait. I didn't really need to get off at that stop. Watch yourself with this one. It can easily relieve you of an entire day.

Riptide GP was a great game for its time, but I feel that the improvements and additions made by Vector Unit have turned Riptide GP2 into a full-fledged excellent racing game.

Nevertheless, Rymdkapsel feels tailor-made for iOS in both form and function, and its elegant, subtle constituent parts nest within one another as neatly as its four-block tetrominos snap together along a space station corridor.

Bloodmasque is a deep, involving action RPG with oodles of style. The visuals are great, the soundtrack suitably cinematic and French and the gameplay honed to a fine point. Oh, and then there's the side-splittingly hilarious Masque feature.

The graphics evoke Another World, and the mood recalls Team Ico, but on a much smaller scale. It never attains the emotional rush of Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, but it never really tries.This isn't a novelistic game. It's poetic. It doesn't say much, but it says it with quiet elegance.

There are five tutorials, which barely count as levels, and another 25 stages across five worlds. I was shocked by how well every level distinguished itself, even within worlds. Every new screen was like beginning a newly reset game of Mouse Trap, but with setup exorcised in favor of pure Goldbergian fun.

Limbo can be elegant and even morbidly funny, but the punchline hinges on retrospective goodwill, after you've brute forced your way through the puzzles and seen the entire Rube Goldberg machine in action.

If you're a Deus Ex fan who was upset that the new game is mobile only, I still think it's worth giving a chance, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Impressions in our forums have been overwhelmingly positive, and for all future top-tier action games on iOS, the bar has been set high with the release of Deus Ex: The Fall.

In summary, Colin McRae Rally is a good game but with the series' heritage, it should have been a fantastic game. Perhaps the reason there wasn't a major fanfare about the iOS release was it was just cash-cow milking experiment.