Sniper: Ghost Warrior headed to iOS... and using the Unreal Engine!

From Q1 next year, iOS gamers will be able to experience the budding Sniper: Ghost Warrior franchise courtesy of City Interactive.

Sniper isn't the most critically acclaimed FPS on the market, but it does deserve full props for trying to do something different. By focusing on the understated thrills of a successful sniper gun assassination, Sniper tries to be a "thinking man's" FPS, and frankly, we can't think of a more appropriate FPS franchise for the iPad and iPhone.

The FPS genre is a difficult one if you don't have a mouse & keyboard or controller, but the iPad and iPhone's touch screen could indeed be ideal for the Sniper style of gameplay.

Retro Review: Balloon Fight (Wii Virtual Console/ 3DS Ambassador program)

Balloon Fight is a groovy little game, and perfect for the Nintendo 3DS. As a freebie through the ambassador program, it’s quite possibly the best of all ten games, but when it goes on the eShop proper, it will well be worth the $5 or whatever Nintendo decides to charge for it.

Five criminally underappreciated PS3 games

The PlayStation 3 has, over the years, played host to some genuine underrated classics. People that claim the JRPG is dead clearly haven’t seen the PS3 library. And God of War? Sure, but there’s a bunch of great games similar to that that just floated in and floated out without any of the recognition they deserve.

So without further adieu, here’s five PS3 games that we thought, tragically, never got the recognition they serve:

Goodies galore for Xbox this week

No less than four games hit Xbox LIVE Arcade this week. It's a deluge! So, what's in this apocalyptic flood of new titles? Actually, some pretty big games, headlined by a kollection of some of the most famous arcade fighters of all time-



Click through for the full list.

Incredible new screens for Wargame: European Escalation

We're big fans of R.U.S.E here at Digitally Downloaded. It was one of the few quality attempts at a more serious wargame that has been released on console, and it worked.

So we are very much looking forward to the developers behind R.U.S.E's newest project, Wargame: European Escalation. Like R.U.S.E it will be a real-time strategy game that promises to focus on the "strategy."

Review: Arkedo Series - 01 Jump (PSN)

There’s a point where retro becomes too retro for its own good. The good “modern retro” games, such as Dot Game Heroes or Spelunker HD, understand what makes retro fun, while also understanding that retro games were not perfect and some modern conventions are a positive development in the name of playability.

Arkedo Series – 01 Jump is a retro game through and through, but it doesn’t necessarily understand what was, and wasn’t good about the frontier days of the industry. It has flashes of utter brilliance, but the experience is just not consistent enough to elevate the game to the upper echelons.

Retro Review: Ice Climber (3DS/Wii Virtual Console)

Popo is doomed right now

If you’ve heard of the mountain-climbing duo, Nana and Popo, you probably have Super Smash Bros to thank. It’s the simple tale of two adventurers scaling a mountain to rescue their precious vegetables from bothersome condors. Those of the people who played Ice Climber back in the day, though, will already know whether or not they want to buy this game again for the nostalgic factor. Most new gamers just aren’t going to derive too much enjoyment from this occasionally taxing arcade platformer.

Nintendo just can't get online right

This game is awesome. Pity the download is complicated

From tomorrow, people who bought Nintendo 3DS consoles before the massive price slash will be able to download the first 10 of 20 free games that Nintendo has promised as an apology to those loyal fans.

That was a stunning, humble gesture – indeed, it was well above and beyond what Nintendo needed to do to appease its fans. Clearly the company wants to please fans. And then Nintendo decided to go and make things difficult. The process for retrieving those free games is absurdly, needlessly complicated. It represents, once again, that Nintendo just does not understand online. Digital Downloads and online gaming is meant to be an easy way to consume entertainment, but it is always too difficult with Nintendo, and it’s just becoming exasperating now.

Retro Review: Kirby's Avalanche (Wii Virtual Console)

Well, do you? He is offering.

Strange things have happened in gaming, but did you ever expect Kirby to share a game with Dr. Robotnik and Carbuncle? This isn’t officially the case with Kirby’s Avalanche, but all three titles are largely the same game on alternate systems by the same developer. However, Kirby’s Avalanche is not the definitive version, at least where the Virtual Console is concerned. It is sadly outdone by both of its brethren, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, and Puyo Puyo Tsuu.

Thoughts: Three creative ideas for video games

Creative opportunities abound

The games industry is at a point now where any kind of non-traditional ways to play are possible. The genesis was probably the original Wiimote, which showed the industry that people will buy into peripherals in a big way if they offer an interesting and creative way to play games, that peripherals need not be relegated to niche games and genres, such as was the case with dance mats or steering wheels.

Since then we’ve had balance boards, better motion controlling, hands-free controlling, exercise peripherals, music instruments, augmented reality, and soon courtesy of Activision toys that can jump into our game worlds. This opens up so many different opportunities and game developers have barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be done.

Indeed, the Wii U is at this stage so full of possibility that many games developers, gamers and investors have been left scratching their heads trying to work out exactly what it is.

Paradox Interactive teases Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Paradox Interactive wants to own my life. It’s the only way I can justify its newest title, Warlock: Master of the Arcane, which was unveiled at this year’s PAX event.

Why do strategy game developers ignore consoles?

I finally got around to purchasing Military History Commander: Europe at War for the Nintendo DS recently. It's a game that's been available for over two years, but each time I'd come across it, a quick look at the back of the box suggested a version of Advance Wars, but with hexes. As such I'd passed it on, but at $10 I was finally willing to give it a chance.

I was wrong, of course - I should have had more faith that a game Slitherine published would be a more in-depth strategy game than that, but with the utter dearth of grand strategy games on consoles, it's honestly amazing that this game happened at all. Even then Europe at War is about as accessible to the "casual" strategist that grand strategy games come, but after seeing how well it works on the DS, I got to wondering why there are so few grand strategy developers and publishers that work with consoles.

Review: SplitApple (iPhone)

I don't know about 'beautiful,' but it does look good

Archery is a vastly underrated sport. The thrill of landing home a perfect shot at 20 feet is one that is never really lost, even after playing the sport for years. It’s also a sport that translates well to videogames – it was the best reason to by Wii Sports Resort, for instance.

SplitApple is an archery game for the iPhone (or in HD on the iPad), that is both surprisingly good, and quite disappointing. To start with the disappointing: This game uses the iPhone gyroscope for aiming. I don’t like the gyroscope. Though it works fairly well in this instance (a feat, given how many games do this poorly), it also means that this game can’t be played on public, assuming you don’t want to look like a twit.

Portal creator teams with Square Enix for new game, Quantum Conundrum

Here's a game announcement that's worth getting really, really excited about; Square Enix is set to publish a game developed by Airtight Games and the co-creator of Portal, Kim Swift. That's not all; that game, Quantum Conundrum, is a first person puzzle game.

Yes. Swift is back in a genre in which she was responsible for perhaps the greatest game of all time. To say we are excited is the understatement of the decade.

The game is going to be released in 2012, for Steam, the PSN and Xbox Live. What does that mean? Well, it means it's likely to be even more experimental than a retail release can ever hope to be. Just what we want from Swift.

We'll leave the press release to explain what the game is about:

Review: Warhammer 40k Kill Team (XBLA)

When I was a kid, I sat for hours on end playing Warhammer 40k with my friends. We played Epic scale, the standard game... we even made up games with our own rules cherry picked from dozens of other miniature table top games. I was really into it. I've long since stopped playing tabletop RPG's, but I don't like the dark sci-fi world of 40k any less. So when I heard that a new title was on the horizon for XBLA, I had one thought: will it uphold the honor and glory of the Emperor?

Digitally Downloaded poll results #2: What is your preferred gaming device?

So, our second poll has closed (see the first here), and the question? “What is your preferred gaming device?”

PC came out on top with 30% of the vote. PS3 was second (26%), while handheld consoles such as the Nintendo DS and 3DS, as well as the PSP, at 16%, rounded out the top three.

The remainder were iOS or Android phone/ tablets (13%), Xbox 360 (8%), and Nintendo Wii (5%).

I don’t think any of this is a surprise, given that this site is about digitally downloadable games, though the low Xbox 360 numbers is a bit surprising to me, the Xbox is a good online console.

On the other hand, it’s heartening to see that tablets are being seen as a primary gaming device for some people – recognition that there is more to these devices than Angry Birds.

So what do you think of this data? And be sure to answer our next one “What genres of games do you like to play most?”

Review: Contre Jour (iPad)

Chillingo's newest find, Contre Jour, desperately wants you to believe it’s a work of art. The opening line of the game’s description in the Apple App Store suggests the game is “blurring the lines between games and interactive art…” but it’s not. I’ll address this misuse of ‘art’ as a marketing gimmick in a future opinion piece, but Contre Jour is not art. It’s an incredible game and anyone with an iPhone or iPad needs to pick it up, but there’s nothing remarkably intelligent about it.

If you take some of the basic ideas behind World of Goo, and then remove the colour from the visuals, you’re more or less at Contre Jour. It’s a physics-based puzzle game which tasks the player with navigating an adorable little black ball character through a living maze to end goal. Nothing we haven’t seen before, and even more traditionally, there are a couple of out-of-the way glowing blue balls along the way that need to be picked up for maximum points.

Review: IceCubes (iPhone)

Mindless block busting action is the basis of many games, and Ice Cubes sits firmly in that camp. By no means is that a bad thing, the vacant zombie-esque stare you gain while swiping frantically at pieces of coloured ice is a thing that brings back the nostalgia and countless hours of Tetris, or more accurately, Dr. Mario.

IceCubes is essentially a Dr. Mario clone, but of course there is a bit more to it that saves it from being an out-and-out copy. If you’re sitting here reading this review, wondering what Dr. Mario is; I firmly suggest you should reconsider what exactly you’re doing with your life.

Runescape coming to consoles, will remain free to play

If there’s one MMO that most gamers have played, it’s Runescape. The online role-playing game continues to be popular, in spite of its age. According to Jagex, the game is now slated for a multiplatform release some time in the near future. This means that Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC gamers will all be connected and able to interact with one another.