Game: Canabalt
Price: $2.99 / £1.79
Size: 12.5MB
Buy it now from the iTunes store:/
Certainly you've played Canabalt by now, correct? Please tell us you haven't skipped out on this one-touch, monochromatic masterpiece, which was updated over the summer to become a universal iPad-native ♚app.
Hopefully this won't serve as your introduction to the excellent iOS time-sucker, but if you somehow missed out, here's the rub: your 8-bit-stylized running man leaps from rooftop to rooftop during a presumed alien invasion, and all you need to do is tap the screen to jump. But it's not nearly as simpl✨e as it sounds, of course – towers crumble, alien pods crash mere steps in front of you, and narrow windows sometimes provide the only pathw💜ay forward.
Canabalt's been out🥃 on iPhone for a couple years now, so we forget from time to time just how well-designed and addi꧋ctive it is. But as soon as we fire it up, we're immediately glued back to those randomized rooftop layouts, hoping to score a couple hundred more meters of distance (and yelling furiously when we don't). Join us, won't you?
Game: Trucks and Skulls
Price: $1.99 / £1.19
Size: 28.5MB
Buy it now from the iTunes store:/
Trucks and Skulls may be the most blatant Angry Birds clone we've seen in the 💙App Store, swapping the titular characters for birds and pigs, respectivel🔴y, as well as environments and icons inspired by heavy metal album covers.
But for an obvious clone, Trucks and Skulls still manages to be solid fun. You'll pull back and launc💯h the trucks towards towers housing numerous skulls – much like in Rovio's smash hit – plus one type of truck speeds up when you touch the screen, while another drops a bomb... yeah, you've seen this before. But if you're as hooked on Angry Birds as we still are, even a decent substitute seems brighter than usual until that expected Angry Birds Christmas app drops.
But Trucks and Skulls does offer one big original perk: the abilityᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ to create your own stages using a handy level maker, and then share them via e-mail with friends. We'd love to see a server-based sharing option in future updates, but this is a nice first step towards playing absurd, player-designed contraptions.
Game: Tap Tap Radiation
Price: FREE
Size: 20.2MB
Buy it now from the iTunes store:/
Rather than port ov♒er its popular Tap Tap Revenge series of iPhone games to the larger screen of the iPad, Tapulous opted for a new approach with Tap Tap Radiation, a fast and fluid m💖usic game that makes solid use of the iPad display.
As one of 30+ free tracks (some must be downloaded in the app💟) thumps in the background, you'll tap three zones on the screen as the beat-matched icons reach their targets. But those zones aren't entirely stationary: they'll bounce around the display in different segments of each song, forcing you to pay attention as you bob your head to the beat. Plus, a handful of premium song sets – including a six-pack of Lady Gaga hits – can be purchased within the app.
Unfortunately, Tap Tap Radiation has essentially gone unchanged since launching alongside the iPad, aside from the occasional free track offe🔯red within the app. Hopefully, Tapulous will build upon this entertaining foundation with a proper sequel or thick update, but even if this iꦆs both the beginning and end of Radiation, it's a worthwhile download.
Dec 2, 2010
We'r🙈e thankful for math, fruit, and Spider-Man this week
🐓 Need a break from Black Ops? Here are five new iPad picks
Loading up your iPad with five fresh new picks
