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10 Unreal Engine games we want to see on iPhone and iPad

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10 Unreal Engine games we want to see on iPhone and iPad
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Epic is the development house built by Unreal, roofed by Gears of War, and decorated by Jazz Jackrabbit. And it's a license-holder of a pretty spectacular engine, which is used to power about half the shooters you play every year.

Now the developer has shown off Epic Citadel, a tech-demo that proves the bulk of Unreal Engine 3’s graphical goodies are possible on our Apple devices of choice. Awe-inspiring vistas, reflective floors, circling birds - it’s got the lot.

On that note, we've picked out a bunch of much loved console and PC games powered by the wonderful Unreal Engine that would be instant purchases should they make their way to the App Store.

We’ve tried to go for indie developments that have used the tech, rather than massive multi-million-dollar console epics that are unlikely to ever show up on iPhone. More Shadow Complex than Batman: Arkham Aslyum, basically.

But if Mass Effect 3 shows up on iPhone or iPad, we won't complain.

Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia

One look at Monster Madness and you’ll agree that the developers of this game have inadvertently revealed a misspent youth playing LucasArts’s SNES cult classic Zombies Ate My Neighbours.

Battle for Suburbia is an addictive, top-down monster smasher for Xbox 360 where household objects and junk found around town become perfect zombie decking material. Sound familiar?

The rather primitive graphics and retro-styled camera would work out fine on iPhone, especially if the control system was tweaked to be a little more like a twin-stick shooter: a genre that Apple devices excel at.

Fatal Inertia EX

Unfortunately, problems with the Unreal Engine caused massive delays and sticky technical problems on PS3. Hopefully, the bugs are ironed out if this Koei developed racer wanted to head onto iPhone.

Fatal Inertia uses the Unreal Engine for some rather pretty futuristic racing courses and ships, meaning it’d be up there with Real Racing and Need for Speed as one of the hottest looking iDevice driving games.

It got some pretty mixed reviews on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but with a radically shortened price tag and some final tweaks it could be a great iOS title.

American McGee’s Grimm

Developed by the ludicrously named Spicy Horse studios, American McGee’s Grimm is a 23 part weekly episodic game. It was initially released for free on GameTap, and McGee has said he wants to release the game on a console downloadable service.

Pick iPhone, McGee.

The game is like Katamari Damacy meets Grimm’s Fairy Tales, as you move about the landscape turning everything innocent and pure into something grisly and scary.

There are tricky puzzles to complete and enemies to attack, plus nuisance critters which will attempt to return your darkness back into the sickly, saccharine niceness that Grimm so detests.

Shadow Complex

Xbox Live Arcade’s best attempt at a Metroid clone comes pretty damn close, as exploring the underground lair of Shadow Complex feels distinctly familiar to fans of Nintendo’s sci-fi Zebes-explore-'em-up.

The game comes from Chair Entertainment, the same lovely fellas who made the Epic Citadel tech demo that kickstarted this lovely list of Unreal lusting.

You play as Jason Flemming, who stumbles on an army of bloodthirsty Stormtrooper-like fellas while spelunking with his new squeeze. Whoops!

What happens next is a tasty few hours of exploring the gigantic underground lair, blasting some ninnies in the face, finding a jetpack, and getting the hell out of there. It’s one of Xbox Live Arcade’s best games, and would be perfect on iPad.

Killing Floor

Killing Floor is pretty much Left 4 Dead but with worse graphics, filled with terrible voice acting and made in Unreal Engine. It’d be perfect on the iPhone, though, especially with local and online co-op.

Groups of four fend off a shuffling army of the undead, gunning down zombies with all manner of shooty sticks and melee weapons. As in World at War: Zombies, you can also weld doors up to direct the flow of enemies.

It’s fast, fun, and rough around the edges. And it takes place in London, which is totally a cool location for a zombie apocalypse.

Alien Breed Evolution

More isometric enemy-dispatching fun built on the massively flexible Unreal Engine, Evolution has you nuking aliens aboard the spaceship Leopold, where you're an engineer.

This contemporary remake will hold a special place in lots of Amiga fans’ hearts, as it reintroduces Worms-creator Team 17’s classic Amiga blaster for the 21st century.

The game (originally intended as an episodic experience, but its been a good nine months without a sequel), has hit everything from Xbox 360 to PS3, and even Steam. iPad next, please.

Undertow

Hey, it’s another game by Epic Citadel creator Chair. This time, Undertow chucks you a few thousand leagues under the sea as you eradicate nasty terrorists from the game’s underwater city.

The game might be a rather simple side-scrolling affair, but it uses the beefy Unreal tech to render lovely, realistic water and the wonderful lighting that streams through it.

Chair has proven twice over that it's handy with Unreal Tech, so consider us excited for Project Sword. Even with that stupid developer name.

Roboblitz

Roboblitz is another impressive little indie game that uses Unreal Engine 3 to bump up its graphics and stand out amongst the crowded downloadable scene.

Developed by Naked Sky Entertainment (seriously, what’s the correlation between Unreal Engine and stupid developer names?), the game features a cute little robot called Blitz. He dashes about a space ship, solving puzzles and defeating enemies.

It’s all rather lovely, really.

Gears of War

Finally, enough of that indie rubbish. Let’s get some real games in here. Macho men with tree-trunk necks and muscles on their muscles and chainsaws on their guns. This is what it means to be a gamer. This is what it means to be a man.

Now if Gears of War, a bloody grimy shooter from Epic Games, ended up on the App Store tomorrow morning, you might also see some flying pigs and a man eating a hat. Multi-million dollar budgeted games that use every last drop of the 360’s power don’t make great iPhone investments.

But there’s no reason Epic can’t use the tech to do Resident Evil 4 or Katamari Damacy styled tiny versions, using the UE tech to blow our sight spheres out of our eye holes. Do it epic, you know you want to.

BioShock

And by that token, how about BioShock? The smart, underwater FPS about objectivism, morality, and bashing the Irish with giant wrenches.

We need more incredibly realised worlds to escape into on iPad, and the Epic Citadel demo proves just how fun it can be to waltz around a well designed environment.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer