Pocket Gamer weekly wrap-up - Riptide GP 2, Bloodmasque, and Prince of Persia reviewed

Colossatron hands-on! Killzone: Mercenary preview! Hot headlines!

| Jul 27, 2013

It's never a slow week here at Pocket Gamer. Whether we're writing huge features, covering the most important news stories, or reviewing the biggest games, we've always got something up our sleeves for you to read.

In a perfect world, you'd read everything. Savour every word. Watch every video. Comment on every article. But that's okay. You've got other commitments. We understand.

To get you up to speed, then, here are the biggest stories on Pocket Gamer this week. So, yep, there's everything you need to know about swashbuckling Persian princes, futuristic jet ski championships, and vampires.

Join us as we review all the goings-on over the last seven days at Pocket Gamer. In other words, we desperately try to remember what we've written about this week.

Big releases Riptide GP2

Vector Unit launched a sequel to its slick jet ski racer Riptide GP. In our review of the follow-up, we said: "Ultimately, Riptide GP 2 is another fun and visually impressive racer from Vector Unit, with a lot more content than its predecessor. It's just a shame that the upgrade system is constantly conspiring to mess up the game's balance and pace."

We were less impressed with retro throwback Prince of Persia: The Shadow and the Flame, mind. We said: "It's by no means perfect, and it's by no means for everyone, but if you've got a couple of hours to spare to revisit a classic platformer that's full of nods to a more modern era of gaming, it's worth giving a try."

And our verdict of Square Enix's vampire basher Bloodmasque? Even less complimentary. It's a "truly odd mish-mash of swipe-based action, social, and JRPG elements, but only its historical vampire lore is executed with any great conviction". That one got a 5/10.

As ever, you can get hands-on impressions of all of this week's new iOS games in our weekly round-up. That includes Sky Tourist, Iron Force, and Chillaxian. See them all in motion below.

In the world of handhelds, we tiptoed past PS Vita indie Stealth Inc. ("another great indie platformer") and 3DS period piece Attack of the Friday Monsters! ("a beguiling story of discovery and innocence").

Feature creep

After hearing the news of an upcoming Batman and Superman movie mash-up, we wanted to know which of these two DC titans had had the best mobile games. So, we organised a showdown. Using words and letters. Supes won, by the way. Maybe.

We've invited Cara Ellison to delve into the murky depths of the App Store and find the worst games on iOS. Her first discovery? The appropriately named Bad Game. It's "a deliberately inflammatory bastard" that needs to be seen to be believed.

Ex-AppSpy editor Andrew Nesvadba has just returned from gaming expo PAX Australia 2013. He promptly regaled us with tales of a giant robotic snake. That's not a native Melbourne species, though - it's the star of Halfbrick's new Colossatron: Massive World Threat game.

Back in Blighty, we got our hands on a preview build of jaw-droppingly gorgeous Vita shooter Killzone: Mercenary. "The little that we've seen so far is very promising indeed," our Peter said.

News beat

Here are the news headlines you should be clicking on right now to discover everything you need to know about games consoles you can fit in your pocket this week.

Mark Brown

Mark Brown spent several years slaving away at the Steel Media furnace, finally serving as editor at large of Pocket Gamer before moving on to doing some sort of youtube thing.

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