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The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Valiant Hearts, Battle Riders, and more

War, vehicular violence, and jet boots

The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Valiant Hearts, Battle Riders, and more
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iOS
| New releases round-up

Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's best new iPhone and iPad games.

Battle Riders
By Valentin Ciampuru - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)
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It would be easy to dismiss Battle Riders at first glance as a joyless descendent of Mario Kart, set in a generic dystopian future in which driving around a grim circuit using mounted guns to shoot other cars has somehow transpired to be good idea.

It's the usual deal. You race in a variety of modes, unlock new tracks, race on those, and so on until you've unlocked everything and outpaced or outgunned everybody. There's not much variety, and no surprises.

But Battle Riders works all the same because it feels like a real racer, complete with hefty vehicles, well-calibrated steering, and even slipstreams. The result is a battle racer that feels more like an earthbound Wipeout than a rusty Mario Kart.

Mikey Boots
By BeaverTap Games - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)
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Mikey Boots clicks immediately. Developer BeaverTap Games has thrown off the gravitational shackles of traditional platform games (or loosened them at least), allowing you to glide above the ground rather than running and bouncing along it.

The result is a game that plays a little bit like arcade masterpiece Jetpack Joyride, in that you hold a finger on the screen to surge through the air and remove it to start falling again.

The difference is that the levels here are maze-like, and you have to thread your way backwards and forwards through them, collecting coins and passing through beams of purple light.

It doesn't look like much, with graphics at the cheap end of the cheap and cheerful spectrum, but the controls are responsive, the physics are robust, and the whole game is so pleasantly intuitive that it's difficult to put down.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
By Ubisoft - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.99 / $4.99)
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Valiant Hearts is not like most war games. Instead of putting a gun in your hand and sending you off on a murderous superhuman rampage, it places you in the shoes of a small cast of vulnerable characters buffeted by the forces of geopolitical turmoil.

Yes, there's a story arc about taking bloody revenge on the unscrupulous warmonger Baron Von Dorf, and yes, there are weapons, but this is a story about relationships and survival, and you're more likely to use a grenade for dislodging a ladder than for killing a soldier.

Ubisoft's smart and sensitive action-puzzler has an engaging story and some fairly challenging puzzles, but its most accomplished feature is its beautiful arthouse animation aesthetic.

The port from PSN and XBLA isn't perfect, with some blurry graphics here and there, but this is still the most thoughtful game about war you're likely to play before 11bit's This War of Mine arrives.

Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.