Risk Next Gen
A 12 player, real time, online variation of the classic board game, Next Gen adds tanks, artillery, and ships to the quest for world domination. This game has everything: diplomacy, backstabbing, hilarious Europeans cussing you out in broken English. Did I mention battle on the high seas? Next Gen games are free, hosted on Battle.net through Warcraft 3 with automatic stat recording and a ladder on their website. Now the strategy game nerd and the competitive asshole in me are both satisfied with one game!
Jungle Style Pinball
While Gameprom’s last two iPhone pinball titles (Wild West and The Deep) weren’t terrible, they left a lot to be desired. Wild West established that they could make a sweet pinball interface, but the gameplay lacked any sort of challenges to keep you interested; you were pretty much expected to sit there and repeat the same task a million times to get the high score. The Deep aimed to improve on this with a slew of new challenges, but in the end it was a flawed effort with needlessly annoying sound effects and a game board that was clearly derived from the Wild West with only a few changes and a new theme.
Gameprom upped the ante with Jungle Style Pinball, a game that has a completely fresh interface including new features like spinning roulettes that determine whether you become trapped, release a multi-ball, or get a ball saver post, two mini-paddles half way up the board and a secret chamber with a mini paddle inside it, and missions that are fun and actually useful towards improving your score (like battling Tiki guards to defeat a giant gorilla or twisting the inlaid maze repeatedly to release the golden ball from inside). This game has kept me way more entertained than my last 99 cent visit to the App Store, thanks a lot I Am T-Pain app.
Heroes of Newerth
Remove everything frustrating about the now 8-year-old game Dota (laggy games, limited graphical interface, disconnects, lack of voice chat, no direct rating system to avoid bad games, etc.) but retain the great gameplay, and you have Heroes of Newerth. This game captures the essence of Dota and presents it in a more palatable form that gives the genre a fighting chance against future beasts like Starcraft 2. I love Dota, but it is time to move on and Heroes of Newerth is the awesome answer to that.
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