In my mind, there is no doubt: BioShock is one of – if not the – best game of the last console generation. And it’s currently on sale on the App Store for $2.99. BioShock is the spiritual successor of System Shock 1&2, released in 1994 and 1999. System Shock was truly ahead of its time and offered a great setting and atmosphere, but was a bit held back by the technical limitations back then (at least System Shock 1 – the controls were pretty crazy). Although I really like the System Shock premise, I believe that BioShock presented the most atmospheric setting ever: Rapture. An underwater city, built by and for the brightest minds of the world, who want to break free of the shackles that are artificially imposed upon them by their government or for religious reasons. “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.”. It’s a first person shooter at heart, although it does have some sort of RPG layer on top of the shooting mechanics: Plasimds. Plasmids are genetic mutations that you will be able to find and/or buy throughout the game that will give you a wide variety of abilities: Shooting fireballs, lightning bolts or summoning insect swarms. It’s great fun experimenting what tactics work with different weapon/plasmid combos.

Unfortunately, the iOS port of BioShock has suffered quite a bit of a graphics downgrade. This does hurt the atmosphere a little bit and you will notice that this game wasn’t developed with touch controls in mind. However: It’s still an incredible game at its core and if the setting intrigues you just a little bit, I can’t recommend BioShock enough. And for $2.99 it’s an absolute steal.

A few days ago I said that Modern Combat 4 doesn’t looks as impressive now that we’ve seen games like Infinity Blade and the likes. Holy cow, I take that back! This game looks sharp! More detailed 3D models compared to earlier games, motion capturing, Havoc physics engine, dynamic objects – if someone told me a few years ago that we’d see all this stuff in a mobile game on our smartphones, I would have personally driven that guy to the next insane asylum.

But, as we all know, graphics isn’t everything and I have yet to get my hands on Modern Combat 4 to find out if the game plays as well as it looks. Fortunately, I don’t think it will be long until Gameloft will release Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour on the App Store. Also, as it seems to have become quite common these days, I don’t think this was the last of the Dev Diary entries. So stay tuned!

Do you still remember how groundbreaking the first Modern Combat game was when it was first released on the App Store? Well, Gameloft is at it again and giving you a look at the 4th instalment of the Modern Combat series for iPhone and iPad. And while the times have changed and we’ve seen such beautiful games like Infinity Blade, Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour still looks pretty awesome for an iOS game. It might not be as groundbreaking as the first entry in the series, but you can clearly see that Gameloft is trying to compensate for that with a more immersive experience. Unfortunately, the writing and presentation of the story is usually one of the weaker elements in almost all Gameloft games, so it’s gonna be interesting to see wether they succeed this time around.

But whatever the outcome may be, I’m still pretty sure that it’s gonna be a fun shooter to kill some time with on your iPhone and iPad.

When it comes to visual appeal, the dudes at MadFinger Games sure know how to please us. The creators of Shadowgun are about to release a zombie FPS on iOS and Android devices in the near future. It’s based on the powerful Unity Engine and a generic “If the world ends, there better be zombies to slay” story. Then again, who on earth cares about the story in a game about zombies? Exactly, no one.

Dead Trigger is scheduled to be released at the end of June. So if this trailer got you interested, you’ll only have to wait a couple of weeks till you can get your mad fingers on that MadFinger Games game. Yeah, I just did that.

Alright, here it is. March of Heroes, the first Gameloft game powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine that a whole lot of iPhone and iPad gamers have been waiting for.

Ever since Gameloft announced a few months ago that they have signed a licensing agreement with Epic, we were pretty excited to see how Gameloft is going to utilize the powerhouse that is the Unreal Engine. A few days ago, Gameloft dropped the bomb on twitter that their first game to use the Unreal Engine would be called March of Heroes. That’s not a whole lot of information, but it was a start. Now today, Gameloft has uploaded a debut trailer for said title.

The trailer shows some of the scenery, cutscenes and actual gameplay footage. March of Heroes turns out to be a military first person shooter set in fairly modern times. And while the graphics do look good, I have to say that I’m a bit underwhelmed by the trailer. But to be fair, my expectations were sky-high. I expected nothing less than a new mobile FPS graphics standard. In the light of the newly released material that showcases Madfinger’s upcoming third person shooter Shadowgun, March of Heroes can’t impress as much as I’d like it to. However, graphics isn’t the most important feature in a game, so if Gameloft nails the gameplay, I’m more than happy to dig deep into their first Unreal Engine FPS.

Yep, you read correctly – Gameloft released N.O.V.A. Elite on Facebook. This move definitely came unexpected. What we did expect however, was that it’s going to be a MMO shooter. And it’s also not a secret that Gameloft is testing the Freemium waters. In order to play it, you will have to install the unity web player, which was a rather small 5,8mb download. It wasn’t working with Google’s Chrome on a Mac, but I had no problems with Safari.

Once I was able to connect to the server I was already in the middle of a 12 player match. And although for a quick browser based shooter-fix Quake Live would be my go-to game, it was actually quite fun. But as the match was over and the next one about to begin, I was already greeted with a message that asked me if I want to purchase the following map, since I don’t have it installed yet. It also features quite some customization options, but you will have to pay for most things like weapons and upgrades with Facebook Credits.

So what’s coming in the future? Well, only Gameloft knows for sure, but since it’s running on unity, it shouldn’t take too much effort to make N.O.V.A. Elite available for iOS devices. Considering the success of MMO shooters like Eliminate and Archetype, it doesn’t seem unrealistic.

It is not long since Gameloft announced via Facebook that there’s a new entry of the N.O.V.A. series called ‘N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance: ELITE’ in the works and today they have already released a trailer saying it’s coming “very soon”. Gameloft is well known to release its new games pretty close to the first announcement but that’s probably going to be a new record.

The trailer opens speculations that N.O.V.A. ELITE might be a MMO shooter, since it only shows multiplayer gameplay. Multiplayer has always been a popular part in Gameloft’s shooters and looking at the success of games like Eliminate or Archetype, the idea of it being a MMO shooter doesn’t seem too unrealistic. Not much changed regarding the graphics – it seems like it’s using the same engine as the previous N.O.V.A. game and not the newly licensed Unreal Engine 3. We probably don’t have to wait long until we can lay our hands on it, since a “very soon” from Gameloft usually means “within the next weeks”.

On top of that, Gameloft has also revealed that they’re working on a new N.O.V.A. title called N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance Elite. Gameloft has promised before to leak some information once their official Facebook page gets to 300.000 likes. Besides the title and an artwork picture, Gameloft so far didn’t reveal any other information like a release date. But since both N.O.V.A. games were great shooters, it’s good to know that there is more to come.

The Rainbow Six series is famous for it’s tactical gameplay. And while Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard is definitely more action focused than the previous parts of the series, its gameplay benefits a lot from some of the tactical elements. You and your 2 AI teammates are asked to stop terrorist activity over the 11 missions of the campaign. Run and gun does work on the lower difficulty to solve this task thanks to a pretty bad AI, but you will definitely have to plan your way ahead on higher difficulties. I really recommend to play the campaign on a challenging difficulty because that’s when the game started to become a lot of fun. You can peek under doors with a snake camera, mark terrorists and then direct your teammates to clean the room. You can also take cover behind various objects to recover your health and take out terrorists from a safe spot. A very pleasant surprise was the level design. There is always more than one way to approach certain objectives. It gives you a little bit of freedom that makes you feel like you are in charge of how to complete the mission. During the campaign you will gain experience that unlocks new gadgets like a red dot sight that you can then attach to your weapon.

The controls are pretty much what you nowadays expect from an iPhone FPS. The only disappointment for some could be that compared to previous releases, Gameloft offers very limited options to customize them to your likes. But this is only a minor setback, the standard controls get the job done very well.

Gameloft has improved their graphic engines continuously with every release and Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard is no exception. It looks great and offers some nice variety. Each level has its distinguish look, be it an oil rig, a village in the Congo or an impressive mansion. What impressed me most however was the sound. A lot of people were complaining about the bad voice overs of previous Gameloft titles. And while the quality was already getting better in Gameloft’s latest releases, they seem to have really focused on it this time around. And the effort paid off. Even the dialogues between some terrorists that you can hear every now and then if you sneak up on them are fun to listen to. I also liked the contextual background music which adds a nice touch to the overall atmosphere. On the bad side are only some strange animations every now and then, especially the one of patrolling guards looks pretty hilarious. While the overall presentation of Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard cannot compete with Infinity Blade, it definitely is amongst the best on the App Store.

The game also comes with 10 player deathmatch and a co-op mode for 3 players to satisfy your multiplayer needs. Both modes are a great deal of fun and absolutely worth checking out.

Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard turned out to be a fantastic shooter that you should not miss out on. It’s available on the App Store since last week for $6.99. And if you are still indecisive, check out the gameplay trailer to see it in action.

Rage does one thing and does it well: Straightforward, in your face action. Your only objective is to shoot everything that moves(and some stationary targets) as ammunition efficient and fast as possible and to collect some goodies while doing so. That’s it. But it is executed to perfection. You can really feel id’s shooter expertise in Rage.

If you are familiar with rail-shooters, you already know what to expect. Your character moves automatically through the levels while you shoot everything that get’s in your way. In Rage you have the choice to do this with either a shotgun, or a machine gun. You will have to pick up the ammo packs placed in the levels to stick with these weapons. If you fail to do so you will have to use the back-up pistol that comes with unlimited ammo, but doesn’t do as much damage of course. You can also increase damage with perfect reloads: When you reload, you have an exact time window to hit reload again to double-up the damage. Such a reload system is also a feature in the Gears of War series(and I loved it – remember the lore ride on insane difficulty?).

Besides the ammo packs there are also money bags waiting for you to be picked up to boost your highscore. You can also boost your highscore by headshots and by shooting stationary targets. Since headshots save you a lot of ammunition and reloading, they come in really handy in the higher difficulties. Rage comes with 3 levels and each of the 3 has a version “II” that wants to be unlocked.

The controls in Rage are great. You have 4 options: Tilt control, touchpad control, gyroscope control and virtual window. Virtual window basically puts you into the game with 360 degrees of movement freedom. While that sounds great, I felt it involved too much physical movement. You will definitely be an attraction if you pull that off in public. Great thing is, all the control methods work great, so it really comes down to personal preference in this case.

The presentation is stunning. From graphics to animations to audio and even the menu design – it’s a gorgeous game. While Rage is a universal app, there is an HD version available that comes with greater texture resolution. Needless to say that if your iDevice can handle the HD version that’s the one I would go for.

Rage is a total recommendation to anyone who even remotely enjoys straightforward action games.