Nvidia likes to release a bunch of titles within a small period of time for their Shield line of Android devices, and the past couple of weeks are not exception to this either. Chariot arrived yesterday, a couple of new games like Hotline Miami 2 arrive today, and a few have landed in the past week or so.
With that said, here is a look at the latest slew of games Shield owners can check out and play on their supported Shield devices. All of these games have arrived onto the platform within the last two weeks, although most have arrived in the last week.
Battle of Sol ($9.99)
It’s not just the occasionally flooded kitchen floor that will be the result of our careless attitude towards the environment. Carry on as we are and we will find ourselves having to leave our knackered planet and wage a war for control of our solar system and inhabitable parts of the galaxy beyond… possibly.
It’s what’s happening in The Battle of Sol. More troubling is that the sun is dying rather more quickly than anticipated so as a commander of forces in the United Colonies of Sol, you have to take part in a series of missions with the aim of saving humanity. It’s not terribly easy because an enemy faction, The Children of the Dawn, are trying to achieve a similar end at your expense.
What follows are some spectacular space battles and challenges. Attacks on huge Capital ships, frantic dogfights, destroying oil refineries, storming space stations… any one of these could be part of your working day. It’s especially entertaining because along the way you’ll see familiar sights like Saturn, Neptune, Pluto and the Kuiper Belt as well as more remote celestial bodies.
Chariot ($14.99)
Funerals can be a bit of a downer, right? So what better way to lift the spirits after the death of a loved one than to stick their remains in a chariot and drag it miles to its final resting place filling it with loads of treasure on the way?
In this unique and tremendously engaging game, the king has died! So it’s up to his daughter and her suitor to have to drag his remains on a chariot through level after level of platform challenges collecting treasure as they go. All the while the King’s ghost keeps turning up and taunting them.
The realistic physics in the game make the process uniquely challenging. You can push the chariot over small obstacles. For larger obstacles you need to go on ahead, grab a handy rope and drag the thing up and over. Getting to higher ground similarly involves the rope but this time you have to rein it in without falling off the platform yourself. It’s great. And in two-player cooperative mode it’s even better as the pair of you grapple and swing your way to whole new areas!
Pac-Man 256 (Free)
Critically acclaimed indie developer Hipster Whale, the same team behind Crossy Road, has teamed up with Namco Bandai to sprinkle their magic onto the legendary Pac-Man franchise.
The result is Pac-Man 256. What’s the title all about? The original Pac-Man arcade machine contained a glitch, and anyone committed enough to shovel in enough quarters to make their way through the game’s single screen mazes to reach level 256 would find that the game crashed in a spectacular style. It was impossible to finish.
Pac-Man 256 uses the glitch as part of the gameplay. As you make your way through the maze, eating pills and power pills—and in this case earning power ups, if you take too long to progress the intentionally glitchy graphics catch up with you. It’s basically an endless runner game but with added heritage. It also happens to be enormously addictive, fun and nostalgic all at the same time.
Whispering Willows ($4.99)
Whispering Willows is an interesting mash-up of different genres and style. It’s feels like a point-and-click adventure but features no point and clicking, instead the player moves around using the controller. It’s pitched as a horror title and though there are some grisly moments, the shocks are mild giving it more the air of a spooky fairytale.
Under your control is Elena, a young girl whose father has gone missing at the derelict old mansion where he works as groundskeeper. Elena sets off to find him. Fortunately she has the ability to separate her ethereal self from her corporeal self, setting up plenty of opportunities for ingenious puzzling. While Elena can explore, hit switches, move furniture and the like, Spirit Elena can squeeze through small gaps, possess objects that are out of reach and, crucially, talk to tortured spirits who offer clues as to how to proceed.
It looks beautiful, the story is engaging for younger and older gamers alike and it plays with a sort of old school simplicity that’s rather pleasing too.
Hotline Miami 2 ($7.50)
As top-down shooters go, this is one of the most amusing and enjoyable. It’s old school GTA-style, run and gunning. Like its predecessor it is unapologetically violent, but this time around, rather than simply concentrating on main protagonists Jacket and Biker there are thirteen playable characters.
Each character has his own special perks, whether that’s athletic ability, the skill to wield multiple weapons, melee talents or pure brute force… you can control it all. Manipulate characters and make them roll under gunfire, wield dual machine guns, use fists in close combat or even get chainsaws involved. Each level begin with a different combination of characters and the story plays out from their varying perspectives.
An exciting new feature is the Hard Mode which is unlocked after you finish the regular story. In this mode enemies are much tougher to defeat and characters lose some of their abilities.
Titan Souls ($14.99)
With Titan Souls, the cute pixel art graphical style belies the toughness of the challenge underneath in a game that’s simple to learn but difficult to master. A lone warrior, with a single arrow has to travel all over the world in order to track down 20 Titans and defeat them one by one. A titan can be killed with a single shot of your arrow which can then be recalled each time it’s fired.
Sounds easy, right? There is a catch though. Once you’ve awoken a Titan it attacks you relentlessly and at speed and while it can be killed by a single blow, so too can you. In addition, each Titan has a different attack pattern which you have to learn and a weak spot to discover before hitting it with you arrow. As well as your directional and firing buttons you can also execute a roll to get you out of harm’s way but we’ll be perfectly honest with you, you are going to die, a lot. In fact the game takes pride in saving a running tally of your deaths just to rub your nose in it.
But this simple premise of repeated Boss battles and limited combat options works incredibly well. There will be plenty of frustration along the way but also an enormous sense of achievement after each victory.
Unkilled (Free)
This is a stunning looking zombie themed first-person shooter from Madfinger Games. You take the role of Joe, a former US Special Forces operative now working for a private military conglomerate called Wolfpack. Following an outbreak of mutant zombies, the reason for which is not entirely clear, Joe and his team have to land his team at the known infestation sites and get to work cleaning things up.
The bad guys are the stars of the show here. There’s Nukleon, a dude in a protective suit who is literally radioactive. Butcher is a huge character with a large blade for a hand. Minesweeper is, bizarrely, a hulking foe who has been physically fused with a submarine mine the results of which are explosive to say the least. There’s also Dodger, and American football player and the mighty Sheriff whose burning fists can deliver a Shockwave Punch.
Anything from a Tomahawk to a Gatling gun can be utilized to defeat these bad guys. If you haven’t guessed already, this is a frantic, action-packed, tongue-in-cheek blast.
All of these games are now available for purchase and download off of Google Play.
