Super Mario Run has a mode in which the player collects coins and heads for the goal, and a mode in which the player competes against the acrobatic moves of other people who have completed the same course. In addition, there is a mode in which you create your own Mushroom Kingdom based upon these play results.

iOS users will be able to download and enjoy a portion of Super Mario Run for free and will be able to enjoy all of the game content available in this release after paying a set purchase price. More details will be disclosed at a later date. The game has been developed with Mr. Miyamoto as lead creator for Nintendo.

The game begins with a flashback of Saxon’s time with a clandestine group called the Tyrants to another fugitive on the run, Anna Kelso.  Saxon had been working for a mercenary for hire corporation called Belltower (think Blackwater) but being the sole survivor of a botched operation led him to become part of the outfit.  The rest of the story is a mixture of Saxon finding out the truth behind his induction into the Tyrants as well as investigating the acute shortage of the drug Neuropozyne, a necessary serum required to fight human rejection of artificial augmentation.  Nearly all of it takes place in a futuristic Panama City.

The Fall works because it is able to mix obstacles and action sequences with multiple solutions that are seamless and for the most part reasonable.  Need to break into a guarded compound?  You can sneak around, find a ventilation shaft and get in undetected.  You can go in guns blazing provided you have enough ammunition and firepower to overcome the enemies.  Or if you invested in upgrading augmentations, you can use the cloaking augmentation to just walk past your enemies.  It’s this interplay that makes the gameplay part of The Fall so addictive.  Similarly, there are multiple responses to conversations with non playable characters that yield different outcomes.  Some make your life more difficult usually by putting you in the midst of a firefight.  Some enable you to use charm or subterfuge to get extra rewards.  For example, at one juncture Saxon needed to get into a night club.  My options were either to run an errand get a card to get through club security, kill all the club security guards, or upgrade my augmentations to a level where I can hack a pretty well protected back door.

On top of that, The Fall features an engrossing storyline that can be pieced together through eBooks, pocket secretaries and computer diary entries.  Some anecdotes are completely benign but often the reading material fleshes out the game world.  That said, The Fall is not a big game world.  This isn’t Elder Scrolls.  Although most areas are unlocked and ready for exploring once you hit Panama City, the game’s main plot line will take you to all the major destinations.  There are a few side quests but none that will take as long as the actual game itself.  Also due to restrictions of the tablet, there aren’t any dead end game areas randomly filled with swag that are redundant to the story.

The default control scheme for The Fall works remarkably well.  You use the left finger to move Saxon.  You use the right to look.  You can also double tap to automatically move to a specific area but I liked the direct control scheme better.  There are quick usage slots for your weapons, augmentations and inventory items.  While the tutorial mission is a little lengthy, you soon get a grasp of the whole interface.  You can hide behind objects similar to Gears of War by double tapping on the object.  You can do rolls to the other side of the wall by tapping an action button.  There are a few clipping issues in the busier areas.  I was stuck once rolling to a stack of crates and ended up in the crate in the midst of combat.

Speaking of combat, there are two areas of The Fall that I found wanting.  The first is aiming.  Combat is a bit frustrating because you can’t aim accurately.  With or without stabilizing or recoil enhancements to your weapons or the use of the zoom, the aiming was just never right.  When you get to enemies that wear body armor, you want to be aiming for their head to save ammunition.  The developers also praised the artificial intelligence in the game.  I found them to be moronic at best.  You can pick enemies off one by one such that I was able to clear four of five in an opposing squad stationed in one room whilst the last opponent having exited his alarmed state would go back to casually walking his normal patrol as if his other comrades did not exist before.  I also divided and conquered by repeatedly retreating back to ventilation ducts where enemies would not follow me.

In spite of these shortcomings, The Fall is still an engrossing game.  Beating the patrol patterns, playing the hacking mini game and sneaking around to bypass security cameras is a thrill because it creates tension.  That’s probably why the combat deficiencies are not as glaring as they should be.  The game is also well designed in that every key door probably has a password lying around.  You won’t ever be stuck because you never upgraded your augmentation to handle level four hacking.

Something that I found unrealistic was the ability to purchase ammunition, weapons and other upgrades at any given time even if you’re about to die (quick grab that revive pack!).  Currency is in the form of credits that are found throughout the game.  I need to search my trash more often because I can’t count how many hundreds of credits I found in rubbish bins.  If you don’t want to spend time exploring the environment, The Fall lets you make an in-game purchase to buy credits.  Thus if you really wanted to skip disabling the turret, you can spend a few real life dollars to purchase a rocket launcher.  It was unused by me but I can see some people using this to give themselves augmentations and weapons to effectively buy their way to completing the game.

Unsurprisingly, The Fall finishes with an ending that leads on to another yet unwritten chapter of the Deus Ex saga.  When compared to the PC and console games, I would say there is enough material in The Fall for one, or if you really push it, maybe two chapters of a typical Deus Ex corpus.   The story is incredibly rich.  Veterans of the franchise will appreciate the references to the NSF, Versalife, Bob Page, Gunther Hermann, etc. — so much so that any Deus Ex fan ought to check this game out.

Reviewed By: Lawrence Wong
Publisher: Square Enix
Rating: 80%

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This review is based on a digital copy of Deus Ex: The Fall for the iPad from the Apple iTunes Store.

World War Z starts out with Doug, an ex pilot, sitting around in a bar until a plane crashes into the building and all hell breaks loose as zombies jump out and start attacking victims. Doug’s wife is a military woman stationed in Japan with his son. While fighting off zombies, he gets a mobile call where his son confesses to killing the zombie version of his mother. He promises to get to Japan and asks him to stay safe for now. Doug then fights his way out of a city and extraordinarily flies half way across the world. The circumstances are about as believable as some moments in the movie.

Along the way, the game forces Doug to solve environmental puzzles whether it’s finding disconnected wires to open electrical items (usually a door or a switch) or running around trying to piece together numeric passcodes to open access panels next to locked doors. Conveniently, these codes are written on whiteboards scattered throughout buildings. Then someone got smart and started spreading the code on to different whiteboards with fake codes that trigger an alarm. Of course you can’t just run around a floor of a building finding all the codes. There are fires that need to be put out to get to one part of the room necessitating you to find a fire extinguisher. I’m sure you get the picture now. The puzzles can get monotonous and repetitive as they force you to back track over areas you’ve already gone through.

Of course, what’s a zombie game without actual zombies to shoot. The default control scheme has you double tapping to walk to places and when you wave the target reticule over a zombie, Doug will automatically shoot. There are also other control schemes that are more traditional where you get a direction pad. I didn’t mind the default scheme. Combat is split into three flavours. The most combat you’ll see is similar to Virtua Cop or House of the Dead. Doug is frozen in some indefensible position and has to shoot incoming zombies; usually from two different directions. Melee combat can also happen when you walk through staged ambushes similar to Call of Duty. You have to swipe in certain motions to dodge, push back and finally kill the zombie. Why you get ambushed all the time I will have no idea because often the zombies are so slow I think drawing a gun and shooting is probably a more effective way to dispatch the undead. Finally, there are rail shooter action sequences where you are on a vehicle trying eliminate hordes of zombies similar to the movie itself. The last part is the most dramatic but it happens infrequently.

As you solve puzzles and make the undead stay dead, you’ll also scavenge bodies and the ruins of each locale for supplies. Gun control laws are definitely not in effect in the near future because ammunition can be found in abundance if you just walk around looking for it. You can also pick up pieces of paper of people’s diaries that add to the dystopia but none of the fiction is actually riveting. How many notes about suicide and missing loved ones can you actually read? This isn’t Bioshock or Deus Ex.

Perhaps the most irritating thing about World War Z is its placement of checkpoints for game saves. There aren’t enough but the game has an inventory system driven by gold and experience. Experience is something you can pick up in the game itself. Gold, on the other hand, is something in-game purchases can buy you. So if you find yourself about to die and you know the last saved game is at the beginning of the level, you can bring up the inventory and purchase some medical kits to instantly heal yourself. The same applies to ammunition. I found it extremely irritating but that could explain why the game is only $2.99.

World War Z has its dramatic moments. How developers managed to fit mountains of swarming zombies in iOS I don’t know, but they do a good job. At times, the game even offers a creepy feeling and draws on that sense of desperation found in a game like Resident Evil. Those moments are unfortunately too far and few in between spaced out by endless environmental obstacles, annoying surprise melee attacks and some shooting gallery sequences that artificially exposes Doug to unnecessary danger. If the story were more compelling, you would want to see it through but sadly it’s not. After the movie’s initial box office results, Paramount has given the green light to film the next chapter of World War Z. Perhaps in a second outing, we can follow the Pitt character or someone else who doesn’t have to open a dozen locked doors to get to the next zombie horde.

Reviewed By: Lawrence Wong
Publisher: Paramount Digital Entertainment
Rating: 60%

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This review is based on a digital copy of World War Z for the iPad from the Apple iTunes Store.