As ever, you’ll be collecting a ton of heroes and angels, customising them to match your playstyle, then sending them out to defeat the forces of evil.

There’s a bunch of PvE and PvP modes, like cross-server arena battles, co-op team dungeons, and a variety of mini games.

You can level up and train your heroes and angels to suit any playstyle and further develop them by enhancing their weapons.

You’ll then select your favourite team and choose the right formation for the occasion. Each enemy requires a different tactic so its important to change your approach depending on the battle ahead.

As an MMORPG, League of Angels – Fire Raiders is played with and against thousands of others. The handy live chat lets you speak to fellow players to organise a PvP match or make new friends.

To celebrate the launch of League of Angels – Fire Raiders, GTArcade is hosting in-game events and giveaways. Simply head on over to the official web page for more information or ‘Like’ them on Facebook to have the information brought to you.

League of Angels – Fire Raiders is out now in the App Store [download] and Google Play [download].

This article is sponsored as part of Steel Media Preferred Partners.

Incredible Express HD is an easy to learn time management puzzle game where you are tasked to manage the deliveries of various items as fast as you can.

Marie, owner of the original locomotive that you have at your disposal, guides you through the game, telling the story of your progress and guiding you on how to complete the various tasks.

The game looks very nice with clean, clear graphics which makes the top down 2D view of the multitude of locations easily to navigate and a pleasure to play in. As do the navigation menu’s and the story book artistic pictures that aid in the story telling.

Things all start pretty leisurely as you direct your small steam train to collect and deliver a variety of around a pre-designed track. While the layout of the tracks are pre-designed you will need to finish building them so that your train can access all areas of the map.

This task is completed by simply tapping on the track and then tapping again to confirm the placement. As you progress through the game you’ll find that their is a lot of track that needs to be laid, however it doesn’t all need to be laid to complete every level and as time is of the essence, to gain maximum points, it’s wise to only lay as much track as required.

There are two steps that need to be taken to maneuver your train around the track, the first is the trains speed which can be accomplished by simply tapping on the train itself. The second is the direction of the train which can be controlled by tapping on the points and lights. The route that the train is due to take high-lighted on the track making it easy to plan your route.

While all this tapping is easy to begin with later levels are more intricate and can make tapping the correct part of the track a little tricky which can prove frustrating.

You train is limited in the number of trucks it can carry so the real puzzle is deciding what to pick up first and where to take it. It’s starts off simply enough with people placing orders for corn and you delivering it. As the game intensifies however you will need to deliver the ingredients of requested products to the factory before delivering the finalized product.

The learning curve is pretty easy but extra features are slowly added to the mixing to test your multi-tasking skills to the maximum. Bizarrely you will find cattle dropping onto the track and tapping on will turn them into milk churns, while later levels will see you having to order in produce via the air based on your earnings in the game.

Overall Incredible Express HD is a great introduction to the genre for those new to it and while the early levels will be easy fodder for the experienced player alters levels will provide a suitable challenge for all concerned. There is also some replay value to be had should you wish to go back and improve on all your initial best scores.

Pros

• Easy learning curve
• Simple, intuitive controls
• The levels keep on coming!

Cons

• Intricate fingers required on later levels
• Too easy for the more experienced player

Price: $2.99 (App Store)

Gallery

The Sims 3 World Adventures [rating: 3/5]

If you are a huge Sims fan or you just throughly enjoyed The Sims 3, then no doubt you were very excited to hear of the new Sims 3 World Adventures game by EA Mobile. With the promise of new goals, new options to change your Sim and exotic destinations to travel the game offered great potential to be another winner in the app store.

If you have played The Sims 3 the game is very similar to that and infact it doesn’t matter if you have never played it you can still play this edition with no problems. At the beginning you first customize and create your virtual character by choosing all the different styles or simply transfer one from The Sims 3 if you had played it previously. The game play is exactly the same, you have to keep your sim happy. You need to feed it, groom it, sort all its biological needs and get it to meet other people to keep it perfectly content.

You can do all this by wandering around your town, visiting your friends and getting yourself a well paid job. To sort your hunger pangs you can go to the local supermarket to buy your food requirements and then pop back home to rustle up something tasty. When you do cook a meal there is a small mini-game to help you cook the food. Although its not that hard to do and not really a game at all. If your pan gets hot you give your device a little shake, it cools down and you carry on, theres nothing fun in it really.

Now so far before I had really done anything with the game I found I was constantly servicing the needs of my sim. If she wasn’t eating she needed the toilet, if she wasn’t showering she needed some fun. My sim never seemed to be happy for a good amount of time this causing me to never actual get anything done. I found I was sleeping, eating, working on one big loop over and over.

Where this game differs from Sims 3 is that in the World Adventures edition you get the chance to travel to three different destinations. There is ‘Al Simhara’ in Egypt, ‘Champs Les Sims’ in France and ‘Shang SimLa’ in China. Now you can travel for different lengths of time all depending on how much you can afford. You might want to note as well that if you have a job you need to make sure you are back in time to go to work. So when you start out more or less it will be just quick weekend visits to the different destinations.

If you have been told a wish from your sim, for example to make someone laugh in China then you might want to make your first visit there to try and do just that. You purchase your plane ticket and off you go. On the way there you play an air sickness mini-game. You look out of the window and you have to keep the picture in focus to try and stop your sim turning green. Its very easy to make them feel unwell though so no doubt as soon as you get to your new destination you will need a shower, sleep, food and the toilet. All wasting your precious day or two you have there. When you have finally sorted your Sim out to being just about happy you can start wondering and exploring. Take a tour of the Eiffel Tower or Sphinx or simply talk to the locals, each destination has its own different activities to do.

When you visit each country there are popular buildings you can tour. For example the Eiffel Tower. When you are in tour mode you are shown a few clips of the site along with a few snippets of information about it. Whilst these were very interesting it was ruined by the strange poses your sim made flashing before you on the screen. As much as I tried it couldn’t be stopped either so you just had to sit and watch it and remember not to do it again in a hurry! I think at this point they could have done a lot more. They could have put more factual information in with more images, something to keep the audience interested instead of seeing half of an image of your sim floating around pulling wierd facial expressions.

Each time I visited a destination I struggled to fit everything in in the short space of time I had. My sim was still needing a lot of attention before we could even get going on our travels. Infact a few times I was deported back home as I had out stayed my welcome and I hadn’t even achieved what I had gone there for. So once I was home I had to go back in my daily routine and earn some more money at work until I had enough to go visit for the weekend again.

Another thing I did notice was my appliances were always breaking down and required fixing. I couldn’t seem to get out of the cycle of fixing things up and keeping my sim happy. The offer of travelling afar seemed exciting at first but having to do so much to actually get there and then to do nothing was really off putting.

The game had great potential to offer a unique game play by going in to more details within each destination. The little snippets of information they offered on the different tours was actually interesting and good. If they could have expanded on that and filled the game with interesting facts and pictures I think it would keep people a lot more interested and wanting it to explore more. Maybe more sights to see and the chance to visit for longer without the mundane tasks. I think the basics of the game are there it just needs tweaking to offer a great replay value because at the moment I feel it hasn’t any.

The Good

• The game offers great 3D graphics.
• Destinations

The Not So Good

• The Sim is far too demanding
• The mini-games are too easy and not that great either
• The tours need to be more entertaining.

Price: $6.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Released: Apr 02, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0.0
1.0.0 (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested)
Size: 97.8 MB
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
Seller: Electronic Arts
© 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Rated 12+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later.

Ask most people under 20 these days what Transformers mean to them and they will answer that it’s a Michael Bay movie starring robots and Shia Labeouf, however, for those over 20 and with a love of animated cartoons it will always be the animated series that started in the early 80’s as a stalwart of Saturday morning children’s TV. And it’s from this era that TRANSFORMERS G1: Awakening for iPhone is inspired from.

For those of you that were addicted to Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance you will feel perfectly at home here, and if you are a fan of both I suggest you notify those nearest and dearest to you that they may not see you for a while!

As we come to expect from Glu Mobile the game looks great, the in game graphics are small enough to fit plenty on the screen and yet still show great detail while the cut scenes will have Transformers fans drooling onto their iPhone/iPod Touches. One of my favorite parts is the sound when the Transformers transform, it’s a small thing but implemented so well that it never tires.

Talking of Transformers all of the characters are here for you to enjoy, from Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to Ratchet and Grimlock all looking great in their shrunken as the move around the small Sim like world. Navigation of your characters is via the touch screen and you can zoom in and out using the standard two finger iPhone shuffle and you’ll need to do this as accurately picking your characters movement when zoomed out can be difficult.

You can move further in vehicle form but can’t attack and so you’ll need to plan ahead and balance your actions. If you do find yourself under attack while in vehicle form your defenses are slightly better as they will be should you stop in ground that has natural coverage such as trees or mountains so planning your movements ahead of time is key to you success, in fact it’s kind of like chess with robots!

When you do battle though the game jumps to full screen animation and you get to see the battles take place full screen. These also look really good although they do get a little repetitive, luckily though you can skip through them at any time should you wish too.

The game goes into a lot of detail and you can check your Transformer stats at anytime and compare them to any potential Transformers that you are considering batting. The storyline is also authentic and strong too keeping in line with the original storyline back in the 80’s which will make the fan boys happy and keep newbies to the Transformers story entertained.

There are three game styles to play, the main Story Mode allows you take part in the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons while in Showdown mode you can go head to head against the Decepticons in a battle to the death. Finally there is the Cybertron Arena where you can play against the AI or a friend to determine the biggest and best in the ultimate last man standing battle. The one thing missing is the ability to play the game over the internet that could eat away even more hours of you life!

If you are a fan of the Transformers you will love this game. If you love turn-based tactics games you will also want to add this game to your collection and subsequently if you are a fan of both you will quite possible need to lie down just in anticipation of this game.

The Good

• Original Transformers Goodness
• Looks great
• Plays perfectly

The Not So Good

• Can be tricky to navigate in crowded areas
• No online multi-player

Reviewed By: Craig Willis

Trailer

Price: $4.99 (iTunes Store)
Released: Feb 25, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1.0
Size: 7.5 MB
Languages: English
Seller: Glu Games Inc
© 2009 Glu Mobile, Inc.

If you’ve already played through the Sims you may be looking for similar challenge and that is what Virtual Families offers with it’s real time game play, achievements, puzzles, marriage and child birth. Virtual Families looks like it could be a complete replacement to your real day to day life.

Virtual Families is a casual family sim that runs in true real time. Adopt a little person from the thousands of choices of little people who live inside your iPhone. Encourage them to work in their chosen career to earn money for necessities and luxuries, help them choose a suitable mate, start and raise a family, let them kick back with a variety of leisure activities, and take care of and improve their home.

Firing up VF’s throw’s you immediately into your white, middle-class home and life style. A big house in suburbia is fully fitted out and waiting for you to move into and other than an initial trash clean up your home is in immaculate condition. It also appears that your life is too as within a couple of minutes of game-play a virtual wife, (or husband) is offered to you via email! You don’t have to accept the first husband offered but if you do you are quickly on your way to your nuclear family and getting your first child is pretty easy too. You can either drag and drop one of your characters onto the other to initiate a strange fertility dance or you can adopt a child. And while the game makers will allow a single parent family via adoption there’s no option to have a same sex marriage with or without children. This is definitely 1960’s suburbia in all it’s glory.

Your family has many chores to do and this is handled neatly enough by simply dragging and dropping them to the appropriate area in your house or yard. As is usual your virtual character will give you hints as to what they wish to and you can also see a view of their current needs via the details tab. Keeping their Happiness, Health, Fed and Energy levels high is key to keeping everyone happy. When they do something right you can encourage them to repeat that action by praising them, and can equally discourage them by using the scolding glove. It’s advised to use the scolding glove sparingly but I quite enjoyed seeing my little VS running away when I scolded them!

The actions come at you thick and fast and you’ll soon be fixing things, cleaning things and working on your career and while these can be fun at first the daily chores can soon become repetitive and boring, esp. when you have a partner and child to look after too. Some of the chores are simple tasks, while other will rely on you to complete a certain set of tasks before you can move on.

While you can continue to grow you family, after and extended time playing you can be in control of 8 family members because the game play is limited to your house and yard the options are definitely limited. You can do the usual tasks of upgrading your house and buying new items for it the lack of locations and esp. the lack of social interactions and relationship building limits the enjoyment that you can have playing this game.

The game does look good. Your single story home is spacious and has all the mod-cons that any middle-class family would come to expect. The sound FX are limited and the music is your standard lounge muzak which does nothing to add to the game.

If you are a fan of the mundane then perhaps this game is for you, but if you are looking for a more enjoyable challenge then look elsewhere. Virtual Families is a Sims wannabe, where there is too much reality and not enough virtual.

The Good

• Lots to do
• Quick way to find out if you want a large family
• Easy controls

The Not So Good

• Repetitive gameplay
• Single location
• No social interaction

Reviewed By: CraigWillis

Price $3.99

Virtual Families Screenshots