Since its debut at the end of 2019, Apple Arcade has continued to update the list of titles available to its subscribers with a steady stream of news ranging from the title suitable for waiting for a bus to more complex products that do not look out of place played on the TV in the living room. An investment whose proportions are not yet well known but, considering the results, it must not be a small one for the Cupertino coffers. To make this platform even more attractive, which as an offer rivals that which Microsoft offers on consoles and PCs thanks to Gamepass, recently a series of titles have been added that if you have an iPhone in your pocket or an Apple TV you should really try and that bring the catalog to almost 200 games.
Here are some tips for you among the most recent releases.
Fantasian
If you love Japanese role-playing games, you probably know Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, respectively the father of the saga of Final Fantasy and the one who set it to music with the most poignant and iconic soundtracks. The two have teamed up again for Fantasian, a very classic title as a narrative setting with a visual peculiarity: the environments are all real dioramas shown in the video game to give it a touch between the realistic and the fairytale. Between craftsmanship and digital. Some small innovations refresh the system that has been run in as far as the fighting is concerned. Overall it is a title that would have absolutely not disfigured on consoles and that you can now play peacefully on the phone within a package that includes dozens of other titles, a must. It has only one flaw: we will have to wait for the second part to continue the story.
The Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a piece of video game history, one of the first titles designed not only to entertain but also to educate. The goal of the game, in fact, is to survive a group of nineteenth-century settlers who have to move along the Oregon Trail that gives the game its name to find an area to found a city, but also to learn something about their life. Among diseases, dangerous fords, attacks of the premises and breakages of the wagons, the task will prove to be particularly complex and still today more than 40 years after its invention, The Oregon Trail represents an interesting experiment to teach and excite both those who are perhaps studying the period and those looking for a particularly difficult strategic and survival title.
Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat
Sometimes you want exciting adventures or colorful platformers, other times you need a light and music-rich title. Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat is the mobile transposition of a popular Japanese musical game based on taiko, the characteristic Japanese drums used in many religious and non-religious events. The original day had the characteristic of being able to take advantage of two peripherals that reproduced in small just two taiko drums, here instead it will be enough to touch the right area of the phone following the instructions. The songs to choose from are in most cases Japanese pieces, but there is no shortage of songs also known in the West, such as the theme song of Evangelion, the difficulty levels guarantee accessibility even to those who do not have a lot of sense of rhythm, but to complete the most difficult challenges will require skills worthy of a real drummer.
Star Trek: Legends
Imagine a classic game “until“Or those free management titles that slowly become more and more complex and difficult to play without spending money, but without all the monetization mechanics. Star Trek: Legends, that’s exactly it. The objective of the game is to win a series of small turn-based fights by deploying a team of four elements who draw from all the various incarnations of the tv series created by Roddenberry, from the classics Kirk and Spock through Picard, Seven of Nine, Quark, Odo up to the Discovery crew. Out of combat it is possible to improve the equipment of the characters, send them on missions to recover other resources or obtain others randomly after accumulating certain items. In short, everything that normally in these games is managed gradually with real money, only in this case the progression is regulated by the possibility of carrying out only a certain number of tasks during the 24 hours or by the difficulty of the missions, without shortcuts and payment.
World of Demons
The Platinum Games are a very popular studio in the console world by those looking for action video games full of spectacular fights and over the top atmospheres. World of Demons brings all of this into Apple Arcade, and while it’s playable with touch controls, it’s one of the two games we recommend using an external game pad for. Those of the last two generations of consoles that can be connected via bluetooth are fine. Perhaps the story as a whole is not particularly interesting and the progression is too linear, but as far as combat is concerned, World of Demons knows how to entertain with a simple but full of subtleties system and a lot of monsters taken from Japanese folklore that are waiting for nothing but a nice fight.
NBA 2k21 Arcade Edition
NBA 2k21 Arcade Edition is a title recommended above all to those who have an iPhone 12 or can count on an Apple TV of the latest and penultimate generation, because this is a visually quite faithful transposition of the game available on PC and consoles, with all the strengths and weaknesses of the case. A positive aspect is that there are no microtransactions whatsoever and you can therefore play without constantly feeling pestered by spending more money. Unfortunately, the simulation soul of the game makes it quite difficult with only touch controls and it is much better to have a gamepad. The other aspect that would be nice to intervene with a patch is the balance at the beginning of the career mode, in which our alter ego will be really too low by the NBA standards and this could make the experience a little frustrating, at least until they do not begin to improve the statistics. Net of all this, however, we are faced with a game that makes the blurring of the boundaries between home consoles and the capabilities of the iPhone even more evident.
