It’s a mystery, detective.
This installment of Weekend Price Drops is unusual for a couple of reasons: first, there’s more good games on sale than there has been in recent memory, and second, there’s a game in here that isn’t any good at all. A mystery!
After the jump, if we crack this case I’ll approve your transfer to Homicide.
Third Eye Crime isn’t the bad game in this list. On the contrary, our man Tierney regards this as the definitive stealth game on mobile, giving it a 4-star review back in June. You play as psychic art thief Rothko, an a game that is itself is a work of art, with a colourful Frank Miller-on-shrooms style.
Third Eye Crime is free and iOS Universal — it’s usually three bucks.
Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies is obviously not the bad game on the list — I’m starting to run out of ways to praise this WWII turn-based dogfighting game. After releasing four different iOS games last year, Firaxis have been awfully quiet on the mobile front in 2014. I wonder what they’ve got up their sleeves.
Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies is two dollars, down from the usual five. iOS Universal.
How about SideSwype? Prolific puzzle maker Radiangames puts out so many products that surely one of them is crap? Nope, SideSwype is just lovely, actually, combining block-sliding and match-three into a typically garish aesthetic that would look bad on the MCP from TRON.
Normally two bucks, SideSwype is free this weekend. It’s also on Android, but it’s not on sale there because — true story — once you drop a game’s price to free on Google Play, you can never make it paid again.
Keith Burgun’s deconstructed 4X game Empire might be divisive, but it’s definitely not the bad game. Au contraire, I thought it was one of last year’s most interesting constructions — it’s Civilization, but with a tiny band of villages that are never safe, built in a world that is hostile to them. Read my review from last fall, but bear in mind that the game has been bestowed with a lot more content since then.
Empire is a buck, down from from three.
Is Square-Enix’s Hitman GO the bad game? It’s from a big publisher and it’s a long-in-the-tooth franchise that may well be post peak — but no. Hell no, actually. Hitman GO is fantastic, and one of 2014′s most original games. It’s a puzzle game, which is a first for that franchise, and it’s extraordinarily clever and there is no more beautifully designed game on the App Store this year. It just received a whole new level pack in a recent update.
Hitman GO is two dollars, down from five. I highly recommend it, and you need not fear the in-app purchases listed on the iTunes page. Those are just early unlocks of content you can unshackle by playing. Also on sale on Android.
Ah, the list has ended. So through our powers of deduction we may conclude that the bad game is Star Trek: Trexels? Boy it sure is. I spent a thousand words saying so earlier this year in my review but man, Trexels is a complete and utter waste of a valuable license. It’s your prototypical free-to-play rock garden where you push the occasional button and get periodically prompted to dump more money into it, but dressed up with the veneer of your favourite TV show.
Why do I devote any space to it here? Because the opening of the game features George Takei himself doing the “Boldly go” speech, and that’s absolutely worth eating some of your bandwidth to hear. Trexels is free.
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