This year, Microsoft has lined up five new titles, that spotlight the technology of the Windows Phone 7, as well as the game features that can be found on that device, like leaderboards and of course, the integration of Xbox Live. We now have a confirmed list of the titles that will be in the 2012 Must Have Games event and it is a pretty good list, leveraging between existing brands and new IPs as well.

Here are the titles that will be coming to Must Have Games starting February 1st, 2012:

• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, February 1st, Electronic Arts
• BulletAsylum, February 8th, Microsoft Studios
• Chickens Can’t Fly, February 15th, Microsoft Studios
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction, February 22nd, Gameloft
• Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp, February 29th, Microsoft Studios

Each of these titles will have all the compliments of their XBLA compatriots, including leaderboards, achievements and more. Check out screens for each title below.

To celebrate Chinese New Year, iOS developer Gameloft is having a $0.99 / £0.69 sale on some of their biggest titles, including Splinter Cell Conviction and Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard.

Here’s a full list of the titles on sale and their respective platforms:

iPhone
- Silent Ops
- BackStab
- Fast Five the Movie: Official Game
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard
- N.O.V.A. 2 – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance
- Spider-Man: Total Mayhem
- Splinter Cell Conviction
- James Cameron’s Avatar
- Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles

iPad
- Silent Ops
- BackStab
- Fast Five the Movie: Official Game
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard
- N.O.V.A. 2 – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance
- Spider-Man: Total Mayhem
- Splinter Cell Conviction
- James Cameron’s Avatar
- Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles

The original arcade version centred around “chronicling humanity’s desperate struggle against a genocidal artificial intelligence” and boasted a popular “vivid art style and exhilarating lock-on laser weapon”. Taito claim “this iPhone edition faithfully captures the magic of the arcade”.

In addition, the new RAYFORCE comes with Game Center support, allowing for in-game achievements and a global ranking system. Players will be able to customise to their own play style – whether a beginner or arcade shooter veteran – as well as the aspect ratio of the game.

This arcade gem is the App Store right now for £7.99/€9.99 and is compatible on iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S and iTouch 3rd & 4th Generation running iOS 4.2 or higher.

As of late, it is interesting to see the amount of production values that are going into the latest iPhone and Android OS games that are coming out. I for one was one of those snobbish gamers that felt mobile gaming was too crude and ugly to want to participate in, but the quality coming out of recent releases has been a mea culpa of sorts. One such game is Seal Force, a new title for both the iOS and Android platforms. While its premise is simple on the surface, and a tad bit repetitive, its high end production values give it a shine that is normally found on high profile console releases and extra rotation on your phone.

Seal Force focuses on a team of three seals – Fonzie, Sarge and Milo – as they defend the oceans of the world from fish that gather in packs of matching color and apparently have conspired to commit acts of no good. The quality animated cut scenes set you up for the missions at hand, which require you to draw lines from your seal to the targets on the other side of the map. At first, things are simple, with color groups coming slow enough to manage, but as you work your way through the included levels, the fish groups come at you fast, and you are frantically having to manage your seals as they take out groups of fish.

Of course, between missions you do have the luxury of visiting the in-game upgrade store to use your upgrade slots to buy powerups, armor and more. While you do earn shell currency in Seal Force, you can speed things up a bit with some currency purchases via real life money. But it is nice that you can earn all of the unlockables with determination and patience if you are willing to do so in game.

But the problem is that the game starts to wear out its welcome after short stints. Seal Force is all about the same color matching premise that we have seen in countless other titles. You are drawing lines from your seals to the groups of fish, but you can only use one seal at a time, making things a bit slow and frustrating more often than not. The occasional special fish are also not quite explained, and I was confused as to what I was supposed to do with them at first.

Of course, it is hard to knock a game that is giving you a lot of content and quality production values when it is free, and Seal Force can be played to completion without a player spending a dime on additional content. It is not easy, and might drive some insane as the difficulty pushes you past normal points of sanity, but it is a doable option for those that want a lot of game for nothing purchased.

I think that in the end Seal Force is one of those games that might be fun when played in five to ten minute bursts, but anything more than that, the game starts to wear out its welcome. Seal Force looks good, and is a free experience for dedicated players, but most might tire of it long before that point.

The Good:

• High production values
• Is completely free to play with determination

The Bad:

• Somewhat repetitive
• Annoyingly difficult at times

Family Focus
Seal Force is cartoonish and does not include any real violent or questionable content. It might be a bit frustrating during later levels for younger children, but looking strictly at content, all ages may apply for this team.

The press release goes on to say both parties are “teaming up to create a series of unique location-based adventures that truly embody the spirit of TOMB RAIDER and Lara Croft”. Geocaching.com uses both its own App or normal GPS devices with over 180,000 people taking part each day according to the statement.

The campaign is said to use a standard treasure hunting format and Groundspeak’s “latest photo-based adventure project”. No platforms have been listed but will most likely be available on mobile devices in the lead up to the games release later this year.

There have been plenty of re-imaginings of the brick-breaking arcade formula defined by Atari’s classic Breakout, released in 1976, but this iOS game sticks decidedly close to the tried and true roots of the original while adding a smattering of interesting mechanics that make for a fitting addition to your pocket portfolio, so long as you understand what you’re in for.

Breakout Boost lends itself to the touch technology on iDevices pleasingly well. The controls are responsive and fair, meaning the only time I couldn’t return the ball was when my clumsy uncouth fingers missed the mark. The game would definitely benefit from a larger screen (I played on an iTouch) and wiser placement of some interface elements, but at least looks serviceable if not somewhat plain on the magical Retina Display.

The standard breakout gameplay – paddling a ball back and forth in an effort to clear screen after screen of varying patterns of bricks, if you’re somehow unfamiliar – remains untouched here, so those looking for a more creative reimagining may be disappointed. There are, however, a variety of unique bricks that spice up the gameplay once broken by the ball. These include acid bricks which allow the ball to drill through large groups of bricks without rebounding and fire bricks which cause the ball to erupt in flames, making metal bricks (which are otherwise annoyingly resilient) crumble in a single shot. There are, of course, bonus points which fall from the top of the screen and managing the collection of these delicious morsels while still making sure to return the ball as it comes hurtling toward the arena’s bottom half remains as frantic and strategic as ever. Other bonus drops include the ball multiplier, which when collected unleashes an additional ball that must then be kept in play. This, however, can often be a double-edged blade as it becomes more difficult to manage multiple returns, adding a slim but appreciated layer of strategy to the brick-breaking.

If you’re a masochist or some kind of reflex prodigy you can elect to increase the speed of the game, heightening your chances of letting a ball slip past while also increasing your point threshold. Alternatively, if like me you are hopeless at this kind of game, take solace in the opportunity to turn things down to slow, and simply enjoy the hypnotic rhythm of that little ball popping back and forth. Bip. Bop. Bip. Bop.

The game features 5 levels playable for free (with the option to double this number if you’re willing to jump through the Facebook sharing hoops which are fast becoming a discomforting trend in gaming) but the real meat comes in the shape of multiple level packs which can be purchased  for around 60p a piece, delivering on average 40 or so standard levels and around 30 challenge levels. That seems like a lot of brick-breaking-bang-for-buck to me! They also include some interesting tweaks on the gameplay – the x12 Multi ball power-up can be chaotic and fun, to say the least, and the challenge maps offer a surprisingly cerebral twist to the brick-destroying extravaganza.

If I had to name one issue with Breakout Boost, it would have to be difficulty of adjusting the game speed or hitting the pause button in the middle of the fray. The positioning of the controls are just awkward enough to have you lose a crucial second as you reach for them. Perhaps it’s the case that I’m not holding the device as intended during play, but it’s still a little off-putting and means I don’t make use of the time slider as much as I would like. The slider, by the way, sits in a questionable position on the left-hand side of the screen which could have instead been utilised to provide a larger playing area. It might have been better placed within an options menu to make the most of the iTouch’s smaller display.

If you’re looking for a competently made Breakout-style game that remains true to the original with little in the way of gimmick and fanfare, Breakout Boost is a solid option. Just don’t expect much more than that from this satisfactory albeit cautious bundle of light mobile entertainment which very much aims to recreate rather than reimagine the classic.

Good times

• Accessibly priced level packs
• Sticks to basics
• Controls really well

Bad times

• A bit of a safe move
• Visually competent but kind of uninteresting to look at

In the game, players will control virtual figurines to fight in a 2D side-scrolling environment against other players. Collecting figurines won’t be a kiddie thing anymore either — the more figurines players collect, the more bonuses players will earn. There will be both original and licensed toys appearing in the game, so players will have a lot to collect from. As if they couldn’t get anymore crazy, Spicy Horse has plans to sell the actual figures tied to the game by a 3D printing service.

Some players might think this is going to be a microtransaction nightmare, but in a recent interview with Gamasutra, American McGee said that the situation with money wasn’t even discussed until the game had been well underway.

“The truth is, being a ‘traditional’ game company, we just started with a gameply demo built by a two-man prototype team, and left the business model thinking until a much later date,” said McGee.

Well, that’s all well and good, but the studio had to find a way to stay afloat. How would they make money then?

“Part-way into production I started pressuring the team to find a theme and make sure that theme linked into a ‘monetization narrative,” McGee said. “To me, the idea that we set the game inside a store made a lot of sense — and it was the ‘toy store’ theme that I pressed for that reason.”

Spicy Horse found it hard to move from a retail game to a free-to-play project, as the focus on gameplay is now shifted to business. McGee said that while it was a struggle at first, Spicy Horse has since focused on bringing the fun into business. “In terms of the business model, it’s been a struggle [to shift our development focus], that’s for sure,” said McGee. “Over five years of development history we’ve established a mentality of, ‘make it fun and let someone else figure out how to sell it.’ As new developments were being started at the beginning of 2011, little or no development effort was going into monetization. We’ve since cured that — or so we hope — but there are many new lessons still to be learned!”

However, despite trying to work through the troubles, McGee said that Spicy Horse won’t be returning to developing big-budget titles. “It’s not likely we’ll go back to big-budget AAA development,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s not why we’re in China. We started the studio here in order to be close to the fastest growing online market in the world and tap into an incredible amount of technical and artistic talent. While the studio has proven itself more than capable of producing beautiful AAA console games, there’s no long-term business for us there. We feel online is where it’s at.”

Considering how The Sims and Zynga took Facebook by storm this year, McGee certainly knows where all the action is at.

BigHead Bash is in an open beta, and Spicy Horse says that the game will official launch in February 2012.

Via GamaSutra.

Secondly we have created a special edition Football Manager 2012 Xmas sleeve which is available to download and print from www.footballmanager.com/, giving your very own copy of Football Manager 2012 some Xmas sparkle! Alternatively, if you have bought the game as a Xmas gift, why not download the sleeve and add an extra festive feel to the Xmas present?
To download the exclusive Xmas FM12 sleeve, please visit the download section.

Football Manager 2012 for PC and Apple Mac is available now and Football Manager Handheld 2012 is available on PSP and to download now on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The Xmas edition of the Football Manager 2012 podcast is also now available for free at the Apple app store.

Check it out here.

Watch the trailer here!

We have a ton of screens for the Thor table below and it can be added to the Zen Pinball title for $1.99. If you have not downloaded Zen Pinball yet, the title is free on both platforms and comes with the Sorcerer’s Lair table completely free.