I sat down with the fine folks at Glu for a look at their upcoming summer titles!
The majority of major iPhone game publishers/developers had a whole lot of nothing to show at E3. Rather, they all stuck with iPad versions of their current iPhone titles. It’s good to see that Glu has a little bit of everything to bring to the table, including one iPad update, 2 sequels, and a brand new title.
Deer Hunter HD
I was pretty impressed with Deer Hunter when I reviewed the iPhone version a while ago. I’m not a fan of hunting games, yet it sucked me in and 
really showed off with some fantastic environments and visuals. The iPad version looks to be bringing that iPhone eye candy to the big screen with a solid port. While the game itself remains the same, the graphics have been redone, and the lush outdoor environments look better than ever. There is even ambient wildlife like butterflies, ducks, birds, and other critters. While I’m not sure if you can shoot the butterflies, I saw a new achievements for shooting birds, so that’s pretty sweet.
Everything else has remained the same, gameplay wise. I found the iPad controls to work well, but I didn’t see the option to customize the layout, which is surprising for an iPad game. If you’re even slightly interested in hunting games, or just want an impressive title to show off graphically, Deer Hunter HD looks to be a good purchase when it’s released in a couple weeks in July.
Deer Hunter: African Safari
Yes, the much requested big game hunting version of Glu’s Deer Hunter is coming this August. While Deer Hunter had you shooting the likes of deer, moose, and elk, African Safari will have you poaching Lions, Elephants, and other sometimes dangerous wild animals. One of the differences in this new game, is that sometimes the more ferocious animals will actually fight back if you can’t pull of a single hit kill shot! I didn’t get to see this in action, but I did get to see a lion take out a Zebra in the title screen. I really hope this kind of 
interaction between the animals will take place in the main hunting campaign, but Glu hasn’t confirmed that yet.
Aside from being attacked, you can also be penalized in-game for not holding to hunting regulations attached to the animals you’re stalking. Big game comes with big rules, and it looks like you’ll have to be careful not to go postal on everything you see. The exact effect of these penalties wasn’t given during the hands on.
While the animal models weren’t all finished, it looks like Glu has stepped things up with the environments in African Safari. One of the levels featured an early morning savanna that showed off some nice fog in the distance. Glu mentioned they have been toying with a weather system for this game, so we’ll see if more environmental goodies show up in the final release. Africa Safari also includes the ability to change vantage points for single locations, which provides for more control over how you approach your target. The original Deer Hunter just placed you based on your general map location.
Build-a-Lot 2
I reviewed the original Build-a-Lot a while ago, and was surprised at how much I liked it. In short, it’s a casual sim/management game that has you 
buying/building/selling properties to create neighborhoods that are appeasing to buyers and residents. Each level has different goals to achieve, from building a school, to reaching a certain amount of income from renters.
The sequel adds an interesting “neighborhood appeal” meter to the game that essentially judges how happy the residents are. As the first game was all about making money, it’s cool to see a new twist focusing on your building and upgrade choices. You can now build things like parks or playgrounds to help boost neighborhood satisfaction. You can also re-paint houses to make them more appealing. Like the first game, Built-a-Lot 2 will feature 8 neighborhoods, with 24 total levels. I also noticed that the GUI has been tweaked and feels smoother than the original, which is good. If you didn’t play the first game, you won’t have to worry, as the sequel contains great tutorial levels that ease you into the action like the original.
Escape from NOM
Pat and I played a very very early version of this game at GDC last year, and we had a lot of fun with it. The game has received a great amount of visual polish to the artwork and animations since then, and I was told it upscales nicely to the iPad from the iPhone version. NOM is a physics-based platform/puzzle game that has you dropping Alan, your little blog, through 
various obstacles and enemies to reach the goo at the bottom of the screen. The goal of the game is to make sure Alan only touches the goo if he is the same color. You get a limited set of “tools” that can be placed on the game field to bounce him around or change his color.
Don’t let NOM’s cute looks fool you, this is one damn challenging game. I gratefully received the “poo award” on pretty much every level I played. At one point I got black poo instead of brown poo, which is a “better” poo award according to Glu. Thanks, guys! I got so whipped in the single player levels, that I decided to jump into the level editor. I proceeded to make what I thought would be an easy level. I then got pwned by my own level. I am not one who generally sucks at games, but I’ll definitely need to bring my A game is released later this summer.
Along with the level editor, Escape from NOM will ship with the ability to publish your levels online, and to download and rate other user-made levels. You can keep your personal levels in a little “My World” area to challenge your friends, and ultimately make them feel like poo. Escape from NOM will hopefully be out sometime in July.
