The game does the hard work of hooking you in, but is insistent on pushing you away straight after unless you cough up cash, which feels both insulting and desperate.

All things considered though, Ice Age Adventures is very well put together. The clever A-List voice acting alone is enough to keep a non-fan like myself interested. Any fan of the series should give it a shot.

It’s best experienced in short bursts of explosive, colorful mayhem: burn bright and fast.

Rules! is that sort of lightning in a bottle that only comes along every so often. I’d rank it right up there with Threes!, and not just because both games so gleefully abuse exclamation points.

Adventure Time: Time Tangle isn’t perfect, but there’s enough here to bring a smile to fans’ faces.

The verdict here is that if you’ve always been intrigued by Blood Bowl and never had the experience of having a Troll throw a Goblin and the ball together into the end zone, this is probably the best gateway into that world that’s ever existed. For hardcore fans, it’s only going to serve as an appetizer until the next main course comes along in a few months.

So, while I’d love to see some more value added for the player who has maxed out everything, Deep Loot is a really fun dive up until that point. Upgrading items is satisfying, finding special treasures is exciting, and the quest to do both is a great driving factor for a long period of time.

Micromon is worthy of criticism because it’s a very decent Pokemon-style game. With a little more polish (and an extra coat for its online issues), it could roll over the App Store’s competition like a Fire-type over a Nature-type.

Dream Revenant could have been a halmark mobile gaming moment. Instead, it’s a masterclass in how to make a mess out of the best of intentions.

The Phantom PI: Mission Apparition is the first in what I hope is a series of sequels that adopt the same look and casual yet intelligent attitude toward adventure games.

Overall, 80 Days is a wonderful game.

Don’t let it’s business model turn you off. If you’re a fan of the Crazy Taxi franchise, this is a unique spin on something you already know and love that’s well worth giving a chance.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t the worst several hours I’ve spent with a game by a long stretch, but I found it disappointingly lacking.

I don’t think Order of Souls is for the hardcore RPG player – the one who regularly buys Kemco’s games or has no qualms shelling out $15-$20 for the latest Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest port. But for the player who wants a casual RPG that doesn’t feel like it’s dumbed-down? Order of Souls is a great choice.

If you’re a really big soccer fan who doesn’t take the game too seriously (and yes, that’s probably an oxymoronic formula), Football Maniacs Manager is a good way to smile a bit and put yourself in the manager’s role with a minimum time commitment. Other people are going to shake their heads and not get this game at all, kind of like non-football fans react to the sport itself.

Traps n’ Gemstones is more than just another great release from Donut Games — it’s essential gaming for fans of classic back-tracking platformers. I

Knight Girl is a good-looking, professionally made game that’s not bad, but not particularly interesting.

Touchscreen issues and a lack of controller support aside, Modern Combat 5 delivers on what it set out to do.

Its combat is unique and extremely satisfying, its 52 levels offer plenty of challenge, and while long-term players will be putting down the $4.99 for unlimited energy, you can easily get a free taste of it is enough to know if it’s worth the money.

Really, one of the lone bummers in The Universal Weapon is that it’s pretty short.

Ninja UP! is a dead-simple jumping game that successfully offers players an intense test of reflexes.

Overall, Barn Voyage is a cute and busy farming sim that lets you do your thing without throwing up a paywall. Again, it’s pretty repetitive – but you can’t really expect anything else from a vocation that relies so heavily on the sun and the seasons.

It’s all fairly straightforward, but with just enough cleverness and self-awareness to it that I can recommend this to anyone looking for an easy game, or something they can give their kids to play.

Happy Flock is crazy cute, and its concept is sound. Youngsters might find it hard to play, though, and parents are definitely going to want to turn off in-app purchases before handing this title to their lambs.

In truth, it’s clear the developers of Fates Forever were trying to build something very much akin to Blizzard’s casual hit – boiling down push-and-pull of MOBA into something quick, simple, and great to look at (the game looks great, by the way, though the human/animal character design is uninspiring). They just happened to reveal the limitations of doing so in the process.

Big Fish Games has long been known as a publisher of the highest-quality games, and Cascade is the latest feather in the company’s cap.

Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores dishes up tons of behemoth-shooting action. It’s an easy game to enjoy.

It’s the perfect one-minute, pick-up-and-play game, except we’ve been playing it all day.