GAMES OF THE WEEK - The 5 best new games for iOS and Android - January 16th

We went all-in with Neutronized earlier on in the year, falling in love with their previous title: Yokai Dungeon. That's not to say that the rest of their games aren't great, it's just that Yokai Dungeon felt like an evolution for the developer. Mineblast!! hammers home their new confidence.

Mineblast!! may look like a simple platformer when you take a glance at a screenshot, but the real joy comes from its juicy explosions and traversal mechanics. In order to explore you have to throw sticks of dynamite in order to clear your way through the mines. Almost everything you blast explodes into pieces, bringing the entire screen to life.

Where the real challenge comes in is when you have to master the throwing arc of the character in order to get all of the gems hidden throughout the levels.

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We wrote a little bit about Tiny Touch Tales' Maze Machina (phew, that's a mouthful) earlier on in the month, briefly touching on the fantastic art-style and theme, as well as the clever combat mechanics.

In Maze Machina you control a little mechanical mouse who has found themselves trapped in a labyrinth. In a similar spirit to Hoplite, your abilities are defined by the tile you are standing on, unlike Hoplite there is a massive variety of tiles in the game and it is all brought together with a really fun machine-punk, clockwork style.

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Crytek is a company who made their name by crashing people's computers. The original Crysis released on the cusp of the dual-core CPU revolution. People who shot big explosive barrels and didn't have the right hardware saw a big blue screen instead of gameplay. It was a beast.

Crysis 3, which remains one of my all-time favourite games, released in 2013 - a year known as the year of the bow as a result of 2012's E3 presser being jam-packed with the low-tech ranged weapon of preference. Later that same year Warface released on PC.

Warface was a confusing outlier to most. In a time where most shooters had a multiplayer mode, and where free-to-play hadn't moved far beyond the mobile market, it was a little bit ahead of its time. The gaming industry, as a whole, was still on its 'expansive worlds' kick, with many looking out for the next Skyrim. Needless to say, Warface did okay, but it was a bit ahead of its time. Ironically it's taken 7 years to get to mobile, and it launches just after Call of Duty: Mobile delivered a fantastic playing experience. Whoops.

But is Warface: Global Operations good? Yes, yes it is. The class-based systems, as well as the long-refined in-game currency systems, have evolved to a state of nigh perfection. It does feel a bit aged now, but there's a lot of gold in there.

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Rattle around in certain circles of the gaming industry for a while and you'll find people muttering about the Citizen Kane of gaming. When will a game arrive which will drag video games into the greater consciousness? Well, we've already had all of that really, there are more people playing games than watching movies or tv now these days, so it was probably Pac-Man or WiiSports or Candy Crush Saga... But, let's not talk about that, let's talk about people's affinity toward drawing comparison between one media form and another... Pascal's Wager could very well be mobile gaming's Dark Souls moment.  

Heavily influenced by the timing-focused, nails-hard RPG, Pascal's Wager tugs on its influences like a candy craving child tugs on their parent's sleeve as they walk past a Pick N Mix station. It's impossible to separate the attachment, which - for those of you who already play Souls games - is a boon for some, but also might serve as an affordable gateway for the mobile-first premium gamers out there.

The main complaint that I've seen about Pascal's Wager in the brief time that it has been on the market has been about the controls and movement - echoing the complaints which many made about Demon's Souls back in 2009/10.

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Do you remember elevator shooters? Single screen games where enemies rush on at set points - meaning the level moves but you don't have much freedom to manoeuvre around the level. Draw Chilly is one of those, although it's got a cool base and squad building elements built into it. If you think that sounds chaotic then just you wait until you hear your job in the game: Purgatory-cruising, city-elevating assassin.

You'll collect currency to build up an area behind you, which gives you passive and squad-boosting abilities while running around in the foreground defeating waves of enemies by dodging, outlasting or simply pummeling everybody who gets in your way. It's somewhat simple sounding, but there's a lot of fun to be had.

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