The best iPad and iPhone games this week - Helix, Electronic Super Joy, The Silent Age

Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's three best new iPhone and iPad games.

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There are plenty of shooters on the App Store, but I bet you'd have trouble naming a game that’s all about flying circles around scratchy-edged retro monsters. Unless you've played Helix, that is.

Built by Michael Brough, the dev behind the likes of 868-Hack, the game is a brilliant distillation of the retro arcade blaster. It just takes away the blasting and focuses on movement.

You control everything with a single finger, swooshing around an ever-changing array of enemies as you learn the patterns you need to take them down.

At review we gave the game a Silver Award and called it "a garish and wonderfully retro anti-shooter," adding that "Helix deserves your high-score chasing attention."

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A wonderfully irreverent, super-tough platformer that sees you bouncing through a neon-bright city that's being destroyed by a giant robot called JoJo. All in a day’s work, really.

Like the best touchscreen jumpers, the game keeps its controls simple. A couple of chunky buttons let you move left and right, a third lets you jump. The platforming itself is razor sharp, but there's a pretty generous checkpoint system as well.

On top of that there's a wonderful stripe of silly, adult humour running through the game. And you get a Steam code for the PC version if you buy the game on the App Store, which is pretty cool.

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The first episode of The Silent Age really caught us by surprise. It was a clever tale of time-hopping and puzzle solving that recalled the golden age of the point-n'-click adventure.

This second chunk of the game continues that trend. It's not perfect, but there's enough here that fans of the genre are going to find something to really sink their teeth into.

The game sees you bouncing between the swinging '70s and 2012, attempting to figure out how to stop the apocalypse. It's grim and funny in equal measures, and features an intriguing and well resolved story.

At review we gave the game a Bronze Award and said "The Silent Age: Episode Two wraps up the story nicely, but it wastes its clever time-travelling mechanic."