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The best iPhone and iPad games this week - SXPD, Bounden, and Frontline: Road to Moscow

Stylised combat racing, dancing partners, and Nazi strategy

The  best iPhone and iPad games this week - SXPD, Bounden, and Frontline: Road to Moscow

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

There were plenty of candidates for this week's list of the three best new iOS games.

Side-scrolling action movie tie-in Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past missed out... but only just. The whimsical and dangerous exploration of Globosome: Path of the Swarm made it difficult to drop this one from the list.

The bizarre over-the-top Silver Award-winning take on tower defence that is OTTTD could easily have been listed below, too. And we also had the alien-blasting bravado of Everplay Interactive's Bill Killem to consider.

But we're happy with the three games we went with instead. Check them out below.

If you disagree with our selection and think we've missed a worthy iOS game from this week, shout at us in the comments section below. Not too loudly, though. Our ears hurt.

SXPD
By Little Chicken Game Company - buy on iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)

SXPD

What's black and white and red (not all over)?

It's SXPD, of course. This is a very stylish blend of digital comic and 3D Deathrace-style combat racing.

Given it looks like a 2000 AD comic book, is directed by Earthworm Jim game creator David Perry, and has tilt controls that positively demand you play the game, SXPD is as impressive as we hoped it would be.

You play a rookie for the all-female police force the SXPD, which upholds Mephistopheles's Law around the industrial 52nd US state New Royal.

The combat racing is as frantic as it should be, while the storytelling immerses you in a world of anarchic terrorism and shootouts. It's as good as it looks, basically.

Bounden
By Game Oven - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.49 / $3.99)

Bounden

Bounden turns your phone into a dance instructor, encouraging elegant co-operation between you and a partner. Suffice it to say, this is unlike anything else in mobile gaming.

Developer Game Oven collaborated on this project with the Dutch National Ballet so that real dance moves are at the core of the experience.

Bounden works by having each person hold one end of the phone. That person then tilts and spins the phone between herself, and is guided by matching points marked around a sphere inside the phone.

Bounden takes a little getting used to. But as you and your partner gradually learn the dances, you do so with a smile. Plus, the very satisfying result is worth the hard work.

Frontline: Road to Moscow
By Slitherine - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.99 / $2.99)

Frontline: Road to Moscow

How do you fancy playing as part of the high command of the German Nazi army and orchestrating the 1941 invasion of Russia?

A strange question, sure, but that's precisely what you get to do in accessible strategy game Frontline: Road to Moscow.

Luckily, the fact that the game's diverse set of tactical options demands all of your attention means you'll have no time to question the morality of your actions.

It's a little shallower than the PC strategy game to which it could be compared, but that makes it a little more suitable for mobile gaming, in truth.

Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.