Apple Arcade: обзор What The Golf?, Monument Valley+ и PAC-MAN Party Royale

Apple Arcade has been adding to its catalog for several years now, with both big exclusive games for mobile gamers and smaller hits from the past. A subscription to the service costs 200 rubles a month, and for that Apple  offers hundreds of games without ads or in-app purchases, but with high-quality and enjoyable play. Many games even support controllers. At this point, the service is already well worth its price tag if you like to play on iOS devices.

And it’s a great deal.

But from experience, it turns out that not all titles are up to high standards. In this weekly column, I’ll be looking at a small selection of games to determine whether or not they’re worthy of attention. In the first article of the column, we’ll talk about What The Golf?, Monument Valley+ and PAC-MAN Party Royale.

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Apple Arcade: What The Golf?

This quirky and genuinely funny «sports simulator» — «golf for people who hate golf» — impresses with irrepressible ingenuity. There are exploding barrels, cats and fleeing cars on the course, and half the time you have to play with a cow or a rug instead of a ball, or anything at all.

There are levels in both three-dimensional and two-dimensional planes. The game is rife with variation in difficulty level, graphical style and game mechanics, there are even witty parodies of other games. Just when it seems that the possibilities of this format have been exhausted, the developers surprise again.

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There are tons of golfing possibilities here, and they all feel fresh. This is a game I can definitely recommend to anyone who wants to have fun with a simple, yet addictive game.

The game has a lot to offer.

Apple Arcade: Monument Valley+

A short and relaxed puzzle game based on visual illusions in the style of MC Escher. The levels are elaborately designed with a nice tactile feel, featuring large dials and sliders that can be used to find a route that fits the game’s strange internal logic.

It’s an all-time App Store classic that combines elaborate gameplay and aesthetics, and if by some miracle you haven’t already, you should definitely play it. Yes, it’s just a version of the game with no ads, etc., but it clearly deserves the attention of puzzle-loving mobile gamers.

Apple Arcade: PAC-MAN Party Royale

In this relatively classic multiplayer game, four Pac-Mans fight each other until the very end. If one of you is caught by a non-player ghost, or if a fellow Pac-Man swallows pills and eats you, you’ll turn into a ghost yourself. When there is only one Pac-Man left, that player wins.

It seems like a simple scheme, but it has a couple nice touches. First, after turning into a ghost, you continue to play. If you manage to catch one of the remaining Pac-Men, you switch roles and are back in the game. And the more dots you eat, the faster you move, which gives the game an exciting acceleration.

The Quick Start option — is an easy way to start a game with three artificial intelligence opponents, but the only real concern — is that it’s much harder to organize a game with other people. The game has no online player matching function, and you have to find playmates in real life, etc. and exchange party codes. Apple TV owners also complain about the lack of support for local «couch» multiplayer on one device. Such points spoil the overall impression of the Apple Arcade-exclusive game a bit.

So far, it’s a bit of a letdown.