Saturday 10 October 2015
10 Best FREE Android Games of 2015 (High Graphics)
10 Best FREE Android Games of 2015 (High Graphics)
What with the news of top-tier game developers pulling their games from the iOS9
app store, the Android mobile platform is looking better and better
these days. While iPhone and iPad users still usually get their hands on mobile
games first, Apple’s primacy in mobile gaming is on the decline, and Android
users are now spoiled for choice when it comes to games.
Android hardware is getting really great, too,
and the games you can play on your mobile device now actually rival last-gen
console releases in terms of graphics fidelity and gameplay complexity.
The best news is that tons of great mobile games
are available for free, and while the “free to play” monetization model is
often used unscrupulously, many great developers have found ways to implement
monetization without being horribly annoying.
We’ve collected ten of this year’s best
good-looking, free Android games for you here, as well as links to their Google
Play store pages. What are you waiting for? Your next bus ride or trip to the
bathroom could be a real adventure.
10 Angel Stone
Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fincon.angelstone&hl=en
A hack ‘n slash RPG that wears its Diablo
III influence on its
sleeve, Angel Stone gives you three character
classes – Berserker, Gunslinger, and Shadow Mage – with whom to venture forth
and administer severe forms of corporal punishment onto zombies, skeletons,
demons, and other grimdark monsters.
Yes, there are microtransactions in the form of
purchasable elite gear, but you can ignore them as you fight through 60
missions of beautifully-rendered demon hunting.
9 Tactile Wars
Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ankama.tactilwar&hl=en
Don’t
let the cutesy graphics fool you: Tactile Wars wraps a kiloton of tactical depth into
a real-time strategy game by way of the paint mechanics of Splatoon and The Wonderful 101’s group control scheme.
You
control a group of paintball-shooting soldiers, directing them around maps to
take control points from your enemy. You’ll take over maps, attack other
players, and build up your own defenses as the game goes on.
The
crucial part is drawing formations on the ground, which can give your troops
the advantage. It seems pretty simple at first, but the game gets pretty
demanding as you progress. It’s also paced just right for mobile – quick
missions that you can finish in time to hop off the bus or train.
8 Path To Luma
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NRG.PathToLuma
Sure, it sounds a bit hippy-dippy, but the game
is rock-solid and drop-dead gorgeous. There’s a lovely ambient soundtrack as
well, making this a perfect game to chill out and relax with during a quick
study or work break.
7 Ire: Blood Memory
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tenbirds.ire
We understand how hacky it is at this point to
compare games to Dark Souls, but come on. This is the Dark
Souls of mobile
gaming. Ire: Blood Memory isn’t trying to hide its
influences, either: developer TenBirds has said they were inspired by Demon’s
Souls, Dark Souls, and Monster
Hunter – and
as influences go, you can do a lot worse.
A mobile game for hardcore players, Ire:
Blood Memory features
the rewardingly difficult-to-master combat of Monster Hunter, as well as
the player invasion system fromSouls.
It’s not about mashing the attack button, but learning how to use and time each
weapon and spell.
While it works fairly well with touchscreen
controls, Ire also supports Android controllers.
This might be the game that makes you consider picking one up.
6 Lara Croft: Relic Run
Store
page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareenix.relicrun
Like
most successful mobile genres, the Temple Run style has been done to death,
resurrected in an unholy free-to-play ritual, and then killed again by the
pitchforks and torches of pale imitators. So it’s not surprising to find
players pretty burned out on the format.
Fortunately,
Square-Enix’s Lara Croft: Relic Run does it right, and even adds some classic Tomb
Raider-style innovations into the mix, like wall-running,
gymnastics, and the occasional vehicle. What could easily have been a toss-off
piece of fan service or marketing is actually a very entertaining and exciting
game that may help pass the time we have to wait until Rise
of the Tomb Raidercomes out.
5 SBK15
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.dtales.sbk15
The official mobile game of the eni FIM
Superbike World Championships, SBK15 puts you on one of the world’s
fastest road machines. You’ll race around tracks at ludicrous speeds using the
big names in motorcycle manufacturing: BMW, Kawasaki, Ducati, and others are
all represented in-game.
Sporting fantastic visuals, SBK15 also supports nine different control
schemes, so you can burn rubber whichever way suits you best, be it virtual
thumbsticks, tilt, or controller. They’ve also added a new time attack mode in
this year’s version.
Just, please – don’t play this game while riding
an actual motorcycle.
4 Fallout Shelter
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bethsoft.falloutshelter&hl=en
Bethesda’s first-ever E3 press event this year
turned a lot of heads for a lot of reasons, and even though everyone knew they
would be giving us a peek at the upcoming Fallout 4, nobody realized they’d been working up
a mobile tie-in game. Fallout Shelter is that game, and it’s now out on
Android.
Using the whimsical VaultBoy art style that’s
always featured prominently in the Falloutuniverse, Fallout
Shelter is a kind of
management game where you build a sprawling underground habitat. As your
population grows, you’ll unlock new rooms to use to train your dwellers in each
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat, which will help them survive when you send them off into
the wasteland to scrounge for supplies.
It’s a perfect game to spend a couple minutes
with at a time – you’ll open it up, check on your residents, and collect the
resources they’ve produced, always with an eye toward expanding. It’s a bit
like having digital Sea Monkeys, but with radiation.
3 Angry Birds 2
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rovio.baba&hl=en
We know, we know: since it first hit phones in
2009, Angry Birds has
grown to a Minions-esque level of overexposure, and it’s hard to blame anyone
who’s gotten sick of them in that time. But under the astronomical popularity
and multimedia blitz is a really terrific little mobile game that holds up
pretty well.
It’s a bit strange to call this year’s iteration Angry
Birds 2, since it’s
actually the fifteenthgame in Rovio’s hit
franchise. But this is the one they’ve dubbed the sequel, and it adds some
interesting new twists to the original slingshot-birds-into-pig-fortresses formula.
There are new birds to use, with crazy new special abilities, and multi-stage
levels that span multiple screens.
And there’s still something insanely satisfying
about lining up the perfect shot with the bomb bird. I love that guy.
2 Need For Speed: No Limits
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ea.game.nfs14_row&hl=en
The Need for Speed series has always put a premium on
arcade fun over strict adherence to realism, and that approach has produced a
lot of very entertaining games over the years. No
Limits hews
close to this tradition – the idea is to drive very, very fast, with as little
regard for the safety of yourself and others as possible.
As you play through the “Underground” story
mode, you’ll pick up blueprints you can use to build and upgrade licensed cars
– Porsche 911s, Shelby Cobras, tricked-out Subaru WRXs. A paint shop is available
as well, and it’s worth it to make your car look pretty, because the game
itself is a stunner.
Need for Speed: No Limits also makes a smart decision for a mobile game: Races are short,
intense affairs, usually lasting under two minutes. You can hop in and finish a
race while you’re boiling an egg.
1 Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.wtcg.hearthstone&hl=en
The product of a Blizzard skunkworks project
created by a team of five programmers,Hearthstone has wound up being a massive breakout
hit for the company. It’s thereigning collectible card
game online now, consistently in the top five games being played on Twitch.tv
at any given time.
Hearthstone made the leap from tablets to phone screens earlier this year, and
survived the transition with nary a scratch: the phone edition makes a few
tweaks to the already mobile-friendly interface, but they’re easy to learn and
intuitive, much like the game itself.
Blizzard has released several expansions to the
game since it launched, so there are now more than 500 cards to collect and use
in battle. Now that it’s playable on your phone, it’s easier than ever to play
head-to-head against your friends while you’re hanging out – which makes trash
talking way more enjoyable.
Bonus: PES Club Manager 2015
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.konami.pesclubmanager
First things first: PES
Club Manager 2015is about managinga soccer club, not
being a player (some users have left nasty reviews for this game in the store
based on confusion over this issue). What your job is here is to recruit
talent, train up your players, and pick out your match strategies from the back
room of one of several licensed European and South American teams, using a pool
of more than 5,000 licensed players.
You’ll get to see the fruits of your labor pay
off (or fail horribly) in fully-rendered, real time 3D matches, and it’ll be up
to you to switch up strategies as games play out. Appropriately for “the
Beautiful Game,” PES Club Manager 2015has
jaw-dropping good looks, rivaling sports games from the last generation of
consoles.
What with the news of top-tier game developers pulling their games from the iOS9
app store, the Android mobile platform is looking better and better
these days. While iPhone and iPad users still usually get their hands on mobile
games first, Apple’s primacy in mobile gaming is on the decline, and Android
users are now spoiled for choice when it comes to games.
Android hardware is getting really great, too,
and the games you can play on your mobile device now actually rival last-gen
console releases in terms of graphics fidelity and gameplay complexity.
The best news is that tons of great mobile games
are available for free, and while the “free to play” monetization model is
often used unscrupulously, many great developers have found ways to implement
monetization without being horribly annoying.
We’ve collected ten of this year’s best
good-looking, free Android games for you here, as well as links to their Google
Play store pages. What are you waiting for? Your next bus ride or trip to the
bathroom could be a real adventure.
10 Angel Stone
Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fincon.angelstone&hl=en
A hack ‘n slash RPG that wears its Diablo
III influence on its
sleeve, Angel Stone gives you three character
classes – Berserker, Gunslinger, and Shadow Mage – with whom to venture forth
and administer severe forms of corporal punishment onto zombies, skeletons,
demons, and other grimdark monsters.
Yes, there are microtransactions in the form of
purchasable elite gear, but you can ignore them as you fight through 60
missions of beautifully-rendered demon hunting.
9 Tactile Wars
Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ankama.tactilwar&hl=en
Don’t
let the cutesy graphics fool you: Tactile Wars wraps a kiloton of tactical depth into
a real-time strategy game by way of the paint mechanics of Splatoon and The Wonderful 101’s group control scheme.
You
control a group of paintball-shooting soldiers, directing them around maps to
take control points from your enemy. You’ll take over maps, attack other
players, and build up your own defenses as the game goes on.
The
crucial part is drawing formations on the ground, which can give your troops
the advantage. It seems pretty simple at first, but the game gets pretty
demanding as you progress. It’s also paced just right for mobile – quick
missions that you can finish in time to hop off the bus or train.
8 Path To Luma
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NRG.PathToLuma
Sure, it sounds a bit hippy-dippy, but the game
is rock-solid and drop-dead gorgeous. There’s a lovely ambient soundtrack as
well, making this a perfect game to chill out and relax with during a quick
study or work break.
7 Ire: Blood Memory
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tenbirds.ire
We understand how hacky it is at this point to
compare games to Dark Souls, but come on. This is the Dark
Souls of mobile
gaming. Ire: Blood Memory isn’t trying to hide its
influences, either: developer TenBirds has said they were inspired by Demon’s
Souls, Dark Souls, and Monster
Hunter – and
as influences go, you can do a lot worse.
A mobile game for hardcore players, Ire:
Blood Memory features
the rewardingly difficult-to-master combat of Monster Hunter, as well as
the player invasion system fromSouls.
It’s not about mashing the attack button, but learning how to use and time each
weapon and spell.
While it works fairly well with touchscreen
controls, Ire also supports Android controllers.
This might be the game that makes you consider picking one up.
6 Lara Croft: Relic Run
Store
page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareenix.relicrun
Like
most successful mobile genres, the Temple Run style has been done to death,
resurrected in an unholy free-to-play ritual, and then killed again by the
pitchforks and torches of pale imitators. So it’s not surprising to find
players pretty burned out on the format.
Fortunately,
Square-Enix’s Lara Croft: Relic Run does it right, and even adds some classic Tomb
Raider-style innovations into the mix, like wall-running,
gymnastics, and the occasional vehicle. What could easily have been a toss-off
piece of fan service or marketing is actually a very entertaining and exciting
game that may help pass the time we have to wait until Rise
of the Tomb Raidercomes out.
5 SBK15
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.dtales.sbk15
The official mobile game of the eni FIM
Superbike World Championships, SBK15 puts you on one of the world’s
fastest road machines. You’ll race around tracks at ludicrous speeds using the
big names in motorcycle manufacturing: BMW, Kawasaki, Ducati, and others are
all represented in-game.
Sporting fantastic visuals, SBK15 also supports nine different control
schemes, so you can burn rubber whichever way suits you best, be it virtual
thumbsticks, tilt, or controller. They’ve also added a new time attack mode in
this year’s version.
Just, please – don’t play this game while riding
an actual motorcycle.
4 Fallout Shelter
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bethsoft.falloutshelter&hl=en
Bethesda’s first-ever E3 press event this year
turned a lot of heads for a lot of reasons, and even though everyone knew they
would be giving us a peek at the upcoming Fallout 4, nobody realized they’d been working up
a mobile tie-in game. Fallout Shelter is that game, and it’s now out on
Android.
Using the whimsical VaultBoy art style that’s
always featured prominently in the Falloutuniverse, Fallout
Shelter is a kind of
management game where you build a sprawling underground habitat. As your
population grows, you’ll unlock new rooms to use to train your dwellers in each
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat, which will help them survive when you send them off into
the wasteland to scrounge for supplies.
It’s a perfect game to spend a couple minutes
with at a time – you’ll open it up, check on your residents, and collect the
resources they’ve produced, always with an eye toward expanding. It’s a bit
like having digital Sea Monkeys, but with radiation.
3 Angry Birds 2
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rovio.baba&hl=en
We know, we know: since it first hit phones in
2009, Angry Birds has
grown to a Minions-esque level of overexposure, and it’s hard to blame anyone
who’s gotten sick of them in that time. But under the astronomical popularity
and multimedia blitz is a really terrific little mobile game that holds up
pretty well.
It’s a bit strange to call this year’s iteration Angry
Birds 2, since it’s
actually the fifteenthgame in Rovio’s hit
franchise. But this is the one they’ve dubbed the sequel, and it adds some
interesting new twists to the original slingshot-birds-into-pig-fortresses formula.
There are new birds to use, with crazy new special abilities, and multi-stage
levels that span multiple screens.
And there’s still something insanely satisfying
about lining up the perfect shot with the bomb bird. I love that guy.
2 Need For Speed: No Limits
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ea.game.nfs14_row&hl=en
The Need for Speed series has always put a premium on
arcade fun over strict adherence to realism, and that approach has produced a
lot of very entertaining games over the years. No
Limits hews
close to this tradition – the idea is to drive very, very fast, with as little
regard for the safety of yourself and others as possible.
As you play through the “Underground” story
mode, you’ll pick up blueprints you can use to build and upgrade licensed cars
– Porsche 911s, Shelby Cobras, tricked-out Subaru WRXs. A paint shop is available
as well, and it’s worth it to make your car look pretty, because the game
itself is a stunner.
Need for Speed: No Limits also makes a smart decision for a mobile game: Races are short,
intense affairs, usually lasting under two minutes. You can hop in and finish a
race while you’re boiling an egg.
1 Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.wtcg.hearthstone&hl=en
The product of a Blizzard skunkworks project
created by a team of five programmers,Hearthstone has wound up being a massive breakout
hit for the company. It’s thereigning collectible card
game online now, consistently in the top five games being played on Twitch.tv
at any given time.
Hearthstone made the leap from tablets to phone screens earlier this year, and
survived the transition with nary a scratch: the phone edition makes a few
tweaks to the already mobile-friendly interface, but they’re easy to learn and
intuitive, much like the game itself.
Blizzard has released several expansions to the
game since it launched, so there are now more than 500 cards to collect and use
in battle. Now that it’s playable on your phone, it’s easier than ever to play
head-to-head against your friends while you’re hanging out – which makes trash
talking way more enjoyable.
Bonus: PES Club Manager 2015
Store page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.konami.pesclubmanager
First things first: PES
Club Manager 2015is about managinga soccer club, not
being a player (some users have left nasty reviews for this game in the store
based on confusion over this issue). What your job is here is to recruit
talent, train up your players, and pick out your match strategies from the back
room of one of several licensed European and South American teams, using a pool
of more than 5,000 licensed players.
You’ll get to see the fruits of your labor pay
off (or fail horribly) in fully-rendered, real time 3D matches, and it’ll be up
to you to switch up strategies as games play out. Appropriately for “the
Beautiful Game,” PES Club Manager 2015has
jaw-dropping good looks, rivaling sports games from the last generation of
consoles.
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