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Hello everyone, and welcome to the week! It’s time once again for our look back at the noteworthy updates of the last seven days. A fine assortment of titles is featured in this week’s list, with a few lesser-seen faces in among the usual goons. Certainly enough to carry you through your breakfast, lunch, brunch, or elevensies. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper or by participating in the TouchArcade forums. This weekly summary is just here to fill you in on the things you might have missed. Let’s go for it!
Mario Kart Tour, Free
We’ve already talked about this update a couple of times, but it’s officially out there now. Mario Kart Tour‘s latest version allows players to play the game in landscape mode if they wish, giving a more standard view of the kart-racing action. You can also invite friends to your online races now, making it easier to play with the people you actually want to play with. Finally, the UI has seen some changes to try to make it easier to get at the things you’ll actually want to get at.
Dan The Man, Free
The update notes for Dan the Man are always so short. It makes it hard to write a paragraph about new versions, that’s for sure. This one seems to be summer-themed, with a new sand and surf beach background to battle in and a new ice cream costume. To beat the heat, you must become the treat. This update also makes some adjustments to certain levels in story mode to give them a little more polish. Finally, it makes with the squishy-wishy on the bugs. I’m honestly impressed this game is still getting updates after so many years, but I guess it’s still pretty popular.
Mortal Kombat, Free
Holy smokes, it’s been absolute ages since Mortal Kombat last updated. I was worried it was finished or something. But no, here it is, updating like nothing ever happened. The latest addition to the game is Klassic Smoke, a character that pays homage to Smoke’s first appearance way back in Mortal Kombat II. He’s a Gold character, and he should be available soon if not already. But wait, there’s more. New Shirai Ryu Towers! Three new Brutalities! New Tower equipment! Adjustments to some existing characters! And some serious Fatalities performed on some pesky bugs! Nice, nice. I think I’ll welcome it back with a coveted UMMSotW award.
Star Traders: Frontiers, $6.99
Ah, Star Traders: Frontiers. You’ll never let me down when I’m looking for spiffy updates, will you? No, you won’t. So what’s new here? A new component, Armored Salvage Bay 5, which is Thulun-only and trades cargo and fuel for stronger armor. The regular Salvage Bay 5 also gets some minor improvements, getting a small bonus to ship ops and a bigger one to cargo. There are also some new ship filters including the Exact Crew Match, which only shows ships that the exact same max number of crew/officers as the current ship. You can also search by mass class. Those are handy if you’ve got a big fleet to deal with. As always with a Trese Brothers game update, there are a bunch of other little improvements and additions, so be sure to hit up those update notes if you want the full story.
Langrisser, Free
Langrisser hasn’t exactly been playing in the Fire Emblem Heroes leagues like it seemed to be aiming for pre-launch, but it remains a fairly popular, well-liked spin on the free-to-play strategy game. In its latest update, you’re now able to preview skins in the Skin Store so that you have more information before plunking down cash. This comes on top of the big update earlier this month that added a bunch of new characters to the game. There were also some critical bug fixes based on player feedback. Yes, this entry is taking the place of a game that I had thought would be updated by today but didn’t make it in time. How could you tell?
Toy Blast, Free
Here’s our obligatory free-to-play matching puzzle game update of the week. Yes, it’s one of those Blast games. Blast it all. That means we’ve got 50 new levels to play, and some sort of fol-de-rol in the update notes about what those levels are meant to represent. Alright, let’s go look. Okay, whoever had “Indiana Jones-style raid into a volcanic mountain to steal the emerald eyes from an ancient statue in a secret temple” gets the Kewpie doll. No one? No one guessed that for the story behind the new levels in Toy Blast? Well then, I’ll just keep the doll. Its name shall be ‘Carter’.
Jurassic World Alive, Free
Okay look, every free-to-play game eventually adds raids, but hear me out: DINOSAUR RAIDS. Ah, how much does Jurassic Park/World get away with just by having dinosaurs? So much. Dinosaur much. Anyway, you can now team up with your friends and alliance to battle some super-powerful DINOSAURS in these DINOSAUR RAIDS. Win Apex Raid battles, and again I stress these raids involve dinosaurs, and you’ll get Apex Boss Mortem Rex DNA. What will you do with it? Just dinosaur things. There are some other little tweaks and improvements in this update, but I cannot specifically claim that they are involved with the dinosaur-related content, so who cares? DINOSAUR CARES, that’s who.
Skulls of the Shogun, Free
You know the disclaimer by now: I write history articles for the people at GameClub, and they pay me for that work. That said, I only include their games here if it’s something I think is exciting, and for me, it doesn’t get much more exciting than Skulls of the Shogun being back from the dead. This is one of my favorite strategy games on mobile, and its life on iOS in its original incarnation was tragically short. GameClub has brought it back and it now runs on current devices. Note that if you’ve already bought this one and want to restore it without subscribing, you may have to drop the good folks at GameClub a note. Ah, I’m so glad this is back, though. Time to take General Akamoto to the top of the underworld yet again.
Real Racing 3, Free
Brabham joins the Real Racing roster in this roaring update to EA’s popular racer. Hop into the driver’s seat of the Brabham BT62 in a special event where you can earn the car for your own virtual garage. Other events include the 2020 GT Endurance Championship, where you can win a 2019 Aston Martin Vantage GTE, a 2020 Porsche 911 RSR, or a 2020 Chevy Corvette C8.R, and the Formula E New York City E-Prix 2020 Race Day Special Event where the twelve 2020 Formula E cars are up for grabs. There’s a lot more in there, including new Team Principals, a chance to earn the Lamborghini Diablo SV, and some new Black Lives Matter vinyls to customize your car with.
Modern Combat Versus, Free
And we’ll finish things up today with a look at the latest version of Gameloft’s first-person shooter, Modern Combat Versus. The big news this time around is that there are seven new weapons to mess with. Lock, Juke, Gh0st, Hashtag, M0nark, Seven, and Kan all get a new weapon each. There’s also a new weapon switch feature that lets you change your weapon before the battle starts. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of balance adjustments, performance tweaks, and bug fixes. But what more do you need, really?
That about wraps it up for last week’s significant updates. I’m sure I’ve missed some, though, so please feel free to comment below and let everyone know if you think something should be mentioned. As usual, major updates will likely get their own news stories throughout this week, and I’ll be back next Monday to summarize and fill in the blanks. Have a great week!
