Gameloft's holiday iOS releases: NOVA 2, Asphalt 6 and Shadow Guardian

Gameloft kindly allowed TUAW to sit in on a preview yesterday of the games it's planning on releasing later this year, and we got to see three new iOS titles. NOVA 2 (seen above) is the sequel to the very popular first-person shooter for iPhone. Asphalt 6: Adrenaline is the latest in Gameloft's high-quality racing series and Shadow Guardian is a brand new IP that borrows a lot from popular action/exploration games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. After the break, you'll find descriptions of all three titles. They will be available for both iPhone and iPad sometime later on this year.

Gameloft is also releasing three more titles this year that we didn't get to see: Dungeon Hunter 2 (which is the sequel to the popular Diablo-style hack-and-slash RPG), and two games called Eternal Legacy and Space Fracture. We'll have more about those games soon, and we'll likely see them live on the App Store before long anyway.
NOVA 2

Perhaps Gameloft's most popular title, NOVA was quite a popular game among hardcore gamers on the iPhone -- it offered Halo-style visuals and a sharp first-person shooter story campaign. Like all respectable FPS sequels, NOVA 2 plans to do what the first game did, but bigger and better. The visuals have been completely redone, says Gameloft, with better looking shadows and effects throughout the single-player campaign. The weapons are also all new -- while there are some new weapons to play with, even the old weapons have been revamped and given new abilities or powers.

There's a rocket launcher with a new lock-on feature that will target your shots instead of requiring you to line them up exactly right. Two new alien weapons are playable: one is a lightning gun that shoots for as long as you hold the button down, and another is a ray gun that simply fires a damaging ray when shot. There's also a grenade launcher, an automatic shotgun and mini mines to place as traps.

Gameloft has thrown in new powers as well -- the player can now freeze aliens in place, or use a "metadisk" weapon as a close-up instakill. There's also a slow time ability that will slow the world around you down, giving you more time to aim or escape. Vehicles are back, and players will have a bike level to drive through as well as a giant mech to control and shoot from.

Finally, there's a full multiplayer component this time around -- players can fight up to six at a time in online or local battles across five different multiplayer modes and 10 maps. Multiplayer allows you to earn XP, and there are 72 levels to progress through. And if you happen to be a NOVA player, you'll get a nice bonus upon logging into the second game.

All in all, NOVA 2 looks great -- it's not necessarily innovative when you compare it to bigger console titles like Halo and Call of Duty, but for an iOS title, it's incredibly full-featured and looked very well done.

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