2012 was another incredible year for iPad gaming, with quite literally thousands of titles released on the App Store. Some of them were brilliant. Some of them weren’t.
This annual round-up is here to highlight the former and shun (in the nicest possible way) the latter.
While Punch Quest sparked an outbreak of high score fever in 2012, and Anomaly Korea easily lived up to its “most anticipated iOS sequel this year” billing, which were the best-reviewed games?
To answer that very question and the similarly themed ‘Which were the best reviewed apps?’, here’s the iPad Quality Index(Qi) round-up for 2012.
Aggregating the reviews from the world’s best websites, such as 148Apps, Pocket Gamer, and Gamezebo, the Quality Index uses a unique metric to create a single definitive score for each iPad title.
Without further ado, here are the best of the best, the cream of the crop that made it into the iPad Quality Index of 2012…
Qi Top 10 iPad games of 2012
1 Battle of the Bulge Shenandoah Studio 9.6
2 Interlocked Armor Games 9.6
3 The Lords of Midnight Chilli Hugger 9.5
4 Angry Birds Space HD Free Rovio 9.5
5 Bastion Warner Bros 9.4
6 Beat Hazard Ultra Cold Beam Games 9.4
7 Tiny Wings HD Andreas Illiger 9.4
8 Punch Quest Rocketcat Games 9.3
9 Magic 2013 Wizards of the Coast 9.3
10 Word Wonders: The Tower of Babel dreamfab 9.3
Qi Top 10 iPad apps of 2012
1 FitGirl App The Body Studio Corp 10
2 Dr Shrink GiveGifts.com 10
3 Smart Loan Calculator Pro iPad+ Praveena Rongala 10
4 Where is my Little Square Bear? InteractBooks 10
5 .FR France Travel Magazine FrenchEntrée 10
6 Baby City Jakub Staryga 10
7 AgileSocial Enterprise Solved 10
8 Nanny App Cold Comfort Media 10
9 CloudMagic CloudMagic 10
10 Contacts Guard Pro Unicorn Professional 10
According to the iPad Qi chart, Shenandoah Studio’s Battle of the Bulge was the best-reviewed iPad game of 2012. This highly polished strategy war game really made an impression with its engrossing turn-based gameplay.
In fifth place on our end-of-year leaderboard, meanwhile, is Bastion, a lush action-RPG with an ambitious story. While it started life on the Xbox 360 console, it feels perfectly home on iPad – as the review scores would indicate.
Down at #8 in the chart, Rocketcat Games’s Punch Quest impressed a whole host of iOS app critics with its novel mash-up of the modern endless-runner and old skool beat-’em-up.
Just below Punch Quest in the #9 slot is Magic 2013, whose creator, Wizards of the Coast, has taken card battles and made them work superbly on a 10-inch screen.
Topping the 2012 iPad Qi app chart, though, is FitGirl App, which provides a number of helpful exercise plans specifically designed for women.
Down in fourth position, we have Where is my Little Square Bear?, which neatly represents one of 2012’s key app trends: interactive pop-up book apps for kids.
AgileSocial earns its spot at #7 with its intuitive project-management and collaboration tools.
Sticking with the productivity theme, CloudMagic has proved incredibly useful over the course of the past year with its comprehensive search capabilities, which help you to find documents, emails, and more, regardless of where they’re stored on your iPad.
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