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Deus Ex GO ($4.99) by SQUARE ENIX INC is the third installment of the GO series of games, which also includes Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO. For the uninitiated, the GO games take popular Square Enix franchises and distills them down into beautiful strategy puzzle games. Whether you’re a fan of the original game series titles or not, the GO games are definitely all worth checking out regardless.

Even though Deus Ex has been around since 2000, I never got into the games myself. In fact, I have a copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution somewhere, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet because I have a large backlog of games and not enough time. Despite this, I know the gist of the Deus Ex games, since it combines stealth and role-playing elements with FPS action and features a lot of cyberpunk themes, hacking, and all that good stuff. I’ll get around to the real games one day, but since I loved the previous GO games (I didn’t play much Tomb Raider or even Hitman titles before), I had to get my hands on Deus Ex GO, especially after I had a demo of it at E3 this year. Now that it’s available on the App Store, I must say that it’s one of my favorite games so far this year.

Visually, Deus Ex GO is gorgeous, as it is a stylized interpretation of the Deus Ex universe. If you’re a fan of the main games, then the world will be instantly familiar to you. Even if you’ve never played a Deus Ex game in your life, you’ll be in awe because of how good the game looks. Like the other two games, Deus Ex GO features 3-D graphics with an angled, top-down perspective so you can see all of the action that happens. The futuristic, dystopian environments are packed with fine details and textures, and the colors are bright and vivid with a subtle vignette effect going on around the edges of the screen.

Your character, Adam Jensen, will be sporting his signature black trench coat and sunglasses, while moving fluidly on each turn. His enemies, including guards, turrets, and more, have their own unique appearances, movements, and abilities that you have to watch out for. All animations in Deus Ex Go are smooth and flow seamlessly with no lag on my iPhone 6s Plus. There’s also an intricate plot to uncover as you go, which will be told through dialogue boxes that aren’t intrusive. The artwork for each character’s avatar in dialogue boxes is beautiful, as it’s done in 2-D but with a stylish low-poly look to it. The game’s atmospheric soundtrack immerses you in the Deus Ex world, and the sound effects are realistic.

Like the other GO games, Deus Ex GO is level-based, and players must go through each stage in chronological order to advance through the story, which involves a conspiracy behind a terrorist plot. The objective in each puzzle is to help Jensen get from the starting point to the portal at the end that takes you to the next area, but you can’t be detected by the enemies. There’s a line path on each level, and you move Jensen one space on each turn. If you’re detected by an enemy, they will activate their Titan Armor and come after you in a straight path, but only as you make your move. Turrets shoot you on sight, and later on there will be drones, walkers, and other crazy enemy types. Since everything is a puzzle and things happen on a turn-by-turn basis, it’s important to make note of where enemies are going and time your movements for the perfect opportunities to strike or escape using hacks and augmentations.

The controls in Deus Ex GO are simple, and you should know how it works if you played the other games. To make Jensen move, just tap on the point adjacent to where you are to have him walk over there. If enemy guards detect you, they will activate their Titan Armor and the path you’re on (in their line of sight) turns red. With the Titan Armor active, you can’t strike them, but if it is off, you can attack them from the sides or even behind to get rid of them. Other enemies like turrets can be disabled by sneaking up behind them, or you can even hack the computer systems (yellow icons) by tracing paths to have the turrets shoot down foes for you instead, or activate floor panels to get where you need to go. You can also get items like Invisibility, which you activate with taps to get by otherwise impossible spots, but don’t confuse invisibility with invincibility (this is an achievement).

The amount of stealth gameplay combined with environment-manipulating puzzles mean a ton of challenging stages for players, which is a great thing. Deus Ex GO starts out pretty easy, but things get much more complex and elaborate as you have to use enemies to block other ones, take control of turrets, use invisibility to get by tricky spots, hack computers and change the flow of electricity so you can cross gaps in the floor, and much more. Fortunately, since there is no time limit or move restriction on the puzzles, you can take as long as you need to solve them, and if you fail, just try again — the game doesn’t penalize you.

In addition to the main story mode missions, the developers have a “Live Content” section, which includes new puzzle events every weekday, and you can play puzzles from previous days of the current week. However, these puzzles are incredibly complicated and hard to solve, and it is recommended to play through the Story mode first, though nothing stops you from taking them on.

I had been looking forward to Deus Ex GO for a long time, and needless to say, I’m not disappointed. The game has an exquisite and stylish aesthetic that represents the Deus Ex universe nicely, the ambient music is great to listen to, and the controls are simple enough for anyone. The puzzles themselves are hard and challenging, especially as you get further into the story, and having daily puzzles that aren’t part of the storyline adds to the replay value of the game. Like Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO, I’ll be keeping Deus Ex GO on my device for a long time to come.

I highly recommend checking out Deus Ex GO for yourself, whether you’re a fan of Deus Ex or not. It’s a fantastic puzzle game nonetheless, and one that you should not miss. Deus Ex GO is on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $4.99. There are in-app purchases for more hints if you are truly stuck (but trial-and-error goes a long way).

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Diffission ($2.99) by Filament Games is a mathematical puzzle game that is both educational and fun at the same time — yes, that is entirely possible. If you enjoyed other games like The Mesh and Noda, then you will get a kick out of Diffission as well. Be warned — the game involves good old fractions.

I’ve never been a real big fan of math in general, but I managed to do well enough in all of the different math classes that I took back in high school and college many years ago. Despite that, I still didn’t like it, because I found it somewhat boring and not fun. But nowadays we are in an age where anything can be turned into something fun, which is a great thing if you think about it. Fractions were also the bane of my existence in math classes, and I’m rather rusty on them since so much time has passed since I had to deal with fractions. But I can’t resist a good looking puzzle game, so I had to give Diffission a spin when I saw it on the App Store, even though I honestly had no idea it was a math theme at first. I’m glad I tried it out, because I’m not disappointed with the quality of the game itself.

Visually, Diffission is beautiful with the simple and clean minimalistic graphics. The game is flat with basic shapes and structures floating on top of a colored, subtly animated backdrop that gradually changes colors over time. It’s rather hypnotic and relaxing, so it does have the effect of helping you focus on the fractions that the game revolves around. Animations are smooth and fluid as you break the shapes down, and the game is fairly responsive overall. The ambient, atmospheric music is definitely soothing, and helps put your mind at ease while you play. Filament Games definitely made something great in terms of visuals and audio with this game, so props to them.

Diffission is a puzzle game with two modes: Endless and Challenge. On the first launch, you’ll go through a short tutorial that shows you the ropes before you get the full Endless mode available to you, and it’s important to read through the introduction, because otherwise you’ll be a bit lost. Endless mode lets players play at their own pace, just solving the puzzles with no end goal in mind. Challenge gives you a set amount of time and you must reach a specific goal (number of diamonds) so it counts as your score. Each time you solve a puzzle, you can either add to the diamond goal or add more time to the clock. It’s a bit more frantic and faster pace than Endless, because time is of the essence.

The diamonds that you collect from solving these puzzles will unlock different types of blocks. Getting more block types opens up a new set of puzzles for you to solve in each mode, and you continue this process until all possible blocks have been uncovered. For example, you’ll eventually unlock the dissolving block, which disappears once you highlight it. This can be used to your advantage to get rid of other blocks, or you can just isolate the dissolving blocks to make life easier, but leaving these special blocks behind nets you more diamonds for more blocks later on. The mechanics that get introduced with each new block type keeps things fresh and interesting, since it adds an entire new layer of depth to the game’s core gameplay.

The gameplay is a bit confusing at first, but you quickly get used to it. Your goal is displayed in the bottom left corner, and it’s a fraction. The total number of blocks that make up the shape or structure is shown in the bottom right. To make the objective, you’ll have to cut down the shape into equal pieces. This is done by slicing them with your finger, in Fruit Ninja fashion. To make more precise and specific cuts (some shapes need to be broken down into certain pieces to be equal), just drag your finger slowly along the edges of the squares you want to breakaway from the rest. Once things are broken down into equal pieces, tap on them to highlight them until you’ve selected enough to match the fraction goal.

While the game starts out easy enough, things get trickier as you go, since you’ll deal with a larger number of squares to break down, as well as more block types and more complex fractions. And with Challenge Mode, you have to be fast and find solutions quickly in order to get the best score. Out of the various mathematical puzzle games I’ve played so far, Diffission is the hardest of them all, but that’s a good thing. Fractions are something we don’t think about too much, and we forget that sometimes it’s important. This game is making me think pretty hard about fractions again and it’s fun rather than boring.

While I am not too far in the game, I’m finding Diffission enjoyable, despite being an educational game. The minimalist visuals are nice to look at, the music and sounds are tranquil and calming, and the gameplay itself is challenging and truly makes you think. The only improvements that could make the game even better are more game modes (perhaps puzzle mode with one solution) and blocks. But no matter how you look at it, Diffission is a fun game with a lot of replay value due to the procedurally generated nature of the puzzles.

I recommend giving Diffission a try if you don’t mind fractions (or want to brush up on them) and want a challenging puzzle game. You can find Diffission on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $2.99. There are no in-app purchases.

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