Lawless is an arcade-style shooter for iOS set in a gritty, 1990s Los Angeles. Players take on the cops to become the nastiest criminal in the city.
You'll Like Lawless if You Like: Playing Time Crisis 2 in the arcade, and watching '90s action film Heat.
Who Makes It? DeNA, a mobile games company that started in Japan and is expanding quickly to Europe and North America. The game was also designed by Ben Cousins, who created The Drowning, which creatively solved the accuracy problem of putting a first-person shooter on mobile.
What's Special? The touch controls for shooting are reminiscent of a light gun, offering precision with the tap of one or two fingers. The graphics and detail are sharp, but they actually capture the gritty feeling of '90s L.A.
What Does It Cost? The game is free, though updating your weapons costs in-game currency, which is either earned through play or can be bought via in-app purchases.
Download it here: iTunes link.
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BONUS: 10 Most Beautiful Mobile Games
You know that nightmare where you're running through the woods, being chased by some unseen terror? That's pretty much Dead Runner. The hauntingly beautiful landscape provides the perfect backdrop.
Price: $0.99 for iOS and Android.
Meet Quozzle, an incredipede -- basically an eyeball that can grow various forms of limbs -- who's on a quest to save her sisters. While the premise is bizarre, the illustrations are beautiful. Inspired by medieval woodcuts and 1700s botany texts from the Age of Discovery, the game is so beautiful it'll be hard to tear your eyes away.
Price: $3.99 for iOS and Android.
Another console game-turned-mobile, Limbo has long been hailed as a gaming work of art, and pioneered the popular style of black silhouettes with light or colored backgrounds. The game is at the same time creepy and beautiful, with unexpected enemies lurking around every corner, waiting to bring about gruesome deaths.
Price: $4.99 for iOS.
Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure game that follows an exiled robot named Josef, who is attempting to return to the city of Machinarium to rescue his robot beloved (who was kidnapped by a mafia-esque organization called the Black Cap Brotherhood). To do so, Josef has to solve a series of puzzles. But the real beauty of the game is the detail in the hand-drawn illustrations.
Price: $4.99 for iOS and $5 for Android
Reminiscent of Limbo, this physics-based game shows the landscape as a black silhouette against a stunning panorama of the night sky.
Price: $0.99 for iOS and $4.99 for Android.
The premise of Osmos is simple: You're a galactic mote. Eat smaller organisms to grow and thrive, and watch out for larger organisms that are trying to eat you. What makes this game special is the beautiful colors.
Price: $0.99 for iOS and $2.99 for Android.
A pixelated world sounds like a gaming nightmare, but Sword and Sorcery masterfully sets this heroic fantasy in a beautifully antiquated world.
Price: $4.99 for iOS and Android.
Based on the graphic novels that inspired the record-breaking television series, The Walking Dead surrounds a new group of characters in the same zombie-infested world. While the game is already unique for its focus on story and characterization rather than puzzles and shooting, the comic-like illustrations pay homage to the series' roots in a gorgeous way.
Price: Free to download for iOS; each episode is $4.99.
This physics-based construction game is as addictive as it is beautifully simple. Create structures by connecting balls of goo to get you from point A to point B.
Price: $4.99 for iOS and $2.99 for Android.
This Swedish game, which is based on an old man's walk though the woods to search for omens for the coming year, is one of the most creatively original games we've played on mobile. Year Walk may be a little trippy, and it may freak us out just a tad, and we may not even fully understand it, but boy, is it friggin' pretty.
Price: $3 for iOS.
Image: DeNA