Console-quality iPhone games

February 17th, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: ExZeus, Gaming, I Love Katamari, iPhone games, mobile gaming, Payback, Rolando, SimCity

Apple’s launch of the app store last year was an amazing success with games making up a large part of the catalog. However, with rumors of iPhone Flash getting hot and heavy, the need for 100 native Sudoku apps, 20 solitaire apps, and probably 1,000 variations of sliding block puzzles will diminish quickly. My suggestion is to insure that the $10 game you buy today is not going to be trumped in three months by a free Flash game three months down the line. In light of that, here are some iPhone games that really make the phone feel like a full-fledged gaming console rather than just a place I can go to pay for games that are free online.

Payback ($6.99)- Payback is a very true-to-the-original GTA clone. I’m sure many of you are only familiar with the GTA series since the third game in the series was released for PS2. This is a little different. This game is very similar to the first two GTA titles for PC (also for PSOne, I believe). The perspective is top-down. You go to phone booths, pickup missions, and complete them for points. Once you reach the point goal, you can move on to the next area. I have a couple of minor complaints. The light poles in the game do not come down even if you hit them with a tank… literally. Not only that, but they stop your vehicle immediately and completely upon impact. The cops in the game are very nonchalant. You can often steal another car in front of them, run over someone, or run into their cop car with your vehicle without raising their suspicions that you might be up to no good. In spite of this minor gripe, this game is definitely a steal. There is spoken dialog and a cool radio just like modern GTA games!

ExZeus ($5.99)- This game comes straight from Japanese arcades. The PS2 version was released only in Europe. The Dreamcast also saw a version at some point in time (probably on a continent on which I do not reside). This is a shoot ‘em up that puts the camera behind a giant mech which you move on the x and y axes using tilt control. Attacks are executed using a number of tapping gestures on the right side of the screen. Tapping the left side of the screen locks enemies for a homing-rocket attacks. It’s great fun and and very polished especially well under the $10 price point.

I Love Katamari ($7.99)- The Katamari series has held a special place in my heart since the original Katamari Damacy for PS2. This particular version was destroyed by critics upon release because of some major slowdown issues, but those were fixed shortly after with the first update. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, you play as the Prince who is sent to earth by his father, the King of the Cosmos, to roll around a giant sticky ball called a katamari and pick up objects. These objects range from paperclips and matchboxes to tables, people, and much larger objects still. While the katamari is small, it can only pick up small objects, but, as it gains mass, it can pick up much larger objects. There are a number of modes including the story mode in which the King asks you to roll up a specific object in each level and a mode which has you trying to stop rolling when your katamari reaches a given size. It is wacky, but it is simple addictive fun.

Rolando ($5.99)- Here we have a super-cute and complete platformer that uses the accelerometer to great effect. The graphics could probably be duplicated in Flash, but the tilt control upon which the game is built is uniquely its own. It also contains a level of polish that few Flash games ever achieve. Roll your Rolandos through each stage solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles to reach the exit. Some stages also have elements that you interact with directly by touch. Each Rolando has a unique personality which makes the game more endearing than most you will play on this platform. Start with the lite version and see if you like it.

SimCity ($7.99)- This is SimCity 3000 adapted for the iPhone. It is an excellent and complete version of the game. Amazing to me is that the game was not watered down for the mobile platform. This isn’t SimCity “Lite.” You’re out there zoning, placing roads and water lines, and talking with advisors just like its desktop counterpart. Maybe this experience could be reproduced in Flash, but it never has to my knowledge.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive. Nor am I trying to suggest that you should not buy simpler games on the platform; they certainly fill a need as well. However, as a hardcore gamer, there is a thirst in me that no quantity of puzzle and card games can ever quench. Lucky for me (and those like me), the iPhone offers a powerful gaming platform that developers (like those of the aforementioned titles) have really begun to exploit to the fullest. These are some of the finest examples of exactly what the iPhone is capable of in the mobile gaming space.

Thoughts on the Palm Pre

January 26th, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: iPhone, mobile gaming, Palm Pre, WebOS

It seems odd to say this since the device has not even been launched, but the Palm Pre is old news. Just after its unveiling at CES, the super-phone received an explosion of coverage. In my estimation, there is good reason for it.

My iPhone 3G has been by my side since I purchased it this past July. As far as I can tell, it is as close as you can get to perfection in a phone. In spite of how this statement may sound, I am far from a fanboy and my devotion to the iPhone is not the kind of religious devotion that allows me to forgive all its faults. There are problems with the iPhone. Apps can’t run in the background. I can’t copy and paste, I can’t do Flash. There is no real keyboard. These are issues that I would love for Apple to solve, but I’m not at all above switching to another device that can fix them so long as that device also does all the things that my iPhone does so well. In the wake of the original iPhone and the 3G, tons of devices hit the market playing catch-up. These devices seemed to market themselves by touting their similarities to the so-called Jesus-phone. Some of them bested the iPhone in one way or another, but they often came up short most everywhere else. The Pre is the first device that seems to share most of the strengths of the iPhone and refine them by adding some of the little things iPhone users have been clamoring for.

First, of the complaints I levelled at the iPhone above, the Pre solves all but one: Flash. Sure, it is disappointing considering all the new features they have included, but the new features will still be compelling to iPhone malcontents. The Pre can multitask and programs can send out system notifications as they run in the background. The lack of any means for an app that is not running to notify the user of new events has all but killed the functionality of twitter and instant messaging apps on the iPhone. It has copy and paste. This is surely one of the loudest complaints of the iPhone user base. It has a hard keyboard. I personally don’t have a huge problem with the iPhone’s soft keyboard; I think it is an excellent implementation, but, given a choice, I would probably take anything more than a couple of sentences to a hard keyboard rather than fumbling it out on-screen.

It seems like a no-brainer. Ditch the iPhone for the Pre and you will get much of what you have been begging for from Apple for months. Unfortunately, every Achilles has his heel. In designing the Pre and its WebOS, Palm has committed two sins so terrible, they more than negate all this goodwill they have built up with Apple’s fanbase by granting many of their collective wishes. First, the Pre is (initially, at least) a Sprint-exclusive phone. Sprint has customer service that makes holy men swear vengeance. I have suffered it first-hand, and I will never go back regardless of the fact that they are generally cheaper than some of the other providers. The second sin will have gamers everywhere crossing the Pre off their wish list: no native apps. That’s right. Palm has taken a few small steps forward but one large step back. WebOS apps are—as you might expect—web pages consisting of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You’re not going to milk any smooth 3D graphics out of your Pre in the foreseeable future.

Even though this sounds like the Pre has come so close to besting the iPhone but just didn’t get there, not all is lost. Both of these issues are relatively minor and could certainly be worked out in time. Once the Sprint exclusivity deal is up, the Pre may be available under any carrier you like. Palm would be better served by a broader potential customer base especially only having sidestepped oblivion with the announcement of the Pre at CES. Palm may also choose to add support for native apps as a software update just as Apple did just six months ago. If these two issues can be resolved, the Pre appears to be the only phone on the horizon that will be capable of competing toe-to-toe with the iPhone on nearly every front. Unfortunately, you’re not looking at an iPhone killer out of the gate unless you can handle a couple of major shortcomings.