The iOS gaming thread

[Stanley]

Super Monkey Ball 2 should now be FREE.

Got it, cheers for that. Unfortunately it plays like a dog.

[Garwoofoo]

i got Superbrothers Swords and Sworcery instead because i'm blunted

I absolutely loved this from start to finish, though I hated myself at the same time for being a pretentious twat.

[Floex]

It's official; Groove Coaster > Child Of Eden

[Stanley]

Actually SMB2 is pretty good if you can stand the controls. Very sensitive and no calibration.

[The Bag]

is there anything else as good as Game Dev Story? i know that studio has put out a bunch of others, but after GDS what is considered the gold standard of iPhone management sims/time eaters?

Grand Prix Story.

(I still want to make my own game dev sim, GDS's release stopped planning on it, which incorporates more of the theme hospital style play in as well as just the numbers game)

[Teeohbee]

Star Command is still coming, looks to mix GDS with Star Trek, no idea when it's coming though.

[Stanley]

Star Command is still coming, looks to mix GDS with Star Trek, no idea when it's coming though.

I can't wait for that.

[Stanley]

I'm really enjoying Zombie Highway.

[deerokus]

is there anything else as good as Game Dev Story? i know that studio has put out a bunch of others, but after GDS what is considered the gold standard of iPhone management sims/time eaters?

It's worth trying all the Kairosoft games. My personal favourite is Mega Mall Story, which is a bit like GDS blended with Sim/Yoot Tower (which is available on iPad, I think?). For some reason there don't seem to be any other management games available apart from diner dash style busy work-athons, though I guess if Rollecoaster Tycoon is coming to 3DS there's no reason they can't port it at least to iPad.

I used to have what I think was a Yoot Tower clone on an old Dell PDA. It was the only thing worthwhile about that device.

[Andy_Why]

I was just thinking of other games I would like to see on the iPad/iPhone and it just occurred to me how great Freedom Force would be on an iOS device. The controls would need a some tweaks, but it would suit a touch screen device perfectly. Who do I have to petition to make this happen?

[sir stiff_one]

I expanded on the Mage Gauntlet thing a bit, and about how you're only ever one button press away from being quit. A short read, if anyone's interested: http://wp.me/p1Tdge-1u

[Stanley]

Nice one mate.

[Massive Invisible Dog]

I played for twenty minutes longer than that and it definitely doesn't get much better.

[Teeohbee]

Yeah, stupidly bought all the "stop reading this review and buy the game now" bull and I feel live I've been had.

It's really tedious and boring.

[Massive Invisible Dog]

You just can't trust any iOS game review site. They all seem to be stuck in this mindset where they genuinely can't believe they're playing these games on a phone and anything remotely resembling a console game from the last twenty years is given a free ride and an unwavering recommendation. And it doesn't matter if they're not that good because, you know, they're less than the price of a coffee!

[Teeohbee]

Yeah a whole load of review sites seem to be from the perspective of phone bloggers, or apple bloggers who have got into the gaming scene via iPhone apps and so have no point of reference in gaming terms.

Toucharcade is usually fairly reliable though, and the only one I check semi-regurlarly and even they were gushing about it.

[Clipper]

Toucharcade is usually fairly reliable though

TouchArcade gush about every thing vaguely half decent on iOS. All these shitty blog review sites have no clue. Pocketgamer, SlidetoPlay, Toucharcade all of them overrate and gush over basic stuff... They dont even mark the games down for having shitty controls.

Any review or reviewer who says, oh yeah the controls are a "bit" tricky/imprecise and then give the game a 9 out of 10 should be shot, strung up and then spat at in the face.

Harsh but fair...

oh and any review site who gave Angry Birds more than 6 out of 10 can be safely ignored.

EDIT - perfect example.. go look at reviews of Secret of Mana... yes its a great game but the controls on iOS are woeful and yet Toucharcade rave about it, SlidetoPlay love it and Pocketgamer do knock off a couple of points for controls and give it 7 out of 10... Not enough smackdown though...

Because RPG controls are fine on iOS.. go play GuardianSaga or even Zenonia and see that virtual pad controls CAN be perfectly good... The ones of Secret of Mana are, however, irrevocably shitty and imprecise.

[SpikedJuice]

Have we got a list of game recommendations from this thread? Or should I refer to lists from TouchArcade et al?

I've been trying to find games that take advantage of the iOS but I genuinely feel nothing so far has topped Cut The Rope. And I've downloaded about 140 games now...

[Alex W.]

"Proper" games sites need to review iOS games more often. I wonder if they're afraid of alarming the under-18 fanboy audience who would scream their faces off at the prospect of the iPhone being a games platform.

[Mr Do 71]

Have we got a list of game recommendations from this thread? Or should I refer to lists from TouchArcade et al?

I've been trying to find games that take advantage of the iOS but I genuinely feel nothing so far has topped Cut The Rope. And I've downloaded about 140 games now...

There is this list:

Angry Birds

1-bit Ninja

Orbital

Words with Friends

Gravity Hook

Piyo Blocks 2

Infinity Blade

Tilt to Live

Train Yard

Bejeweled 2

GeoDefense

GeoDefense Swarm

Flight Control

Space Invaders Infinity Gene

Piczle Lines

Trainyard

I Am Not A Zombie

Axe in Face

Truckers

Cut The Rope

Peggle

Solipskier

RobotUnicorn

Helsing's Fire

Prism

InvaderR

Trainer Drop

Zen Bound 2

Osmos

StarDunk

Say What You See

Flick Kick Football

Soosiz

Awesome Solitaire

Shibuya

Tiki Totems Premium

Tiki Totems 2

iBlast Moki

Epic Citadel (Tech demo)

& also this list:

1-bit Ninja

1951

1000 Heroz

Angry Birds

ASYNC Corp

Blockoban

Broken Sword 1 + 2

Bumpy Road

Canabalt

Carcassonne

Chess with friends

Civilization Revolution

Dark Nebula

Deathsmiles

Disc Drivin'

DoDonPachi Resurrection

Drop 7

Dungeon Raid

Emilie's Flights

Espgaluda

Espgaluda 2

Eternal Legacy

Flick Golf

Flight Control

Football Manager series

Forget Me Not

Fruit Ninja

Game dev story

Geo Defense

Geo Defense Swarm

Gravity Hook

Great Little War Game

Greyhound Manager 2 (Don't ask...)

Groove Coaster

Hunters

Kami Retro

Magnetic Billiards

Marblenauts

Match Panic

Mechanic Panic

Minotaur Rescue

Minotron

Orbital

Peggle

Piczle Lines

Pinball Dreams HD

Pinball Fantasies

Plants Vs Zombies

Platypus

Powder

Quiz Climber

Reckless Getaway

ReRave

Ridge racer

Rock Band (1 and 2) Amazing port, and absolutely validates it as a "console"

Settlers HD

Shibuya

Shot Shot Shoot (+Tr Tri Triobelisk)

Small World

Space Miner

Spider

Squareball

Stair Dismount

Super Photon Racing

Super Stickman Golf

Sword of Fargoal

Sword & Poker 1+2

The Kairosoft games (Game Dev, Hot Springs, Pocket Academy)

Tilt to Live

Time Geeks

Tiny wings

Touchgrind (+HD)

Tree Connect (2 colours, 15 seconds)

Undercroft

Vector Runner

Vector Tank Ex

Weird Worlds

Wordfeud

WordJong

Words with Friends

Zen Bound

Zombie Gunship

Zookeeper DX

[Clipper]

"Proper" games sites need to review iOS games more often. I wonder if they're afraid of alarming the under-18 fanboy audience who would scream their faces off at the prospect of the iPhone being a games platform.

Well if certain elements of this forum are anything to go by then they have a reason to be afraid

I don't have much faith in any of the gaming websites to be honest, they seem to be their to serve the publishers rather than the games players themselves. However the mobile roundup on EG was ok, got dumped and they said it would allow them to focus on more mobile stuff in future in full reviews and since then? 1 review?

I think anyone could argue that the gaming review sites themselves are the screaming their faces off at the prospect of the iPhone being a games platform.

Oh and to remain on topic... The new update for League of Evil also makes the game universal and it plays gorgeously on the iPad...

[deerokus]

You just can't trust any iOS game review site. They all seem to be stuck in this mindset where they genuinely can't believe they're playing these games on a phone and anything remotely resembling a console game from the last twenty years is given a free ride and an unwavering recommendation. And it doesn't matter if they're not that good because, you know, they're less than the price of a coffee!

Yeah a whole load of review sites seem to be from the perspective of phone bloggers, or apple bloggers who have got into the gaming scene via iPhone apps and so have no point of reference in gaming terms.

Toucharcade is usually fairly reliable though, and the only one I check semi-regurlarly and even they were gushing about it.

This is all spot on. It's quite an annoying platform to be honest, because it is such an open platform (a good thing, of course) it takes a bit of effort to find the wheaty goodness in among the chaff and the clones of other games, the ripoffs and barely-interactive 'games' that often get praised by those sites. It's silly, since it means that the higher levels of Metacritic are flooded with average iOS games: according to Metacritic, Anomaly:Warzone Earth is better than Uncharted 3, Red Dead Redemption, Portal 2, CoD4, Vice City and the 360 version of Arkham City, while 'Where's my Water?' is as good as Fallout 3 and better than PoP:Sands of Time. Threads like this are a much more reliable indicator of a game's quality than iOS review sites, for the most part, which isn't to say that that situation is ideal - there are some people on such threads with baffling taste in games, though you can at least be sure that everyone here has played a huge amount of video games over the years, rather than being dazzled by the groundbreaking interactive possibilities of Angry Birds.

I had that free app review app of Rev Stu's which was a start but, unfortunately, his taste in games is very different from mine, so I got minutes of entertainment out of almost everything that recommended.

That sounds more negative than I intended, but it's quite striking. Maybe the company behind Giant Bomb ought to start up an iOS gaming site (I suppose they do mini video reviews of such games on Tested.com).

[MrHendo]

according to Metacritic, Anomaly:Warzone Earth is better than Uncharted 3, Red Dead Redemption, Portal 2, CoD4, Vice City and the 360 version of Arkham City, while 'Where's my Water?' is as good as Fallout 3 and better than PoP:Sands of Time.

At the risk of turning this into a review debate - a 69p game getting 9/10 does not mean necessarily that it is as good as a £40 game getting the same.

In fact they're completely unrelated even by the same reviewer. "Random Name Reviewer" does not review Flight Control and think "I really love it, but I have to adjust my score to reflect how I feel about all these other more substantial games on different platforms".

I love Disc Drivin', I give it a 9/10 for what it does, taking it down a point from 10 because of the lack of replay exporting which it so clearly needs.

I love Batman : Arkham City, I give it a 9/10 because it's fantastic but it drops a point from 10 because it's not the big surprise that Arkham Asylum was.

You see? I don't compare the two games, they don't get the same score because they're as good as each other, that's not how scoring works.

[deerokus]

Oh I know, my point, however, which I didn't put especially well, is that you see far more massively inflated review scores like those for iOS games than any other platform, which of course is partly down to the way metacritic works.

[sir stiff_one]

I reckon early in the life of the NES, Mario Bros was getting 9/10 or 95% or whatever and although later games got a shitload better, they couldn't give 11. I totally agree with MID and Teeohbee and I think this huge wave of enthusiasm happens for all the reasons they say. Everything has to be relative, and now with the influx of higher production value games, longer, more traditional games and games that are perfect for the short form format bus trip per level sort of thing, it's going to make it even more of a mess and even more complicated.

Like someone says, they've played 140 games or something. Time vs enjoyment is the metric to consider when thinking about iOS gaming now, with certain exceptions. All a 9 or 10 does is give it a slightly higher chance of getting noticed and hitting a wave of hype/word of mouth. I come here for my iOS recommendations and more than ever people trust the opinions of people they know when it comes to buying and, crucially, avoiding games.

Not that I'm complaining of course, on balance it's been fucking great!

[toythatkills]

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS. GAMELOFT ARE HAVING A SALE. THIS ONLY HAPPENS ONCE A DAY SO STOCK UP NOW ON 69P PIECES OF CRAP!

Also, in actually-relevant-to-good-games news, Hypership Out of Control is all free for today only. If you don't download this I'm going to come to your house and smash your iOS device into pieces so small you won't even be able to detect its existence any more.

[toythatkills]

Reckless Getaway has just gone free too.

Best free game day ever!

[Stanley]

Cool, nearly paid for that yesterday.

[MBM]

a 69p game getting 9/10 does not mean necessarily that it is as good as a £40 game getting the same.

Am I the only one believing that price has absolutely nothing to do with the inherent quality of a title?

[Stanley]

Yeah it's bollocks. 9/10 is the same no matter what the cost of the game, or how much the game cost to produce either.