Phone Games & Apps

[Hendo]

Fucking hell, I haven't tried all of them out there and I've still played with 3 or 4 of them!

Oh well, I'll give yet another one a try. I do have to say though I preferred the one where you can get tweets from people in your area, that was pretty cool.

[Hendo]

Because I'm a cheap bastard (and I wouldn't get much use out of it) I haven't got a Sat-Nav in my car, so yesterday I used the Maps app to get me to the Academy in Leeds, from Wrexham, North Wales.

Never been to Leeds before but the GPS works brilliantly, gave me a direct route and also tracks your location as you're moving. Only problem is that if I was on my own then I would've been stuffed (or dead) as it's not the easiest thing to look at while driving.

Also, used that "Around Me" app and was able to find the nearest cash machines and car parks.

I can honestly say that without me phone I would've been screwed.

[DANGERMAN]

I can honestly say that without me phone I would've been screwed.

I hope no yorkshiremen heard you say that. By 'eck lad, they'd d beat ye t death wi flat cap

[David]

Because I'm a cheap bastard (and I wouldn't get much use out of it) I haven't got a Sat-Nav in my car, so yesterday I used the Maps app to get me to the Academy in Leeds, from Wrexham, North Wales.

Never been to Leeds before but the GPS works brilliantly, gave me a direct route and also tracks your location as you're moving. Only problem is that if I was on my own then I would've been stuffed (or dead) as it's not the easiest thing to look at while driving.

Also, used that "Around Me" app and was able to find the nearest cash machines and car parks.

I can honestly say that without me phone I would've been screwed.

Technology FTW

I really want an iPhone, they can just do so many awesome things.

[Hendo]

To celebrate the start of the holiday season Igloo Games is pleased to announce it's first sale ever. Dizzy Bee is Igloo Games' critically acclaimed game that has been entertaining iPhone/iPod touch owners since the launch of the app store earlier this year, and will be going on sale from roughly 12am Thursday, Nov 27th until 11:59pm Friday, Nov, 29th (PST) to coincide with Thanksgiving and Black Friday in the US. The sale will be worldwide. The price will be reduced from the already low $2.99 to an unbelievable $.99.

We at Igloo Games have been working hard on our next entry in the app store. That new game is buzzing very near completion.

Happy Holidays,

Igloo Games

This will apply on the UK Store too, so you should be looking at 59p (maybe?) for a brilliant, brilliant game.

Anyone who has an iTouch or iPhone and hasn't bought this already, would be a fool to miss out.

Looking forward to Igloo's next game.

[Jimboxy]

Nice selection of games from the very nice people at Kotaku, some stuff on there i'm deffo going to check out.

Iphone gaming gift guide

[Hendo]

Toy Bot 2 and Aurora Feint 2 are ready? Oh crap, there's goes the credit card.

[Hendo]

Not tried it yet, but due to a recommendation from the Joypod podcast, I've installed Chess With Friends which is free and you can play over WiFi, 3G or Edge to make your move against a friend, kinda like how Naked War works.

I'm gonna see about getting my best mate on the case and see if any of you guys are up for trying it?

Also, very useful and free, MyRail Lite uses GPS, finds the nearest train station to you and tells you the times of the trains there.

You can also store train stations to your bookmarks.

Heartily recommend.

[Hendo]

I'm sure I mentioned the Flixster one earlier in the thread?

It is brilliant but the upcoming/what's out bit is American, so it took me ages to figure out why Bolt was out but nowhere near me was showing it (it's out in February).

I'm on the Chess game as Hendo, someone hit me up.

[Hendo]

Installing that now, though the user reviews on the Store aren't very positive about it, to say the least. But hey ho, it's free.

So Aurora Feint II is out, Toy Bot Diaries 2 is out and on the way this week is the sequel to possibly the best game on the iPhone.

Igloo Games is pleased to announce our much-requested much-anticipated follow up to our 4.72 Star app for the iPhone/iPod touch: Dizzy Bee 2.

iTunes discription:

Dizzy Bee is back in an all-new adventure. Meet baddies like you've never seen that will literally eat you up and spit you out! Can you help your Fruit Friends make their way through grinding gears, around sticky webs and past wild turrets? There are twice as many Fruit Friends as before for you to guide and protect. This time there are power ups to help you get back at those baddies! 2 Oceans, 8 islands plus 2 bonus islands, 2 difficulty levels, 8 Fruit Friends, power ups and a ton of baddies will keep you tilting and turning your iPhone or iPod Touch for hours!

New and improved from Dizzy Bee:

Tons of new enemies.

More Fruit Friends.

Difficulty levels: Choose "Easy" and "Normal"

Nearly 90 levels including Easy variations and Bonus Stages.

Finer control. You can hold your iPod Touch/iPhone flat to move enemies and good guys with more precision. (No more "too flat" warnings!)

Power ups! Finally the good guys strike back.

New bonus level rules!

Additional time bonus scoring. Beat levels faster if you'd like some extra points.

Auto sleep function has been greatly improved.

Dizzy Bee 2 was just submitted to the App Store, and should be available on or around Dec. 11th. It will be introductory priced for 1 week only at $2.99 (US). Get it while it's cheap!

[Hendo]

I deleted that Joost app as it really is in a poor state at the moment. It's buggy as hell, the front end is really tacky looking, it only supports WiFi, and in general it's a poor man's YouTube.

I also installed (and deleted) the BBCNewsReader app. It's not official BBC, but takes the info from their end and puts it through the app, so you can get the headlines on the go, which is what I wanted. What I didn't realise (and why it's rated so low) is that it's just headlines. No story to the articles at all - click on the headline and you get......errr....the headline. On its own. Woop.

I'm gonna have a look at that Fieldrunners game that got into Time's top 10 of the year, but in the meantime I'd like to recommend a free tower defense game that I wasted a good hour to last night, TapDefense.

Being free the graphics aren't quite as polished as they could be but it shows that a tower defense game can really work well with all touch controls, so it makes me even more interested in Fieldrunners.

[Oliath]

Hendo

Re the BBC reader... it DOES download the full articles, you just gotta wait.

When you load the app it says its downloading for a few seconds. This bit is broken.

If you check the connection wheel at the top of the screen you will see its still spinnning.

If you also click on INFO at the bottomit actually shows you a correct progress bar.

Once you let this do its work then you will find that it downloads full articles AND pictures.

Its actually quite a good app, but it does take a while to download even over wifi. I am in the habit of loading it in the morning when i get out of bed so its ready for my tube journey.

Some SERIOUSLY good games coming out lately.

Most of them seem to be from Gameloft... an iphone dev worth watching.

I recently purchased:

Brothers in Arms

Ferrari GT

Hero of Sparta

I also own by them:

Brain Challenge

Guitar Rock Tour

So you could pretty much say i love their work!

Brothers in Arms is so so. The controls let it down a bit, but its pretty much the same as it was on the DS.

Its not a bad game once you get used to it though and pretty impressive on the iphone.

Ferrari GT is the BEST racing game on the phone. Its also due to be the first to offer ONLINE multiplayer via an patch coming soon. It controlls really nicely and actually feels like a propper racing game. Very glad i got this one.

Hero of Sparta is a God of War clone. Again its technically very impressive but a bit on the dull side. Its essentially a hack and slash and you can pretty much just bash the attack button. There are some weapon upgrades lifted STRAIGHT out of god of war too.

Guitar Rock Tour is quite simply the truest recreation of Guitar Hero on the iphone. I have played tap tap and while fun, its lacking in places. Rock Tour, like Guitar Hero on the consoles actually misses out notes if you fail to hit them and so on. Its great fun, has a cool tour mode and also lets you play drums if you like. I highly reccomend this game to anyone who is a fan of Guitar Hero.

Another dev company i am in love with and buy anything they make is NGMOCO:)

I think it was set up by a dude from EA, but pretty much everything they have pushed out is highly polished and 100 percent built for the iphone.

They price their games really well too, so its not too much of a risk.

My favourites from them are Topple... which is a stacking game with wonderfully animated blocks and the recently released Doctor Awesome.

This is a cross between Trama Centre in its presentation and Quix in its gameplay.

Uniquely it uses your contacts list as the patients you have to operate on... which is an absolute stroke of genius and makes for some amusing moments...'er... dude... i sort of killed you last night by mistake'.

Again... this game is pretty cheap and well worth a pop.

I am particularily excited about their forthcoming game ROLANDO which i am sure you have heard of.

So yeah.. basically i have spent about £30 in iphone games over the last few weeks, but i thought i would stock up on stuff to keep me sane over christmas.

[Hendo]

I'll keep a look out for the NGMOCO games, they sound pretty cool.

I figured the BBC thing was to do with the loading, but I just didn't like the app anyway, I'm still waiting for the BBC themselves to bring out something. A Digg one would be cool too.

[Oliath]

Go and download Platypus.

Its a side scrolling shootemup and its gorgeous:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=r15rnVLNITw

Apparently the guy painstakingly modeled all the sprites out of plastercine and then photographed them to get them into the computer.

Everything... and i mean EVERYTHING is made from plastercine and it works so well. It makes it one of the best looking games on the iphone.

On top of this the music is awesomly retro and really catchy and the controlls are spot on.,

[Oliath]

Hmm see i disagree with you there.

I think that its a great iphone game and a fun racer to play too.

I don't really look to my iphone as a serious gaming device, but more of something i will play here and there for five to ten mins at a time while waiting in line or taking a dump or while commuting on the bus.

[Oliath]

A GREAT new game from ngmoco was released yesterday.

http://www.vimeo.com/2499213

They guy playing it in this vid is clearly rubbish at games.

Its a wonderful cross between a moonlander / thrust type game and geometry wars.

As a warning... it DOES take a few goes to get your head around the controlls and the orientation of the game.

Its presented like a 3D game, but its actually a 2D game... if that makes sense... So you are only really flying left, right, up and down as opposed to forwards and backwards in space...

For the 3D minded here... it works on X and Y axis but not Z :-)

Two game modes:

Campaign - where you have to retrieve a green crate from increasingly harder to navigate and better defended areas.

You can also rescue human survivors (who are named after people from your phone book) for added points and weapon upgrades.

If you take damage you loose energy, which can be reclaimed by shooting enemies and then collecting orbs from their explosions.

Freeplay mode - This mode is more arcade based and you just have to rescue all humans on the maps. Each map gets more tricky and has more enemies.

There are suggestions that this mode is infinite but i can't find any proof.

At £1.19 you really can't complain at all.

[Hendo]

I've just bought a load of new games to play while I'm in bed:

Soul Trapper (on offer for just over a quid)

Platypus

Dr Awesome

Dizzy Bee 2

Toy Bot Diaries 2

Fieldrunners

Dropship

[Hendo]

Here's my mini-reviews of the 9 (!) games I bought recently.

Soul Trapper : Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

When I bought this it was on offer for under two quid but it should be about a fiver I think.

It's an old school adventure game ("do you want to go left, right, up or down? There is a phone to the left...." etc) with some small elements of gameplay and pretty much no graphics other than a single static picture for each chapter (there's 23 in all) and the iPhone's generic button style.

It's essentially a radio play that you listen to and interact with occasionally. It's a story of a ghost hunter and from time to time, you have to use sound to "play" the game, like turn the dial until you can hear the voice properly, or hit a left or right switch depending on where you think the ghost is.

It's pretty simple stuff and the voice acting ranges from passable to downright embarrassing, but there's a pretty big game here. I'd say it was worth it as long as you know what you're getting into.

Dizzy Bee 2

More of the same, so I'm as happy as a pig in the brown stuff.

There's a bit more variety as well this time with a new type of level where you have to go after the enemies, which is a nice mix up, kinda like when Pacman gets his power pill. Bit of revenge is always good.

Dr. Awesome

When the user reviews kept mentioning it as a Qix clone I couldn't quite remember what Qix was, but playing it, it all came flooding back.

Like Oli said, the big thing is it using your contacts out of your address book to be your patients. I nearly killed Ben the other night but saved him at the last minute. illdog wasn't so lucky.

The presentation in the cut scenes (obviously "inspired" by Trauma Centre) and the in-game graphics are really well done and polished. I've got 3 games by ngmoco:) now and all of them are quality.

Dropship

The most recent ngmoco:) game and is a Thrust clone but the controls are art style make it pretty unique. Left thumb controls your engines and right thumb controls your guns. With a bit of tweaking I can easily imagine a Geometry Wars game coming onto the iPhone.

It's a really tough game, but they do seem to be updating it with new levels so it shows support.

Topple

This is probably the cheapest game I've bought (not including free) at 59p so I thought it would be throwaway gash but it's actually got a good physics engine behind it.

You just have to stack different shaped boxes on top of each other to reach the goal line.

Like all the ng:) games it's got a cool art style, you can tell it was custom made for the system, and they really get modern gaming as they all have achievement systems! Not a unified points one, but a simple checklist for each game and it will pop up with a little achievement unlocked box when you do it.

Fieldrunners

This is the one that won it's place in a "best of the year" article recently and it's not that good, but it is highly addictive and is a pretty good take on the Tower Defence game. Although TapDefence is free, I'd say that this is still better and worth skipping straight to this one.

Platypus

The side scrolling shoot'em-up that Oli pointed towards before with everything modelled out of plasticine. That's cool enough but the music is brilliant and even though it was only about £1.20 I was surprised when the end of Stage 5 was over that the game didn't end and I was actually onto Area 2. It's a solid shooter and the controls work too.

Toy Bot Diaries Entry 2

Barely scratched the surface with this but more of the same so far and that's good enough for me.

Trism

I heard the name mentioned a few times and it's highly rated in the Store so I checked it out and it's not bad from what I've seen, though I can see me being rubbish at it.

It's a puzzle game so the best way to explain it is to show it:

I've only gone through the tutorial mode so far and it reminds me of how Hexic wrecks my tiny mind.

[illdog]

Havent got time to link to the thread i saw but Katamari is coming to the iPhone - joy.

[Jimboxy]

good reviews there Mr Hendo. Some possible purchases for me i thinks. I got prism the other day as well, it is good but super hard. I'll be purchasing toy bot 2 and field runners i reckon, noticed that got into edges top 30 of the year as well.

A while back in this thread a reviewed a game called loopy, i can't remember how much it cost but it was dirt cheap (59p maybe) it's an iphone version of slitherlinks, a popular puzzle game in japan. The DS version but hudson is probably my most played DS game i loves it.

With the iphone version I was critical about a few aspects of it, including not being able to zoom and the likes, well I'm now pleased to report that's all been fixed and its become my fave iphone game ever. I've spent the last week or so playing nothing else at work, and subsequently getting really behind in what I'm meant to be doing. If you like number puzzles in the vain of sudoku I would highly recommend it.