Be Excellent To Each Other

As iPhone gaming is becoming big business it would seem churlish to ignore it, especially seeing as I own the device. How long is it going to be before Eurogamer add an iPhone section to their site? Does anyone know of any decent iPhone review sites, or is there a niche there to be filled?

If not, I was thinking of taking the plunge and doing it myself - would there be any interest in this at all?

I'd defintely be interested, though I do think the device has a way to go yet before being seen as a proper gaming device.

Incidentally, I got I Love Katamari for my iPhone t' other day. It feels like a Beta test they expect you to actually pay for. I mean there's a fantastic game hidden in there, but the frame rate is utterly attrocious and the tilt controls keep resetting their zero-point so that in the end you're practically having to hold the phone upside-down in order to get the Prince to move forward.

The fact that the timer seems to take at least twice the time stated (so a 4 minute level will easily take at least 8 minutes to play) makes me think the game wasn't designed to run as slow as it does and that it's either be rushed out or some dick has released a prototype rather than the finished game. Either way, I hope they patch it at some point!

I'd be interested. In fact, I've been meaning to write some of my own for some time (sorry jonarob, I swear I will do this over Christmas...)

I might get Sim City soon. I think with publisher support increasing (like Konami's announcement the other day) it's becoming more important as a gaming device, albeit one with radically differences from the existing ones (no physical controls, electronic distribution of games, price points typically £2-£10, very different demographics in the the device owners).

Yeah, the IGN review of I Love Katamari cited those very problems. The good thing about them is that they're constantly being patched like Xbox 360 games. A lot of developers are taking advice from forums and fixing/adding new features all the time.

I've just downloaded Virtual Pool Lite, and it's a surprisingly decent 3D pool simulation. The full game is only £1.59, so I might take a punt on it. Super Monkey Ball at £5.99, though? No, ta.

-edit - VP is now only 59p! I'm going to buy it and review it. Stand by.

For anyone who likes Guitar Hero/Rock Band, but wishes the music was a bit more of a dance persuasion, Tap Tap Dance is meant to be very good. I've only played the free one (Tap Tap Revenge), but it's an excellent little game.

Apparently a patch has just been released for Katamari:

http://kotaku.com/5115370/katamari-iphone-fixed

Cool! Downloading now - I shall disappear to have a game during my lunch break and report back.

Space.deadbeef is worth a play - sort of R-Type thing. It's a free demo at the mo.

want this as wwell, haven't sen a good review yet

According to the editor, it's in the works. (I pitched an iPhone section and got politely told to sod off, since it's all going to be taken care of with existing freelancers). Pocket Gamer's probably your best bet for iPhone games reviews at the moment, even if its scores are a bit odd at times (varying wildly between contributors).

I'm also—you heard it here first—aiming to open a rather unique take on iPhone reviews in January, and may be happy to take on contributors. The idea's a bit different to the norm, though, so I've no idea whether it'll work or not!

couple of free ones worth getting are trace and wordwrap.

Well I was thinking about knocking some kind of Wordpress-type review site for it (a bit like Jonny's Snappy Gamer), but I'd be interested in contributing to yours...

If we're into a recommend-o-tron, Wurdle (£1.19) is a great Boggle-style game, Topple's a good stack 'em up (free, too, right now), and Frenzic (£1.19 for the next week or so) is a fast 'n' furious action puzzler that makes Tetris feel like ae walk in the park. I also bought Dropship (59p) yesterday, which resembles an update to Thrust (as in, the 8-bit Gravitar clone); it's a bastard to get the hang of, but the control method is very interesting indeed. Rolando appears to be getting a lot of press at the moment, with lots of "best iPhone game evar!" fawning, but I've not grabbed it yet, because I'm in tight-fisted mode and don't really want to splash out six quid on a game right now.

Trace is great fun. The screen is perhaps not quite sensitive enough for it at times, but it's still a good laugh.

Are there any games worth getting for the N95?

Theres also a ebook reader called classics thats 59p and much better to use than stanza, although its only got 15 books or so but they keep updating it they say. Then again 59p for 15 books isnt bad.

the need for such is becoming high now, the appstore is worse than xbox marketplace these days...incredible just how many applications are coming in

The interface for Classics is excellent, but I think there's been one addition in the past few months. Other recommend-o-apps: MyRail Lite (train times), Now Playing (movie listings), Weightbot (weight tracker), Units (unit conversion), Currency (just guess!), My Football (football results/tables), PCalc Lite (free version of PCalc). The official Facebook and eBay apps aren't too bad either.

I've got Stanza - it seems to do the job well enough for a free app. I've got Call Of Cthulu lined up for a reading at some point on it - been wanting to try some H.P. Lovecraft for a while.

In other news, I did indeed play some post-patch I Love Katamari in the comfort of my car during my lunch break and can confirm that it is indeed much, much better now, though still far from perfect. It's quite playable though, so if you're a Katamari nut like me, it's worth trying out. I know that the whole 'Great if you like this sort of thing. 73%' review-style is frowned upon here, but in the time I've got right now, that's the best you're getting.

For what it's worth, Kotaku just gave it a glowing review:

http://kotaku.com/5113967/simcity-iphon ... ng-iphones

good to see that it is ported well, after sim city DS i was sure i would buy it again, but i probably will at some point

incidentally
Nytimes about the businessmodels and music games

Yeah, I was tempted, but sick squid?! I'm baulking at that price point at the moment. Although I swore when I got this phone I'd never pay for any applications and I've bought three 59pers since yesterday.

I came across a rather nice website the other day that allows you to download (spacked - Ed) versions of iPhone apps for free, if your phone is jailbroken.

Alas, SimCity is apparently incompatible with the iPhone 2G - well, that's what it tells me when I try and install the (whacked - Ed) version on it. Everything else has worked sweet though.

Have you upgraded to firmware 2.2?

Yeah, the entirely legit version of SimCity works fine on my iPhone 2G - not that I'm implying your copy is anything other than completely above board and totally legal, GazChap!

I've only had the very briefest of goes on it, but the control system does a very good job of working around the inaccuracies of the touch screen by allowing you to freely edit the placement of all roads, zones, utilities, etc before confirming that everything is exactly where you want it to be. It seems to be based on SimCity 3000 (my favourite version anyway) and a very nice and accomplished port at that.

Aah right, no. Don't want to do that yet as I'm not sure that BootNeuter will unlock it.

It's SimCity 2000 in a 3000 skin, apparently. SIX QUID, though. I still can't get my head around paying that much for a game on my phone.

I believe QuickPwn does the job. My iPhone is unlocked (I use it on the Orange network) and I upgraded, as opposed to restored, to firmware 2.2 the other day in order to QuickPwn it. Turned out that the phone was still unlocked after the upgrade, just not jailbroken anymore. And since I haven't used any jailbreak apps in ages, I just decided not to bother in the finish and have left my phone as is.

For anyone who likes Tap Tap Dance but wishes the music was a bit more of a Christmas and/or Weezer, persuasion: Christmas With Weezer!

http://tapulous.com/weezer/

SimCity (and quite a few of the new games and apps) need 2.2, as far as I'm aware.

2.2 seems a lot more stable than 2.0 was also - I don't seem to be suffering with slowdown when typing text messages or random Safari crashes anymore.

There's also a need for an iPod click wheel games review site.

Really? I didn't think anyone bothered with those.

I do. And the reviews on the iTunes site are appalling. Most of them are by people who haven't played the games, for starters.

I've only got a 2G Nano, so I wouldn't be much use, I'm afraid.

Dropship is excellent!

My reviews are already working! Now, if only I can actually get the website off the ground!

iBoobs not approved

I've just given Trace a go and it's great fun. There might be mileage in this iPhone gaming malarkey.

textropolis is an alright wordy puzzle game. Its similar to those 9 letter grid things you get in the paper, but based around city names, get so many words and you get new cities and more stars on how well you do in each city. I dont think theres a 9 letter word for each, and its fairly cheap at £1.19, I got it for 59p and forgot to tell people on here about it and now its went up.

A friend showed me this over the holidays, it looked ace. And then when I went to the app store to get it, it had been taken down for some reason (maybe they want to charge for it, or maybe the rail companies didn't like it, it makes their stuff look shit)

Is there anyway to get hold of this (jailbreaking or otherwise)?

As for games, I'm still really enjoying tapdefense. It's free, and a neat tower defence style game.

iMob online looks like it has potential to be OK, but it's really really buggy at the moment, very often refusing to connect.

Another reason for jailbreaking right there.

If you like wordy games, try Wurdle. It's like a frantic version of Boggle—really addictive.


Judging by the MyRail Twitter feed, they got threatened and took the app down. (Probably uncoincidently, Trains also bit the big one at the same time.)

Anyone for iPhone Archon?

http://www.offworld.com/2009/01/react-b ... -arch.html

As mentioned elsewhere on this very forum, I soft-launched iPhoneTiny yesterday, which is a Twitter stream whose content then gets automatically dropped into a blog. Given that I mostly download games, it's likely to be quite games-oriented. And given that I'm not a fuckwit, I won't do what App Store reviewers do and go "Best Game Evar! (one star)" or "Those bastards dropped the price for this. I HATE THEM! (one star)". Medium-term, I'll get the thing optimised for iPhone, obv.

That looks utterly hideous. Interested to see how the 'action' sections of the game would work on iPhone, given its lack of a joystick. Robotron-style controls a la Dropship would be ace.

Interesting this, as this is a bit my work; in the netherlands a dutch student made an app called Trein (Train in dutch, obv), which showed real time train info, webscraped from the nedrail site, and they made a big fuss out of it, but it stayed; and seems to be supported by european law making it free info (as its creation (the run of trains) is subsidised by the state)

Nedrail? Wullie!

I have MyRail lite and it's one of the most useful apps on there. Really annoying if they've had to take it down, I'd be interested to know the reason.

actually Nederlandse Spoorwegen, but it runs the railway around liverpool and others on the nedrailways monicker..