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The Official iPhone/iPod Touch Gaming Thread

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Aru said:
Zenonia Lite is kinda cool but I hate the controls :(

The best "touch d-pad" I've seen yet for an iPhone game is iDracula's.

I wonder if they updated the Lite game's controls when they did the full game - they massively improved the d-pad. Still not great, but far more usable, made me not mind playing the game.

Have you tried Hero of Sparta's virtual analogue stick? How does iDracula's controller compare to that?
 
mrkgoo said:
I heard Galcon was 99c.

That it is. Bought.

So guys, I'm in a bit of a conundrum. See, I really want a Motherlode-like game on my iPhone. And I've found two that I really like, but each for different reasons: I Dig It and California Gold Rush. I love the openness of I Dig It compared with the levels of California Gold Rush, as well as the controls, but the upgrades and general polish of California Gold Rush is tempting. There can only be one, and I'm at a loss at what to jump on. Any opinions?
 

Spoit

Member
Dreamwriter said:
I wonder if they updated the Lite game's controls when they did the full game - they massively improved the d-pad. Still not great, but far more usable, made me not mind playing the game.

Have you tried Hero of Sparta's virtual analogue stick? How does iDracula's controller compare to that?
Maybe it's because you aren't moving on a square grid, but I found sparta's controls more sluggish than zenonia
 
The best virtual D-pad controls for me are either in Isotope or Dropship. Those re-center where ever you place your fingers on the screen. I really like when devs do that.

Another nice control feature some devs implement is when you have direct control of your on screen object but you don't have to place your finger directly over the object. Instead you can place it anywhere on screen and move and your on screen object moves relative to that movement. Not sure why more devs don't do this.
 
Stoney Mason said:
The best virtual D-pad controls for me are either in Isotope or Dropship. Those re-center where ever you place your fingers on the screen. I really like when devs do that.

Really? I *HATED* the virtual stick in Mario 64 DS because of that - I could never figure out where the center was because it was always in a different place. As in, I'd be walking one direction, have to immediately switch to the opposite direction, and not know where to move my thumb to do it, and so get hurt. Or in the excitement I'd barely lift my thumb and place it back down, and Mario would stop moving (because my thumb was now at the center of the stick)
 
Dreamwriter said:
Really? I *HATED* the virtual stick in Mario 64 DS because of that - I could never figure out where the center was because it was always in a different place. As in, I'd be walking one direction, have to immediately switch to the opposite direction, and not know where to move my thumb to do it, and so get hurt. Or in the excitement I'd barely lift my thumb and place it back down, and Mario would stop moving (because my thumb was now at the center of the stick)

Everybody is different I guess. On a touch screen my fingers are always sliding around unlike a real d-pad. So the re-centering as they slide or just being able to lift up my fingers and move them and still be able to play when I put them back down is preferable for me.
 

boutrosinit

Street Fighter IV World Champion
Right now, I'm loving PathPix and Radial50. Radial 50 could use some alternate control scheme, but overall, solid idea.
 
Stoney Mason said:
Everybody is different I guess. On a touch screen my fingers are always sliding around unlike a real d-pad. So the re-centering as they slide or just being able to lift up my fingers and move them and still be able to play when I put them back down is preferable for me.

I definitely agree that it's the most awesome way. Unlike other pads where you need to look to see where right is, or you might miss and have to tap to find it, right is always put your finger down and slide right. It's effortless.

Dreamwriter said:
Really? I *HATED* the virtual stick in Mario 64 DS because of that - I could never figure out where the center was because it was always in a different place. As in, I'd be walking one direction, have to immediately switch to the opposite direction, and not know where to move my thumb to do it, and so get hurt. Or in the excitement I'd barely lift my thumb and place it back down, and Mario would stop moving (because my thumb was now at the center of the stick)

Super Mario DS and Rayman DS and all those early DS games with touch dpads controlled horribly. All iPhone games that have done this work like a dream.
 

Surfheart

Member
Just wanted to pimp a mate's new game that's just gone up on the store called Amoebaz.

iTunes linkage.

screen_amoebaz_1.jpg


screen_amoebaz_2.jpg


screen_amoebaz_3.jpg


Amoebaz_new_level.png



I posted about gameplay on TA so I'll just quote that here.


It plays kinda like a time management game in the most basic sense.

At each corner of the screen is a pool of coloured primordial ooze; red, green, blue and orange. Amoebaz fall from the sky and need to be directed to the the appropriate pool based on their colour by tapping the correct pool or on the Amoebaz themselves. Green Amoebaz to the green pool , red to the red pool and so on. You start with 5 lives and score an extra life for each 100 Amoebaz saved.

It starts out quite easy, but the Amoebaz start falling faster and faster and it gets quite intense as they bump and bounce off each other as you try to direct them to the correct pool. If you don't get them to the pools fast enough they die under the hot sun and you lose a life.

Presentation is very polished with some very slick menus and cute sound samples of the Amoebaz themselves. Graphics are very colourful and ran smoothly on my iPhone 3G.

No online leaderboards at this point, hopefully that could be added in a future update.
 
Not really digging DownToZero... Feels devoid of charm and not sure the concept is all that compelling in the first place... But maybe I'm missing something?
 

Khanage

Member
N Coward Parody said:
Not really digging DownToZero... Feels devoid of charm and not sure the concept is all that compelling in the first place... But maybe I'm missing something?

I'm really enjoying it. Once I got the hang of chaining my moves I was hooked.
 

billy.sea

Banned
I am curious to know how many of you here that visit this thread were used to be iPhone/iTouch gaming hater (like the ones who bitch about John's iPhone Game of the Week on Listen Up etc)?
 
billy.sea said:
I am curious to know how many of you here that visit this thread were used to be iPhone/iTouch gaming hater (like the ones who bitch about John's iPhone Game of the Week on Listen Up etc)?
I didn't hate it but I never thought I'd be using my iPhone for games as much as I do now.
 
billy.sea said:
I am curious to know how many of you here that visit this thread were used to be iPhone/iTouch gaming hater (like the ones who bitch about John's iPhone Game of the Week on Listen Up etc)?
Me. I laughed and protested at people giving the iPhone credit as more than something you struggle to play Tetris on.
 

Prezhulio

Member
JPBrowncoat said:
I didn't hate it but I never thought I'd be using my iPhone for games as much as I do now.

this.

i'm still not positive about the wii, but something tells me i should just get one cause i'd probably love it as i'm having more fun with my iphone than my ps3 these past couple weeks :/
 

antispin

Member
JPBrowncoat said:
Also digging DownToZero a lot. I bought Base 10 earlier this week and liked that a bunch and this is kinda similar.

Yeah, same.

It's amazing what the iPhone is doing to game prices as well. Asphalt 4 on DSiWare = $8, and $0.99 on the iPhone. Really brings things into perspective. The iPhone is competition, whether the likes of Iwata acknowledge it or not.
 

mrkgoo

Member
antispin said:
Yeah, same.

It's amazing what the iPhone is doing to game prices as well. Asphalt 4 on DSiWare = $8, and $0.99 on the iPhone. Really brings things into perspective. The iPhone is competition, whether the likes of Iwata acknowledge it or not.

You know, on one level, it's bad. With the race to get to 99c, soon, that's all that you may have - throwaway 99c experiences.

If you think about it in another way, after the 30% cut from Apple, the developer and publisher get a lot of profit. Marketing is minimal, distribution costs are nil, no printing boxes and manuals, no logistics costs, and with this digital download method, you don't even need to maintain your own servers. There's probably a lot to be said for that.
 

Khanage

Member
mrkgoo said:
You know, on one level, it's bad. With the race to get to 99c, soon, that's all that you may have - throwaway 99c experiences.

If you think about it in another way, after the 30% cut from Apple, the developer and publisher get a lot of profit. Marketing is minimal, distribution costs are nil, no printing boxes and manuals, no logistics costs, and with this digital download method, you don't even need to maintain your own servers. There's probably a lot to be said for that.

I don't think you can downplay this point. The way the App store is laid out, it is very easy for a game to get lost. Think back to all the games you are enjoying on your iPhone... I bet a sizeable chunk of the games you really like you heard about through this thread, or the enthusiast press, such as Touch Arcade. My point is how many people, apart from hardcore gamers, check these sites? Right now there is only two viable ways to get your app noticed. Market the fuck out of your games like ngmoco, or price it at 59p and hope word of mouth breaks it into the top 50. The other savings you get by developing for the iPhone are great... But the iphone hasn't done away with the need for good marketing.
 

Acid08

Banned
billy.sea said:
I am curious to know how many of you here that visit this thread were used to be iPhone/iTouch gaming hater (like the ones who bitch about John's iPhone Game of the Week on Listen Up etc)?
I was in both. I love playing games on it but really hated listening to the long diatribes about how Facebook connect is going to revolutionize gaming. They now seem to have hit a really good spot for talking about iPhone games. A few games a week, takes up a nice amount of time, and it's informative. So much credit to those guys for getting it right recently.
 

Barrett2

Member
N Coward Parody said:
Not really digging DownToZero... Feels devoid of charm and not sure the concept is all that compelling in the first place... But maybe I'm missing something?

Same here. Played a bit of the lite version and was definitely not into it.

However, I did get a free code for Big Top 10 yesterday and am really liking it, largely for the game's simplicity and great art style. You slide your finger over connected #s to add up to 10, with a few nice additions such as negative numbers, bombs which explode adjacent tiles, clocks to freeze time, etc. I think the combination of less tiles on screen, adding as opposed to subtracting, the 'bomb' and 'clock' tiles mixing it up, along with the snappy visuals; overall just made me enjoy it much more than Down to Zero.

But hey, they're both only 99 cents, so I guess if you're into number games based around adding / subtracting to 10, just get them both. :lol
 

RoH

Member
This is my first post in a while, but I just had to say something about Hero Of Sparta. This game is great! I cant believe its a cell phone game. Now all I need is Command and Conquer
 

mrkgoo

Member
Khanage:Yeah I agree entirely. I didn't mean to down play the Importance. The marketing is just very different on the iPhone platform. You can do what ngmoco does, but they kind of get away with it (as do other devs) because there isn't much of a method to market other than on wEbsites. Because the store is entirely online the game is very different. The biggest marketing you can do is to create word of mouth at the moment. There just isn't the impetus to launch a markeing campaign on tv or otherwise. This may change in future of course.
 

bryehn

Member
jonnybryce said:
This looks pretty fun and very well put together. I'm not a huge fan of castle defense but I may end up checking this out.

It's good, I'm in the middle of reviewing it right now.
 

dLMN8R

Member
God I love this iPhone. My little anecdote:

-Had a red eye flight last night at 10:20PM Pacific
-Sitting at the airport at 8:30PM
-Browse GAF using the web application
-See Costanza's post about DownToZero going live
-Click the iTunes link, immediately linked to the app store (on the iPhone)
-Realize it's less than 1MB, quickly buy, download, install
-Play on the plane :D

Now it's 9:47AM and I'm tired as fuck because I didn't sleep on my red eye flight :-(



Also loaded up on a bunch of other games that I played on the flight, all very fun:
-Pipe Mania
-StoneLoops!
-I Dig It

:D
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Enviro-Bear 2010: Operation Hibernation is out!

sfvxao.jpg


http://toucharcade.com/2009/07/10/enviro-bear-2010-the-best-bear-driving-simulator-in-the-app-store/

Make sure to read the whole quote, this sounds completely deceptively amazing.

Yes, Enviro-Bear 2010 is a bear driving a car simulator where you have five minutes to fatten yourself up and drive to your cave in preparation for winter. The controls are hilariously awful, and while the iPhone may be capable of multi-touch gestures, as a bear driving a car you only have one free paw which is what you use to drive around and scarf down food.

You can use your single paw to do all kinds of things, from putting the car in to drive or reverse, throwing just about anything (including the clock tracking your remaining time) out the window, and defending yourself from badgers. The driving controls provide as realistic of an experience as I can imagine if I were a bear driving a car, since you can either steer or use the pedals. With only one paw, how could you both at the same time?

It wasn't until I played the game through a few cycles of winter that I started to realize the depth of how much you can interact with the world. Such a seemingly terrible game at first glance really has a odd level of detail, especially when you start thinking outside the box, or rather– Thinking like a bear, driving a car.

For instance, the horrid combination of constantly switching between the gas and steering is completely remedied by something so simple that it hadn't even crossed my mind until I saw someone mention it in the thread on our forums. If you ram your car in to a boulder, a piece of rock will fall off, and you can use that rock to hold the gas pedal down. (Actually, you can do the same thing with the clock.)

2mezn9e.jpg
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Costanza said:
I actually bought that, its so bad that it's awesome
I'm downloading it now.

*edit* this is completely awesome. 60FPS too!!
I love how the game expects you to not only press on the gas or brake, but *drag* it down to push it :lol
*edit* oh shit, ravenous badgers are bitch to deal with.
 

jts

...hate me...
Holy shit, Return to Mysterious Island is a huge ass game. 260MB, that's almost as large as all my other 60 apps together :eek:

Also, I'm unsubscribing this thread before I go bankrupt.
 

Costanza

Banned
Lord Error said:
I'm downloading it now.

*edit* this is completely awesome. 60FPS too!!
I love how the game expects you to not only press on the gas or brake, but *drag* it down to push it :lol
*edit* oh shit, ravenous badgers are bitch to deal with.
you can also put rocks or the alarm clock on the pedals to hold them down while you steer :lol
 

Barrett2

Member
Lord Error said:
I'm downloading it now.

*edit* this is completely awesome. 60FPS too!!
I love how the game expects you to not only press on the gas or brake, but *drag* it down to push it :lol
*edit* oh shit, ravenous badgers are bitch to deal with.

This game would be amazing to have for when someone asks you if the iPhone has any good games. You can feign a really snobby voice, fire this up, and hand it to them why dryly saying "I don't know dude, you tell me..."
 
lawblob said:
This game would be amazing to have for when someone asks you if the iPhone has any good games. You can feign a really snobby voice, fire this up, and hand it to them why dryly saying "I don't know dude, you tell me..."

I loled.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Costanza said:
you can also put rocks or the alarm clock on the pedals to hold them down while you steer :lol
Yeah, I saw that - clock doesn't quite seem heavy enough, so it's better to clinch it below the brake pedal so that it pushes gas down! I wish badgers were easier to deal with. Nine times out of then when I throw one out, they seems to fall back in, and driving with them is nigh impossible.

lawblob said:
This game would be amazing to have for when someone asks you if the iPhone has any good games. You can feign a really snobby voice, fire this up, and hand it to them why dryly saying "I don't know dude, you tell me..."
:lol
This reminds me of times when i first had PSP and someone would ask what it can do - I'd fire up Ridge Racers and with a serious face would give them that little loader game to play. Oh it was so funny how everyone was trying their best to be polite and still compliment it - and then of course the real game would start, and they would realize they'd been tricked :-D
 

Barrett2

Member
Khanage said:
http://twitter.com/Mobigame/status/2570158539

Has he not got anything better to do with his time!?

I hope Edge stays up on the app store.

So what's this guy's shtick? He just sues people and hopes they settle rather than go through the expense of litigation?

Reminds me of the Stephen Kent book about the Nintendo litigation with Paramount; how they and other IP holders routinely sue anybody they can think of who might remotely come close to one of their patents, just hoping for a shake-down and not actually going to trial.

What a piece of shit, garbage like this is what makes people lose confidence in civil litigation.
 

bryehn

Member
Battle Shock Review

Pretty short review, there isn't a helluva lot to the game. We gave it a 4/5 though because the top-town view makes it way more familiar feeling and fun than most castle defense games (which I am not generally a fan of).

Battle Shock gives off an old RTS or tower Defense feel and the battlefield is randomly generated every time you start a game so it stays fresh. For $0.99 you really can't go wrong.
 

Mrbob

Member
I don't want to bog down this thread about hardware, so direct me where to go if I'm the wrong spot but my MP3 is currently on the fritz and am looking into getting an ipod touch.

I see they are on sale right now for 275 (16GB), but a friend of mine says these are being reduced in price for new models to hit in september. Would this be a bad time to buy an ipod touch? I would hate to buy on now only to have a new model with more features hit in a month or two. At the same time I don't know if my current MP3 can hold out.

With my DVDs and blu ray purchases I have a couple digital copies I would like to transfer over for when I'm on the go.

Finally, is there a list of quality iphone apps/games I should be looking for? Trying to move around Itunes to find stuff in the app store is a bit of a mess. I love Zuma and saw a similar game on sale for 99 cents, so I picked that up! Any thoughts I would appreciate it!
 
I been playing California gold rush nearly all week on holiday, such a great game, in fact I still not finished it as there is a ton of levels and I like to 3 star them when I can, so worth it.

Amazingly on holiday where I was staying had wireless internet but it was rather slow, too slow in fact to update most of my games on the iphone directly and I nearly lost my saves because it all cocked up a bit, thankfully turning off wifi and rebooting the device returned the old games with update errors only.

I seen the youtube video of earth vs moon, I like what I see.
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
cjelly said:
If the 3GS is anything to go by, then any iTouch announcement in September probably won't be much different to what's out there now.

except with much more power and the new gpu ? i also heard they might incliude the cam..
 
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