| Ooh ooh, definitely going to get SimCity! Cheers for the impressions Piro, a big improvement on the DS versions by the looks of it, which I tried so, so hard to love....but didn't. |
iPhone/iPod Touch App and Game Review Thread
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yegon 6,511 posts
Seen 6 months ago
Registered 18 years ago -
HoriZon 14,352 posts
Seen 6 hours ago
Registered 19 years agoRolando FTW! its so cool .gif)
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deem 31,667 posts
Seen 8 months ago
Registered 18 years agoMy app moving and ting!
\o/
I'm really chuffed with it. A few tweaks here and there, but the devs have done a grand job. -
CosmicFuzz 32,632 posts
Seen 6 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoThat's awesome deem -
deem 31,667 posts
Seen 8 months ago
Registered 18 years agoI'm fucking well chuffed! -
Dr Strangelove wrote:
/suddenly becomes very interested in an iPod touch.
Decent review and video of sim city here. -
deem wrote:
What he said.
Pirotic wrote:
A bit off topic, but I'm making a tower defence game for the iPhone store at the moment. Can you tell me if any exist yet which let you create the maze yourself using towers,
Yes, Fieldrunners.
Good luck trying to better that! It's the best game I've played for a long time, let alone the best game on the iPhone. -
Staying well away from Sim City until I see a 'proper' review that talks about how it realistically handles on the iPhone as a game for mobile use as opposed to "OMGTHEYCRAMMEDSC4ONTOIPHONEZOMG!!!"
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MrED209 wrote:
deem wrote:
What he said.
Pirotic wrote:
A bit off topic, but I'm making a tower defence game for the iPhone store at the moment. Can you tell me if any exist yet which let you create the maze yourself using towers,
Yes, Fieldrunners.
Good luck trying to better that! It's the best game I've played for a long time, let alone the best game on the iPhone.
Was playing it quite a bit yesterday, it's bloody good init? the graphics are lovely. I coded a engine which was very similar (month old vid), but I took it back to drawing board shortly after that and re-wrote a new engine from scratch which supports multiple view windows on screen, zooming, multi-touch etc.. nothing to show of that yet tho, but I'm glad I did else it would of been too similar (but without a decent artist to make it look anywhere near as nice). Anyhow, it's very different from it now thank god.
and MrED209, I wrote a review a page ago for Sim City. I'm not saying it's a great review, but I at least avoided the OMG!!! stuff. Screw it, it was down the bottom of the last page so I'll just go a bit ego-centric and quote myself.
Pirotic wrote:
Sim City came out today, downloaded it and I'm very impressed. The interface is probably the best they could possibly have done considering the limitations, and while it's fiddly at times the developers clearly recognized this and made sure you couldn't accidentally build objects in the wrong place or screw up roads. You drag, resize and then accept everything you place down and while it does take longer to do than on any mouse and keyboard version, considering you can pause the game at any point it's a worthy trade off instead of getting pissed off at trying to draw straight roads using your finger.
It looks quite stunning, for someone expecting something between Sim City and Sim City 2000 I was surprised to find it's a bloody close replica of Sim City 3000. The sprites have been reduced somewhat but it only affects the zoomed in views rather than the default zoom level you'd use for building, so it's a very minor visual downgrade. Traffic has gone (from what I remember anyway, could just be very toned down) and anybody expecting the 2.0 shader model clouds from the PC version probably needs a bit of a reality check, and the day night cycle has bitten the dust, but that was more of a hindrance than a help despite looking rather lovely.
The only gameplay affecting removal is that the map rotation has been lost, but they've again foreseen and prevented the problems you would have expected, placing roads behind tall buildings is just as easy due to the building going transparent. It also removes a lot of the graphics while you scroll the map, all the buildings and effects vanish and you are left with just the terrain and a colored grid representing the zones, but the moment you stop scrolling everything fades back in snappily, so again, it's completely allowable given it's on a mobile phone. It's clear why they've done it, basically the terrain isn't animated at all so when you finish scrolling it renders the terrain to a graphic so it no longer has to keep re-draw it, the result is that scrolling feels quite jerky but once you stop, it suddenly smooths out again. Considering I'm playing it on an iPhone it's probably a tad more playable on the beefed up 2nd gen touch, but for a slow paced game it's nothing to be too concerned about.
Minor niggles would be the interface is a little 'big' compared to DS games, but then a finger isn't as accurate as a touch-pen so I can let that one go, and because they've had to limit the number of buttons on screen, you can get a bit lost trying to remember where the more technical bits and bobs have gone to, advisors etc.
And all the aforementioned bits and bobs seems to be there still. Underground, rail, water pipes, electrics, zones, all the views showing crime and so forth. You can even click the (?) button and then a building to find out about the nitty gritty of life in your wee city. It's one of the first must have titles I recon, and it'll hopefully get tweaked with constant patchs like the rest of the app store to sort out most of the minor niggles.
Well worth £4.99. -
"Sneezies" is a 59p lil puzzley type game. Trying to remember the name of the game it`s a rip off of - maybe Every Extend Extra ? Chaining one explosion to get the target number of things to go pop. Except now it`s gone cutesy - still good fun tho.
Also, has no-one mentioned "Space Deadbeef" - it`s a free R-Type side scrolling shooter. The touch to shoot mechanic is a pain in the arse, cos your finger ends up being in the way. But it has potential. Pretty hard, too.
One for the kids "Animal Mechanicals Memory Match". It`s free, it has characters off the telly, and it`s a polished memory card game. My boys love it. ANd the fight over "iChalky" - too.
I keep coming back to "Fuzzle" tho. Deceptively easy looking puzzler.
And the missus loves a bit of "Bejewelled 2".
Whens Peggle coming out - surely a perfect match for touch screen controls ?
Oh, and "Sol Free" gives a pretty decent Klondike / Solitaire game. -
@Pirotic - apparently Fieldrunners was named by Times as one of its top ten games of 2008. And it has had Edge kissing it`s arse, too.
Maybe choose a less competitive genre ?
How about a really polished Moon Lander clone - the Atari one on PSP was cool, but how about adding some of the Dropship graphics and making it more challenging and less shooty ? -
ayrtonsenna 1,566 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoQuordy is an awesome Boggle clone. I mentioned Deadbeef a while back, good stuff.
Hoping for iTunes voucher next week so I can buy Rolando -
I got a £15 iTunes voucher from work last night so I reckon I might get rolando and sim city after all... -
Hilko 1 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 13 years agoI wonder if and when we'll get a Geometry Wars for the iphone. Now that I've played dropship, I'm confident that they'll be able to create a good interface for it... -
Zinio.com/iPhone
The Zinio reader, formatted and quite pleasantly usable. I think it's a reader that needs Internet connection rather than downloads, but you get 15 Yank magazines for free. Including Playboy - for the articles of course. -
Katamari Damacy has been updated to no longer be shit \o/ -
Wish I could roll it by touch, could put a spin on it -
Anyone else bought Hero of Sparta?
The framerate is absolutely atrocious on my 1st gen Touch.
Thank God for the marvellous Rolando, though. \o/ -
Dr-Strangelove 2,309 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 17 years agoCrispyXUK wrote:
Has the slowdown been completely sorted? Does it slowdown when changing the environment size?
Katamari Damacy has been updated to no longer be shit \o/ -
Yup. Still there a little for environment change, but it was for the PS2 version -
UncleLou wrote:
Anyone else bought Hero of Sparta?
The framerate is absolutely atrocious on my 1st gen Touch.
Thank God for the marvellous Rolando, though. \o/
Well, I can answer my own question now. Bought the woman a 2nd gen Touch for Christmas, and prepared it with some music, applicaions etc.
Hero of Sparta runs miles better on the new one.
/bursts down in tears of envy -
Dr-Strangelove 2,309 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 17 years agoInteresting, based on Lou's experience with Sparta on a 1st gen Touch is anybody playing Katamari on one? Or have experience of it on a 1st and 2nd gen?
Whilst there were genuine frame rate issues that seem to have been sorted I'm wondering if some of the frame rate issues are because of that. Can people who have katamari say what iPod they are using, whether its an iPhone or 1st or 2nd gen Touch? Cheers. -
Dr-Strangelove 2,309 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 17 years agorodpad wrote:
Hmm, is that even after the update??
Generally runs ok, but some of the later levels run at like 5fps even on my 2nd gen. -
HoriZon 14,352 posts
Seen 6 hours ago
Registered 19 years agoGot Tetris a while ago and never really played it but played it today and wow its great playing it with my own music playing!
Happy days! -
Dr Strangelove wrote:
Interesting, based on Lou's experience with Sparta on a 1st gen Touch is anybody playing Katamari on one? Or have experience of it on a 1st and 2nd gen?
Whilst there were genuine frame rate issues that seem to have been sorted I'm wondering if some of the frame rate issues are because of that. Can people who have katamari say what iPod they are using, whether its an iPhone or 1st or 2nd gen Touch? Cheers.
Btw., I've since tried a system restore with my old Touch, and put nothing on it but Hero of Sparta. I ran it side by side on the old and the 2nd gen Touch, and loading times as well as framerate were still considerably better on the new one - the system restore did nothing, in other words.
Based on my PC experience, I'd guess Hero of Sparta runs at maybe 12-20 fps most of the time, while it's between 20 and 30 or so on the new one. Which makes all he difference as far as playability is concerned. -
Wow, Fieldrunners is overrated. Actually not a bad little game, I don't particularly regret buying it for relative peanuts (£2.99) but there's so little to it, it's untrue. Comparisons to something like Ninjatown, admittedly a full price release on the DS, are NOT favourable. My overwhelming impression was "Is that it?!". Nice production values but it really needs a few gameplay additions.
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