iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch game recommendations

[CraigGrannell]

Drop7.

Yeah, well done, Stu. Make everyone else totally unproductive, too, with your 'play Drop7' shenanigans. It's not like the thing's videogame crack or anything.

Looking forward to some more titles appearing.

More Sega titles, presumably? In terms of general titles, there are now more than 13,000.

[Rayne]

Reading the first few posts I'd tell some to hold their horses

The iPod is decent, there's loads of games available but it's in no way a decent games machine, don't be fooled into buying one instead of a DS or PSP and thinking you'll get better gaming experiences.

They're good for a few short retro blasts and a lot of games deserve credit (Glyder & RE: Degeneration are my two top games) but the experiences don't last long and often suffer from jerky controls.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Reading the first few posts I'd tell some to hold their horses

The iPod is decent, there's loads of games available but it's in no way a decent games machine,

Others might wish to put it more diplomatically, but shut up you idiot.

[Rayne]

No...You shut up

Seriously though. It has good games, I won't argue with that. What I would say is that you get what you pay for, I doubt I'll be engrossed and spend hours of my time on an iPod game, certainly not in the same way I've poured my time into PSP or DS games.

[Team Alfie]

The forthcoming Space Invaders Infinity Gene looks and sounds most agreeable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ISkdn7bnvI

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

No...You shut up

Seriously though. It has good games, I won't argue with that. What I would say is that you get what you pay for, I doubt I'll be engrossed and spend hours of my time on an iPod game, certainly not in the same way I've poured my time into PSP or DS games.

Your loss. God knows what sort of games you want, though, if you can't find anything on iPod worth more than five minutes. Zenonia? Drop7? Geo Defense? Toki Tori? Car Jack Streets? Poker Logica? Let's Golf? Flight Control? Real Racing? Just sounds like uninformed snobbery to me.

[CraigGrannell]

I'm with Stu on this. My DS and other consoles have had almost no 'game time' at all since I got my iPhone. And although there are several games I really like for that system, games for Apple handhelds just take up too much of my time (in a good way).

Flight Control alone has taken many hours of my life, and now Stu—no doubt while laughing maniacally—introduced me to Drop7... (As for, 'you get what you pay for', 59p for Flight Control is the rough equivalent of going into Sainsbury's and coming out with a trolley load of tasty food for a fiver. Far too many DS and PSP games are like nipping into the same shop with a crisp 50-pound note, and leaving with a pile of glossy fruit that goes off surprisingly quickly.)

While I'd say there's definitely—on average—more immediacy with games for the platform, that doesn't necessarily tally with a lack of depth, nor with something that's only worth quick blasts (although there are far more games in the 'quickfire' category than for any other system, but that, for me, is also a bonus).

As for 'jerky controls', I'm not really sure what to say there. Aside from games that try to emulate other systems (Nicky Boom *shudder*), most of the best—Blue Defense, Drop 7, Flight Control, Cube Runner, Dropship, PapiJump Land, Galcon, Rolando 2, Saucelifter, and so on—are silky smooth. If you get jerky gameplay, that's probably a RAM issue, and pretty much every iPhone/iPod touch dev recommends a device restart after installing software (or if performance starts to stutter after extended use).

[Rayne]

When I mention jerky controls, I think of games like Worms, Assassin's Creed (and essentially any game with an on screen joystick, it's a good idea but it doesn't quite work in practice) and the holy grail of bad controls, Megaman 2 as if the game wasn't hard enough already.

DS and PSP games come cheap as chips these days, I can get everybody's golf for under a fiver and play for months :3

From my personal perspective I haven't found any games that have held my attention for massive ammounts of time, yet. But I can't wait for the day I do

[michaelf]

Just in case anyone's not noticed, Pinball Fantasies has been added to the App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt ... 49939&mt=8

[pforson]

Just in case anyone's not noticed, Pinball Fantasies has been added to the App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt ... 49939&mt=8

Ta, I hadn't noticed but as Dreams is my most played game on my touch I'll be getting this tonight. Happy.

[CraigGrannell]

For fans of point-and-click, it appears LucasArts' "we might be bringing games to iPhone (HINT HINT WINK WINK)" turned out to be accurate—The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition just showed up on the App Store for a fiver. The 'reimagining' has updated art, a complete voiceover by the original cast, and a remastered musical score. You can also hot-swap scenes between the SE and 'classic' modes at any point.

[sscott]

When I mention jerky controls, I think of games like Worms, Assassin's Creed (and essentially any game with an on screen joystick, it's a good idea but it doesn't quite work in practice) and the holy grail of bad controls, Megaman 2 as if the game wasn't hard enough already.

DS and PSP games come cheap as chips these days, I can get everybody's golf for under a fiver and play for months :3

From my personal perspective I haven't found any games that have held my attention for massive ammounts of time, yet. But I can't wait for the day I do

I'm with Rayne on this one. The iTouch has come a long way (and yes I own one) but I find a lot of the games shallow and the controls just not quite right. VPool and the new Tiger Woods are amazing though. Think the iTouch is suited to some types of games and not others IMO.

[CraigGrannell]

I entirely agree about the controls. Most (although not all) of the games with virtual d-pads are poor control-wise, although that's mostly down to poor design by the devs than the device itself. As for "most of the games [being] shallow", I totally disagree—a lot of them are simple, but only 'shallow' in the same way Tetris is shallow. Also, there are PRGs, point-and-clicks, sprawling adventure titles like Rolando, and so on, and those are anything but shallow. (And Tiger Woods—that seems way tougher than it was when I last played it on Xbox and annihilated the competition from my first game on. Nice game though.)

Elsewhere, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition just got a page on Touch Arcade, where they talk about how you switch between SE and classic mode: it's done via a double-finger swipe and is instantaneous. Nice!

[retrojc]

i prefer the n-gage


*i don't own an iphone/ipod touch, but they look fun

[CraigGrannell]

i prefer the n-gage

Matron! We need the straightjacket again—retrojc's started making strange noises!