Posts tagged iPhone
The Backlog: Cruisin’ Pandora in an Audi R8 edition
Oct 30th
Get it? Because the only two games that the three of us played were Borderlands and Forza Motorsport 3? And the Audi R8 is the cover model for Forza?
Oh, whatever. You try using Photoshop on an old laptop without a mouse, you jerk.
Review: Canabalt (iPhone)
Oct 14th
How can a story be told in a game?
I’ve heard the question come up more often in the last few months than I have in the previous decade. This year in particular has seen more narrative-driven blockbusters with a sophisticated approach to storytelling than ever before. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves have both been lauded for their intricate (and wildly different) approaches to developing a narrative in tandem with a long-term experience.
The debate even manifested recently in the comments section of Doug Bonham’s recent editorial on storytelling in games. Does a story always improve a game? Does it ever improve a game?
I think the question is best answered by asking how we define storytelling. Is it the preliminary text explaining the player’s motivations and mission? Is it the thousands of lines of melodrama that fill each installment in the Metal Gear Solid saga to the brim? Is it as insignificant as being told the president has been kidnapped by ninjas, followed with a simple query: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?
I sought to find a good example of how even the most minimal amount of overt storytelling can have a profound effect on how a player experiences a game. And I found it in Canabalt.
The Backlog: The Decapitating Kanji of the Dead edition
Oct 2nd
My gCal for this week: The green arrow represents the days without posts on Silicon Sasquatch. Everyone likes an effective graphic!
Unfortunately for you, dear reader, our goal of posting fresh, thirst-quenching content at least once a day didn’t occur this week. We apologize for that; It’s a busy season for those of us in graduate school and those of us looking for jobs. But you’re not here for excuses! You’re here to about read what videogames we’ve been playing — the most important segment of our daily lives, of course.
Nick’s been hoarding mad “lewt”, I’ve been rekindling my passion for zombie killing and Doug’s been using his DS to hone his prowess with the Japanese language.
Wait…is that even a game?
Review: The Sims 3 (iPhone)
Sep 15th
The Sims is unlike any other game brand in existence. While most find success by focusing on delivering a fun, exciting experience, The Sims excels not by being fun — which it typically isn’t — but from its uncanny ability to be fascinating on a humanistic level.
Like most of Will Wright’s games (SimCity, Spore, etc.), The Sims eschews the traditional need for linear progression through a series of tasks in a static game world. Instead, players are given an impressive set of tools to create characters, objects and environments and watch as life unfolds. It’s a formula for resounding commercial and critical success, and it still works as well as it did twenty years ago. But almost all of Wright’s games were built for computers, which carry with them the expectation of a greater commitment of time and effort on the part of the player.
Adapting The Sims to the iPhone, then, was no easy feat from a technological or a design standpoint. On iPhone, The Sims 3 is an impressive example of shrinking a massive game down to phone-size proportions without losing most of the elements that gave the series its clout: the requisite customizable characters, charming set pieces and robust decision-making aspects are all retained from its flagship PC release. But it is the very fact that so much from the original release was crammed into such a minuscule and difficult interface that makes The Sims 3 almost impossible to recommend.
Will iPhone 3G S create a divide for mobile gamers?
Jun 10th
Don't let the identical exterior fool you. Apple's latest iPhone iteration is packing some significantly upgraded hardware.
Apple pulled no punches with its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote this year: Its flashy (and affordable) new operating system, Snow Leopard, was priced and dated, and a new line of more powerful and less expensive MacBook Pros was announced. But as usual, the iPhone swooped in at the last minute to steal the show — this time with a brand new model: iPhone 3G S.
Although Apple wasn’t eager to spout specifics at the WWDC keynote, various sources have disclosed the details on the iPhone’s first major performance bump (see AnandTech’s writeup here.) Simply put, the increases in processing power and graphics rendering capabilities mean Apple’s newest device will be capable of greater visual detail, faster rendering and more complex imagery than ever before. It also means that, theoretically speaking, games could be developed that will only run (or run effectively) on the iPhone 3G S.
The Backlog: Post-E3 Hangover edition
Jun 8th
Hey there, reader! Long time no see. How’s tricks?
Well, we’re all a little burned out here. I mean, you all saw the media deluge last week, didn’t you? The countless trailers, the hours of presentations, the Brütal Legend lawsuit . . . it’s just exhausting.
So, we failed to deliver on the E3 commentary we promised, and I wanted to personally apologize. We weren’t sure how we were going to discuss the event as it raced by, and thanks to each member of our bustling staff of three having something major come up, it just didn’t happen.
If you’re still with us, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding. All three of us have busy lives, and I know that it’s been a constant struggle for me at least to have a full-time job and keep up the quality and consistency in blogging that I aspire to.
We’ll be getting back on track shortly. In the meantime, excuse our flakiness.
Now, let’s talk about some games, shall we?
Review: Wolfenstein 3D (iPhone)
Jun 3rd
Wolfenstein 3D doesn’t need much of an introduction. Most people remember the game for its pioneering spirit. It brought the first-person shooter into the public eye and paved the way for successors like Doom to follow. It also stirred up its fair share of controversy for its abundance of Nazi symbols, featuring a rendition of Adolf Hitler as a giant fighting cyborg — including chainguns for arms.
State-of-the-art entertainment, ca. 1992.
It was a simpler time in gaming. Of course, that was nearly twenty years ago, and now we’re playing the game that once required a sturdy personal computer on our mobile telephones. What a difference a few presidencies makes!
When a game has been ported countless times to every platform under the sun, purchasing it again has little to do with whether the game is fun to play start-to-finish. In terms of content, this is the exact same Wolfenstein 3D you remember; all six episodes arrived intact. But that’s not the reason Wolfenstein 3D was brought to iPhone.
Instead, it’s a proof of concept — an inquiry into the viability of taking a time-honored game and rebuilding it for a platform it was never intended to exist on: a mobile phone with an exclusively touch-based interface.
Daily Recap: May 12, 2009
May 12th
In a bit of site-related news, today was our most active day ever in terms of unique page views. We can attribute such a solid boost in numbers to Nick’s wonderful review of Peggle for the iPhone (apparently one of the first online, even before the big-name blogs and sites), as it was our top story for the day.
"Awesome!" indeed
So, we want to extend a ginormous gracias to those of you who read Silicon Sasquatch daily and continue to direct your comrades to our corner of the web. We promise to keep bringing you things of a decidedly awesome and videogame-related nature.
Now, it’s time for the real news: Atari gets cold feet, the telenovela that is Midway’s financial woes gets juicier, we get to know Modern Warfare 2 a bit better and Valve’s Team Fortress 2 team takes a “bow.” (You’ll get the pun in a bit.)
Review: Peggle (iPhone)
May 11th
The most dangerous thing about Peggle addiction? It’s that you don’t even see it coming.
Sure, you might’ve played a couple rounds here and there of Peggle, PopCap’s fun little peg-shooting puzzler, but it’s easy to shrug it off and get back to being a productive member of society.
But sooner or later, it’s inevitable: You’ve got some free time! You glance around, shrug your shoulders, and decide to pay the Peggle Institute another visit. “What’s the harm in a few more levels?” you ask yourself.
What’s the harm, indeed.
Review: WordFu (iPhone)
May 4th
It’s a simple premise: You’re given a few cubes with letters on each side of them, and tasked with spelling as many different words with the letters you have until you run out of time.
Sound familiar? WordFu plays a lot like other word games (TextTwist, Bookworm) where you’re presented with a set of letters and tasked with building as many words as possible within a time limit. But thanks to some clever twists on a classic formula, a helping of snazzy graphics and some fantastic score-gloating mechanics courtesy of Facebook and Twitter, WordFu spins an old concept into an engaging and exciting iPhone app that’s sure to captivate the wordie in all of us.