Posts tagged iPod Touch
Review: Game Dev Story (iPhone)
Oct 26th
The truest measure of how addictive a video game is comes from how much time you’ve unknowingly lost because of it. It’s one thing to comprehend the passage of time but still stay glued to the screen; it’s another to look up and go, “holy shit, I’ve been playing for 12 hours?”
Certain few games fall into the latter category. I’m here to tell you that Game Dev Story, the recently released iOS game from Kairosoft, is definitely one of them. A devilishly well-balanced RPG-slash-video game development sim, Game Dev Story is one of the few games I’ve played until my iPhone’s battery is almost gone — and then plugged it in to play some more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Review: Bejeweled 2 (iPhone)
Feb 17th
The de facto puzzle game of the Internet Age arrives on the iPhone at an unbeatable price
If you’ve surfed the Web in the last five years, I’m willing to wager you’ve also played Bejeweled. Since it first appeared as a Web-based application in 2001, Bejeweled has been downloaded more than 150 million times, according to developer PopCap. Known for its wildly popular and often brilliant casual games, such as the Pachinko-like Peggle, Bejeweled remains PopCap’s iconic flagship title. This latest iteration first arrived in a Web-based format in 2004, followed by releases on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005 and PSN in 2009. With the immense install base of the iPhone and the unparalleled accessibility of its native App Store, porting Bejeweled 2 to the phone was a no-brainer. And with the game priced at a paltry $2.99, it’s easily the best value for your money in iPhone gaming. Read the rest of this entry »