henke on 5/5/2011 at 05:59

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I've felt the same way about gaming on all the cellphones I've had through the years. I get a new cellphone, am amazed at how good looking games you can run on these things nowadays, download a whole bunch of stuff(mostly demos though) and get bored of the whole thing withing hours. The games may look alright but the interface just isn't anywhere near usable. So far I'm very much enjoying gaming on my iPad though. I've spent most of the two last nights playing various games on it. Some games work great(Jellycar, Superbrothers, Gears, Real Racing), some don't work well at all(NOVA2, Resident Evil 4, RX Matchup). Pressing a button on a touchscreen just isn't the same thing as pressing one on a gamepad. There's no physical feedback, you just have to watch the game to figure out if it did indeed register the buttonpressing. A separate gamepad that you could plug into your iPad would be a cool thing to have.

Enough philoziphizing about contolschemes, here are some cool things I've gotten:

Djay - the iPhone version was on sale for 79 cents two days ago and it might still be so all you wannbe Mix Master Mike's out there hurry up and get this thing. I've spent more time with this app than anything else on my iPad so far. Figuring out how to scratch, learning by doing. The song-lister helpfully lists the BPM of all the songs in your musiclibrary so finding songs with the same speed is easy and even if it's not exactly the same you can still sync the tracks up by speeding up or slowing down the individual cuts. A lot of what I mix up sounds like shit but sometimes, just sometimes, I stumble on two tracks that work brilliantly together and I'm scraching and looping and crossfading and feeling like a superstar DJ. With my sunglasses on, in my bedroom, at night.

Jet Car Stunts (iPhone game) - Ever wondered what happens when you strap a jet-engine on a F1 car and try to jump it between a set of skyhigh floating platforms? Then get this game and find out! I've only played the lite version yet but enjoyed it very much. The gameplay is a lot like Trackmania except you have more control of your car when it's airborne in this.

Superbrothers - looks fantastic. Plays well. Tries to be funny but doesn't really pull it off. After having played the first chapter(about 30 min) the game tells me I'm 17% through the whole game.

@Matthew: that's ok. I'm finding out that plenty of iPhone games are perfectly playable as well. And if they're free than that's double-awesome. :)

addink on 5/5/2011 at 10:09

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I've played (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/catan/id335029050?mt=8) Catan on the iPhone a lot. It plays very well. In single player mode the different AI's use different strategies and -if you set the animations to 'turbo'- a single game can be quite quick (<30 mins), try that with the boardgame.
For multiplayer it only has a hotseat setup, which involves a lot of handing back and forth of the phone/pad, especially when trading. Still it's fun.


Haven't played Carcassonne on an iDevice yet, but it generally receives very positive reviews. It does feature a number of multiplayer setups, internet, local network. At $10 it's kinda pricey for an app of this type, especially since they started out at $5 only to double the price once they added HD support.

Renzatic on 7/5/2011 at 02:25

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Oh wow! I forgot about Enviro-Bear. Now that I've sold out to Apple, I can play it now! :D

Selling out, by the way, doesn't suck as much as I thought it would. I'm pretty much the same person I was before I bought an iPhone. It's just that now I get a little bit pissed at Google and all their cheap ass Android phones for stealing the concept of a portable communications device from Apple.

And...well...I had more, but this virus ridden piece of shit Windoze machine ate my goddamn paper again. At first I was like 0_0, then I was like 0_o. I really wish I had a computer That Just Worked.

Renzatic on 8/5/2011 at 20:40

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I've found one interesting game, if you're interested in those oldschool first person dungeon crawlers from the early-mid 90's.

(http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-quest-gold/id345293120?mt=8) The Quest

It's about as generic as you can get as far as the setting is concerned. You've got the usual medieval bandits, dragons, and magic BS that's been seen a thousand times before in a thousand other games. But that doesn't stop it from being a surprisingly deep and entertaining little title.

If this sounds like the sort of thing you'd be into, then grab the demo and give it a go(search for Quest lite on the app store). It offers up about 3-4 hours of playtime from the beginning, and lets you port your character to the full game when you're done.

Chimpy Chompy on 8/5/2011 at 23:21

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good, we need to keep an eye on him in case a Tornado carries him off!