A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Vanguard Storm Lite (iPhone)
Jul 20th
A sequel of sorts to Crystal Defenders, this puts a new spin on the defense genre.
The playing field is a grid, with monsters coming in from the left and, at least in the Lite version, moving one square to the right each turn. If any get to the last square on the right, you lose the level. To stop them you’ve got some fighters and mages and such. Every turn you can move each fighter to any square on the right-hand side of the grid. Soldiers only attack the square in front of them, mages attack from range, archers shoot diagonally, etc. You can’t, however, spend too long pondering your moves, as you only get a short amount of time every turn to move everyone before the next turn kicks in.
It’s fun, it’s fresh, it looks good, it uses Final Fantasy characters… it’s got an awful lot going for it. It’s just that in the current climate, £2.99 is a lot of money for an iPhone game. Yes, I know, £2.99 for a game is cheap, but when smaller, more desperate developers are falling over themselves to make their games as cheap as possible, £2.99 starts to look expensive. It’s a ridiculous situation, yes, but that’s the way things are right now.
Zenonia Lite (iPhone)
Jul 20th
SNES-style action RPG with colourful, well-designed graphics.
At first, I hated it. There were endless cut scenes before I actually got to play – and they felt endless even though I was skipping them. I skipped one and another came along. It was getting silly when I finally broke through into the actual game… where things were even worse. The controls felt awful – with the virtual d-pad sending me flying randomly about the screen. Having to line myself up to talk to people was impossible. I didn’t know where to find out what I was doing or how to do it. And it wouldn’t let me leave the village to go and kill things before I’d done a quest I didn’t know anything about.
Awful, awful, awful game.
It did, however, grow on me. I took the speed down a bit, which helped me learn the controls. I found out what I was meant to be doing. I got used to the menus. I managed to leave the village and do some “kill X of Y” and “collect X of Y from the dead bodies of Z” quests. It all came together and I ended up thoroughly enjoying the game until the Lite version ended.
There’s only one thing stopping me from buying the full game, really – will I actually play an RPG on the iPhone? Won’t I just start up my quick-fire games instead and leave it to rot? I have to decide quickly – the game’s on sale at half price right now and I think it’s going back up to full price any time now.
Pocket God (iPhone)
Jul 20th
This is one of the darlings of the iPhone. A hugely popular little app that lots of people love and that gets frequent and meaningful updates. I wish I liked it more.
There’s a couple of islands where some pygmies live. You can kill them in initially-amusing ways, help them out with firewood and stuff, try to kill a lot of them at once to earn Achievements (using the cross-game Feint system) or, er, well, there doesn’t seem to be much more to do and for me it’s not enough.
It certainly looks nice. In that picture I’ve created a hurricane, which is throwing my little pygmy chaps around. It was fun, the first two or three times. But without any real consequences it just all feels a bit flat to me – I just don’t care about the little chaps. I should check for any Achievements I’ve not yet earned, but I don’t feel invested enough to even do that.
There is hope, though. The next update should see the first real, proper mini-game being added to the game. It should be the first of many. I’ll check out once it’s been updated, but I doubt I’ll play it again before then.
Droplitz (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Two things about Droplitz, both illustrated in the picture below.
1) My high score is probably not very good, but without online leaderboards it’s hard to tell. Still, it’s a good three thousand higher than my previous high score.
2) The front-end is a bit dull.
Good job the game’s so blindingly good then, really.
Skybound (iPhone)
Jul 20th
One nice thing about the lovely Skybound is that, as well as just going for the best score, there are some challenges to try and complete. Think Achievements and, well, you’re exactly right. The game doesn’t need them, being all the game anyone could need already, but they’re a nice addition.
I’d like to say I completed that challenge after lots of hard work and perseverance, but it just popped up randomly one game. Still, hooray!
Dotopop (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Hardly worth blogging about this one, quite frankly, but rules are rules.
I got past the level I was stuck on, did a few more, stopped playing. I really should consider only blogging about games I play for more than fifteen minutes, or something.
Alien Invaders (iPhone)
Jul 20th
This has been reduced to the bargain price of FREE! for a day or so to drum up some interest. The developer seems to feel that if people play it, then they’ll spread the word and people will buy it when the price goes back up. It might just work, because forum people seem to be pretty positive about the game.
I, in contrast, don’t like it much.
You tilt (or use a virtual pad) to move left and right and tap the screen to shoot. Between rounds you can upgrade your ship. It’s a nice system, actually, but there’s one huge flaw in the game for me… I’m awful at it. I’ve heard it really gets good after several levels, but I’m stuck on level seven. I just can’t avoid the enemy fire for the life of me. Sigh.
Baseball Slugger: Home Run Race 3D (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Despite playing a lot of 9 Innings and Superstars, I didn’t neglect Baseball Slugger. I played a few rounds of the Arcade mode, but I mainly played online.
I did, sometimes see this screen.
But more often I saw this one.
I got enough golden balls to complete my Jaguars costume and buy a new bat, though, which was nice.
9 Innings: Pro Baseball Lite (iPhone)
Jul 20th
After playing some Baseball Superstars Lite I tried out 9 Innings: Pro Baseball Lite.
It looks superficially similar to Baseball Superstars, but with a slightly more realistic look. That sums up how it plays, too. You don’t get any pirates or nurses playing baseball in this, just athletic-looking men. The pace is slower, the pitching requires that you time button presses and it seems a lot easier to mess up your fielding and it’s a lot harder to hit the ball anywhere useful. It lacks the mode where you create a player and play as them, but you get special tasks to perform in games to gain points to upgrade your coach.
It, like Baseball Superstars, is a very good game and I played it a lot. I think I’m coming down on the side of Baseball Superstars, mainly because I like the RPG-type mode and find it easier and quicker to play, but I’ve not made decision yet and both games seem very worth £1.79.
Baseball Superstars Lite (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Baseball Slugger is, as I’ve mentioned, all kinds of awesome. However, I’ve had a hankering for a fuller baseball game, where you’ve got teams and nine innings and you run around bases and all that. After some research online it seems my top pick, Konami’s Power Pros Touch, isn’t available in the UK and there’s no demo of the official MLB game, to which there has been a varied response online.
So that basically left with me two contenders – Baseball Superstar and 9 Innings: Pro Baseball, both of which have fairly generous Lite versions available. First off, I tried Baseball Superstars Lite.
It’s a fast and furious arcade baseball game, with super-deformed players, non-human super players and some RPG elements. It also runs at an incredibly fast pace. I enjoyed it very much indeed – especially the part where you create a player, play as only him and then go on dates and train up between games. Very promising indeed, though in all the time I spent playing over the weekend, which was a lot, I never worked out how to play as my super players.
