A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Dungeon Solitaire (iPhone)
Mar 2nd
Apart from Words With Friends, this was the only game I played last night. I even got an achievement for killing the Ice Dragon. (If you’ve played the game, I’m sure a little spark of hatred lit up when you read his name.) I also won a game in less than ten moves, through sheer fluke.
Not in too bad a position there, I don't think.
A couple of times I’ve had games that couldn’t be completed – the only cards left were hero cards, which got forced off the board when played, so added back to the deck, so came back again and were forced off the board again – but that’s a minor annoyance. No problem to quit out and restart.
You’ve got to remember this is a solitaire game, so games are decided as much on luck as tactics. If you hate playing solitaire, it won’t appeal at all, but otherwise – go buy. Now.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Mar 2nd
...for the memories.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. I couldn’t think of a decent caption. Still playing Words With Friends several times a day, still got loads of games on the go. Still going for Triple Word spaces whenever I can, as a spoiler tactic as much as anything.
I’m not doing so badly, either. I thought I was going through a bit of a rough patch, but I’ve actual won six out of my last ten games. Not too bad.
The game crashed last night and wouldn’t start up again – just kept crashing out. I deleted it and redownloaded it and when I logged in everything was fine, though, so no harm done.
Dungeon Solitaire (iPhone)
Mar 1st
A wholehearted, unqualified recommendation here. Dungeon Solitaire is a brilliant game that works on the toilet, in bed, on the sofa, at your desk and sitting outside the TK Maxx changing rooms while your wife tries on swimsuits.
Spend two minutes going through the tutorial and this screen will make sense.
It may look like a collectible card battling game, but it’s very much not. The clue’s in the title. It’s a solitaire game. It’s got its own deck and its own rules, but it’s all about turning over cards and trying to win. There’s more scope for tactics than traditional solitaire games and it’s got a very robust set of rules that sound immensely complicated on paper, but which are made very clear by a quick tutorial.
You can add to the game by buying cards to add to your deck as DLC, but there’s no need to do so. The main deck is good enough to stand up to repeated play.
The interface may lack polish, but the game itself is fantastic.
There are also OpenFeint leaderboards and a good list of achievements and overall this is a very, very good solitaire game. It being a card game, there will of course be times where you can’t win, but that’s common to all these games and no reason to steer clear. I really do urge you to take a chance and spend £1.19 on this game, because I honestly don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Astro Ranch (iPhone)
Mar 1st
A small, Harvest Moon style farming game, that’s unfortunately been released in an appallingly unfinished state.
There are crashes aplenty, a terrible lack of feedback when player actions fail and the social networking part of the game simply doesn’t work right now.
An example. I started the game, went through the tutorial, then spent all my money on seeds. I spent a good twenty minutes trying to dig the ground so I could plant the seeds, but it wouldn’t work. I used my shovel, my character walked over to the square I’d chosen, then did nothing. There was absolutely no explanation of why it wouldn’t work, but I eventually found out online that you need to pay to dig squares and I had no money. A little pop up explaining the problem would have saved me an awful lot frustration – and when a game loses that amount of goodwill so early, it’s hard to get back. (It does tell you that it costs money to dig land in some text help you can find in your house, but it was in the Crops sections, which I didn’t check, rather than the Basics section, which is where it tells you how to use your tools.)
Give him cannonballs. Hope game doesn't crash.
Another example. There’s a chap who wants you to find three cannonballs. I wandered around the tiny game world, found the balls, then took them to him. I gave the balls to him… and the game crashed. I went back in (the game had saved the previous day, so I didn’t have to repeat too much), then tried again. This time when I gave him the balls, the guy told me to go find the balls, then immediately thanked me for bringing the balls to him.
There are other niggles, such as path-finding bugs that send your character in the opposite direction to where you want to go. The controls need work too, as sometimes you need to be annoyingly precise about exactly where you position your character and I really don’t like having to tap the screen to move. It’s all right when moving down the screen, but when going up the screen my finger gets in the way. I don’t like having to shake my iPhone to shake trees, either.
All a bit flakey and unfinished, in other words. Luckily I’ve not yet hit any bugs that stop my game from loading, as others have reported online.
There's decent farming underneath it all.
Once it’s all fixed, there’s going to be a good game here, but I don’t think it’ll ever rival Harvest Moon. I’m not a fan of the sci-fi setting, as having made-up names for vegetables and animals makes everything less intuitive, and the game world is surprisingly small, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the game design.
After a few updates this might be worth getting, but until its been fixed and tweaked it’s impossible to recommend.
Giana Sisters (iPhone)
Mar 1st
Giana Sisters began life as a Super Mario Bros clone. Nintendo didn’t like it very much and it was, I believe, removed from sale.
It’s now back on the iPhone. Despite not being an exact clone any more, it doesn’t do much to hide its main influence. There are enemies to stomp, blocks to hit with your head and a power up that lets you shoot fireballs.
If you get all the red gems in a world you can access a bonus level.
It’s all very playable and nice-looking and is more than merely decent, while not rivaling Nintendo in terms of level design or feel. It works well enough, though I wish the left and right controls were a little higher up the screen, but the lack of inertia means the character movement feels more workmanlike than inspired.
If you’re expecting a dodgy Mario rip-off, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you’re expecting something to rival Mario, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a very good game, but I can’t love it.
Final Fantasy (iPhone)
Mar 1st
Didn’t play as much of this as I’d intended over the weekend, but I managed to do some wandering and found another town.
Yarr!
The people there were scared of some horrible pirates who were hanging around, so I went and beat them up. (Violence, of course, solves everything.) The pirate captain was so impressed that he vowed to change his ways and gave me his pirate ship, which was nice of him.
I’ll be sailing the seven seas when I next play, then, unless I just wander around outside town fighting for a while to level up.
Orbital (iPhone)
Mar 1st
I don't know why I keep using new screenshots, you wouldn't notice if I used an old one.
One of my friends beat my Gravity high score, so I had to try and reclaim by top spot on my friends leaderboard. Unfortunately I failed, so he’s still there, taunting me. I’ll get him one day, though. One day…
Final Fantasy (iPhone)
Feb 26th
Sod the stupid goblins, time to play properly.
Played for about twenty minutes over lunch, which consisted of wandering up to the first dungeon, beating the rubbish boss in two or three rounds, then getting congratulated for my great success. It’s nice to be thanked, but I didn’t even get a free stay at the inn for my troubles.
Chaos Shrine, eh? Sounds nice.
Did get a lute, though. It’s a key item, so I assume it comes into play later in the game. Talking of which, I must remember to go back to the castle and the Chaos Shrine once I’ve got hold of the mysterious Mystic Key. Apparently some elf chap’s been keeping it safe. I assume I’ll run into him at some point.
(As you can probably tell, despite having played and completed this game before, memories of the specifics aren’t exactly flooding back.)
Final Fantasy (iPhone)
Feb 25th
I’ve played a lot of Final Fantasy games, but the only one I’ve completed is the first. (Though I completed the Gameboy Advance version, rather than the NES original.) It was released last night on the iPhone and I bought it, despite the relatively steep £5.49 price, because I’m dying to play through it again. While it was downloading, I read my blog posts about my playthrough of the GBA version to see if there were any hints and the only one I found is that I wished I hadn’t had a thief in my party.
With that in mind, I decided to go with a party consisting of a Warrior and one of each of the mages. I may regret the lack of heavy physical damage dealers in the later game, but we’ll see.
My heroes - Doc, Donna, Rose and Martha.
I haven’t done much so far. I went to see the king, bought some new weapons and magic and ran around killing some goblins. All my characters are up to level three now and I’ll see how much grinding I can stand before I set out on the real adventure. Probably quite a lot, because there’s just something charming about the game, even (especially?) in these early stages.
Setting forth on our adventure.
Running around triggering random encounters, returning to the inn to sleep, it’s all intensely familiar, like a favourite blanket. The nostalgia factor isn’t hurt by the fantastic music and the much-loved sound effects. It’s the gaming equivalent of comfort food.
Who's better - goblins or heroes? There's only one way to find out...
There are a few niggles. The touch screen controls work wonderfully for the most part, but sometimes seem not to register properly, especially when trying to talk to people. It’s as if the hit box is slightly smaller than the sprites you’re trying to click. A very minor issue. Another annoyance is the terrible framerate in the town. It doesn’t hurt the gameplay at all, but it’s very unpleasant to look at.
The little animation when you sleep at an inn still doesn't appear to be skippable.
Whether or not you’ll like this if you’ve not played it before, I don’t know – but four years ago when I played the GBA version I’d never played it before and I loved it then, so it might be worth a go… unless you hate the traditional JPRG mechanics.
Zombie Cannon Carnage (iPhone)
Feb 25th
And that’s it! One hundred percent completion. The last achievement I got was for breaking 250 street lights, soon after the one for calling in ten air strikes.
Yay! Go me!
I’m pleased, of course, but I feel a bit empty now. Still, there’s always high scores to go for.
I’m top of a couple of the leaderboards, but not the main score ones.
Yay! Go me! Again!
Yay! Go me again, again!
I wonder if I’ll have the motivation any more, though? It’ll be interesting to find out. Regardless, I easily got my money’s worth from the game.
