A Gaming Diary
iPhone
iDrop Dead Lite (iPhone)
Sep 22nd
After ten minutes with iTubes, I spent far too long playing iDrop Dead Lite. It’s based on a Flash game, which you can play HERE. For some reason I never really got on with the mouse controls in that version, but the iPhone version seems to work much better.
Maybe it’s just me.
Anyway the Lite version gives you two levels to play around in. You have a cute little bear chap and you have to cause him as much damage as possible. Each level seems to have four goals. From memory they are:
1) Detach the head.
2) Detach the head and have it fly through a marked zone on the level.
3) Score over a certain number of points.
4) Completely dismember the bear.
Something like that, anyway.
Basically, you throw the poor little guy around.
Heads fly.
Saw blades cut down to the bone, then turn the bone into powder.
All good, dirty fun and getting the goals on each level proved to be very compulsive. Beyond the “cute animals + gore” factor, you’ve actually got an interesting physics-based puzzle game. It’s Rob Zombie to iBlast Moki’s Frank Sinatra, or something.
Anyway, full version is only 59p, so it’s been bought.
iTubes (iPhone)
Sep 22nd
Had a quick go of Time Attack here in the office, where I have a solid GPRS phone signal, but no wifi. No, the score didn’t get recorded, despite OpenFeint running fine.
Anyway, enjoyed the game itself, though I think I got stuck at the end, unable to make any paths. (They have to be over two tiles long.)
My fault for using my power ups too early, perhaps, but it would be nice if the game would allow a way out – or even end your game early – if there’s nothing you can do.
Of course, it’s possible I missed something obvious. You can check the screenshot above and see.
iTubes (iPhone)
Sep 22nd
Right, I’m going to do a lot of complaining in this post, so I’ll get this out the way first – the core game of iTubes is absolutely ace. It’s the only game I played last night and the “rotate blocks to make pathways” mechanic fits me to a tee. I love it, even if I don’t quite understand when bonuses are awarded.
So, what have I got to moan about?
Well, the first thing is that games go on for a minimum of ten minutes and there’s no way to save. You have to play the whole game in one go. For an iPhone, that’s pretty unacceptable. But the developer has said he plans to let you save in a future update, so I can let that go for now.
The second thing is, well, the game uses OpenFeint. You know the problems I have with that. The actual interface to OpenFeint has got a lot better lately, with the new version actually showing your position on the global leaderboards. If it worked, it would be pretty great.
I had some many problems with it last night, though. It was twittering my achievements fine, for the most part. Once it failed, but that seemed to get cached and went through when I next started the game.
My problem is with high scores. I was mainly playing Time Attack last night and made some decent scores, I think. However, none of those scores got recorded.
Some people managed to get scores recorded, but not me.
I didn’t often get error messages, but once I saw this screen.
Anyway, as I test, I tried Classical Hard mode. After playing I went to OpenFeint and saw the screens below.
That said, when I checked this morning, although I still had no Time Attack scores, my Classical Hard mode score was on the global leaderboard. So that was just a delay, then, and not a real problem.
I’m not really sure what the problem is. Are game developers just not checking for errors properly? Does OpenFeint actually have a way to check for errors? Are the scores failing to upload without an error somehow? I don’t know.
The only thing that may possibly be an issue is that in my house my phone signal comes and goes all the time, but my wifi connection is, as far as I’m aware, solid. Does losing the phone connection somehow put OpenFeint in an offline state, even though I still have a wifi connection? I don’t know.
It’s very annoying, though, whatever it is.
Pajatzo (iPhone)
Sep 21st
Apparently this is a very common form of gambling in Finland and the iPhone version is now free.
You shake to fire coins, then tilt to try and make them go through the slots to pay out money. Takes about thirty seconds to figure it out, don’t worry.
If you like that sort of thing, I think you’ll probably like it.
Um, yeah.
Against The Fire! (iPhone)
Sep 21st
Despite some stiff competition from some excellent games, Against The Fire! walks away with the award for Most-Played Game of the weekend.
It’s another twin stick shooter from the Alive 4-ever team, but I think I prefer it.
Instead of arenas, you have increasingly complex levels, with rooms and corridors and dead ends.
Instead of zombies, you fight cute little fireballs.
Every mission is an escort mission. You have to find one or more citizens trapped in a burning building and lead them to safety. Job done, you move on to the next level. There aren’t any experience points or upgrades or anything like that, which means no grinding of existing levels just to survive. (Though can always go back and play old levels for a better score, should you wish.)
Not that it’s an easy game. It starts off that way, but I’m about half-way through now and am having to try levels multiple times, working out the best routes and desperately trying to protect the citizens on the walk back to the safety zone.
It’s colourful, great fun and the controls have never once been an issue. It won’t last forever – as I said, I’m nearing the half-way point already – but it’s definitely not a short game and it costs a mere 59p.
Run (iPhone)
Sep 21st
Ha!
I hadn’t played this wonderful game since since I got my new iPhone because I was mad at having lost my high score.
I’m over that now, though, so started it back up. I was rubbish at first, but soon got a score of nearly five hundred, pretty much doubling my previous best score on my old phone.
Excellent.
Sorry that the screen shot is from the very beginning of the game, but once you start playing there’s no time to stop and take pictures.
Unify (iPhone)
Sep 21st
Played a lot of this over the weekend. Thoroughly enjoyable stuff, though I’ve still not finished Normal mode, nor even come close.
Inevitably, though, I’ve been having problems with OpenFeint. Yeah, that’s a shocker, I know. It logs me in when I start the game, but then often fails to record high scores and achievements. It’s a real pain, but at least Unify actually has proper local scoreboards, so OpenFeint is just an extra on top of the rest, not a necessity.
iBlast Moki (iPhone)
Sep 21st
I love that this keeps changing.
I found myself in a strange underwater world, where light things float up and heavy things sink down, leading to some very interesting puzzles.
After that, I found myself back on dry land, but now, as well as bombs, I have balloons I can use to make things float.
My general way of playing this now is to do a level, get scared by the next one and quit the game. Then, a few minutes later I’ll start it up again and be put back exactly where I left off. No menus, nothing – straight into the game. I’ll realise the level wasn’t as hard as it looked, though it’ll probably take a far bit of experimentation, then I’ll see the next level, quit out and the cycle begins anew.
It’s fabulous.
4×4 Jam (iPhone)
Sep 21st
This is great in small bursts.
A race here, a race there, just start it up, have three minutes of fun, then put it down for a while.
Played like that it’s actually pretty brilliant and I still love the extreme bounciness of it.
I am so glad I bought this game. It was good before the update, now it’s just great.
Townrs Defender Lite (iPhone)
Sep 21st
I wish I had liked this more than I did.
To start with, it doesn’t quite fit into any established genres, which is refreshing. It’s a bit like a tower defense game, a bit like an action game, not quite either.
Creeps come in from entrances and try to get to your castle gate. There are towers in their way. However, you don’t sit back and place towers, you control a single hero, rushing about the level, killing enemies before they can destroy your towers and, eventually, your castle. You get experience points and can level up your skills and it seems like the sort of thing I would like.
So why didn’t I? Well, I found it slightly awkward to trigger attacks and the cool down on of them means a mis-timed or mis-placed attack can cause you real problems. I felt like the difficulty came from the control system and not the game itself, which is never a good thing.
There’s probably an injustice here. Even a few weeks ago, I might have played more, really trying to get to grips with it properly and maybe even doing so. Right now, though, after twenty minutes or so of struggle I just gave up and deleted the game. I’ve got so many things to play that if a game still feels awkward after a few minutes I’m not going to go back. It’s harsh, but that’s the way things are on the App Store right now.
Still, it’s an interesting little game and you can try it for free, so it might be worth a download to see if you get on with it better than I did.
