A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Deadshot Free (iPhone)
Aug 20th
Nothing much to this one. You’re frozen to the spot in a snowy wasteland. You can turn around by swiping the screen, but not move. You have three guns – a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle. Nicely-animated zombies approach. You tap them to shoot them – and sometimes you think you’ve tapped them but the game says you haven’t, which I’m happy to put down to my having rubbish fingers, rather than it being a problem with the game. Sometimes extra ammo appears. You tap it to pick it up.
That, dear readers, is all that happens.
Well, okay, sometimes you get told you’ve finished a level and then you start again, with more zombies approaching more quickly.
But that’s really all that happens.
This demo consists of five levels – which, unfortunately, seems to be about when it starts getting properly frantic.
It’s incredibly simple. It’s refreshingly unpretentious. It, like at least 73% of iPhone games, has zombies in it. I enjoyed my brief time with it. I don’t think I’ll buy the full version, but you never know. It’s just got a certain low-rent charm that appeals to me, even though you can imagine proper games with their monocles and top hats and little terrier dogs being very sniffy about the whole thing.
Sentinel: Mars Defence (iPhone)
Aug 20th
I would have thought the game would be called “Sentinel: Mars Defense”, rather than “Sentinel: Mars Defence”, but iTunes is showing the latter. Doing some auto-translation thing, maybe? I don’t mind either way, being quite happy with UK and US English and happy to write this blog in either, or both.
Anyway, that’s not important. Sentinel is a fixed-path tower defense game… or a tower defence game.
Aargh!
I think I’ll stick with the “s” spelling for now, for the genre name, even though it’ll probably cause spluttering from fellow Brits who now think I’m some sort of traitor. In my defence… oh, forget it.
Sentinel is a TD game. I bought it ages ago, but didn’t play it until last night.
First impressions were that it was a solid, uninspiring TD game without anything to recommend it over other games of its type.
Further play cemented those impressions. I mean, it works. It looks quite nice. It’s got a couple of its own ideas – barriers with health, rather than a certain number of lives, and repair droids that can repair those barriers or go off mining resources for you – but that’s about it.
It’s certainly quite addictive, simply because tower defense is an addictive genre and Sentinel doesn’t muck it up. It’s just that the tower selection is utterly bog standard, the upgrades for towers are deeply uninspiring and the enemies are equally standard, for the most part.
If you want a fixed-path TD game, by all means go and spend 59p on this. You’ll get your money’s worth, no question. I might even play it again. I might even find myself playing it a lot. I don’t know yet. It’s a decent game. It’s just that after a couple of hours of play I find it perfectly functional but completely uninspiring.
Str8ts (iPhone)
Aug 20th
And talking of games I don’t have much to write about…
At least now I can say, “Look, after not being able to do a puzzle due to brain issues, now I’m back at full strength.”
And prove it with a screen shot.
I did a couple of levels yesterday, both in less than ten minutes.
I suppose I could once again mention that this is by far my favourite puzzle game on the iPhone, just in case anyone sees this post before any of my others.
I’d be less worried about all this, if it wasn’t taking Blogger ages to upload and generate code for screen shots at the moment. Last week, it was uploading, but didn’t realise it, so never generated the code. Now, if I leave it long enough, it generates the code for me. It might be quicker to cut and paste from earlier entries and go to my site to look for the filenames of the images Blogger’s generated, but that’s such a hassle.
Oh, right, here we go. Now just to move it from the top of the post to where I want it… and we’re done!
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 20th
No, seriously.
I have no idea what to write about this game.
Last night, I played some moves in a game very like Scrabble. This morning, I made some more.
I may even have won or lost a game, but I tend not to remember, as it’s the playing that’s important to me, not the result. (Though I do try to win, obviously.)
The only point to these continuing entries to say “Hey, look, I’m still playing this game!”, because if this blog is any way useful to anyone, it’s to show which games are quick burners and which have legs. Otherwise, I might as well just label some posts as “first impressions” and others as “review” and be done with it.
Real Racing (iPhone)
Aug 19th
Whoa! Whoa! Hang on a minute!
This game is fantastic! Why don’t I play it more often?
I mean, I knew it was great. I’ve played it before, I’m quite happy to recommend it everyone and anyone, but I haven’t actually been playing it.
But why? I’ve just had a few lunchtime races and it’s absolutely brilliant. It controls perfectly, it looks gorgeous, it’s always tense, always exciting, there’s a great sense of speed – everything you need in a racing game.
So why has it been weeks since I last had a go?
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 19th
I also kept up with my Words With Friends games.
Here’s a picture of a game for no real reason, except to make this post look a bit prettier.
Not that it’s an especially pretty game. The graphics display necessary information, though, which is much more important.
Str8ts (iPhone)
Aug 19th
Wasn’t really in the mood for games last night. Not sure why, I was just finding it difficult to concentrate and nothing really appealed.
I did, though, try a Str8ts puzzle. Instead of the ten minutes I was bragging about yesterday, this one took me half an hour, over three different play sessions.
I just kept missing obvious moves and kicking myself when I saw them. It was very odd and unsatisfying.
TowerMadness: 3D Tower Defense (iPhone)
Aug 18th
Downloaded one of the free maps – Invasion. It’s 152 waves of aliens, with three points of entry. Only one exit, though, like all the maps I’ve tried so far, so I build my maze from the end backwards. Seems logical.
I died the first time, but made it through second time. The secret? Nothing special, really. Just a good mix of towers – including dedicated anti-air – and nukes. Lots of nukes.
At the end of it the game uploaded my score and I was 50th in the world! Amazing!
Well, amazing until you realise that’s only on the daily leaderboard. Hmpf. I’ve still got a long way to go.
Anyway, despite still not really knowing about the alien types (though I’m slowly starting to learn just by playing), I had great fun. Most importantly – I played for an hour or so without selling a tower accidentally. Not a single one. Maybe I’ve finally learned not to do that. Let’s hope so.
Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (iPhone)
Aug 18th
All across the vast world wide web you can find people praising this game, so I really don’t need to.
But I will.
I start it up for one level – just one, because I want it to last for a long time – and end up playing for four or five. That’s about my limit, because it does starting feeling a little repetitive by then. I don’t mind overly much, though, because even stopping for half an hour makes the game feel fresh when I come back.
It’s a very good game.
There’s also something of a story. There’s an abandoned manor – can you work out why the Bryce family disappeared? I can’t. I’ve made some things glow. A gravestone and, er, well I can’t remember what else offhand. I don’t know what the glowing means. I don’t know the relevance of the lost items. Was the locket in the well? Why is there a gap in the washing on the line? Does that even mean anything or am I trying to hard?
I get the feeling that I’ll either end the game as baffled as I was at the beginning, or everything will be revealed at the end. I suspect the former. I doubt I’ll be able to work out what happened on my own. If there is an explanation at the end, I may even be disappointed, because the sense that there’s a larger mystery gives the game its atmosphere.
It’s not like Braid, which made you feel stupid… okay, made me feel stupid. It doesn’t seem to be willfully obtuse. It’s just that there is background and there are clues. I may even be trying to read way too much into things – maybe making things glow is just giving me bonus points, or something – but there’s something about the game that makes me feel like I’m not quite seeing everything. And I like that.
Anyway, whatever, it’s a great game, whatever happens with the background story in the end.
TowerMadness: 3D Tower Defense (iPhone)
Aug 18th
Played some more of this last night. I’ve now played for over an hour. 1.16 hours, to be precise, according to the great in-game stat tracking. I finished the Hard level, then the Madness level.
I have two main problems, still.
1) I still keep selling towers by mistake. I’ve worked out why. When you click on a tower a menu pops up. On the left is Sell, on the right Upgrade, at the bottom a little X that lets you close the menu. All well and good. However, you can click on another tower without closing the menu first. This is a good feature, because when things are frantic and you’ve clicked the wrong tower, just being able to quickly click the correct tower without closing the menu can save you a valuable half a second or so. However, sometimes I click the wrong tower, then try to click a tower to its left, only to find myself clicking the Sell button. It’s entirely my fault – and the game wouldn’t work with a confirmation box for selling towers popping up every time you wanted to sell. I really just need to learn to be more careful, but in the heat of the moment that’s a difficult thing to do. Suffice to say, I’m at fault, not the game. I really don’t think the interface, which I actually very much like, needs to be changed to make allowances for my idiocy.
2) I don’t know what the strengths and weaknesses of the different alien types are. Some of the aliens have different hats. This indicates they’re strong against some weapons, weak against others. The game did tell me when I first unlocked them. However, I can’t remember and I can’t find any way to find out about them again. Either this information is completely missing, or I’m missing something. The Guide just shows the different weapons, as far as I can tell, with nothing about enemies. So, I’m just building a good range of towers and hoping that the combination will take out the aliens. Which, to be fair, is probably what I’d do anyway, but it’s annoying not knowing if I should upgrade a flak cannon or a laser from moment to moment.
Those are my problems with the game. To be fair, they are spoiling the experience a little, especially the problem I’m having selling towers by mistake.
Also, I’ve now finished all the levels in the game, after one measly hour.
BUT!
Don’t stop reading yet!
I could go back and try for high scores on the levels I’ve done. The game has all sorts of leaderboards – daily, weekly, all-time, for all the different levels… including the downloadable ones.
Downloadable levels?
Why, yes. I may have completed all the levels included with the game – with rubbish scores – but there are a load of levels to download. The developer left a comment on this blog last night saying that the built-in levels are more training than anything else and the downloadable levels are where it’s at. (Not using those exact words.) I’ll be very interested to try those.
If I can learn which aliens are which and can somehow train myself to stop selling towers by mistake I think I’ll be playing this for a while yet. It doesn’t seem like much at first glance, no, but it’s a real grower. I’m even using the zoomed-in view quite a lot now, despite being all sniffy about it in my initial post. Also, I’m finding it very easy to tell different towers apart now, partly due to being closer to them, partly just by playing the game.
I’m glad I downloaded this game for free. Of course, that promotion has ended and the game is back up to the regular price of £1.79. My current thinking is that it’s not a must-buy, but if you think it looks interested and you’re prepared to withhold judgment until you’ve played for an hour or so, I don’t think you’ll regret the purchase.
The fact that I’ve just written such a huge entry about a game I’ve only played for an hour must mean something, right?
