A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Resident Evil 4 (iPhone)
Jul 31st
Didn’t play any of the story last night, just levels in Mercenaries mode. First I tried out the Pincer Attack level again. I managed to do it, but I was stuck with just a handgun, my back to the wall and some scary enemies advancing on me when the helicopter finally showed up. Very tense stuff.
Though not as tense as the next mission, Sniper’s Hand. It is, as the name implies, a sniper level. You start on a ledge with the rifle and fair amount of ammo. There’s a ladder leading down to the ground that you can kick over. Then it’s a question of picking off the bad guys as they approach. It seems easy at first, but before too long the enemies have got the ladder back up. That’s still okay, though, because you can shoot them and kick it back down. That doesn’t last long, though, and eventually you’ll be unable to get to the ladder as more and more enemies approach and climb up to your ledge. They keep going down, but then the rifle clicks… you’re out of ammunition. Sometimes the enemies drop ammo, but do you dare to try and reach it with enemies approaching? Even if you do, you’ll run out again before long, so you switch to the handgun and keep firing as the final seconds count down, hoping that the rescue helicopter will reach you before the villagers. It’s awesome stuff, it really is.
And I didn’t even mention that now and again enemies can come from behind you and mess up your careful sniping. I’ve played this level a few times and it’s never been less than heart-pounding, terrifying stuff. If I was better at sniping people it would be a lot easier, but also less exciting. I’m actually hoping I don’t get too good at it.
Oh, and it also earns you a huge amount of money, due to the number of enemies and the amount of head shots you get. I’m building up a lot cash, which I’ll use to upgrade my weapons when I go and do the next story level.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Jul 31st
Played a lot last night. Won some games, some lost games, many are still ongoing.
Sometimes the board gets silly.
It’s a great game, this, it really is. It would be nice if it wasn’t so buggy, though. I’ve had tiles stuck in their “move across board” animation and they’ve then appeared on every game board until I’ve restated the game. I once had tiles in my rack appear on top of each other and be unplayable – I could drag some of the tiles to empty spots on my rack, but not play them. That bug lasted through restarts and I eventually had to pass my turn to get past it. There’s also a very common bug where it often won’t apply a double word score to your move on the first turn if you place your word on a DW space. (Unlike Scrabble, the first word isn’t automatically doubled.) Also, sometimes you get a 35-point bonus for using all your tiles and sometimes you don’t.
The bugs can make a difference to the outcome of the game, so they really need to be fixed as soon as possible. It’s a testament to the overall quality of the game that the rampant buginess hasn’t put people off playing.
My Brute (iPhone)
Jul 31st
So, I tried playing My Brute yesterday evening. It got to the title screen, but the button wouldn’t respond, so I couldn’t progress. I tried a few times, rebooted my iPhone, finally got it working, only to find that I hadn’t quite left it twenty-four hours since I last played, so I couldn’t do anything.
Sigh.
Later that evening my iPhone informed me that there was an update, to version 1.7. It adds a new arena and, um, some other stuff I don’t remember, but which didn’t sound especially interesting. By this point I was actually able to play, so I finally got to see my dog in action.
I actually won a few of my fights last night. The dog doesn’t do much damage, but it does add up – and he’s good at taking a hit or two for you.
It’s worth noting, too, that I’m only using one character, when I could have three, so I could actually be playing more if I felt like it. (The game lets you have nine in total, but only if you recruit people to unlock the extra slots. I’ve talked about how much I hate the policy of locking features unless you recruit other players before, but I’ll mention it again. I hate it. It’s rubbish.)
Minigore (iPhone)
Jul 30th
The Touch Arcade forums are not my favourite place on the web. I’ve not found anywhere else with so much chat about iPhone games and there are some good posters, but there’s an awful lot of static in between the good stuff. Recently, an awful lot of that static has been about Minigore, with the anticipation thread especially being nothing more than a churning mass of adolescent hype. A lot of it’s been at least semi-ironic, but there’s no doubt that a lot of people have been hyped up to the eyeballs for the release of this game.
Which, of course, has made me very curious about it. That’s the thing about hype – it works. Oh, in the long term it can backfire, but for getting sales on the day of release there’s nothing like it. Even people, like me, who weren’t caught up in storm have at least heard the thunder claps a few miles down the road.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I bought Minigore because of the hype. And because it was only 59p. And because it’s absolutely bloody gorgeous. Take a look.
It’s not much of an action shot, because there’s no time to take a picture when stuff’s happening, but you should at least be able to tell that it’s a good-looking little game. It’s a simple twin-stick shooter, with a small level and a few different sizes of enemy, with the bigger ones splitting into smaller ones when you shoot them. There’s not very much to it, but what you get it is polished, fast and fun. Think Zombies & Me for a similar amount of game and polish.
It also uses the OpenFeint system for leaderboards. This is good, because it means there actually are leaderboards, but it’s got the usual problem of not showing your position on them. (It’s possible I’ve missed something every time I’ve looked at a Feint-based leaderboard, but I have my doubts.)
The developer is promising many updates in the future, including a co-op mode – though unfortunately that won’t be online. For now, we’ve just got one small level, two guns and a great power-up that turns you into a beast and lets you kill everything you touch for a few satisfying seconds.
So, it’s not the best iPhone game ever, but it is well worth checking out as long as you’re only expecting an unpretentious little shooter. It has to be said, though, that Isotope is the same price and is a much better twin-stick shooter with a lot more going on.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Jul 30th
I lost another game at lunchtime, between goes of I Dig It. No, no, I didn’t lose The Game, just a game of Words With Friends. Sorry for any confusion.
A very close game that I may just had won if I had somewhere useful to put my Z on the last go, but I couldn’t quite manage it.
I Dig It Lite (iPhone)
Jul 30th
So, I tried again. And I’ve spent my entire lunchtime trying again. And again. Oh, I completed the tutorial I got stuck on last night with ease – even though it didn’t seem to actually give me all the instructions this time round – but then I tried the Mini Campaign option, which gives you fifteen minutes to earn $2,000. The wrinkle being that you can’t actually earn $2,000 without spending money. To get your balance above the winning figure you therefore need to balance spending money on your vehicle so you can explore further with saving money towards your goal.
And all the while you’re trying not to die by overheating, smashing up your vehicle or running out of fuel.
It all adds up to a very compelling experience once you’ve worked everything out and I kept going back for another go. Eventually, after many deaths, I managed to hit the magic $2,000 with two minutes and thirty seconds remaining. Phew!
And, yes, for 59p the full version has been purchased.
Draw Race (iPhone)
Jul 30th
It’s a top-down racing game… but with a twist. (Exclamation mark.) You, as the name implies, draw a path for your car with your finger, trying to get the speed right and take the best racing line. When you’ve drawn the required number of laps your car does its best to follow the line you’ve drawn. If you beat the blue car, hooray. If you don’t, try again.
My big, fat fingers aren’t really precise enough for the job, but I’m having great fun with it. Mainly because when you finish a race it compares your time to everyone else’s and tells you what percentage of people you’re better than. On one track I’m better than 56% of people, which is nice. I have, a couple of times, scraped a win and been better than 0% of people. When that happens I try again.
My only concern right now is that I’m unlocking all the tracks very, very quickly and I’m not sure that I’ll want to carry on playing once it’s just a question of racing the same old tracks over and over. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Regardless, for 59p you really should download this, just because it’s new, different and great fun, even if it might only be so for an hour or two.
I Dig It Lite (iPhone)
Jul 30th
People keep recommending this, so I thought I’d give it a go. The first bit of good news is that it’s got a very generous Lite version. So generous that I didn’t finish it after playing for half an hour or so. Unfortunately, at that point I died and it looked like I might have lost all my progress and would have to restart from scratch… which seemed awful at the time, but just writing this has made me want to go back and have another crack at it. Odd. I wasn’t planning to ever play it again.
Anyway, it reminds me of Miner Dig Deep, an Xbox 360 community game I played a while ago. You drill down into the ground to get rocks to sell, then return to the surface to sell them. With the money you make you can refuel, repair and upgrade your mining vehicle. Controls are a bit fussy, but not unplayably so.
The main problem I had was that on each trip down into the ground I was only getting enough rocks to repair and refuel and never seemed to have any money left for upgrades. I was starting to run out of rocks I could reach when I got careless and died. I’m worried that it’s possible to get into an unwinnable state. I’m not sure if I was missing something, if the full game has features to combat this that the Lite doesn’t or if it’s really possible to play for ages and then find you need to restart from the beginning.
I better go back and check sometime, really, rather than indulge in idle speculation that might make me look like a fool.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Jul 30th
Sometimes, you don’t get much luck with your letters.
Ouch. Anyway, I’ve got about fifteen hundred games on the go at the moment and I’m having a wonderful time, even though I’ve just lost a game after winning my first six.
By the way, I will play some games that aren’t on the iPhone again sometime, I promise. I might even turn my 360 on sometime in the next few days. This site hasn’t turned into an iPhone-only blog. It’s just that at the moment I’m doing my daily Animal Crossing and then just enjoying my iPhone games. It’s partly because it’s new and exciting, partly because I’m catching up on a year’s worth of games, partly because it’s a lot easier to play games on a device I always have with me, partly because I can play while the TV’s on and, well, partly because the iPhone is home to some cracking games – that are either very cheap or free.
But it’s also because Words With Friends is as addictive as chocolate-coated crack that comes with a free Batman action figure.
Resident Evil 4 (iPhone)
Jul 30th
Still playing this, still enjoying it. Even when I die. Which happens a lot.
Although, thankfully, not on level four of the story. That’s a big boss fight. A gigantic boss fight, even. Hint, hint, yeah. I was too busy trying not to die to get a screen shot, but my concentration worked. Okay, so I did die once, but I beat the bugger the second time around. The rifle is an awesome weapon in this game.
I’ve not tried the fifth level yet, I’ve just been playing the new levels I’ve unlocked in Mercenaries mode. There’s one, Pincer Attack, that I’m finding quite hard. You’re just given a handgun and a shotgun – no rifle! – and there are enemies that come from multiple directions. I honestly can’t remember if I’ve completed it yet or not.
