A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 27th
Things are going better now after the disaster of the previous season. My batting average is up, my team, though seemingly doomed to mid-table obscurity, are at least doing better than last season and my coach even tells me I’m awesome now and again.
There’s no way on earth my popularity is going to be high enough to let me continue to play after the end of the tenth season, so I’ll probably just delete my player and start again. I suppose it’s possible I may play some actual full games of baseball sometime, but I just love this mode so much that I never seem to want to.
Trixel (iPhone)
Jul 27th
If there’s any game that I probably shouldn’t have spent money on, it’s Trixel. It’s not that it’s a bad game – far from it. It’s actually a very nice implementation of a good idea. The trouble is, I am terrible at it. It requires planning several steps in advance, something my poor, dim brain just isn’t cut out for.
I play a few levels, then my brain shuts down and decides that I’m not allowed to, you know, think and I get annoyed and turn the game off and go and play something that requires no thought while my brain lies back on a chaise lounge and fans itself for a while.
Zombieville USA Lite (iPhone)
Jul 27th
A simple shooter. Move left, move right, fire your weapon, kill zombies.
You can duck into houses to avoid the zombies and find cash or ammo, but there’s a not a lot to it. It’s good fun in short blasts and, as you can see, it looks lovely. Simplicity isn’t a bad thing in iPhone games, either. Some of the games I play most are entirely lacking when it comes to advanced mechanics or variety. So why haven’t I bought Zombieville? Well, mainly because Zombieville just seems to lack some spark or hook to keep me playing. Also, it costs £1.19 when, in the current climate, it feels very much like a 59p game.
Pipe Mania Lite (iPhone)
Jul 24th
I have very fond memories of Pipe Mania (or at least its clones, if not the original game), so when I saw it was on sale for 59p I nearly bought it. Just in the very nick of time, though, I noticed there was a Lite version, so I tried that instead.
First up, it ran like an absolute dog until I rebooted my phone – the first game I’ve had that trouble with. Quite possibly luck of the draw, rather than inherently wrong with the game, mind you.
Anyway, post-reboot it all seems to work as it should. I got through the training levels without any problems… but then it took me to an Arcade level, where things got hard. These levels are bigger than the screen and scroll automatically, with you having to keep the ooze on the screen. If it falls off the side, you fail. Needless to say, I failed. It seems to be a way to keep you constantly on edge, in contrast to the more sedate pace of what I consider to be the traditional levels, where you only ever feel that way if you’re doing badly. I need to adjust my expectations of the game now.
Car Jack Streets Lite (iPhone)
Jul 24th
Take a look.
Yes, it’s a top-down GTA clone. I’ve just spent half an hour so trying out the Lite version. It’s been quite well-received and I can see why. It’s not as good as GTA, but it’s a thoroughly decent stab at making a basic GTA game on an iPhone. It’s just not got any sort of magic, judging from my time with it. Nothing’s wrong – except the horrific default steering controls, which you can thankfully change – but guns don’t really kick, collisions are just vaguely bouncy things that happen, jumping over a river feels like stepping over a puddle…
The current price of £1.19 feels about right to me. I don’t think I’ll be buying. I recently gorged myself on the feast that was Chinatown Wars, this feels more like a packet of ready salted crisps next to that game’s fully loaded baked potato. Or to make another tortuous analogy, if GTA is a beautiful woman, Car Jack Streets is the same woman, just without her skin. It’s basically almost exactly the same, but you wouldn’t want to, you know…
It’s a good effort, I think, and all props to the developers for making a playable GTA clone on the iPhone, but it’s not really enough for me. It’s more interesting because of where it is rather what it is, I reckon.
Also, from what I’ve read, your game ends if you don’t make payments to your loan shark on time, very much limiting how much you can actually bugger about. I don’t like the sound of that – and it’s something the developers have said will be changed for the upcoming DSi release.
Anyway, all this is just based on the Lite version of the game, so you might as well try it for yourself for nowt and see if I’m talking crap or not.
FaceFighter Lite (iPhone)
Jul 24th
It’s a simple first-person fighting game. The hook is that you can use photos of faces and put them in the game. Now, I don’t think I’m actually comfortable with beating up real people I know in a game – it’s a long time since my friends and I named all the different types of car in Spy Hunter after teachers from our school – so I tested it out with a picture of me in last year’s Halloween costume.
It seems to work and is at least briefly diverting, but I really don’t think it’s for me. Though I suppose I could always download an image of Piers Morgan…
geoDefense (iPhone)
Jul 24th
I am stuck on this level.
But not frustratingly stuck, no. Happily stuck. I try different things – in this case I was trying a few high level towers, rather than lots of cheaper ones – and I enjoy myself. I don’t get annoyed with the game or myself, I just shrug and try again. Over and over and over again. I’ll beat it one day, then it’ll be on to the next. I hope I get stuck on that level for a while, too.
Big Top Ten (iPhone)
Jul 24th
This got an update last night. The bad news is that you have delete the game from your iPod before installing it or it won’t work properly. This means you lose your high score and unlocked Achievements.
The good news is that this update adds support for Feint, so Achievements and high scores are now kept online. After downloading the update I made it my mission to beat my old high score as soon as possible. After a few games I managed it – and pretty much doubled it into the bargain.
Submitting my score online, I was very happy to see that I was ninth in the global leaderboard.
Okay, that’s not because I’m good, but because I was one of the first to install the update and go online with the game, but still. I’ll take what I can get. Also, I’ve already unlocked all the Achievements I had before the update – and more. So I’m happy.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 24th
Oh dear. The sixth season of my quest to become a star baseball player isn’t going well. I’m not doing too badly myself, pretty much keeping my batting average at the .278 level. I know that’s actually really rubbish, but by my standards, I’m happy. I’m building up my stats when I can and I seem to be getting better.
The trouble is, I’m not able to build stats a lot of the time because I have to waste training time by going on dates to raise my morale. You see, your morale is based on your team’s performance – and my team, the Dragons, are doing incredibly badly this season, sitting one place off the bottom of the league with only four games to go. It’s a problem – I can’t be a great player in this team right now, but I can’t change teams either. Loyalty’s a bitch.
Underworlds Lite (iPhone)
Jul 24th
A Diablo-like with a sensible, though not perfect, interface. It seems to work well, actually, and I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time with it. (Well, except when it crashed the first time I tried to enter a room in the crypt.)
You’ve got a virtual pad for moving, or you can click on the screen to move your chap. To target friends and enemies, you can either click on them directly, or just click the Target button to start attacking/talking to the nearest monster/person of interest. Likewise, you can click on dropped loot to pick it up or just click the Loot button, which hoovers up everything nearby. There’s lots of equipment to find, skills to learn, everything you’d expect.
As it’s only 59p right now I may well pick it up – even though it sends you into the cellar of a pub to kill rats within two minutes of the game starting. I know it’s a knowing wink from the developers – with a twist, of sorts, even – but even so.
