The developers at ZodTTD have submitted a version of Quake to the App Store. In a few days we will find out if the incredibly popular Jailbreak app will be available in the official App Store.
If the app does get approved it will have network play options, downloadable content and more.
I wouldn’t suggest anyone get their hopes up though because I don’t know how likely it is that the game will actually make it to the store. One can still hope, and since the game looks super fun and would be free it would be a big win for both Apple and iPhone users alike.
EA may have the whole DRM thing wrong but they seem to be on the right track when it comes to they’re opinions on piracy.
An EA rep:
“Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale…. We’ve talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy, or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus.”
Well, they’re half right. On one side they are correct not all and maybe not even most of the people who download Spore from Bittorrent represent a lost sale, but they are clearly wrong by making it seem like a lot of the people who download it end up with the game not working.
It’s not difficult to download Spore from a BitTorrent network and have it working in just a few hours and anyone who downloads it and ends up with a virus should really spend a couple of minutes looking around before they download the first torrent they see (which by the way, if you search for “spore” on The Pirate Bay, the first result is in fact a working copy of the game).
Digital Legend’s Kroll has finally been released to the App Store. The developer provides this feature list:
KROLL will immerse gamers in amazing 3-D action with its groundbreaking technology built explicitly for the iPhone touch screen with its full graphics capabilities.
Epic environments enhance the iPhone gameplay experience with hectic fighting at the mountainside, inside molten magma mines, and high above active volcano in magical floating prison. To learn the secrets behind the legend of KROLL, gamers must conquer mythic enemies and creatures.
Bash’n’Crush your way through nine hectic levels destroying ever increasing amount of enemy hordes and play through awesome cinematic boss battles.
Extend your experience through 3 difficulty level (Normal, Hard and Insane) for more and more crushing action. Scoring system keeps track of your progress.
iPhone and iPod touch special features: Use the accelerometer of your device to activate special attacks and the touch screen for controlling your character.
The game looks gorgeous but one of the problems I am having with it, in regards to my decision on to buy it or not, is that I haven’t seen anyone talking about gameplay. It seems everyone is spending all their time talking about how this game is the best looking game for the iPhone but I haven’t seen anyone talking about how fun it is to actually play. If this game is fun then that is one thing but I’m not going to spend $7.99 on a game thats only purpose is to show off your device.
Not only has EA announced that Spore Origins for the iPhone will be released on September 7 (it is already available for 5G iPods, iPod Classics, and 3G iPod Nanos) but they also announced that they are currently developing 9 more games for the iPhone.
Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed Undercover, and The Sims 3. Many of these titles have already been mentioned by EA but there are a couple added to this most recent list. I’m most excited for SimCity, The Sims 3, and Yahtzee Adventures.
I’m incredibly excited for the iPhone as a gaming platform and wouldn’t be surprised if we see it up there next to the PSP and Nintendo DS in terms of how people think of it as a gaming platform. From the games we have already seen for the iPhone it is clear that it is an immensely powerful device and with time the games will only get better.
Officially today you can now pick up an Xbox 360 for (what I consider to be) that magical price point of $199.99.
This bundle includes the console itself (without hard drive), a 256MB memory unit, a wireless controller, Xbox LIVE Silver membership, Composite AV cable, 5 Arcade LIVE titles: Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Uno.
So if you are looking to pick up an Xbox 360 either as a gift for holidays or just for yourself right now is a great time to grab one.
Shortly after news that some stores in Australia broke the street date for Spore we hear that Spore has already been cracked and is now being traded on BiTtorrent networks (*cough* The Pirate Bay *cough*).
The cracking group called RELOADED didn’t seem to take that long to crack the SecuROM anti-pirating software used by Spore. There are now thousands of people downloading it and it’s 3 days before it is even supposed to be for sale in North America.
There have been several racing games for the iPhone, from Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D to GTS World Racing, but Firemints crack at the genre might be the most realistic and possibly the best yet.
Firemint is an Australian developer that has developed this game with accelerometer steering and multiplayer modes over Wifi. The game also allows you to upload your best racing times to a central website that will let you compete with others.
What I find very interesting is that the lap data can be converted into replay videos that are sent to YouTube. The game will be out shortly before Christmas of this year, but there is no word yet on pricing.
De Blob was a game that I was really interested in when I first heard about it. The basic premise is that you are a blob that picks up different colored paint and rolls around coloring buildings. Of course that isn’t the whole game you also do things like race from point to point before the time runs out, have to crush Inkts.
The story within the game basically goes like this, a takes all the color away from the city and you have to bring it back by rolling around painting buildings. You also run into “Revolutionaries” which will give you various missions like having to crush 4 Inkts in a set amount of time or paint 6 buildings red in a set amount of time.
The game is very simple and easy to pick up and play, there are two ways to control your character you can either enable tilt controls which let you tilt the device to move him around or you can tap on the screen in front of him to make him go that direction. The only other thing you need to know how to do is tap the circle on the bottom of the screen to crush Inkts.
You can also gain bonus points for collecting four letters that spell out the word “Blob.”
I think everyone should head to the App Store and pick up this game it is well worth the $7.99 and maybe even the first game that I’ve been able to say that about. I don’t usually give a score based on a number scale for iPhone games but if I was to give one for this game it would have to be an 8/10.
Yesterday GTS World Racing was released in the app store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The game costs $7.99 and is actually pretty fun.
I haven’t had that much time to spend with it but it is both challenging and fun. The game is pretty simple, it’s a straight up racing game but you tilt the device forward to accelerate, backwards to brake or go in reverse, left to steer left, and right to steer right… like i said, very simple.
The game lets you choose from 3 different car types, 16 locations, 64 tracks, 4 different play modes, and 4 difficulty levels, so if you like racing games you’re going to spend a lot of time playing it.
The game was a lot easier to play than Moto Racer was but (unlike in Moto Racer) GTS World Racing doesn’t give that feeling of speed that other racing games do. I also disliked the animation of the game itself, I rarely got the feeling that I was actually turning, because the car doesn’t really move, it seems to stay centered on the screen as if the ground below it was moving but the car wasn’t (not that big of a deal really but something that I thought was worth mentioning).
The races seem extremely long, for a device in which spending 1-2 minutes in a game is very commonplace having to spend 3-5 minutes on a single race is just too much. The tracks do end up seeming a little repetative though since you are spending so much time on them, by the time your finished with a race you don’t really want to be on that track ever again, and that’s where 64 different tracks come in handy. I also wish you could at least change the color of your vehicle, there are other cars in the game that you race against that have different colors, why can’t I?
Some more things about it do bother me, the fact that their is a blinking arrow at the top of the screen practically non-stop is a little annoying and I seem to always find myself in the grass, which apparently makes you slow down nearly as fast as if you ran into the back of another racer. I also hate the fact that if you try to accelerate and tilt the screen too far forward you get this screen:
Overall the game is good, but with its downsides I don’t think I could tell anyone to buy it at its current price ($7.99) if the price was dropped to maybe $4.99 I would change my tune but I would have to tell you to pass unless you really like racing games.
One of the frustrations I’ve found with iPhone gaming is that you have to listen to the games music instead of what is currently playing in the iPod app. I’m sure you probably had a similar experience, you purchase your first game, turn on some music, open the game and your music fades out and pauses.
Well luckily there is a work around, it doesn’t work for all games but it does work with some of them.
Make sure you have the iPod controls turned on when you double tap the home button.
Start the music you’d like to listen to (or podcast, which is what I usually do).
Open the game you would like to play.
In the games settings turn off all sounds and set the volume sliders to as low as possible.
Hit the lock button on the top of your iPhone.
Double tap the home screen button for the iPod controls and hit play.
Hit the lock button on the top once to turn the screen off and a second time to turn the screen back on.
Slide to unlock and your game should show up on screen.
Now if this work around is usable on the game your playing the music should continue if not it will fade out, pause, and your out of luck.
I’ve found that it doesn’t work with Scrabble or Sudoku but does work with De Blob and Apple’s Texas Hold’em.
It doesn’t really make amy sense why the game makes the audio from the iPod app turn off unless the OS needs more memory for the game and tells the iPod app to quit. But, you would think there would be a way for developers to do some sort of check like if iPod music is playing mute gameplay audio, or something like that.
If you find another game that it does or doesn’t work with leave a comment and let us all know.
Update – GTS World racing actually has exactly what I want, it has the ability to disable game audio so that you can listen to your own audio from iPod.app. It’s amazing to me that their aren’t any more iPhone games that allow you to do this. I just wish it was as easy as writing a line of code that checks to see if iPod.app is playing, if so disable game audio.
John Bowers of EsperssoSoft is the developer behind an upcoming game for the iPhone called StarSmasher. The game is a 3D space shooter that let’s you fly through space shooting up rocks and (seemingly) other space ships.
The game is modeled after Star Fox and uses the accelerometer for controlling flight with tap controls for firing.
This looks like a great game and but it starts to make me wonder whatever happened to that 3D space shooter that Apple was building for the iPhone as sample code? (update below regarding this) (by the way it had almost the exact same control scheme as this game). I’m really excited about this game and even more excited about the price, the game will go for $2.99 when it is released in the App Store.
Update: The developer of StarSmasher contacted me regarding the similarities of this game to Apple’s game (which was called TouchFighter). Here is a section of the email:
“I’m the developer of StarSmasher. I wanted to address the TouchFighter issue since I’ve noticed it crop up several times. I don’t think TouchFighter’s controls are the same as StarSmashers or even that similar (aside from the fact that they both use the accelerometer and are 3rd person). I haven’t played it personally, but from the videos that I’ve seen of TF the gameplay is essentially turret based. You aren’t actually changing the position of the ship on screen just the direction it is aiming. The feeling of moving forward is an illusion produced by the stars moving by.
StarSmasher gives you more control over the position of your ship (hence the dodging asteroids bit). I decided to write it because I really like rails games and I wanted one for my iTouch.
I hope people will like the game. I do. I wrote it for myself first and setting it out in the App Store is just a perk.”
If you remember my review of the iPod game Phase you’ll remember how much I love rhythm games. Tap Tap Revenge is just that, music plays and as notes come down from above you must tap on them as they cross over a line, if you hit it on time you get points, if you miss, you lose points.
Currently Tap Tap Revenge has 17 original tracks to play throughout 4 different difficulty levels. The game has new tracks all the time and they are all free. Unlike Phase Tap Tap Revenge doesn’t use tracks from your iTunes Library (because iPhone applications don’t have access to those tracks) so they had to create they’re own original tracks for the gameplay.
The gameplay is very simple, as I explained above the classic notes coming at you and you have to tap on them as they cross over a line, but in Tap Tap Revenge they also have “shakes” which are arrows that come at you and as they cross over the line you have to move the iPhone in the direction the arrow is pointing making use of the accelerometer (you can also turn shakes off, as I have).
To keep the game interesting, the makers of the game have periodic contests to create Tap Tap Revenge videos or simple highest score wins contests giving away prizes such as iTunes gift cards.
I have had a lot of fun playing this game but what I consider to be the best feature in the game is the two player mode, which let’s you play the game with a friend, head to head style. One player uses controls on one side of the iPhone while the second player uses the other side (I’m not sure how this would work using an iPod Touch since the iPod Touch doesn’t have a built in speaker).
The only thing I would like to see add to this game (other than the obvious, more songs) is either a better visual confirmation or an audible confirmation that you hit the note at the right time. There are small fireworks-like animations when you hit it at the right time but that happens underneith your finger so you can’t see it. In other rhythm games they have a small sound that plays every time you get it right but I suggest a color change (maybe to green) across the entire bar at the bottom when you get the note right, you could also go with another color when you miss (such as red).
Overall the game is great and easy for anyone to jump right into, more songs are surely coming and should give you hours of more play.
