iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch game recommendations

[quantum]

>> Hey Pinball fans! Retro Pinball is on offer, only 69p! And it's universal.

It's not bad. No where near as much fun as epic pinball was on DOS. I bought the shareware game back then and enjoyed the range of tables, but they're really limited on iOS. Worth 69p though

[CraigGrannell]

I find the Elite compilation curious. The company's really complicating its output with all of these individual and compilation apps, which have tons of crossover but also unique features.

[ShadowMan]

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 is out (£1.99) and as I thought its a mess.

The controls try to work on a touchscreen and fail badly, there is just to much to map to to little. The virtual stick for a start feels unresponsive (Unlike KOF or SF on the iPhone which are both pretty good for what they are). There are 2 button setups, a simple setup where you swipe over a special move button which should pull off different attacks but seldom does, or a full 6 button layout like the arcade game but the controls are to unresponsive to pull off the moves. To make matters worse not every attack is mapped to a button on the simple setup...

Its framerate has been cut in half to 30FPS which for a game like Marvel is terrible, playing a match on arcade mode with censored flying everywhere makes it unbearable to play. And for a universal app it looks horrible on the iPad.

So avoid it, can't see why they even tried to get Marvel working on a touch screen, its one of those games thats just to fast and chaotic to work with anything but a proper controller in my opinion.

[blakespot]

Wings of Valor...Wings of Fury remade...

http://toucharcade.com/2012/05/07/class ... -of-valor/



bp

[Misery]

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 is out (£1.99) and as I thought its a mess.

The controls try to work on a touchscreen and fail badly, there is just to much to map to to little. The virtual stick for a start feels unresponsive (Unlike KOF or SF on the iPhone which are both pretty good for what they are). There are 2 button setups, a simple setup where you swipe over a special move button which should pull off different attacks but seldom does, or a full 6 button layout like the arcade game but the controls are to unresponsive to pull off the moves. To make matters worse not every attack is mapped to a button on the simple setup...

Its framerate has been cut in half to 30FPS which for a game like Marvel is terrible, playing a match on arcade mode with censored flying everywhere makes it unbearable to play. And for a universal app it looks horrible on the iPad.

So avoid it, can't see why they even tried to get Marvel working on a touch screen, its one of those games thats just to fast and chaotic to work with anything but a proper controller in my opinion.

They do make controllers and such for these devices (not JUST the iCade stuff), but something tells me Capcom isnt quite bright enough to have thought of it.

[ShadowMan]

They do make controllers and such for these devices (not JUST the iCade stuff), but something tells me Capcom isnt quite bright enough to have thought of it.

Exactly. I'd be somewhat tempted to pick up one of the pad accessories if Capcom actually bothered to make use of it for MVC but I don't ever see that happening, everything about the port seems half assed. Still, at least I have UMVC3 on my Vita for portable Marvel!

[CraigGrannell]

I think a lot of companies are reluctant to support the iCade because it doesn't use any kind of official API—it just pretends to be a keyboard, and Apple can get stupid about that kind of thing (in much the same way it recently pulled a fantastic sketch-sharing app from the App Store because it used Game Center for collaboration, but it wasn't a game). Also, there's the problem that third-party controllers have no 'standard', despite the efforts of some indies, and so games are often unplayable apart from on the original full-size iCade. (For example, the Gametel is technically iCade compatible, but many games are impossible to play on it, because of the way the buttons are mapped.)

That said, it was interesting to see Namco's iPad Pac-Man quietly get iCade support a while back, and Midway's arcade compilation is also compatible now. Last time I spoke to someone at Capcom (which, admittedly, was a while ago), iCade was on the company's radar, but I got a 'no comment' when asking when or if support would happen. I think the only real hold-out in this space will be Taito though, largely because it's made its own rival controller.

[Morkin]

I've just bought Tower of Fortune & Infinity Blade as they were both 69p each. Don't know when they'll get played though.

[Antiriad2097]

It does seem like Apple are missing a trick. You'd think they'd have officially licensed iControllers that met a standard as its easy income from the 3rd parties.

[CraigGrannell]

First, Apple doesn't really care about nor 'get' gaming. Secondly—and more importantly—I suspect the small bit of Apple that does understand gaming doesn't want that segment of iOS to ever become remotely reliant on third-party controllers. The games should work as they are, with a vanilla device, rather than ending up in a situation where games are rubbish unless you also fork out 50 quid for an add-on.

That said, with the controllers that are now in the wild, some kind of IAP would be useful.

[Misery]

First, Apple doesn't really care about nor 'get' gaming. Secondly—and more importantly—I suspect the small bit of Apple that does understand gaming doesn't want that segment of iOS to ever become remotely reliant on third-party controllers. The games should work as they are, with a vanilla device, rather than ending up in a situation where games are rubbish unless you also fork out 50 quid for an add-on.

That said, with the controllers that are now in the wild, some kind of IAP would be useful.

Exactly.

I'm all for Apple and their products, but they're VERY reluctant to use things like outside tools and whatnot. So it's totally up to the game developers to support iCade and the rest.

Fortunately iCade has a pretty big list of games that support it now (including Gridrunner, agh, I almost want one JUST for that game, because it's freaking awesome).

[CraigGrannell]

The problem though is the form factors vary greatly and there's no defined usage for the various buttons. So you have some games devs using the left-most ones for jump/fire, and some using the right-most ones. That's fine for the iCade and iCade core, but it's a big problem on the controllers that only have four front-facing buttons (like Gametel) and I suspect it will be for the iCade mobile. Mind you, I should be getting a core and mobile for testing over the next few days, so we'll see.

[DreamcastRIP]

It does seem like Apple are missing a trick. You'd think they'd have officially licensed iControllers that met a standard as its easy income from the 3rd parties.

http://toucharcade.com/2012/04/03/rumor ... ontroller/
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/02/app ... or-iphone/

[Antiriad2097]

It does seem like Apple are missing a trick. You'd think they'd have officially licensed iControllers that met a standard as its easy income from the 3rd parties.

http://toucharcade.com/2012/04/03/rumor ... ontroller/
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/02/app ... or-iphone/

Both of those come from the same source:

I know of an internal Apple project to bring a physical controller to market, but whether or not it will ever see the light of day remains to be seen.

And why, at this late stage in iOS gaming, is this still just rumour? It should be a standard. Apple should have as a bare minimum, a standard API that allows for 4 directions and a couple of buttons via touch screen control or replicated via an external control, connected either via the dock port or bluetooth. If the external controls must replicate an on screen button (which may be hidden), we have a standard so it doesn't matter if a gamer has the optional extra or not, the games will work just the same.

[DreamcastRIP]

Agreed. This is Apple we're talking about though!