I fell out of love with mobile gaming ages ago. What once was a platform full of potential has degraded into a free-to-play money grab for the likes of Farmville, Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans. For those of you that like those kinds of games, that’s great. However, the types of games and the business models that drive them no longer appeal to my gaming sensibilities. At this point, my final vestige of mobile gaming comes from digital adaptations of analog board games.
When I checked out the news yesterday morning, I wasn’t expecting Nintendo to drop the bombs that they did. In one fell swoop, they announced their intentions to move into the smartphone gaming space with DeNA, as well as an acknowledgement of their next home console. Thoughts? Continue reading
Aliens are hell bent on taking over our planet, but to quote Will Smith from Independence Day, “Welcome to Earth!” In XCOM: The Board Game, you and your fellow teammates will square off against the extraterrestrial threats on multiple fronts. This particular conflict may not be completely new to you, as this is a licensed board game based on the hit video game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Nonetheless, it brings something very alien to the table for gamers of all sorts (pun intended), as it’s one of the first board games that needs to be played alongside of a digital app. Should you suit up for what might be Earth’s last stand?
Qwirkle is the more popular and award winning precursor to Iota, a game I reviewed not too long ago. They share a similar premise and more or less the same strengths and faults. However, I can’t play Iota on my iPhone or iPad. Meanwhile, Qwirkle is readily available on iTunes. Wanting more of this style of gameplay on the go, I gave Qwirkle on iOS a shot.
If memory serves me well, I’m pretty sure Blokus was one of the first board games to make the jump to iOS. Despite all of the positive things I heard about it, I never bothered to give it a chance until I played and bought the physical game. At first, I downloaded the free version to try it out and was immediately put off by the ad implementation. I understand the need to include ads to subsidize a free version of the game, but the full-screen video ads that would interrupt my game every three moves or so are obnoxious. Instead, I put down the $1.99 to play uninterrupted.
I’ve been buying board games on iOS since the launch of the app store. However, my collection of board games consists of mainstream titles like Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. Now that I’ve expanded my horizons when it comes to physical board games, it’s about time that I revamp my iOS collection as well. First on my new list is Ticket to Ride; a personal favourite of mine.
2K raised some eyebrows (mine included) when they announced a port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown for iOS. I love that game, but how the heck were they going to make it work on those devices? Well after the fact, I found out that it works pretty well.
(Download Pocket Tanks For iPhone)
My first encounter with Pocket Tanks occurred in 2001. I was in high school computer programming class and one of my friends asked me to come over to his computer and play against him. I don’t remember why we had enough time to get in a few matches instead of actually writing code, but that’s moot at this point. Years later, I picked up the free version on a whim because why not?
While it sat on my phone for years collecting cyber dust, the game became the focal point of my afternoon commute when my office moved downtown.
While many ports of modern fighting games have translated very well on iOS, such as Street Fighter IV: Volt and King of Fighters i-2012, the older titles in the genre haven’t carried over so well. Titles such as Street Fighter II Collection, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and SoulCalibur are plagued with sub-par controls, limited feature sets, shortened character rosters and unreasonable pricing.
As someone with a soft spot in my heart for the Samurai Shodown series, I was really hoping that the Samurai Shodown II port to iOS would buck that trend. I should have known better.
I should have known better.
A Contra remake on iOS sounds totally rad on paper. At a price of only $0.99, how could this go possibly wrong? Let me count the ways.
In Third Person 