Yeah, I know. Pretty wild, huh? Me, who took a year to get a flippin’ pendrive, about to drop six hundred on a skinny little gizmo. It’s been a long time coming, spurred on mostly be the stories I’ve heard about how rich mobile gaming has become (and by how hard it is to find anything fun for the PS3 or XBox 360, but that’s another thread).
I’ve never owned a mobile device before, and I’ve been a part, active or otherwise, of the great big Apple community, so this is completely fresh ground for me.
So please, educate me. What’s cool? What’s big? What’s addictive? What’s Apple’s equivalent of Super Mario Bros. or Double Dragon or Street Fighter or Dance Dance Revolution?
(Oh, and I’m not into money pits, so no Candy Crush or anything.)
Here’s what I remember seeing in the store:
Mr. Crab: One button continuous-movement platformer a la Cannabalt. Bright, colorful, humorous, the kind of thing I can whip out and spend 5 minutes on when I need a diversion.
Jetpack Hero?: 2D race-'n-collect game. I’ve seen something like it on Kongregate. Lots of powerups; should keep me busy for a while.
This 2D golf thing: Tricky
Temple Run (and its ilk): Tilt the device ever so slightly to stay on track! Could be a bit too fast-paced for my blood.
Some Spider-Man continuous runner
I’m not massively into gaming, but I am addicted to Candy Crush on my iPad mini. I know you specifically excluded it, but if you’re tightfisted like me, it doesn’t take a lot of discipline to not spend any money. I’m nearly up to level 700 and have never spent anything. It’s handy because you can play for just a few minutes and it doesn’t require a lot of concentration.
If you like racing games, I also enjoy Real Racing 3. Again, it tries to get you to spend money, but there’s no need to. Nice graphics and a realistic racing experience.
My iPod touch will no longer play most new games, but here’s a few I’ve enjoyed over the years: Swordigo is a very cool retro style platformer. It’s a pay game (not IAP, just a couple bucks up front), but seems to be on sale or even free quite frequently. Traps and Gemstones is another platformer that was a lot of fun.
for ‘casual’ puzzle time wasters, Harbor Master and ElectroTrains and Flow (Free) are great. Flow has paid and free versions, but the free one should keep you busy for a long time.
Also, if you decide to start playing The Simpsons, there is a very large and active Straight Dope group on that game. Yes, you can spend money on it, but I’m level 52 and still getting tons of enjoyment out of the free game.
Gun Bros is a dual stick shooter that I found very enjoyable, but had to stop playing because it went all crashy on me. A newer pod/pad should be more stable. I never spent a penny on it, but they do have pay weapons for outrageous prices (worked out once that the best weapon in the game would cost almost 300 dollars!). With that caveat, it was pretty addictive and enjoyable for a while.
I’ll go through my purchase history later and give you some more recommendations, but that should get you started.
Well, the apple Super Mario would have to be either Angry Birds or Candy Crush, right? No idea what version of Angry Birds they’re up to these days. I think the Where’s My Water? games were also very popular for awhile and legitimately good.
I’ve mostly moved on to Android stuff in the last couple years, but my now creaky and old 5S is still loaded with the stuff I liked a few years ago. No idea what the cool kids are playing now, but I can definitely remember some of the highlights.
On the endless runner front, Canabalt pretty much kicked off the genre and is still good, simple fun. Jetpack Joyride and Tiny Wings were a bit more complex and good time killers. My favorites and most common bathroom games were Punch Quest and Time Surfer. Just the right amount of complexity for short bursts.
The best platformers are probably the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, 1, 2, and CD. They’re all very well ported. I am utterly terrible with virtual control pads but somehow could play those.
10000000 was my go to puzzle game for awhile. I hear the sequel You Must Build a Boat is supposed to be more of the same in a good way.
Battleheart was a really good… touch RPG? Not quite sure how to describe it, but was deservedly very popular.
Plants vs Zombies was pretty great. The sequel was filled with freemium crap, but the original was a great, whole experience.
My current commute game is Hungry Cat Picross. It strikes that nice balance for me of being engaging enough for my groggy mind without being so hard as to be overly frustrating or too simple to be completely perfunctory.
Lots of other good stuff (and way, wayyyyyy more freemium crap), but those would be my off the cuff recommendations with wide appeal.
FWIW, Apple normally announces its newest iPad about mid-October, so if you can hold off a few months, you can either get an updated Air 3, or at least a discounted Air 2. There’s no guarantee it will come out that soon, of course, but it’s happened the past few years.
Flight Control- really fun and has a pretty limitless replay value. You touch and drag randomly appearing airplanes to landing runways making sure they don’t crash into each other. Wild West Pinball has great realistic pinball physics. Little Galaxy Family- you revolve around planets, jumping from one to another making sure to time your jumps so you don’t go flying off into space. Monument Valley- buildings are puzzles to be solved. Mini Motor Racing- a racing game that can be both addictive and repetitive at the same time. Threes- slide numbered tiles together to add them up into as big a number as you can. Jet Ball Arkanoid- just about the best Breakout clone. Better than Anodia. Tiny Wings- already mentioned so I’ll second it. Hangman RSS- automatically generates hangman puzzles from current headlines.
Word games like SpellTower and Bonza. Bonza has a large free selection of its puzzles, but once you get through those you have to pay for new packs.
Would’ve been back sooner, but it took me a while to commit to the purchase (it was seven hundred, not six…I didn’t want to be left short on memory), and a bit longer to get it up and running. This thing runs completely unlike anything I have ever owned in my life; it’s been quite an experience just setting everything up.
The majority of the games seem to run on the old shareware model, i.e. play a very limited or annoying game for free, and if you like it, pay for the real deal. Most of them don’t charge all that much. I used to pay a buck for one damn song on Rock band, so getting a full game out of that is a heck of a deal. Mostly, I’ve discovered that tablet gaming is one of those things were you just have to dive in with both feet and see what pops up. You can find the most quirky or weirdly enjoyable things just be searching. (Three words: Llama or Duck )
Thanks for the responses. I think I’ll just save this whole thread and look up your suggestions when I got the time.
zbuzz- No, trust me, I really am that desperate. There was no way in hell I was going to hold out until October. I’m not the kind of guy who always needs the latest thing, so if there is an Air3, they can have it.
I wrote up a summary of the ones I recommend, and why, here: Tablet games recommendations – Persistent Beta
The list:
Dream Quest
King of Dragon pass
Ascension
FTL
Rebuild
Plants vs. Zombies
Some others worth considering:
Letterpress, if you like word games and have friends
Sentinels of the Multiverse is a superhero team card game, and is excellent.
Star Realms is a deckbuilding game designed by former Magic Pro Tour players, with a limited card set but deep strategy and replayability
Card Crawl is a simple but fun solitaire card game with a dungeon theme
Puzzle Quest (not Puzzle Quest 2!) is a match-3 engine used for an RPG (PQ2 is kind of the same, with some art upgrades but more tedium, which is sad)
I think 99% of games on the iPad/Phone suck balls, but heres a few gems I personally like and have stayed on my devices without getting deleted:
World Series of Poker
And two rare games that take full advantage of the iPhones hand held capability:
High Noon—you “holster” your iPhone/iPad before firing away at other old-timer Western challengers. Earn points to upgrade your character. FREE.
Field and Stream Fishing----this time you pull back your device, and throw it forward to throw your orient to catch BIG fish. Very addictive, and free.
My favorite use of the swipe feature is:
Big Cup Cricket----such intuitive features, and fun cartoon like graphics and sound effects. Its $1.99 but Ive gotten more than my moneys worth on both devices.
No swipes or gravity but Patrick Kane Hockey is a lot of fun too.
Once game that seems to have disappeared is Fight Night had a great game for the iPhone, and I played it on iPhone # but it seems to have disappeared.
Matador Hero is a fun bullfighting game.
Finally, if your not from Australia, you cant get this game to work on your consoles, but AFL:Gold Edition and AFL:Live 2 are worthy additions if you ever wanted to try Australian Rules Football as a video game!
I think 99% of games on the iPad/Phone suck balls, but heres a few gems I personally like and have stayed on my devices without getting deleted:
World Series of Poker
And two rare games that take full advantage of the iPhones hand held capability:
High Noon—you “holster” your iPhone/iPad before firing away at other old-timer Western challengers. Earn points to upgrade your character. FREE.
Field and Stream Fishing----this time you pull back your device, and throw it forward to throw your orient to catch BIG fish. Very addictive, and free.
My favorite use of the swipe feature is:
Big Cup Cricket----such intuitive features, and fun cartoon like graphics and sound effects. Its $1.99 but Ive gotten more than my moneys worth on both devices.
No swipes or gravity but Patrick Kane Hockey is a lot of fun too.
Once game that seems to have disappeared is Fight Night had a great game for the iPhone, and I played it on iPhone # but it seems to have disappeared.
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