iPhone Article Zone

Spore: Creatures

Darwin was a wise man who a long long time ago wondered about the origin of species. His pondering on this subject led him to conclude that nature was in a constant battle for survival, and only the fittest were to survive. Through evolution over the years, species could change and become better equipped to survive. Sadly, “Spore: Creatures”, the creation of the good folks at EA did not to evolve into a better game, but rather devolved into a much more boring repetitive game. It’s like 1999 Britney Spears evolving into 2008 Britney Spears. I don’t want any part of that…

Spore: Creatures (which is actually EA’s second “Spore” title on the iPhone) starts you out with a single celled organism. You start out sliming your way around sucking up little creatures for nourishment. As you eat these creatures, you gain points that will allow you to evolve into a big strong monster, but for now you’re just a wimpy little monster. You will also find piles of bones on the ground that will unlock new parts to add to your creature. Different mouths, legs, eyes, arms, fighting tools, etc. Basically, this is what you do for the entire game. You will meet other races of creatures as well who you can decide to either brutally ravage, or you can befriend by wandering through the map looking for random gifts to return to your new friends. Friends? More like gold diggers.

If you played the first Spore game, “Spore: Creations”, you’ll know exactly what to do in the second “Spore” game in the App Store, because it’s pretty much the same exact game, on land. Like how Speed 1 was on a bus, and Speed 2 was on a boat. The first time was enough, thank you.

Boring screenshot, boring game.

The gameplay is simple enough. You control your creature with the accelerometer, and you only touch the screen to interact with other characters or the environment. That’s pretty much the entire control scheme, and it works fairly well, though sometimes it is hard to maneuver. The graphics are very nice and the sound is fitting for the game. In fact those are probably the best parts of the game.

Because of just flat out boring and repetitive gameplay, it appears that the Spore franchise and EA may have some evolving to do before they carry on this franchise’s name. It was cute the first time, but it turned into something just oh so bleeeeeh. For $6.99, “Spore: Creatures” is a worse choice than week old leftovers.

Need for Speed Shift

Even 3 billion-plus purchases into the short life of the App Store, there are those that doubt the ability of the iPod Touch and iPhone to be legitimate gaming devices that can stack up with their traditional counterparts. They point to the unorthodox business model of the app store, its crazy pricing scheme, and top 25 charts filled with crapware and exclaim that it’s destined to fail. I would contend that as long as games like Need For Speed Shift are being made, the app store is here to stay.

The few complaints I saw about NFS Shift in the reviews on iTunes were about its $6.99 price point. Really? If you want quality apps, you should be prepared to pay for them. You wouldn’t go to Target to buy a Nintendo DS game and then try to haggle with the salesman. In fact, feel fortunate iPhone gamer. Need For Speed Shift at Best Buy will leave your wallet feeling $29 dollars lighter. This discrepancy in pricing is consistent for almost all iPhone games.

The 1st person viewpoint is the way to go.

NFS Shift is a perfect example of what iPhone gaming can be; graphically polished, easy to learn, and fun to play for two hours or ten minutes. The race types are just diverse enough to keep you interested for a long period of time. There are 7 different types of races. Circuit, sprint, driver duel, eliminator, time trial, drift, and driver face off. Sure, the rules vary a little bit for each one, but in the end the idea is the same; drive fast.

NFS Shift is polished, but the good folks at EA also decided to throw some glitter and stickers on their shiny creation. It didn’t really need the glitter, thanks anyways. Just like its console counterparts, as you progress through more races you earn profile points in two different categories; “precision” and “aggressive”. Things like sticking to your racing line, doing an entire lap without going off the track or crashing into opponents, and mastering corners will earn you precision points. Crashing into opponents, drifting, and generally just driving like a four year old will net you aggressive points. Earn more points to level up. The only time the points will help you out is to help you earn stars to unlock new tracks, and when you reach level 20 and you unlock a Maserati. As you progress through levels you will also earn pieces to a personalized badge depending on whether you used a predominantly precise or aggressive tactics, neither of which matter too much.

There are 20 cars and 18 tracks to unlock in Chicago, London, and Tokyo. The variety of cars is pleasing enough for an iPhone game and they all handle differently enough to justify upgrading from one to another. There is minimal customization to the cars, with just a few bodykits, rims, and color changes available, along with performance upgrades to the top speed, acceleration, tires, suspension, and nitrous.

The controls are fairly tight and delightfully simple. The car accelerates by itself, tilt the screen to turn and touch the screen to brake. Once you add nitrous to your car, there is a small red button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen you tap to turn your nitrous on and off. There is also an option for manual shifting, but it’s not really my cup of tea. If you do prefer manual shifting, a mere swipe up or down on the right side of the screen will allow you to change gears.

My only real gripe with this game is that it’s sometimes a bit too difficult. On some tracks I simply got stuck on certain objectives and couldn’t get enough stars to advance to the next track. A minor gripe would be the soundtrack. While the sound effects are pretty nice, the soundtrack is just good enough to keep me from turning it off. To beat this, NFS allows you to create your own soundtrack to race to, which is a welcome addition.

With this game on sale right now for $6.99, I would say that it’s definitely worth a go. If you’re a racing fan, you’ll probably come to know this game as one of your favorites. If you aren’t a racing freak but can appreciate the genre, then you too should get some enjoyment out of NFS Shift. It’s not my favorite app, but it’s definitely one of the most polished in my library, and absolutely takes advantage of the fantastic iDevice hardware.

First Look: N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance

After months of waiting for followers of the title, Gameloft have today announced the release of N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance. Possibly one of the most anticipated App Store titles of the year, N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance is a science fiction first person shooter set in futuristic environments. Graphically stunning, the game centers around man-made artificial satellites called near-orbitals, created to allow people to live on due to the Earth no-longer able to sustain life.

For the protection of these separate near-orbitals they each came together to create N.O.V.A, or the Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance. A team of mercenary operatives tasked with the mission of fighting to defend mankind. Forced back into battle against your will, you play as Kal Wardin, a retired marine. Knocked out cold by members of the N.O.V.A, Wardin finds himself assigned to a string of life-threatening missions.

Highly compared to that of the Halo franchise which has become insanely popular all over the world on Microsoft’s Xbox platform, N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance plays out over a satisfying 13 campaign levels, each taking you to a different landscape, including: a jungle, snow, spaceship, bunker and a forgotten alien city. There are six weapons within the game which you can take advantage of to help you on your mission. These include: an assault rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a handgun, a rocket launcher and a plasma gun. Plus, in certain levels you’ll also get to use grenades and even rock out on machine gun turrets!

As well as playing the game yourself, N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance can be played in multiplayer mode, too. In this mode, 2-4 players can play in local and online multiplayer deathmatchs, over Wi-Fi and you can versus up to 2 players via a Bluetooth connection. In total, the game’s mutliplayer option offers a range of 5 in-game maps in which you can choose from.

Already a 5-star hit wonder after less than 24 hours on the store, and receiving huge critical acclamation, I can’t help but think N.O.V.A is going to be an instant App Store hit, if it isn’t already! I have to say, having picked up the game myself and played through a level or four, this game sports some of the best visual based graphics I have ever seen on the iPhone (and iPod touch) platform. I’m not just saying it, it’s like N.O.V.A crosses that invisible barrier of mobile game to console wonder, and in my personal opinion, Gameloft has excelled.

Be sure to stay tuned for our full in-depth review of N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, very soon. In the meantime, feast your eyes on some in-game shots from the game below!

N.O.V.A. - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2009-12-17
Price: $6.99

Ravensword

Ravensword is an ambitious, 3D RPG set in an open fantasy world. The developers have cited games such as the Elder Scrolls series and Zelda as inspirations behind the game, and the result is a noble attempt at a console-like RPG. Unfortunately, despite hints of greatness, it falls short thanks to a dearth of customization, a dull storyline, and a strict adherence to RPG cliches. Is Ravensword a huge achievement? Certainly, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds. But as it stands now, I feel like Ravensword is just mediocre once you get past its ambitious skeleton.

The cliches begin as soon as the game opens. You, a male warrior, have awakened in a village with a severe case of amnesia. You’re woken by a kind woman who suggest you go visit Donald if you want some gold. Guess what your first quest is? Yup, that’s right: kill some rats! The game progresses in a linear fashion from there. Take a quest. Kill some stuff. Gain experience. As you talk to the townspeople and take on more quests, you learn about the events in the world around you. The king apparently vanished years ago, and nobody knows where he went. It’s all typical RPG fare, complemented by a few boss battles and competent (though unexciting) storytelling.

Combat boils down to simple button-mashing. You tap on an enemy to lock onto it, and when you’re close enough, you mash the giant “attack” button. There are very few weapons, and the only one that adds variety is the bow. Still, there’s very little strategy necessary here. My main gripe with the combat system is that there’s no “auto” setting, so if you get attacked from behind, for example, your character will just stand there while you desperately try to spin the camera around.

Every time you kill something, you’ll gain experience; unfortunately, however, levelling is done automatically. You can’t assign points towards specific attributes. This isn’t really surprising, given how little customization is in the game; for example, you’re also bound to being a male warrior. Also, weapons and armor have no visible stats, so the auto-levelling isn’t as annoying as it might have been.

There is one aspect of the game, however, that shines: the open world. The graphics aren’t console quality, but they’re still good enough to give you a sense of wonder as you explore. I mean, jeez, is this an iPod I’m using? While we’ve seen great 2D worlds (see: Zenonia, Inotia 2, etc), this is one of the few iPhone games where you can roam around a true 3D world. Add that to fairly good movement and camera controls (well, besides how long it takes to turn around), and you end up with an immersing experience that might make you forget you’re on an iPhone.

All told, there’s a lot of promise to Ravensword. More variety and a departure from fantasy tropes could have made it a stellar success. As it is, exploring the world is still fun, and there is definitely a “wow!” factor at work here—Ravensword is undoubtedly a historic App Store game.

However, all the shiny graphics and technological feats in the world can’t make up for the fact that Ravensword feels more like a beefed-up proof-of-concept demo than a full-fledged game. Yes, you can easily spend a lot of time immersed in the world of Ravensword, but I can’t shake the nagging feeling that something’s missing, and the limited scope of the game makes it a lot less fun than it could have been.

This has been a hard review to write. I really, really want to celebrate Ravensword for what it has accomplished, but at the end of the day, it’s the gameplay that matters. All but the most hardcore of RPG fans will probably want to wait and see what the future holds for 3D iPhone RPGs.

DanceDanceRevolution S (DDR)

You don’t have to be good at DDR to love it! Konami ported the fantastic music game to the iPhone a while back, and their recent sale prompted me to see how well it translated to the portable platform. While fancy footwork and dance mats aren’t included in DanceDanceRevolution S, the game works great with tap-based controls. The songs are fun and it’s the same awesome game as ever, but a limited track list combined with some truly awful integration decisions keeps it from being an instant-buy.

If you’re familiar with DDR, playing this version will be a no-brainer. Arrows fly out from the bottom of the screen; the targets (”Step Zones”) are at the top. Your dance mat is replaced with a set of outlined arrows near the bottom. Tap on the “mat” when the arrows reach the Step Zone. The controls work surprisingly well—my fingers don’t obscure too much of the screen, and everything is responsive.

The song list and characters will also be familiar, though the content was clearly trimmed to keep the app running on the mobile platform. There are supposedly twenty songs in all, though many must be unlocked. I really wish that there were more; twenty songs just feels weak in comparison to DDR on other platforms. Even with the shorter song list, there’s no doubt about it: this is DDR. The transition to the iPhone was handled wonderfully, and the game is just as fun as ever; the songs are the upbeat tunes that fans are accustomed to.

For the record: I definitely appreciate the fact that one of the starting female characters is named Bonnie. I’m famous!

This edition of DDR comes with Standard mode (i.e., one track at a time), Course Mode, Practice Mode, and Shake Mode. Course Mode should be familiar; you’re given a list of tracks to complete, and you can’t fail. Practice Mode is for, well, practicing. Shake Mode, though…Shake Mode is baffling. It only has one song, which is more demo than anything else (it’s labeled as a lesson!). And yet, it’s been a while since the app was released…where’s the rest of the content, Konami?

Now for my biggest gripe: iPhone integration. DDR is stable, but it has some major problems. Hit the “home” button by accident mid-song? Sorry, but you’re back at the title screen when you relaunch the app. Get a push notification? Back to the title screen. Hit the power button and lock the screen? Hey, look, it’s the title screen again! Not including a pause feature on a mobile platform is incredibly shortsighted. There isn’t even a manual pause button while you’re playing a song. It’s incredibly annoying to be stopped mid-song by a power level warning, and if you pick a song by accident, you have to play through it; there’s no going back!

Other iPhone game mainstays are also missing. There’s no multiplayer, no online leaderboards, no challenging other iPhone users. Really, Konami, throw us a bone! Sadly, if the app’s history is any indicator, we won’t be seeing frequent updates on this one.

And yet…and yet…

And yet, it’s easy to forgive these missing features, because it’s DDR. Even though the tracklist could use some expansion, the music has the same catchy quality, and the game is addicting and fun. I’d even venture to say that DanceDanceRevolution S is better than the current king of iPhone music games, Tap Tap Revenge—I get sucked in more easily, and somehow I just have more fun with DDR.

If you think that you can put up with the lack of pause or auto-save, and you can bear the price, DanceDanceRevolution S is a must-have for DDR fans and rhythm/music game fans in general. Grab it while the 99-cent sale lasts!

Asphalt 5

So you wanna go fast? Gameloft’s latest iteration of its arcade racing franchise, Asphalt 5, lets you do just that in spades. It is the type of racing game where you often forget about the brake pedal, and can pinball around the track at ridiculous speeds with very little consequence. That is, unless you careen into oncoming traffic and meet a car head-on in a blaze of glory! Asphalt 5 is an unabashed arcade racer that is good-looking, sometimes silly, and almost always fun.

The first thing you will notice is the graphics, and they get a very nice overhaul from the previous version. You start out with two vehicles, a Mini Cooper S and a Nissan 370Z, but can unlock a total of 33 cars and motorcycles including Ferraris, BMWs, and Ducatis, to name a few. There is also a total of 12 tracks to unlock that are very detailed and offer various challenges. There is a nice variety of weather and road conditions across the course locations, including elaborate shortcuts and jumps that can often make the difference between sweet victory and crushing defeat. I did experience the occasional drop in framerate while playing on an iPhone 3G, but not enough to impact the overall experience.

Asphalt 5 offers a single race mode, where you can jump into a quick race, but won’t earn any cash or experience. The career mode is where you will spend the bulk of your time, and can unlock all the available cars and venues in the process. You will encounter 8 different race modes as you progress through your career, including Normal, Time Trail, Last Man Standing, Cop Chase, Escape, Cash Attack, Drift, and Duel. These modes offer some nice changes of pace, although the Cop Chase mode, where you are asked to act like the police that often harass you and eliminate a certain amount of your peers during the race, can be very frustrating. It doesn’t work as well as the other modes, especially early in the game when your cars don’t accelerate as capably, and you will eventually meet a point where you will have to complete these races to advance.

All of the available race modes have you collecting power-ups throughout, such as nitro and cash. You are also rewarded monetarily for aggressive driving maneuvers, and you can then turn that money into better rides and upgrades. Tuning your car is actually a pretty easy experience, as you can upgrade across three different categories: engine, handling and boost. Each category has some options that can be improved by just purchasing the next, better-performing part in a sequence. Each upgrade serves to increase either your acceleration, braking, handling, top speed, boost capacity, or boost speed. You can also change the look of your car at no cost by painting it or affixing decals. Asphalt 5 also offers a menu option called “Girl”, where you can choose between different lovely ladies that you earn at certain levels of your career. These girls can provide certain stat boosts such as helping you earn a percentage more money or boost. Although this is an established part of the series, and a very minor one at that, it feels a bit unnecessary and somewhat tacky. A game this good doesn’t have to try this hard to be cool.

As far as gameplay goes, Asphalt 5 gives you the option of three different control schemes. The default is accelerometer control with auto-accelerate, and it feels the most natural. You can adjust the sensitivity of the tilt, and can also choose to enable a manual accelerator pedal. There is also tap control, where you tap the left or right sides of the screen to head in the corresponding direction, or a steering wheel control, both of which use auto-acceleration. As far as cameras go, you can choose between close, far or the visceral bumper cam. Regardless of which control/camera combination you choose, you should be zipping along the track as recklessly as possible after relatively little time to acclimate.

For those looking for some multiplayer action, Asphalt 5 offers a variety of local and online solutions. Local multiplayer is both bluetooth and WiFi capable. Online mode lets you host or join a race fairly easily with up to 6 players when you log into Gameloft Live!. There are also online leaderboards, trophies, and Asphalt Academy, which lets players race on a specific track with a specific vehicle to see who can post the fastest time for the week. The multiplayer modes will often let you compete using any vehicle and track, regardless of whether you’ve unlocked them in career mode.

At the end of the day, Asphalt 5 does not presume to be anything else than it is, and that’s a flat-out arcade racer. It succeeds in its mission, and does so without taking itself too seriously, making it both charming and fun.

Pocket Tunes Radio

I don’t know when the last time I listened to a radio was. A week? A month? It’s kind of hard to find good stations where I live. That’s why I like CD’s for the car. But my interest was sparked by the description of Pocket Tunes Radio. Sure, there are other streaming radio apps—but this one looked good. Maybe I’d finally find a station I liked.

Pocket Tunes has surpassed most of my expectations. The interface is slick, and it sports an impressive array of features: a Safari work-around that allows background streaming, song recording, a built-in web browser, and more. The library of available stations is broad enough to appeal to most listeners; it even includes support for Sirius and XM radio! The bottom line: this app works, and it works beautifully.

Selecting a station is the first order of business. Groups (genres, essentially) include your basic Country/Rock/Indie/Pop/Classical and so on, but there are also groups for featured stations, “top stations,” college stations, and Hi Speed Network stations, among others. You can also find stations based on your location. Opening a group allows you to see the stations contained inside it; while there are many easily recognizable names, others are just an anonymous serving of alphabet soup. In any case, with 16,000 streams, you should be able to find something you like. Navigating to a station from the web is also possible.

The best part about the station listing, though: you can hide groups entirely, which helps declutter your list. Considering the massive number of stations and genres available, this feature is a godsend, and just one of many examples of the attention to detail in Pocket Tunes Radio.

Song playback works flawlessly over WiFi, and while I couldn’t test it over a network (I have an iPod Touch), others have reported decent quality on 3G, with occasional problems over EDGE. Some radio stations offer multiple quality levels, and Pocket Tunes then chooses one based on your connection, though you can switch to a different stream manually. Sound quality is solid, though obviously compressed, but it works for everyday listening if you’re not an audiophile.

While a song is playing, you can add the station to your favorites, search for the song on iTunes, or…best of all…you can record it by tapping the red button at the bottom of the screen. Nice! The recording feature works great, though it’s completely manual; if you come into a song five seconds late, for example, you’ve missed that part for good. Recorded songs are stored in the app, so unfortunately there’s no way to grab them.

You can also browse the web while a song is playing. This is used both to open web-based radio stations and to allow you to continue semi-normal activities whilst listening to music, since Apple still won’t allow background processes. Better still: if you want to do something other than browsing the web (like, say, playing a game or checking your mail), Pocket Tunes uses what amounts to a Safari hack that allows the music to play in the background. The background-process restriction doesn’t apply to Safari, so the app opens a Quicktime stream. Long story short: Pocket Tunes does it for you and then you close Safari and go about your business. This 3.0-exclusive workaround isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure if it works for all stations, but it’s a nice feature.

I could go on and on about the minutiae of Pocket Tunes Radio, but let it be enough that it’s a slick, speedy radio app with a massive selection of stations and some great features like recording and background playback. Yes, there are other offerings on the store, and I haven’t tried them all, but Pocket Tunes leaves you wanting little, and best of all, it just works. For $6.99, this app is worth it.

Doom Classic

Following on from Doom Resurrection, the slightly revamped, slightly modernized version of good ol’ Doom, iD Software thought you’d like the classic experience, and so this week they announced the release of Doom Classic, for iPhone (and iPod touch) – and this time my friends, it is the Doom we all know and love. You won’t find polished graphics here. This is the classic 8-bit Doomfest you’ve been waiting for. Nostalgia overload.

If you’re reading this you probably know what Doom is, but believe it or not there are still people out there who have yet to experience it. Doom was introduced in 1993 as a science-fiction horror based FPS, and when first introduced was looked upon as the first of it’s kind, sparking what many see as the thriving FPS genre we have and buy into today. This release takes everything you loved about the original Doom and shrunk it down to fit inside your pocket!

The game sees you play through 36 missions, in 4 episodes. The first 3 episodes are the original ones you know and love. These include: Knee-Deep in the Dead, Shores of Hell, Inferno, and the latest – Thy Flesh Consumed. Playing the actual game is simple enough. Controls are touch based, and you have a three different control options.

The first configuration (and the default when opening the game for the first time) is a movable joystick-like area located on the left-hand side of the screen. This controls your characters directional movement. Opposite this is your ‘tap to fire’ button. The second configuration sees a d-pad introduced into the left side of the screen, which is static. Opposite this is the right is the joy-stick which controls both vertical and horizontal movement, and above this is the ‘tap to fire’ button. The last and final configuration for controls in Doom Classic sees a navigation ‘wheel’ added (on the left), allowing control of your camera view, alongside a full d-pad (on the right). On this configuration, your ‘tap to fire’ button stays in the same position as on configuration 2. When moving a control element around the screen, once you lift your finger up, the control snaps back into the corner. This is great as it means you don’t have control items cluttering up the screen.

Moving in-game, while the controls are easy to use, and having 3 different configurations to choose from definitely helps, gameplay can be a bit fast – I’ll explain what I mean by that. I’m not referring to the length of the game, but instead the ’speed’ your character moves around the maps. In my experience it can get a little nauseating. But this is really all I can fault in this port. While it doesn’t ruin the game, you’ll likely find it a little harder to reach and navigate to places you’d like to because of it.

In-game stats like your health, amount of ammo remaining and percentage of armour you have remaining are displayed in a static bar on the bottom of the screen. Tapping the animated character head thorws up your weapon inventory. Available weapons in the game include: Your fist, Pistols, Shotgun, Chaingun, Rockets, Plasma, BFG, Chainsaw and the DBLShotgun. Ammo for all of these can be picked up in game.

If you’re not a big FPS fan, graphically you might find the game disappointing. There are no flashy visuals here. Just pure, true, “bloody” Doomilicious FPS. Graphics resemble that of Duke Nukem, sporting that ‘pixelated’ look you die-hard Doom fans craved all those years ago.

There are a few welcome changes though, the first being multiplayer ability. Doom Classic offers two multiplayer modes including: Deathmatch and co-operative multiplayer which in trun supports up to 4 players at any one time, via Wi-Fi. The game also features the original Doom soundtrack which plays throughout, although this can also be disabled allowing you to use your own music from iPod.app.

Overall, Doom Classic for iPhone is a worthy port of a retro gaming classic. A nostalgia title recommended for fans of the franchise, iD Software have managed to pull off bringing the game to the iPhone, in a user intuitive and graphically pleasing way. While I found the game could do with a few more control tweaking options, this can be overlooked (in a way), by the amount of content packaged within this port, and your bang for buck.

Preview: Jules Verne’s Secrets of The Mysterious Island

Following on from the immersive RPG that was Return to Mysterious Island, iPhone publisher Chillingo have announced they’re bringing a sequel to the store, announcing Jules Verne’s Secrets of The Mysterious Island is coming to both iPhone (and iPod touch), shortly. The first of the series hit App Store shelves in May of this year, and like most adventure based titles seemed to go down in a storm with the iPhone crowd. Recently I seem to be saying that a little too often about various titles, but having actually owned (and played) this title myself, I can say quite honestly say the adventure was thoroughly enjoyable to play through.

Based on a graphic novel by Jules Verne’s, and carrying on from titles such as 1112 and Cassandra’s Journey, the game sees you take the role of Mina, a sailor who becomes stranded on an island, somewhere in the Pacific ocean. As you trail and tap your way around the island, trying your up-most to survive, and finding objects and (more importantly) food along the way, you try to unlock the mysteries hidden within.

Described by Chillingo as an experience which will mirror that of Robinson Crusoe, this new release will carry on from where you left off. The game will start off with a helicopter crash, and continuing the theme of being stranded, you will have to guide Mina to safety. This time will also see you visit new locations including: Captain Nemo’s base and scouring the ruins of an unknown civilization. Eventually, you will realize the cause of the threat to the island, and will aim to prevent it.

For approximately 700 Mb, the player will find out the end of the adventure of Mina. Jules Verne’s “Secrets of The Mysterious Island” contains stunning 3D graphics, many ambient sounds, music designed to enhance the mysterious atmosphere and feel.

The real big news though is this sequel will see the addition of special feature only available to OS 3.0 and 3GS users. In Jules Verne’s Secrets of The Mysterious Island, you the player will have the ability to navigate the entire island via not only placing fingers on the screen (nothing new there then – but wait!) 3GS users will be able to further enhance this experience by harnessing the true power of the built in compass, and therefore bringing full 360° compass direction navigation to the title. I don’t know about you, but I’m quite excited about this, especially for an adventure game like this one. While touch and drag navigation is cool, doing it by physically moving your phone around – I’m sure you’ll agree – is even cooler! Although, do be careful – I wouldn’t want you to knock out the person sitting next to you while searching for melon!

All in all, with the title said to offer even more mini games and puzzles to complete, Jules Verne’s Secrets of The Mysterious Island is at first looks looking to paint a great sequel to the original Jules Verne adventure. My previous experience with both this genre of game, (and the Jules Verne saga inparticular), has me on the edge of my seat for this one!

Said to give a respectable 15 hours and gameplay, and priced at $6.99, the sequel to this hit adventure game should be with us “within weeks”. International readers will be glad to know that the written in-game dialog of this initial release will be translated in: English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Jules Verne's Return To Mysterious Island

Our Rating: :: ADVENTUROUS

Category: Games / Strategy
Released: 2009-07-24
Price: $2.99

Earthworm Jim

Earthworm Jim was originally released in 1994 on the Sega Genesis. Since then, the game has been subsequently updated and ported to several other platforms, the newest being the iPhone. Earthworm Jim is an unforgettable game in terms of both gameplay and difficulty, but was Gameloft able to successfully port it to a device with no physical buttons?

One of the best features of Earthworm Jim is its humor. For those of you who have yet to play it, in Earthworm Jim, you play as Jim, an initially lowly earthworm. One day, a super-powered suit falls from space and gives Jim super powers. Of course, Jim’s adventure involves saving a princess, “Queen Slug-for-a-Butt”. Saving the princess involves, like all platformers, the basic mechanic of running and jumping onto platforms. There are numerous enemies along the way, which Jim can attack in one of two ways, depending on the enemy: using his gun or using his head as a whip. The whip can also be used as a sort of pseudo grappling rope. In addition to the normal in-level enemies, there are bosses which often require special mechanics. One of the best things about Earthworm Jim is the absolute plethora of gameplay elements it contains. There are wires to be crossed using your head, conveyer belts of garbage, teleportation devices, underwater hiding spots, and more. The level design is superb. Earthworm Jim is known for being extremely difficult, but to help out more casual gamers, Gameloft has included four difficulty levels, the hardest one being “original.” In addition to the normal platforming levels, Earthworm Jim contains intermediary tunnel racing levels in which you race an enemy. These are controlled using the accelerometer, and they are very similar to other App Store tunnel games: avoid some objects, collect others. Including these levels, Earthworm Jim has 16 levels in all. The game is a little short, though the individual levels are long. Frustratingly, there are no mid-level saves, eliminating “pick up and play” value.

I couldn’t have ever imagined a perfect control scheme for Earthworm Jim for the iPhone, but Gameloft did the best they could. Movement is done using a virtual d-pad or analog stick. While for me, the d-pad was by far easier to use, it lacked a big enough sensitivity area. There are on-screen action buttons for jumping, using the gun, and using the whip. These are a bit too bunched together. The controls take some time to master, and of course lack the precision of physical controls which is frustrating, but are not a deal-breaker because of the adjustable difficulty levels.

Gameloft's superb graphics enhancements

Gameloft has clearly taken time and effort in recreating Earthworm Jim, as evidenced by the graphics. They have all been lovingly remastered, and look fantastic. The presentation is comical, and is well-implemented. This is the best looking version of Earthworm Jim yet. The audio is great as well, with recreated sound effects and music that do nothing but add to the humorous feel of the game.