iPhone Article Zone

Tuesday Morning App HQ?

Random musings of the App Store

2 Billion Apps Served

Apple announced recently that over 2 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. Notable is the timing; this announcement comes only six months after the download of the billionth app, which occurred 9 months after the App Store was launched. This indicated exponential growth of the store. Obviously these numbers are a bit inflated from a developer’s perspective because they seem to include free downloads, but the numbers also indicate that among the user base of 50 million, the average number of apps downloaded is 40, a surprisingly high number. In contrast, the average number of times one of 85,000 apps has been downloaded is only about 23.5, hardly a safe bet for business prospects. Despite all of your various incompetencies in managing the App Store, Apple, I have to congratulate you on a truly unprecedented event.

Critical Contrast

No matter how experienced we are here at 148apps, no two reviewers agree about every game. That’s why I thought it would be nice to offer some separate best app lists, just so you’ll know what we think is worth buying right now.

Will’s Top 3 Current Apps (games):
1. iBlast Moki
2. Meteor Blitz
3. Unify

Will’s Top 3 Apps of All Time:
1. Rolando 2
2. Real Racing
3. Space Invaders Infinity Gene

Chris’s Top 3 Current Apps (games):
1. geoDefense Swarm
2. Orbital
3. Aera

Chris’s Top 3 Apps of All Time:
1. Orbital
2. Fieldrunners
3. Need For Speed: Undercover
A special mention has to go out to geoDefense Swarm, as it may enter the top 3 after a bit more time spent on my iPhone.

This week’s sign of the apocalypse of the world being fair and just. By Chris Hall
This space is usually reserved for calamity, but this week we have one instance of people being quite rational. Family Guy: Uncensored appeared in the app store this week for an insanely high app price of $4.99. I’m not against spending $5 on an app, as I do quite often, but this one is just bad. How can you have a Family Guy game with absolutely no voices, only text bubbles? Even a simple “giggidy” would’ve been appreciated given the premium app price, but I suppose that Glu Mobile just figured that the Family Guy license alone would bring customers. Apparently the people aren’t biting though, as Family Guy: Uncensored is nowhere to be found in the top 100 apps.

Family Guy: Uncensored

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-23
Price: $4.99

Apps of the Week

Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem
The strongest App Store Real Time Strategy game yet comes loaded with an extensive single player campaign, online multiplayer, and a humorous and engaging story. The game covers all of the proverbial RTS bases while forging a unique identity. My main complaint about the game is the lack of the ability to minutely control your troops, you must place “action flags” that attract your troops but don’t allow for the same degree of precision. Besides this quirk, however, the game is highly recommended.

Robocalypse - Mobile Mayhem

Category: Games / Strategy
Released: 2009-09-15
Price: $4.99

geoDefense Swarm, by guest writer Chris Hall
I usually don’t work myself into MMAHQ, but I have found a new love. geoDefense Swarm (gDS) may be the best tower defense app in the app store, and with a crowded field of apps that include Fieldrunners, The Creeps!, and Sentinel, that is saying something. Unlike so many apps in the tower defense genre, including some of the iPhone greats, gDS is genuinely challenging from the start. The graphics are great in a Tron sort of way, and the sound effects are surprisingly effective. This game is not only my new favorite tower defense game, but it may be my favorite iPhone game… period.

geoDefense Swarm

Category: Games / Strategy
Released: 2009-09-14
Price: $0.99

Aera

I covered Aera back in July right when I saw the very first released screenshots from iChromo. Coming from a seemingly small developer and being so unique, I felt like it was my civic duty to show everyone the sheer beauty of the game. I knew that the screenshots were from a very early build, but they were already something to behold.

After a good three month wait, Aera finally dropped onto the App Store. I knew the game would be pretty, but I really had no idea what I was expecting in terms of gameplay. What we have here is a hybrid 3D biplane shooter on a two dimensional playing field. Basically, your plane can move only backwards and forwards along the screen, allowing for as many twists and (up and down) turns as you feel like performing. The controls of the game are quite simple. All of the games movement uses tilt controls, and they are quite fluid, allowing this game to work as well as it does. Moving the plane up and down requires just a quick tilt your phone to the right and left, while performing a quick tilt away from you flips your plane upside down. Other touch controls include the ability to touch anywhere on the right edge of the screen to shoot, a rechargeable speed boost in the top left, and homing missiles/mines on the bottom, which are undoubtedly pretty useful.

The entire game includes 10 levels that are split up into three varieties: solo, fight, and race. Solo flights have you flying through an obstacle course of sorts, dodging land mines while collecting a certain amount of tokens in a certain amount of time. It’s hard to explain the feel of the solo flights, but to me they reminded me of playing the coin collecting sled races in Mario 64 for the first time. Sure, it’s a bizarre reference, but it’s the only memory I have of being wowed by a games increadible depth of scope. Just imagine stressing your propellers to fly straight up in the air to get to a hoop, flipping over for a dive bomb to avoid 3 air mines and having the screen pan way out, showing you the entire background landscape, with your next target just a bit below you. It’s a unique experience, Fight levels are basic dogfight adventures, and are surprisingly fun given the fact that you cannot turn your plane right and left. Race levels on the other hand are the bane of my existence. The first race level in the game took me about 20 tries. Maybe I’m just quite bad, but I’m convinced that the racing levels are just plain hard.

The real selling point for the game though isn’t tilt based controls or mission variety, it’s the games cinematic immersion factor. I can play all the airplane games I want on the iPhone, but this is the only one makes you really feel like you are experiencing something. Dogfights, my favorite of the level types, have you twisting and flipping around the screen, albeit in a straight line, in an attempt to get your machine guns in line. The thrill of dive-bombing with the ground rapidly approaching, hearing the sound of your engine spin out of control, while shooting down an unsuspecting plane from above is an experience that is unique to Aera alone.

Aera truly is a fun game, and at $2.99, is at a palatable price given the extremely high production value. People will probably complain about the lack of replay value, with only local 1v1 multiplayer available at the moment, but the developers are promising more levels and more things to do in future updates. If you are a fan of airplane games, or just enjoy ‘pretty’, pick this one up today. You won’t regret it.

Aera

I covered Aera back in July right when I saw the very first released screenshots from iChromo. Coming from a seemingly small developer and being so unique, I felt like it was my civic duty to show everyone the sheer beauty of the game. I knew that the screenshots were from a very early build, but they were already something to behold.

After a good three month wait, Aera finally dropped onto the App Store. I knew the game would be pretty, but I really had no idea what I was expecting in terms of gameplay. What we have here is a hybrid 3D biplane shooter on a two dimensional playing field. Basically, your plane can move only backwards and forwards along the screen, allowing for as many twists and (up and down) turns as you feel like performing. The controls of the game are quite simple. All of the games movement uses tilt controls, and they are quite fluid, allowing this game to work as well as it does. Moving the plane up and down requires just a quick tilt your phone to the right and left, while performing a quick tilt away from you flips your plane upside down. Other touch controls include the ability to touch anywhere on the right edge of the screen to shoot, a rechargeable speed boost in the top left, and homing missiles/mines on the bottom, which are undoubtedly pretty useful.

The entire game includes 10 levels that are split up into three varieties: solo, fight, and race. Solo flights have you flying through an obstacle course of sorts, dodging land mines while collecting a certain amount of tokens in a certain amount of time. It’s hard to explain the feel of the solo flights, but to me they reminded me of playing the coin collecting sled races in Mario 64 for the first time. Sure, it’s a bizarre reference, but it’s the only memory I have of being wowed by a games increadible depth of scope. Just imagine stressing your propellers to fly straight up in the air to get to a hoop, flipping over for a dive bomb to avoid 3 air mines and having the screen pan way out, showing you the entire background landscape, with your next target just a bit below you. It’s a unique experience, Fight levels are basic dogfight adventures, and are surprisingly fun given the fact that you cannot turn your plane right and left. Race levels on the other hand are the bane of my existence. The first race level in the game took me about 20 tries. Maybe I’m just quite bad, but I’m convinced that the racing levels are just plain hard.

The real selling point for the game though isn’t tilt based controls or mission variety, it’s the games cinematic immersion factor. I can play all the airplane games I want on the iPhone, but this is the only one makes you really feel like you are experiencing something. Dogfights, my favorite of the level types, have you twisting and flipping around the screen, albeit in a straight line, in an attempt to get your machine guns in line. The thrill of dive-bombing with the ground rapidly approaching, hearing the sound of your engine spin out of control, while shooting down an unsuspecting plane from above is an experience that is unique to Aera alone.

Aera truly is a fun game, and at $2.99, is at a palatable price given the extremely high production value. People will probably complain about the lack of replay value, with only local 1v1 multiplayer available at the moment, but the developers are promising more levels and more things to do in future updates. If you are a fan of airplane games, or just enjoy ‘pretty’, pick this one up today. You won’t regret it.

Monday Morning App HQ

Random musings of the app store

App Alluvion

This week’s only news story also has the sign of the apocalypse and the apps of the week built in – handy, eh? Over a 24 hour period, 453 new games were released! What happened Apple, did someone finally wake up? This is a great disservice to developers, as it’s exceedingly hard for an app to get noticed when so many other good games are released on the same day. Sure, developers can set release dates, but if they do, their app is placed on the latest releases section in iTunes according to approval date not publication date, therefore burying it beneath the first page and limiting valuable exposure. Please fix this, Apple! Anyway, enough ranting, here are some of the most notable releases this week. We’ll try to have reviews for as many as we can in due time, but until then, here’s a quick rundown:

Hybrid: Eternal Whisper

Gamevil’s action-RPG follow-up to Zenonia certainly has great aesthetics and a nice online component, but for me so far, the story has been too intrusive and the gameplay mediocre. At $5.99, you may want to wait for our review.

HYBRID: Eternal Whisper

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2009-09-17
Price: $5.99

Unify

Zach Gage’s first iPhone game is a very stylish Tetris variant with OpenFeint integration. Instead of blocks falling from from the top, the fall into the middle from both the left and the right, where you have to manipulate them using multi-touch controls. Match four or more of the same color to clear blocks. The game starts out slow with only black and white, but quickly becomes challenging with the addition of more colors and faster scrolling. From my time with the game, I can say it’s one of the more fun puzzle games on the App Store.

Unify

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-17
Price: $0.99

Aera

This beautiful flight sim had our editor Chris in a frenzy before its release. From initial impressions, it seems the game delivers on the hype, but if you don’t want to shell out the $2.99 now, Chris will have a review up very soon.

Aera

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $2.99

Aves
Aves contains some truly magnificent animations and entrancing binaural audio, but with its simplistic gameplay, it plays more like a tech demo. Still, if you want to see some really cool technology, it’s worth the $.99 price of admission, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for Ghost LLC’s future projects.

Aves

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $0.99

Above and Beyond Air Combat

Young developer Josh Rosen’s followup to SciFly is a totally different beast. It’s still an arcade plane flying game, but it shines with OpenFeint integration, a huge level of customization, open-world gameplay, and shiny graphics. In any normal week, this would easily earn the app of the week award.

Above & Beyond Air Combat

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $2.99

Robocalypse – Mobile Mayhem

Robocalypse is a humorous and strong entry into the RTS genre, which is relatively weak on the App Store. Featuring a lengthy campaign and full online multiplayer, Robocalypse is a safe bet for RTS fans.

Robocalypse - Mobile Mayhem

Category: Games / Strategy
Released: 2009-09-15
Price: $4.99

Alley Gator

Alley Gator is Glu’s entry into the quick $.99 games category with accelerometer-based gameplay.

Alley Gator

Category: Games / Racing
Released: 2009-09-04
Price: $0.99

Champion Archer

From the guys who made Sparta comes a port of an addictive online flash game.

Champion Archer

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $0.99

Against the Fire!

Meridian’s followup to their smash hit Alive 4 Ever is a similar survival shooter but with theme of a fireman putting out water monsters.

Against the Fire!

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $0.99

Dungeon Hunter (pulled from the App Store)

Otherwise known as Gameloft’s Diablo clone, Dungeon Hunter was said to be very impressive, but was unfortunately pulled due to a bug in the game. The game should be available for download again soon.

Castle Warriors

Castle Warriors is another nice addition to the RTS genre on the App Store. The gameplay is similar to Galcon and the graphics are very nice overall.

Castle Warriors

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-17
Price: $0.99

Super Shock Football

After App Store giants Gameloft and EA turned out full football sims, you would expect Chillingo, publisher extraordinaire to follow up with one of their own, right? Instead, developer Steamroller studios has produced a light-hearted throw back to vintage vibrating football games that is ultimately more suited to the iPhone than either Madden or NFL 2010.

Super Shock Football

Category: Games / Arcade
Released: 2009-09-17
Price: $1.99

Underground

This Chillingo “shmup” is very stylish but adds little to the genre gameplay-wise.

Underground

Category: Games / Arcade
Released: 2009-09-15
Price: $3.99

Scarecrow

Scarecrow is Ezone’s take on Doodle Jump and also the latest 3rd party game to incorporate ngmoco’s plus+ network.

Scarecrow

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $0.99

Apps of the Week

iBlast Moki

iBlast Moki is the best puzzle game on the iPhone, period. This physics-based puzzle game contains challenging gameplay. The goal is to, using bombs and eventually other elements like balloons, get all of the mokis to the exit of the level. It sounds simple, but some of the levels are head-scratchingly devious. There is almost unlimited replay value with over 70 levels, Plus+ integration, and a full-featured level editor/sharer.

iBlast Moki

Our Rating: :: VIRTUALLY IMPECCABLE

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2009-09-09
Price: $1.99

Meteor Blitz

By the same token, Meteor Blitz is the best top-down space shooter for the iPhone, surpassing even the famed Isotope. The dual-stick control scheme is incredibly fast and responsive, the graphics are simply stunning, and the gameplay is livened up by the inclusion of RPG elements and many different weapons. The game also features superlative pause and auto-save functions.

Meteor Blitz

Our Rating: :: WOW!

Category: Games / Arcade
Released: 2009-09-15
Price: $1.99

Wow, so many great games, and I’m sure I’m missing a few. Of course, I won’t expect any good game releases for the next month couple with reports of month-long approval times.