The iPhone/iPod 3.0 OS allows third-party applications to utilize the device’s Bluetooth capabilities for two-player games. The first (and only) application I had that supported this in an update was Flight Control, and since then, whenever my wife and I are on a train, we occupy our time playing this.

The huge advantage of multiplayer Bluetooth compared with Wi-Fi is that you just need the two devices, no Wi-Fi access points or Internet connectivity is required. This is truly awesome, although as we cry, “Arrrgh sooo close!” loudly on public transport we can get some strange looks. We’ve loved playing Flight Control, but I thought that by now there must be a good number of other Bluetooth-enabled games. So I’ve searched the App Store and found the following games are the only ones that support multiplayer gameplay over Bluetooth. This list will hopefully grow soon with more complex quality titles.

Flight Control — 99 cents

Direct planes so they can land without crashing into each other. Each player controls different colors and needs to send the other player’s colors off screen to the other player’s device.

F.A.S.T – Fleet Air Superiority Training — $1.99

For great graphics and a true dog-fighting two-player experience.

Bomberman Touch 2 – Volcano Party — $2.99

Play the classic Bomberman game against a friend in either head-to-head mode, or co-operative mode.

Attack From the Dead — 99 cents

Play with a friend in zombie killing, co-operative mode action.

iSamurai Bluetooth — 99 cents

Swing your phone around like a samurai sword and have a sword fight with a friend.

Showdown Poker — 99 cents

Play poker against a friend.

Showdown Quickdraw — Free

Have a Wild West-style gun-slinging match with a friend.

Tank War – Bluetooth Battle — 99 cents

Battle a friend with tanks in a bitter neon colored war.

Attack – Wireless Bluetooth Space Battle — 99 cents

If you don’t like tanks, maybe you prefer to fight in spaceships instead. Battle head-to-head.

Tic-Tac-Touch: FS5 — Free

It’s Tic-Tac-Toe; what else is there to say?

Touch4 FS5 — Free

Remember playing Connect 4 from your childhood? Relive the experience.

Briscola — $1.99

Play the Italian card game “Briscola” against a friend.

Heads Up Poker 3G — Free

This is another multiplayer Poker game.

SG Mahjong — 99 cents

This lets you play Mahjong against up to four people at once.

Scopa — $3.99

Play the Italian card game “Scopa” against a friend.

ShapeShape — 99 cents

In a game that looks like a cheap knock-off of Rolando, two-player mode lets you race against a friend to finish a level, as well as allowing you to share custom levels made with the level editor.

Pong – iPhone Edition — 99 cents

There couldn’t be a more simple game than pong, the first computer game ever made.

Checkers Lite — Free

The classic game of checkers. Everyone knows checkers.

Combat On Palm — Free

Two player head to head space combat action.

Trivia Wars — 99 cents

Challenge a friend to a trivia content.

Mancala Lite — Free

Play the game of Mancala against friends.

Reversi Lite — Free

Play the age-old game of Reversi (also known as Othello) against a friend.

iPunchOut Boxing — 99 cents

Have boxing battles against a friend by holding onto your device tightly and swinging your fists around.

Speed Lite — Free

Play the card game of Speed against a friend.

Cheap Tactics — 99 cents

Challenge a friend to this simple strategy RPG game.

BattleFrogs — 99 cents

Similar to Battleships, but with frogs on lily pads. Guess where a friend has placed their frogs by throwing rocks.

Bluetooth Hot Potato — 99 cents

Pass the hot potato to other players before it burns up.

No doubt that despite my searching efforts I may have missed a game — or perhaps one has just been released. Let us know your favorite Bluetooth multiplayer game in the comments.

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App Quick Stats

With Watchmen arriving at movie houses around the globe, the iPhone game attempts to brings the grim world of the costumed hero to you.

There’s a whole heap of Marvel in my comic collection but, I’m afraid, not so much DC. I preferred my heroes to have hyphens and make cheap puns. Plus, Batman just ain’t a superhero, however you cut it: real heroes have powers.

Shielded from the darkness of the DC-universe, I never read Watchmen. Never got to bask in New York’s crime-ridden ’80′s underbelly. Failed to experience a mankind-enveloping conspiracy unfolding, page after page, the distinction between hero and villain smudged like a fresh inkblot test.

And so, in preparation for the iPhone game — a massively multiplayer online adventure — I purchased the Watchmen graphic novel. Now, having read this classic book, I’m ready to shine my healing torch of justice into an ocean of violence and crime, representing all that is good and just. I am The Ambassador.

New Frontiers

The idea behind Watchmen: Justice is Coming seems to be to take the MMO experience — think World of Warcraft, Age of Conan etc. — and transport it to the iPhone. It’s a seriously compelling prospect: forming your own crime-fighting syndicate and entering a dark, bustling fictional New York, teeming with hidden evils.

Having just read the graphic novel, everything seems almost real to me — the source material is so rich, setting the stage for a vast online adventure. Therefore, there’s much at risk and much that could be wrong; like more paranoid members of the Watchmen contingent, I got the feeling that there would be something awful waiting for me.

Before donning costume and taking up residence in the rotten core of The Big Apple, as The Ambassador, the first thing I had to do was set up an account. It’s fairly standard character-generation stuff, choosing skin color and a name, but there’s a clever twist thrown in with the Rorschach inkblot test — determining your hero’s personality type.

Vigilante Stuff

However, there’s no palpable impact as a result of the setup process. The Ambassador popped up on a New York sidewalk, wearing civilian clothes, nothing particular heroic about him and the result of the Rorschach test seemingly rendered irrelevant.

Moving around the streets is easy enough — pressing and holding your finger on an area of the screen starts your character walking in that direction. Unfortunately, you’re just another guy, wandering the streets, getting your drab city clothes soaked through in the everlasting rain, rifling through dumpsters in search of new clothes.

Indeed, aside from fighting, that’s how you up your XP and acquire new costume pieces: dumpster diving. Before you’re even ready to start fighting, it seems your first mission is to saunter around the curiously deserted back-alleys and street-corners in search of garbage.

Maybe it’s a tip of the hood to Rorschach’s trashy drop-off point in the graphic novel (a can rather than a dumpster), but it just doesn’t seem appropriate. We’re heroes — we get our hands dirty handling criminal scum, not digging through garbage for cast-off costumes.

Sham Crusade

The Watchmen graphic novel didn’t seem to be about fighting, or violence, or good vs. evil per se; the story seemed to be something a step ahead of traditional comic book fare. It’s a shame therefore that the MMO eschews all of this and seems to boil down to fighting.

The city streets seem to be empty much of the time. Maybe it’s because it’s early days for this MMO, occasionally though you’ll pass by another player and they’ll pick a fight with you. If you agree to fight, you’re thrown into a mini-game — an odd little affair which involves tapping a couple of buttons, no skill is apparently needed.

Another option for those of a violent disposition is to go hunting for Knot-Tops and other criminal rogues. These fights with computer-controlled characters can be accessed by locating floating red exclamation marks on the streets — something else which just doesn’t sit right, detracting from the atmosphere of the Watchmen universe.

A Perfect Grid

Despite the fact that the game plays out on an isometric grid — harking back to the old days of adventure games, an impractical viewing angle that I’ve never appreciated — the atmosphere is something which it almost gets right.

The New York of the graphic novel is grim, falling to pieces under the weight of fear, criminality and hysteria. The New York of the iPhone game — while devoid of the hustle and bustle — is a forlorn, broken location. It’s totally appropriate and feels just right. Or just wrong, as the case may be.

Walking the streets, I wandered past the Gunga Diner and kissing silhouettes nearby. I stood next to the Newspaper stand so often visited by the reader in the graphic novel. There was even a visit to the cemetery, where I paid my respects to The Comedian. It’s all, quite pleasingly, present and correct.

Graphically, the game is undeniably impressive, certainly drawing comparison to early PlayStation titles, even reminding me of the original Metal Gear Solid at one point. Although there don’t seem to be any sound effects, the soundtrack swoops and moans, dripping with melodrama and intrigue.

Under the Hood

Unfortunately, all the melodrama generated by the dark soundtrack and the aptly depressing scene-setting achieved by the graphics doesn’t help the game’s cause. In actual fact, this grim atmosphere feeds in to the frustration felt because of the game’s many bugs and flaws.

Other players seem to always want to pick a fight. This is a world of heroes and, although it’s mentioned in the graphic novel that heroes frequently end up in combat the first time they meet, it just doesn’t sit right. Why should all the heroes be fighting each other? There’s no scene-setting, no grand over-arching plot. (There is a plot, but it hardly seems to explain why there’s a proliferation of violent heroes on the streets.)

Plus, I’ve frequently been thrown in to a fight that I wanted to walk away from: the yes/no option is broken, it doesn’t work and it’s so frustrating. Once a fight starts loading, you’re taken off the streets, in to fight mode. This mode frequently doesn’t load, there are usually connection issues, and the game either locks up, disconnects, or takes around five minutes to reconnect you to the street server.

The game falls asleep too. So while you’re waiting to be reconnected to the streets, if your iPhone goes to sleep, it may not actually connect when it finally does wake up. It just feels unpolished, rushed and, frankly, rude on the part of the game developers.

The interface is clunky, it’s frequently unclear just what is a clickable object or button and what isn’t. Plus, there’s no visual or audible feedback from pressing buttons or interacting with objects. It’s disconcerting that from source material teeming with so much vitality and expression, can come such a lifeless and, at times, dull game.

Summing Up

I enjoyed the graphic novel so much, plus I’ve been waiting for an iPhone MMO, something with a compelling narrative and real mass appeal. Unfortunately, this isn’t a worthy companion to the graphic novel and certainly not the iPhone MMO I’ve been waiting for.

The game feels rushed and, as is a trend with games based on movies, is most probably a hastily created cash-in. It seems to have very little relation to the universe it’s based upon; instead it’s probably best described as a lazy, bug-ridden chat-room with pretty graphics.

With more players and less bugs, this could really be something special. For now though, The Ambassador is packing up his costume and retiring. Perhaps he’ll return when the world is ready for heroes like him.

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So in keeping with the spirit of chilling, we’ve done all the hard work for you and hand-picked a few bright young additions to the App Store this week. Light some incense, breath deeply and let our wave of recommendations gently wash over you.

This week we’re looking at Yoga Stretch Lite, Sniff_Jazzbox, and Live Poker.

Yoga Stretch Lite (free) – Flexing your Chakras can be an expensive affair, with yoga sessions costing a fair few bucks. In this time of economic uncertainty, there’s a cost-effective solution to the pricey problems of relaxation: Yoga Stretch Lite is a free app that effectively squeezes a proper yoga sesh in to your iPhone. The app features audio instruction, sixty different poses and specially composed background music to help you stretch and chillax.

Unfortunately, in testing the app out, I discovered that the music is terrible and the softly-spoken female instructor had been recorded with the wail of a police car in the background. Very relaxing indeed.  Setting that aside, you can switch the music and voice-over off and it’s supremely helpful to have clear guidance for a yoga session squished on to the iPhone.

Sniff_Jazzbox (free) – Ever browsed for a Wi-Fi hotspot in the middle of a city and noticed all those locked networks? Unless you’ve got a password, they’re all but useless. Sniff_Jazzbox puts those networks to good use, converting them in to music, so as you walk round the city your iPhone spurts music like a fountain full of abstract jazz. It’s all a bit abstract, but certainly intriguing to hear those invisible networks rendered as an endless jazz odyssey.

Live Poker (free) – An incredibly polished poker app, with full multiplayer capabilities and connectivity with other players on Facebook and Myspace. Plus it costs absolutely nothing! It sounds like the ultimate poker app for iPhone and, despite a few version one bugs, it really is.

The free version comes with 1000 chips — replenished for every day you play — but there’s also a paid version ($9.99), which kicks the game off with 40,000 chips in the bank for you. I recommend that beginners and sharks alike grab the free version today and work your way up to the big money using your skills alone.

FriendBook from Tapulous

And finally, before you jump over to the App Store for a flurry of downloading, Tapulous have released their long-awaited contact management app Friendbook. Tapulous are the awesome development team behind Tap Tap Revenge, the free rhythm action game for iPhone/touch.

Available for free, Friendbook was originally released several months ago, touting an intriguing new feature called Handshake. Using the iPhone’s GPS functionality, Handshake enabled users to wirelessly share their contact details with each other. Unfortunately, it didn’t work quite as planned, and Friendbook users ended up receiving the contact deets for total strangers. Tapulous yanked the app before any serious damage was done.

Now the app is back in the store, still touting the Handshake feature (which we hope has been fixed) yet no longer free, priced at $0.99. Is it worth it for a buck? Several months ago, perhaps, but now there’s a raft of contact list management apps available (some free, some for a few bucks). Plus, there’s even a free app called Handshake which we covered right here on TAB a few weeks back.

That’s all from the App Store this week, I’ll be back next Saturday to delve in to the mixed bag of new releases and pick a few highlights just for you. In the meantime, drop by the comments and let us know which apps you’ve tried over the past week.

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This week we’re looking at Google Earth, Mobile Files, Say Who and Cyber Chess Ultimate Online Chess.

Google Earth (free) – Is there nothing our humble iPhone’s aren’t capable of? Apparently not, as Google have upped the game once more by shrinking down the awe-inspiring Google Earth on to our pocket-size Apple devices. It’s not necessarily a replacement for the excellent GPS-fuelled Maps app, but Google Earth is impressive nonetheless and a useful tool to compliment every iPhone owner’s globe-trotting adventures.

Mobile Files ($4.99) – While there are already several wireless storage solutions for the iPhone (including the feature-rich and totally free Discover), there are very few applications that allow you to access your iDisk. Mobile Files gives you access to your Mobile Me iDisk, allowing you to mount multiple iDisks and even view files (such as images, office documents and music) while you’re on the move. It’s worth noting that this is the only free solution available from the App Store at present.

Say Who – Dialer (free) – There are some who believe that the iPhone — for all the wonders that it does offer — is missing a few essential features. One of the additions that has been called for is voice-dialing and, in lieu of an official solution from Apple, Excuse Me Services have stepped up to the plate and created Say Who – Dialer. The app supports a range of voice-dialing methods, from simply saying a name, to actually stating the number you’d like to call.

Cyber Chess Ultimate Online Chess ($1.99) – Setting aside the game’s overly specific name, this is actually a seriously robust chess game. It’s really the complete package with great graphics, solid AI and support for FICS which means 300,000 registered players via FreeChess.org. For the price, it’s represents great value both for beginners and experienced players of this wonderful game.

And while we’ve managed to point out a few particularly special additions to the App Store, as always, there’s a little bit of time left to wax lyrical about something we might have missed from a few weeks back. Japanese clothing company, UNIQLO, commissioned creative agency Projector to create a promotional campaign for them and the result was the UNIQLOCK.

You can check out the UNIQLOCK online, install Facebook widgets and do all that stuff, but it really seems to come in to its own on the iPhone. It’s like carrying around a piece of performance art in your pocket and it’s just great, fusing catchy electro lounge jazz with synchronized dancing and a big clock. The app is free, so if you’re feeling a little avant go grab it now!

That’s all for another seven days, we’ll have another App Store roundup for you next Saturday, in the meantime, drop by the comments and tell us what apps you’ve been toying with this week.

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