Infinity Blade

Definitely a Looker

Let me make something abundantly clear: This is a gorgeous game. It’s the best-looking game I’ve seen on my iPhone 4′s Retina Display, and the best on the iPad, too. I haven’t had the chance to see how it works on an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch, but it runs very smoothly on Apple’s latest phone and tablet hardware. You can see many pretty pictures of just how nice Infinity Blade looks in the gallery at the end of this post.

Gameplay

Gameplay initially held some disappointment for me. Unlike in Epic Citadel, you aren’t free to move about the game world in Infinity Blade. It’s an on-rails experience, with pulsing circles directing your attention to places you can travel to. Generally speaking, you have one choice. Sometimes, you have two. Along the way, you can tap gold, potions or chests to get items, and you can change the camera angle, but there is no exploration or open world environment.

When you start the game, you’re presented with an opponent barring your way. Tapping on that enemy puts you into combat, or you can tap a circular blue “i” icon to get more information about him. You can block, dodge or parry attacks in order to get opponents to drop their guard, and then attack with your weapon. If you attack without first breaking an enemy’s defence, you’ll only do minor damage. You can also use a special power attack when fully charged, which automatically breaks an enemy’s guard. Finally, you can also use magic to cast spells with gestures you draw on the screen, which can be either offensive or defensive.

Fighting opponents earns you (surprise!) experience, and money, which you can spend on equipment. You “master” equipment by using it in battle, which grants you skill point upgrades. Levelling up also nabs you new skill points which you can assign to your attributes as you like.

Story

You’ll probably be amazed at how fast you burn through the various battles with the castle’s guardians and wind up facing the God King, the game’s boss. I know I was. And you’ll probably be even more surprised when the God King kills you incredibly quickly. But death isn’t the end. When the God King kills you, you start again, with all your weapons, equipment, gold and experience intact. Because you’re the previous hero’s son. Enemies are tougher, but you earn more defeating them. The cycle repeats as you gain experience and better equipment, getting killed by the God King until you’re strong enough to take him down. It took me four runs (or generations) to get to that point.

Verdict

Infinity Blade is short, and repetitive. Even within the individual “lives” of the hero, the enemies you face have repetitive fighting styles and character model designs. Despite its brevity and repetition, though, Infinity Blade is a good game. Why? Because I still want to keep playing it, even after having seen both possible endings to the game.

When the credits first rolled, I admit I felt betrayed. The game does cost $6.99 after all, and I expected something completely different after playing Epic Citadel. But then I just started playing again, and didn’t stop for a long time after. Collecting and upgrading items feels so rewarding, as does refining your combat abilities and identifying enemy patterns. In fact, in that regard, it feels very much like old-school games where you have to know the boss patterns by heart to win. GigaOM colleague Kevin Tofel noted that Infinity Blade reminded him of gaming classic Dragon’s Lair, which is another pretty good comparison.

Infinity Blade is a great tech demo. It shows that Apple’s iOS devices can run games made with the Unreal Engine 3, and the level of detail put into armor, weapon and environment design is amazing. But more than that, it’s a really fun experience based around RPG fundamentals, yet light enough that it remains a great casual game: one you can pick up and put down at your leisure without feeling like you’re breaking the mood as you might with, say, a Final Fantasy title.

Here’s what you might want to think about before making a purchase:

• Highs: Gorgeous graphics, fun gameplay with solid controls. Addictive RPG elements.
• Lows: Short on story, repetitive.

It’s also good to keep in mind that Infinity Blade’s developers have promised more content to come, including a multiplayer mode. I can see player-vs-player combat being really fun using the mechanics already in place. The promise of future updates doesn’t affect my overall opinion of the game, though. I’d gladly recommend it either way.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Sony vs. Microsoft: Whose Mobile Gaming Strategy Will be Better?
• The Real Impact of Facebook’s New Approach to Gaming
• Why Microsoft’s Mobile Gaming Strategy Is a Mistake

The iPhone faces control issues and what seems like a natural reticence towards developing lengthy, in-depth game experiences on the iPhone. I say natural because most users still game only casually on the device, since that’s what a phone lends itself to. So does Ravensword manage to pull off an in-depth action RPG gaming experience? Read on to find out.

Graphics and Audio

At least superficially, Ravensword looks like the console and PC games from which it so clearly takes its inspiration. By default, you operate your character from a third-person perspective, and you can switch to first-person. That’s a standard borrowed from the Morrowind series, among others.

It’s a little jarring to see some of the visual effects the game has in store. For example, everyone’s eyes are plastered open all the time, and look painted on and terrifying. Every time your character wakes up after having fallen in battle, I have to suppress a little scream.

Ravensword’s soundtrack and effects sound a little pre-packaged and stock, but they don’t really hurt the experience, and you can always flick the silent switch is the soundtrack becomes too repetitive, as it did for me.

Gameplay

If you’ve ever played any kind of RPG before, the game mechanics of Ravensword will be familiar to you. Basically, you run around killing monsters and get experience for doing so. In most cases, the RPG mechanics are a little more structured and complex than that. In most cases. In Ravensword they are not.

As soon as you venture out beyond the city walls, bad guys appear, and you hit them with whatever you happen to be wielding, then they die and you get experience, or you die and wake up in town. If you kill enough critters, you gain a level, and your stats are increased by a pre-determined amount. No level customization, no skill selection, nothing. To make matters worse, you don’t choose a class/race/gender etc., so you’re stuck as a human warrior whether you like it or not.

Nor is combat challenging. The most you can do is switch between your bow and your sword when killing animals and forest creatures. Otherwise, you just hit the attack button like it’s going out of style. Also, you die a lot early on, since the game design is unbalanced.

Plot

It’s a bad sign when the first thing I have to say about a game’s plot design is to question whether or not it actually has one. To be fair, there is a story lurking somewhere in the background, about a kingdom in denial and a king who’s been missing for three years. Presumably, you’re meant to find out exactly what’s up with all of that nonsense at some point, but after spending quite a bit of time killing rats and warthogs, I just wasn’t convinced that finding out would be worth it.

Verdict

I was perhaps too excited to pick up Ravensword, since it seemed to have a lot of promise as an action RPG for the iPhone, but even if you aren’t expecting much, I’d definitely take a pass on this offering from Chillingo. Dungeon Hunter is a much better experience, and if you’re looking for a Morrowind clone, I’d suggest just waiting a few months since I’m sure Gameloft will get to copying it, too, in due course.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

Trench Run is based around the Rebel assault on the Death Star at the end of George Lucas’ classic 1977 movie. Piloting an X-Wing fighter, you begin the game high above the Empire’s dreaded Death Star in an aggressive dogfight with TIE fighters. Once you’ve dispatched them, it’s time to descend into that famous trench and make your approach to a small (two meter wide) thermal exhaust port, which, if memory serves, you’ll find right below the main port.

Oh, and, the shaft is ray-shielded so you’ll need to hit it directly with proton torpedoes. The doubting Dodonna’s amongst you might think that impossible — even for an iPhone — but, y’know, womp rats, T-16’s and all that.

The game starts with a fierce dogfight with TIE fighters above the dreaded Death Star…

…and culminates in the famous trench run.

Trench Run uses the iPhone’s accelerometers to great effect. I’m usually wary of extensive tilt-control. That might be because I’m just rubbish, or because developers sometimes use accelerometers unnecessarily. In Trench Run it’s not too bad, and there are options for adjusting pitch and sensitivity.

The on-screen controls are cleverly implemented; there are no virtual buttons cluttering the screen. Instead, the two main controls (Force Power for slow motion and, of course, Fire) are activated by pressing the left or right hand sides of the screen. Easy.

The few controls are activated by hitting large areas of the screen

Video sequences of the X-Wings approaching the Death Star (S-foils in attack position, naturally) and the spectacular explosion of the Death Star itself (the 1997 bang, by the way) really help set the scene. But it’s John Williams’ breathtaking score that puts you slap bang in the middle of the action.

All Wings report in…

One quibble; the difficulty levels are a bit… odd. The easiest level was selected for me at installation so I bumped it up a level (usually labeled “Normal” but Trench Run goes directly from Easy to Medium.) So, with Medium selected, I dove in… and failed. I’m normally good at this type of thing but after 15 minutes of failure I was starting to hate this game. So I tried again on “Easy.”

10 minutes later I had destroyed the Death Star and defeated the evil Empire. I had finished the whole game. See, once the dogfight’s over, the actual trench run is appallingly easy. THQ Wireless say the game has “tons of replay value” but when the difference between “Easy” and “Medium” is actually “Pointless” and “Practically Impossible” I don’t see myself playing this again any time soon. (Now in your best Yoda voice, croak “That is why you fail.”)

THQ also says there are hidden features in the game. You could always stretch out with your fingers and ask Google what they are, but that’s probably the path to the Dark Side.

If you love Star Wars, this is a game you should own. I doubt it’s worth the $4.99 asking price, but hey, there’s profit to be had, and Lucasfilm ain’t finished beating this Tauntaun just yet.

Star Wars Trench Run is out now. Go buy it – and may the Force be with you.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

Now, the trend seems to be to use TransGaming’s Cider, which in non-technical terms a wrapper game developers can use to bridge their Windows code over to OS X. It’s not a “true” native client, but, since it doesn’t require a virtual machine or the ritual sacrifices that seem to go along with getting games to run on Crossover, I can handle that. Warhammer Online, from EAMythic is the latest game to get ported. After a few months of beta, it was released October 26. Full disclosure: this isn’t a full review. I’ve only got about 15 hours or so of game play to base these observations on.

I’ve had decent luck with Cider ports, although my sample set of Sims 3 and Spore is a little small. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) is definitely the most resource-intensive of the ports I’ve tried. For the most part, it worked fairly well. I have a brand-new MacBook Pro, but with only 2GB of RAM. I had enough stutters and jerks to prove to me that jumping to 4GB would be optimal, but it wasn’t unplayable with 2GB, either.

Gameplay

Warhammer has two modes: one where you fight against the computer-controlled monsters (PvE), and one where you fight against other players (PvP). There are two sides, Order and Destruction, and they are locked in the age-old, time tried, cliché battle to control the lands. What I liked is you can earn the experience needed to level up in both modes — although there is a separate level called Renoun where you only earn in PvP.

The PvE quests are fairly trite, being mostly “go forth and kill me 10 of these.” One nice variation is a Public Quest. When you go into an area, you’ll get a pop up to “kill x of this.” Any player in the area killing these contributes to the kill total. Participating in these earns you some influence you can use to buy better gear — almost all the gear upgrades I found were earned from either Influence or Renoun rewards.

There are also PvP quests relating to capturing enemy turf or killing other players. You can also play PvP scenarios, which are similar to a Team Fortress-type map. You’ll go into a small area and need to fight other player for control of a few objectives. This is where I had the most fun. The battles are short, usually fairly intense, and last about 15 minutes. You can queue up for one with a press of a button. When enough players are queued up, the scenario will begin. When it’s completed the game will return your previous location. Being able to gain levels doing this relieves some of the boredom attached to just running quests.

There are a couple of amusing bones EA has thrown to Mac players. All Mac players unlock an in-game title, “I’m a(n) Order/Destruction” depending on your faction. If PC/Mac people kill enough of each other, you can also unlock a secret title.

Competition

Warhammer’s biggest competition on the Mac is World of Warcraft, and in many ways it’s not a fair comparision. WoW has years of polish behind it and only has a PvE mode (the PvP stuff is more of a tack-on than a core game component as it is in WAR). There is a visual similarity between the two, but it’s ironic. Warhammer Online is based on the old Game Designers miniatures game, which WoW borrowed from for its look. However, I found the look to not be a sharp as WoW, and the characters models were a little bland by today’s standards.

One of the benchmarks I’ve used when reviewing games to judge their elusive “fun” factor is how many times I bullcrap myself into thinking, “I’m just logging in to check one thing,” knowing full well I’m going to be in there for at least an hour. That about sums up my weekend with WAR. You can download a free, 10 day trial here. Existing customers, aka, yous Windoze folks, can download the client for free.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

How well does the beloved RTS translate to the iPhone platform? That depends on what you’re looking to get out of the game. EA Mobile has clearly tried to faithfully translate the experience, but as with any translation, no perfect one-to-one relationship can exist. What does come through, however, is definitely worth looking at.

Graphics & Audio

Perhaps just to make me sad, EA chose not to go with live action mission briefings for this installment of the series, opting instead to brief you with static cartoon images and scrollable text. It’s not nearly as pleasant as hammy acting, but it does get the job done and prepare you adequately for the in-game action.

In-game graphics look great, and are probably a bit of an improvement over their original counterparts in the PC version. Units are clearly distinguishable from one another, animations are smooth, and the visual special effects look good. My sole complaint for the in-game look of things is that units can tend to stack, which renders some of them invisible. It’s confusing and can hamper effective unit management.

Sound is good, with music from Red Alert 3, which is the latest game in the series for the PC and consoles. In-game voices are well-recorded and clear, as are most sound effects. Again, the lack of audio in briefings and other between-action components is a little disappointing, but not terribly so.

Gameplay

As with any real-time strategy port for the iPhone, the key to enjoyable gameplay lies in making sure the controls are well-designed and intuitive. This can be particularly challenging even when porting RTS games to consoles from the PC, so EA has its work cut out for it with Command & Conquer on the iPhone.

Selecting and commanding individual units on the iPhone is simple enough. You touch a unit to select it, and touch somewhere else to tell it where to go or what to attack. To select multiple units, you have to activate a selection tool by clicking an icon in the lower left-hand corner. At first it wasn’t clear (I hadn’t reached that part in the tutorial yet) and I tried tapping and dragging and two-finger pinch and zoom type gestures.

Once you have selected a group of units, though, you can assign them to a command group using another icon at the lower left of the screen. This assigns them to one of three slots on the left, and allows you to re-select that group at any time with a simple tap. It’s the saving grace of the game, control-wise, and I wish there were more than three spots available to assign unit groups to.

The campaigns are fun, and not too challenging. There is both a Soviet and an Allied campaign, each of which contains five chapters, and there’s a skirmish mode with customizable starting resources and different maps, which really adds to the replay value of the game.

All told, EA Mobile does a great job skirting the limitations of the iPhone’s controls, and provides ample gameplay while still retaining a fairly casual feel, so that you can pick it up and put it down as necessary between meetings or while commuting.

Verdict

For an iPhone game, Command & Conquer: Red Alert feels polished and professional, but it leaves me wanting something more. I can’t help but yearn for the easier controls and richer storyline and gameplay of the PC version, which may in fact be what EA was intending. Perhaps the iPhone game is meant as a sort of teaser demo to attract new customers to the PC/console line. Either way, despite solid gameplay, Red Alert left me underwhelmed. I’d wait for the inevitable price drop to $6.99 or less before picking this one up.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

In fact, Gameloft was very wise in porting this game to the iPhone platform. As far as traditional-style games on Apple portables go, control issues can tend to muddy an otherwise well-developed user experience. Innovative platform-targeted titles like Rolando escape these nagging issues, but a straight-up hack-and-slash RPG is a different fish.

Graphics and Audio

The look and sound of this game are exactly what you would expect if you’ve played previous Gameloft offerings like Hero of Sparta or Assassin’s Creed. You view things from a third-person, three-quarters perspective, which is right in line with the Diablo games it so liberally borrows from.

Your character’s look changes depending upon what class you choose, and what items you have equipped. It doesn’t display quite the level of detail and variety that you get from Diablo 2, but it does do a fair job of keeping things interesting for those easily bored by their character’s avatar.

Monsters and NPCs on the other hand get recycled quite a bit, but let’s be honest, all we’re looking for here is a point-and-click experience fest, and for those purposes, the baddies serve well enough.

In terms of sound, Dungeon Hunter doesn’t offend, but the score also won’t be claiming any awards any time soon. If you tire of vaguely ominous orchestral music, however, there is the nice feature of a built-in music player complete with unfettered access to your iPhone’s music library in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, tucked away nicely where it doesn’t get in the way of anything.

Classes, Attributes and Skills

You can choose from three different classes in Dungeon Hunter. There’s the basic Warrior, the more lightly clad Rogue, and finally the Mage, who is obviously the chief magic user in the bunch. I like the simplicity of class choice, since you don’t get all muddled up trying to choose between shades of difference, like those that exist between a Warrior and a Barbarian. I chose a Warrior as my first character, as I always do, because magic is girly and lame.

Speaking of girly, ladies are out of luck with avatar choices, since there aren’t any heroes of the female persuasion to choose from. That might be story-driven, since you take on the role of the recently deceased king of the land, but I suspect it has more to do with making game design and coding easier.

Each class will assign your attribute points according to their strengths. You can later assign two points per level as you progress in the game towards the attribute of your choosing. I’ve been throwing mine around with abandon, and so far it hasn’t negatively affected gameplay.

Skills are class-specific, and include both active attacks and spells and passive buffs. There is not very much variety here, but each skill has a number of levels so you won’t soon run out of places to put the points you acquire when you level up. In addition to these, you get a Fairy spell that changes depending on which Fairy you currently have equipped. You find these creatures throughout the game.

Gameplay

In Dungeon Hunter, the controls shine, so long as you have click-where-you-want-to-go mode enabled, which is off by default. You can use the virtual stick if you want, as has been the standard for Gameloft’s other action-adventure titles, but tapping where you want to move just feels natural in a Diablo-esque title, and it works well on the iPhone. Spellcasting isn’t as smooth. You have to flick through your available skills to change which you want to use, so I just basically stick with one and put all my skill points into it.

As in Diablo, you travel from town to town and to various dungeons in between, following your central quest arc. You can also pick up a number of side quests along the way, many of which yield items, experience, or both. I wouldn’t call any of the side quests complex or overly detailed, but they also don’t feel tedious, so it works well.

Once you’ve cleared an area, you can either just quit to the map or fight your way back to the entrance to exit. You can also return any time you like to pick up items and defeat more enemies, which respawn. Helps with the occasional grinding that’s required to beat a boss.

Verdict

I paid $7 for this game, and I would gladly do so again. It may only provide a fraction of the addictive, life-ruining enjoyment that I derive from the Diablo series, but it provides it anywhere, any time via my iPhone, and it does this all with sound design and a certain amount of style to boot.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• Is There Any Money for Carriers in the Mobile Wallet?

Arcade bowling style games are very popular. In the real world, skee-ball is probably the most recognized of these. In the iPhone world there have been several who have risen to the challenge, but Ramp Champ, the newest game from The Iconfactory and DSMediaLabs, brings a very interesting and addictive twist to this genre.

Boasting an interface designed by The Iconfactory (and award-winning designer Louie Mantia), Ramp Champ takes traditional skee-ball and throws it down in a series of four stylized arcade games, based on the idea of flicking balls at targets of varying points. Right out of the proverbial box, users can play a variety of mini-games, including ones set in a clown environment, an underwater environment, an arcade-style outer space environment or, for Apple fanboys out there, a classic “Icon Garden” style setting. Unlike traditional skee-ball, each environment has multiple targets of varying weight as well as hidden easter eggs.

Each mini-game rewards great gameplay by providing tickets, like a traditional arcade. A “loot” section showcases a page of prizes per each environment, allowing users to trade in tickets for a very diverse collection of prizes. Each mini-game also provides for three goals and awards players with collectible trophies upon completing those goals.

The game also supports in app purchasing of additional environments, including an Adventure Pack which adds ninja and tiki island themed levels as well as a Challenge Pack which adds fantasy and dental themed levels. These additional in app purchases are 99 cents and also include additional goals and prizes.

Ramp Champ is a very fun and addicting game and perfect for long term gameplay or just when you have a few minutes to spare. The original soundtrack and amazing graphics make this a definite must have. Ramp Champ is $1.99 and available on the App Store.

P.S. Among the easter eggs you might find in this game is everyone’s favorite dogcow, Clarus. When playing The Icon Garden level, knock over all of the icons and then one of the two differently colored flowers in the second wave. If you’ve played Ramp Champ, tell me what you think!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

The first week of September has seen a deluge of new arrivals at the App Store. It’s time for me to search through the latest releases for iPhone and hand-pick my recommendations for the past seven days.

This week I’ve been looking at Button, Facebook, BlogPress and Quicksilver.

Button (Free)
One of my favorite sci-fi novels, “Better Than Life,” oscillates between a deep space distopia and an almost perfect Earth as it follows the surviving crew members of the Red Dwarf mining ship. It’s soon revealed that the crew’s collective vision of Earth is actually a highly addictive massively multiplayer online game beamed directly into their brains, leaving their real bodies in a seemingly catatonic state. Rather than take a giant leap towards this sinister style of multiplayer gaming, Button instead takes baby steps. There’s a big button, everyone around the world sees the button, when the button lights up you must push the button, sometimes you win a prize, usually you don’t. Button is effectively a nonsensical distraction that seems to tickle just the right bit of your brain. Plus, you can ramp up the futility by playing as a team. I’ve created a special team called tab just for readers of TheAppleBlog, come join my group and let’s push buttons together.

Facebook (Free)
The official Facebook app has finally received its first major update for some time, bringing the service’s iPhone implementation almost (but not quite) up to speed with the 3GS and 3.0 firmware. For starters, the app’s user interface has been streamlined and tidied up — gone are the tiny buttons, pointless scrollable horizontal groups bar and crash-happy inbox. The main feed benefits from having a clutter free interface and now incorporates likes and comments. The menu screen features several big chunky buttons, designed for ease of navigation. Notably, the app now allows video recording and uploads, a real boon for iPhone 3GS users. However, it’s seems that when Facebook update their app, there’s always something missing. In this case, there are no Push Notifications, an OS 3.0 feature which could have been designed solely for apps just like Facebook.

BlogPress ($2.99)
The official WordPress app just isn’t working out for me. While I appreciate the WordPress app being free, I’m still not impressed by the app’s sluggish navigation and overly technical user interface. In essence, the WordPress app doesn’t feel pretty and it doesn’t work as it should. With this in mind, I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement and BlogPress seems to be just the app to knock WordPress off my iPhone. The app features a WYSIWYG editor, incredibly important as you certainly don’t want to be tweaking your latest post’s code on your iPhone’s keyboard. There’s also video uploading, something which the WordPress app doesn’t currently support, handled by uploading your video to YouTube and then embedding within your latest post. BlogPress also supports posting simultaneously to multiple blog services, including Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal, Drupal and Joomla.

Quicksilver ($1.99)
And finally, while on the subject of replacing apps, I’ve been on the hunt for an alternative to Nimbuzz — while it’s an excellent feature-rich iPhone IM app, and free too, I’ve been feeling like I need a more streamlined solution. With it’s minimal iChat-esque interface, Quicksilver is the perfect app for a quick bit of iPhone IMing, with one caveat: it’s made for XMPP-compliant servers only, which, in non-geek-speak, means it’ll work with Google Talk but not MSN. The really great thing about Quicksilver is that it incorporates Push Notifications, making it more than worth the two buck asking price. When you close Quicksilver, you’re not logged out of chat, instead you’re status is changed to away. If one of your contacts should get in touch, the message will arrive on your iPhone as a push notification.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

This week I’ve been looking at Gomi, Ustream 3GS Recorder, Simon the Sorcerer and Minigore.

Gomi ($1.99)
I’ve been waiting for Gomi for what seems like an absolute age now. The game’s developer, Bovine Dragon, is a regular tweeter and so when I woke up this morning to read that Gomi had finally been approved by Apple and released to the App Store, without even rolling out of bed, I immediately purchased the app. I’ve mentioned it a few times over the past few months, but to recap over the premise, the game blends Katamari Damacy object-rolling with planet hopping à la Mario Galaxy. The graphics are so lo-fi they look to be drawn using MS Paint on an old IBM running Windows ’98. It’s charming, fun from the start and really easy to get to grips with. Plus, for two bucks you get over 140 levels, eight minigames and loads of achievements and unlockables.

Ustream 3GS Recorder (Free)
We’re going to start seeing more apps that are exclusive to the iPhone 3GS as the weeks roll, on and Ustream 3GS Recorder is most definitely one of them. The app makes use of the iPhone 3GS’s video functionality, enabling you to record video on the fly. Although the app doesn’t support video trimming as with the iPhone’s native Camera app, there are some handy advantages to using Ustream. For avid social networkers, the really special thing about this app is that, alongside uploading to Ustream, the app can also publish your video on Facebook and YouTube. In effect, this free app is an easy way to activate Facebook uploading on your iPhone 3GS and will provide the perfect stopgap before Facebook comes out with its long awaited app update.

Simon the Sorcerer ($4.99)
Another week of releases and another classic retro title gets a refit for the iPhone. In the past few weeks we’ve had Space Invaders, Monkey Island, Flight of the Amazon Queen and now, rather unexpectedly, classic point ‘n’ click fun with Simon the Sorcerer. Plucky young Simon has been teleported in to a world of magic, wearing traditional sorcerer’s garb and with a typically teenage attitude, it’s up to him to defeat the bad guys and find a way home. While the games mentioned in previous weeks have been been updated for the iPhone, Simon the Sorcerer just seems to have been shrunk to fit the device. It’s still a great game though and, while it’s certainly a relic from a bygone era, it’s one worth dusting off and checking out.

Minigore (99 cents)
Behind the scenes app developers seem to be facing some serious issues, but that’s clearly not stopped a slew of brilliant games arriving at the App Store. The latest must-have game is Minigore, an ultra-cute shooter featuring a small square man called John Gore. The game is set in a forest arena inhabited by the sweetest looking bad-guys you’ll ever blow to bits. The perfectly implemented dual-controls hark back to old school arena shooters like Robotron and Smash TV and, when you’re not frantically racing round the forest avoiding getting eaten, you’ll also notice that the artwork is positively delicious.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

For its latest title, EA has brought Bioware’s Mass Effect to iPhone. This installment builds on the story from the original critically acclaimed console game.

Set in the same universe as the original console game, Mass Effect Galaxy features a rich story peppered with action-packed gunplay.

As you’d expect with a game set in the Mass Effect universe, the game is driven by a strong plot, leading you from one shoot out to the next. Imagine an episode of 24 set in outer-space featuring feuding alien races, with you as an intergalactic Jack Bauer.

Talk First, Shoot Later

The story is compelling, but the conversation branching — being able to guide your character through interactive dialogue scenes — seems like smoke and mirrors. More often than not it seems thst there’s a predetermined outcome to a conversation and that there’s nothing that can be done to change it.

Setting dialogue navigation aside though, the artwork and animation is impeccable. Instead of going for hi-res 3D motion graphic sequences, we’re treated to a cartoony take on the Mass Effect universe. Indeed it was so effective that I was left hankering for a Mass Effect Saturday morning cartoon.

Tilt ‘n’ Tote

The combat sequences, slotted in between each dialogue segment, are played from a birds-eye view. The controls are a great twist on an established genre: your mercenary fires automatically, it’s up to you to tilt the iPhone, moving him to a more strategic area of the map.

Unfortunately, on my iPhone 3G, the combat sequences suffer from slowdown. At times, the game is rendered unplayable to the point that I rebooted the iPhone several times throughout the game. Plus, the game suffers from an occasional bug whereby a combat sequence begins but you’re unable to control the main character. It’s a horrid bug and, for EA and BioWare, unexpected and improper.

There are also long loading times between combat rooms. Its frustrating enough to have to wait a minute or more to play through a 30 second sequence, it’s worse still that EA has seen fit to place advertisements on the loading screens. It’s a real drag to be advertised to in a premium app, especially when the advertising breaks up the story and ruins what little immersion the game has to offer.

Summing Up: Rotten Apple Award

EA needs to up its game on iPhone. It may be the big boy on console and PC, but young upstarts like ngMoco, Chillingo and BulkyPix are making better games — games that are fun and stable.

Gamers who are familiar with Mass Effect would be forgiven for expecting more from the iPhone iteration. The game’s bugs are a major disappointment and, while it may be an interesting play for avid followers of the franchise, this is one to avoid for everyone else.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories