iPhone Recommendations

[Specially Cork]

I got Hot Springs Story, it's not without its charms, and I killed quite a bit of time on it this morning, but there's a few problems with it:

- You're now designing a hotel, and the simple isometric view and controls make this really fiddly. You can't rotate the camera, which sucks.

- It's a Hot Spring - all those funny references and parodies about the gaming industry are obviously gone - and there's nothing else instead.

- Time passes really slowly. You spend 2 minutes blowing all your money on the hotel, then 20 minutes waiting for a return on your investment.

- There's not a lot to do. Granted, Game Dev didn't either - but you were just clicking through menus. This is like Theme Park without the rides. You unlock stuff as you go, but it's slow-going

Anyway, it's basically another pointless time waste. I'm enjoying myself, but I think getting to be a "designer" rather than a "manager" hinders it, because you end up comparing it to other similar games (from Sim City to Farmville), that pretty much do more of the same thing for a lower price.

[Zealous zerotype]

I've got to echo pretty much what boney said. I was really hoping for a game with some more depth and sure you can build stuff/things are different now. What it really made me want to do was load up sim tower and start giving that a whirl. I could see some enjoying it though.

Kinda OT, I've been looking for trpg games for the iphone (hell even pure turn based strategy games) I've downloaded Mecho Wars which looks to be pretty good, but was wondering if anybody had any other suggestions? Also any multiplayer games we could all hop on and play with?

[Zealous zerotype]

The people that made game dev have been at this for a while it seems

http://kairosoft.net/kairopark/astro.html

Just showing a bunch of games in similiar style. I guess boney could go ahead and enjoy some of them, but maybe not as for me part of the enjoyment comes from playing them on the go. I really hope they come out with a more indepth fame dev story game.

[Specially Cork]

All seem like pretty goofy phone games to me.

TRPGS...there isn't any really. Squenix haven't released one, and the rest of the genre is small-time Korean devs pumping out action RPGs.

If you want Turn-Based Strategy I'd recommend Rogue Planet. It's a Gameloft clone of Advance Wars and does a pretty good job. Lots of units, alright-ish story, long campaign, skirmish mode, multiplayer etc. Downside is it's a bit pricey, but you can always wait for another Gameloft sale.

I didn't get Mecho Wars. I have never been so repulsed by an art-style.

Some more random recommends:

Speedball 2 Evolution (great port if you played the original)

Papa Sangre (scary sound-only game with 3D audio, repetitive but amazingly unique and a great experience if you can find a quiet place and use your imagination)

Battleheart (multi-touch battles-only action RPG, really casual and unique)

[Zealous zerotype]

As for square enix not releasing a TRPG check out song summoner. I have not actually started it yet (accidentally wiped all my music and you kinda need that for the game to work), but from checking out gameplay videos it looks like I might enjoy it.

[Specially Cork]

The fact that it was an old ipod chickwheel game kinda turned me off. Especially because it doesn't seem to have been updated much and there's a painful $9.99 pricetag.

[Zealous zerotype]

From what I've read it is a sequel and has been updated a good bit. I still have not actually started it so I can't fully comment on it, but it seems to of been positively received. I'm waiting for FFT to FINALLY get ported to the iphone (keeps getting fucking delayed), but for most of my TRPG love I suppose I'll be playing through the GBA emulator. TRPGs work pretty well through emulator touch screen controls, but I just feel like a touch screen device is *perfect* for a TRPG. Oh, btw I do have Rogue Planet just have not started it yet would you say I should start Rogue Planet or Yggdra Union first? (I believe you recd Yggdra Union a while back to me).

A friend of mine has been wanting me to get into the Dead Space games and although I have not played the first one I downloaded the one for the iphone (iirc it is set between 1 & 2). The reviews were pretty good for it so I figured why not? Back to TRPGs I really wish NIS would port or make a new TRPG for the iphone. They are my current favorite dev for that type of game and I also believe they are responsible for the newest persona games? This is completely unrelated, but I really feel like this platform (touch based) has just started to have the surface scratched for what is possible. I've come up with a few UI designs of my own and am really looking forward to more unique little gems.

[melancholy]

The fact that it was an old ipod chickwheel game kinda turned me off. Especially because it doesn't seem to have been updated much and there's a painful $9.99 pricetag.

I originally had the original iPod version of the game, and truth be told, I didn't find it worth the money then.

[Specially Cork]

I paid $9.99 for Aralon - now that's a game worth the money.

[Zealous zerotype]

Thanks hansey. Downloading now

[Specially Cork]

More recommends (I've spent waaay too much money)

Pictureka (Based on a boardgame, get a card, "find 6 cold things" and look for them in a giant composite picture)

Flick Kick Football (for the Brits, thought this would be naff, but the presentation is top-notch)

geoFighter (Geometry Wars clone - it's free now)

Silverfish (There's a lot of neon vector shooters on the iPhone, but this has tons of modes and pacman chase-or-be-chased gameplay)

Spirit (similar neon presentation again, but you circle enemies to capture them)

6th Planet (lunar lander gameplay across unique levels, great comic book story. Get it if it's still 99c)

Ready Action (goofy speed platformer based on movies, free right now)

Dungeon Raid (a really fast-paced "beat your high score" rpg/match-3 game similar in style to Puzzle Quest, I give it 100 thumbs up)

[Specially Cork]

Well...I just jailbreaked using greenp0ison.

So...what emulators and apps do I need now?

[BlueCrab]

In all honesty, the only Jailbroken apps that stayed on my iPod for any period of time were MobileTerminal and some kind of Duke Nukem soundboard. I found that controlling games in emulators was too clunky and didn't particularly find that much in Cydia that I really cared about at all.

[Specially Cork]

I'm really interested in the emulators. My iPhone replaced an Android phone, and Google carries emulators in their own store. I know virtual d-pads and whatnot are pretty crappy, but it's really hard to not miss portable Chrono Trigger, Zelda etc. when you keep spending money on iPhone apps that are supposed to be as good as those but aren't.

There seems to be a lot of options though, and I can't work out which to get.

[Specially Cork]

shift 2 is free today.

[Zealous zerotype]

EMulators I use
NES A.D.+
Snes A.D.+
gpSphone (GBA)
Genesis4iphone

for any of the emulators that don't have built in rom downloading I use ifile to download roms straight to my phone. Otherwise you have to SSH into your phone to add them and fuck that. They might have built in synching now, I'm honestly not sure, but I just do it that way. I only really use it to play TRPG games because otherwise fuck the virtual controls. Although, you can sync a wiimote to use as a controller pretty easily if you really want to. Other jailbreak things I use SBSettings (swipe the top of your phone to bring down a dropdown menu to toggle stuff), TVOut2 (tv out on every app), some rotation thing that gives you more rotation options from the double tap slide over menu, you can also run XBMC on the iphone which seems kinda shitty, but with the tvout it should be pretty nifty. I have not tried it yet because I'm still running 4.0.x (been lazy about updating my jailbreak I even have the old 3GS bootrom) and it requires 4.1.x at min.

[Specially Cork]

I got the same emus. For roms I just downloaded iphone explorer and drag and drop. I'm pretty bummed about the quality of the iPhone emulators though. I guess it's just down to the developers - yongzh's emulators for Android are amazing. It's just simple things like moving the virtual d-pad to the top left so you can see underneath. I thought this was a pretty obvious feature.

[Specially Cork]

Managed to make a custom skin for gpspphone that got my d-pad where I wanted it. Pain in the ass but got there in the end.

Picked up VLC Streamer and Orb Live. Replacing my computer with an iPad is looking pretty nice right about now.

[Zealous zerotype]

Oh man, Orb Live is really awesome. I just love the hell out of that program. I'm looking into selling my iphone to go towards the purchase price of an ipad because they're fucking awesome tbh.

[melancholy]

Replacing my computer with an iPad is looking pretty nice right about now.

I recently bought an iPad for my wife to replace her broken E-Reader. And let me tell you, despite the limited things you can do on an iPad, it has one gigantic benefit; if I want to look something up, I press a button and I'm online. When I first thought of the idea of the iPad, I thought it was dumb when you could just boot up a computer and do so much more. But that minute of booting has almost completely stopped me from ever turning on a computer.