iPhone Games Review: My Accelerometer Games
Ah, part III of my app reviews. Did you miss my Twitter client review and my movie app review? Golly, I hope not.
So I downloaded a few games, some free some not, was looking to see how the accelerometer worked on these bad boys. Generally speaking, it works awesome. I really like all of them.
Unsurprisingly, this is the first game I bought. $9.99 and worth every penny. I know some folks have complained that the controls are hard, and they are. I suck at it, I still haven’t unlocked anything but the “hard version”, which just involves getting through all the boards by any means possible. But it is fun as hell and the amazing graphics don’t hurt. It looks kind of like old N64 games and that ain’t bad.
Like with almost all the accelerometer games just remember, small moves get the job done. The device is remarkably sensitive and going too fast often involves flying off the rails. I wouldn’t know it, but there’s apparently over 500 stages to get through, which is a lot of bang for your buck.
The other game I bought, this game is super disco breakin, man. I knew I wanted this game from playing it on all my other friends’ jail broken iPhones (I’m too much not a man to have done it to my own). It’s like those old school marble games where you navigate a marble through a holey maze by using two knobs to rotate the board on two axes. Except on the iPhone you don’t have two knobs, you just freaking tilt the iPhone a little bit.
This game is super simple and super fun. It’s really addictive, one of those games where despite thinking “Ok, this is the last try”, it never counts because the game totally cheated that time. The best part of it is that you can download tons of level packs that people have designed (just use any SVG editor and the magic happens for you!). So far the level packs I downloaded are “Can you do this?”, “Extreme levels”, “Intense Level Pack”, “Intense Level Pack - Extreme” and “The Hell Pack.” And that’s just a fraction of them. I haven’t designed any levels yet, but maybe one day. Easily worth the $6.99. Also I will crush you at this game. Just sayin.
Cube Runner
This was a free game but was temporarily removed from the App Store, should be back up whenever Apple gets its lazy ass to approving an update. It’s a real simple flying game, you have only two controls, tilt left to veer left, tilt right to veer right. Avoid the blocks. Easy to learn, hard to do. Addictive. It reminds me in some ways of my favourite game ever, Spectre from back in the day. (please someone port the game to the iPhone with multiplayer over WiFi!).
Like Labyrinth, you can design your own levels, it’s even easier here because it’s just a text file! You then put it up on a website and download it to the game, which is about as easy as it gets. The problem, though, is that there’s no central repository. I’m lazy, I want to play other people’s packs - in addition to the url method, there should be a central place with easy point and click download. That would be a huge improvement. But defintely grab this game when it comes back, very worth it.
This game is like one of those rhythm games where you basically hit one of three buttons on a beat. You pick a level, pick a song and then go. Very simple, it also uses the accelerometer for special beats that has you flicking it left, right or forward. That is somehow more embarassing to do in public than flying your spaceship or rolling your monkey (your super monkey ball, I don’t know what you were thinking there), but it’s fun. Eventually there’ll be more songs to grab, which will be even better. You can also play in heads up mode against someone which is pretty great - although the quarters are cramped on such a small screen.
It does seem to not really tell you when you miss - that is, sometimes it tells you but a lot of times it doesn’t seem to. You should be able to turn off the buzzing when you miss. Still, this game is really addictive and it’s free so give it a whirl!
And those are the games I play. All use the accelerometer to good effect. You playing anything? You got any Labyrinth level packs to recommend me?
