On one of my posts, I was showing off talking about my new iPhone, and I got a comment from Bill that said I should mention some of the iPhone apps that I like. Of course, I could talk about some of the IM apps or utility apps that i’ve been using. Or I could just talk about how cool it was yesterday to 1) look up a take-out eatery’s menu online, 2) get the directions and 3) hit the link to the phone number of the eatery, making the iPhone call the place immediately so I could place my order. But noooooooo!! No one kids themselves into saying that games aren’t awesome to have on a touch-screen, motion-sensitive device! (Why do you think Nintendo is selling vast numbers of gaming units??) So, with my few weeks of experience, I’ll give a brief synopsis and review of three games that have caught my attention…

Trism: This is one of the first games that caught my attention when I was shopping around Apple’s App Store. It was the excessively-high reviews that caught my eye (4.5 stars out of 5 averaged from 346 reviews!), so I had to see what the buzz was about. Ever play Bejeweled? This is Bejeweled on crack. It actually has 3 modes: Infinism, which is their classic free play; Terminism, which is a time-attack game; Syllogism, which is a special puzzle mode. The object is to make 3 or more colors in a line or group. When you make those groups, you’re rewarded with a pleasant sound and more blocks to move around. What’s interesting is when you get new blocks, the lines of blocks don’t always have to fall downwards. You can change the direction of gameplay by tilting the iPhone so that lines can fall sideways or upwards. I won’t spoil the rest of the game in this post. Just download it. At $4.99, you get enough challenging gameplay that makes the price a real bargain!

CubicMan Deluxe: This game is a variation on the popular Flash game, Bloxorz, featured on albinoblacksheep.com. The objective is to guide a rectangular block across a platform, filled with hazards and narrow pathways, to a standing finish at a designated goal area. There are 80 levels, with varying degrees of difficulty. Again, it seemed like a good game based on what I had read, and I loved Bloxorz, so I spent another $2.99 on this app. That is a decent price considering that this is a game that was challenging and gave me a mental workout. However, in a few days I beat all 80 levels, so obviously the designers have some room for improvement in the game. They have promised an update with more levels and harder gameplay, so I’ll be looking forward to that.

Moonlight Mahjong Lite: Here’s a nice surprise from Christine, my wife, who really is not much of a puzzle gamer! (Although I guess calling it a puzzle game is a misnomer) This is but one of many versions of Solitaire Mahjong that you can get anywhere, for free or otherwise. For the uninitiated, this kind of Mahjong is really kind of a cross between Klondike and Dominoes. I haven’t had any experience with any variation of Mahjong before last night, when Christine turned me on to this game, so it was a good thing that it was a freebie. The non-Lite version costs $4.99, but the lite version is sufficient for newbies like myself. It’s a really fun game and the interface design and workings are very impressive for being a freebie. You can view the board by pinching to zoom in and out and you make a rotating gesture with two fingers to rotate and tilt the board. I had fun just by rotating the board and going “Oooooh, cooool!!”; that’s how impressed I was, sad to say! When you win the game, you’re shown a view of tiles perpetually zooming into the camera. Very neat!

I could have spent some premium money on well-known titles such as Super Monkey Ball, Enigmo, or Cro-Mag Rally, but money’s tight and sometimes you can find real gems in the cheap-or-free category. You can view all these title and more in the App Store in the iTunes Store. I may get one of these soon but, for now, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

Well, that’s all for now. The next post will probably be written if and when I can raise my computer back from the dead! Cheers!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Personal Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.