A New Way to Play (Part 3)

I used to play Sudoku on my phone, or Wheel of Fortune. Those were decent, but then something happened to the mobile phone gaming spectrum.

Chapter 3: The magic touch

The basic idea of playing a really good Dead Space game, while sitting in a waiting room is overwhelmingly awesome, but early last year EA figured out a way to make it happen and didn't even have to gimp it. From an atmospheric standpoint, I even enjoyed Dead Space iOS more than Dead Space 2 for the big consoles. I must digress though, this post is not Dead Space for the iPhone, so much as it is about the iPhone itself. The iPhone is in it's own right a brilliant gaming console. On one hand, it's got great classics, like Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana, but on the other you get new incredible games, like Chaos Rings or the infamous Infinity Blade. iPhone is a beast and has done amazing things for gaming in general. People who don't care about gaming at all, can't get enough of simple games like Angry Birds or Cut the Rope (my preferred of the two) and in some way gain an understanding of the joys of gaming as a whole. My girlfriend often steals my phone to play a game called Pocket Frogs. She's hardcore!

Alas though, this series is not about the great games on the console, but how the controls have changed the way we play. The iPhone fares pretty well. It doesn't feel like a tacked on gimmick, so much as a relative advancement, but I would be delusional if I said it was perfect. The touch screen controls, often serve to take you out of the experience, and occasionally leave you struggling to get the control that you would have with a controller. Specific examples would be with Chrono Trigger at a part when you have to catch a rat by running and turning sharp corners after him, and Dead Space when there are several enemies on the screen and you are trying to aim at specific ones in specific ways. Don't get me wrong though, it's definitely functional, but limited in intense parts. On that note, Mega Man games, flat out, don't work on the iPhone.

The iPhone is a lot like the Nintendo DS, in that it isn't played in the best of ways, but it has great gaming support, with games that I would call every bit as good as console games. Overall, the iPhone actually accomplished the goal of allowing the casual crowd to get interested in gaming, without lying to them and telling them that gaming was something else this whole time.

I like my iPhone a lot, but it's still no substitute for buttons.