Zero Punctuation: iPhone Games

[Jandau]

Cool episode, but I take offence at the final comment regarding not owning an iPhone. Not only do I not own an iPhone (or anything like it), almost none of the people I know don't own one and it's a general consensus (with a few exceptions) that only entitled dipshits whose parents have too much money own one. While that consensus might be open to debate, the point that iPhone is not a platform everyone probably owns still stands.

 

[LadyMint]

Kinda crowded here on Mars with the other people who don't own iPhones.

Still enjoyed the review. Some of those games did seem interesting. Still a little casual. I would probably check out Fruit Ninja, though. And Angry Birds.

 

[Bloodstain]

You betray Gametraders Robina?!

And I played through the whole of Doodle God in one session on Kongregate...it. was. hell.

 

[xscoot]

The thing is, every iPhone game is just a shitty knockoff of a flash game you can play for free on the internet.

Maybe Yahtzee should just go on Kongregate or Newgrounds or something and just spend a few hours having some real fun.

 

[Ravenac]

Way to go on the "Kinks" reference Yahtzee!

Great review too.

 

[Terrorist_school_drop-out]

Mars isn't that bad a place as long as you don't mind all the Ipho.... I mean space gear owning douchebags waving their latest tech around, the cunts. I mean, what do you people have aginst good old buttons.... I mean breathing by way of nose?

 

[kael013]

How do I breathe on Mars? That's easy, I live in a greenhouse. Now hacking into the FBI's cybercrime division using satellites in order to have an internet connection, that's hard.

BTW the view from the top of Olympus Mons is really nice this time of year.

 

[missedstations]

Mars is actually really nice this time of year.

 

[Sicram]

Iphone shymphone. I have a HTC desire and actually the fruit ninja game I heard of first on the android phones, then again I don't care about the I phool (ok, ok, I'm pushing it).

Also, I'm all smug sitting here behind a giant glassfacade watching a vista of mars, it's nice this time of year.

Also, I do ALL of my gaming needs on the PC, thank you.

 

[sstadnicki]

Not that anyone is still reading this after 8 pages of iPhone hate, but.

While I think gameplay-wise there's a much greater diversity across the top iDevice games than there is on most other platforms, the market does seem to have settled on a single (visual) style ('soft cartoony') that bugs me. There's nothing wrong with it, and there are games where it's well-suited (Angry Birds is actually a decent example), but otherwise it reminds me of the late-'90s Windows shovelware market art-wise, and that's not a great place to be. (It's probably not coincidental that both are platforms where the 'little guy' has disproportionate visibility; good-enough cartoony art is almost certainly cheaper than good-enough realistic art.) There are a bunch of exceptions, don't get me wrong, but it feels like by far the predominant theme and I think the platform's marginally worse for it.

(Okay, one bit of nerd-rage, since I can't resist. One thing folks are missing is that even in cases where an iPhone game is fundamentally a remake of a Flash game, the games still have different feels to them; the physical, tangible act of flicking your finger creates an inherently different sense of play than drag-clicking a mouse does. It's no coincidence that physics puzzlers are so prominent on the iDevice; you feel the physics.)

 

[Christopher Glass]

Every popular iPhone game is stolen from somewhere else. Angry Birds is just Crush the Castle 1 with bird graphics.

 

[Kingjackl]

I don't own an iPhone because the only difference between them and any other decent phone is a few decent games, Apple connectivity and about $1000.

 

[Bruden]

Every single one of the "iPhone games" showcased is just a knockoff of several free to play flash games. Spend an hour on Kongregate or newgrounds and you'll have played angry birds 3 times of different flavors, it just wont have birds or pigs. The console equivalent would be taking a metroid game making Samus a dinosaur and all the metroids various breeds of dog, while still having the entirety of the gameplay, levels, and story line the same, and then releasing it on xbox and hailing it as something new and exciting.

and as for Mars, turns out it's rather easy to breathe here so long as you're not the smug type who enjoys paying double for the apple logo.

 

[eganaught]

I have survived by having an ipod touch and a normal cell phone, yet i plan on getting rid of my ipod touch and getting a zune hd because i hate apple

 

[Toeys]

of all the fucking things... why didnt you just show a clip of you sucking jobs' small cock!?

next week we'll look at macintosh games getting the praise as well won't we?

i'm fucking disappointed

 

[keithburgun]

Wait - no 100 Rogues?! Hit it up next time, Yahtzee. You'll like it. It is one of the few truly original games on the iPhone, with fully animated pixel art and SNES style music.

Here's the soundtrack http://dinofarmgames.bandcamp.com/

www.100rogues.com.

 

[cornmancer]

There was an iTouch here, now it's gone.

i.e. someone stole mine a few weeks ago.
Even when I had it I was too cheap to pay for the updates to my first gen iTouch since I only used it for music anyway.

 

[taltamir]

I don't own an iPhone because the only difference between them and any other decent phone is a few decent games, Apple connectivity and about $1000.

i don't live on mars, I just don't have the 1000$ dollars for an iPhone (or any of its competitors)... I use one of those old "dumb phones", it is a small and svelte phone with no blue teeth, no inter tubes, no games, not even a calculator... it has an alarm clock and thats it.
Maybe one day when I am not a poor college student...

 

[Lord Honk]

Maybe I truly am in the wrong place, and by place I mean planet, but I see little to no positive aspects about the iPhone when compared to other, objectively and subjectively better, less pricey alternatives.
Then again, games for mobile phones (such as my marvellous Nokia 5800XM *coughSymbianIsDeadcough*) are getting more interesting to me, commuting to and from uni every day for about an hour each way. Sure, as Yahzee pointed out, there's no shortage of, lets call them, Zen games, but, comma, it's a way better good/bad ratio than you find looking into a retail store shelf.

My opinion, of course