Rollin’… in my 3.0

This piece was first published at iPGN. To see my original article, click here.

I’m currently drowning under a deluge of updates. It’s kinda fun. With the new 3.0 firmware having recently dropped, publishers are rushing to get their newly-improved games to the public. I’ve gotten updates or new releases of Baseball Sluggers, Star Defense, and Enigmo so far. I’m willing to be that there will be more by the time I’ve finished writing this.

Oh, here comes Leaf Trombone. Sweet.

While I won’t be among the lucky few getting the new iPhone 3G S, I do get to use the new firmware – it’s the every-man’s upgrade, providing you ignore the fact that us second-class iPod Touch users have to pay $9.95 for it. It’s a fair price, though, for all the fun little upgrades I’m getting. I won’t really be going into detail on them here – expect that in a later piece. Here are the things I’m enjoying so far:

State of the System, Part I

This was first published on the iPhone Games Network. To view my original article, click here.

Apple’s App Store was announced over a year ago, and since then we’ve seen it explode, with over one billion apps downloaded, independent developers striking gold with the likes of Trism, and mainstream powerhouses contributing AAA titles like Super Monkey Ball, Tiger Woods and Assassin’s Creed. The quality and variety of games has multiplied dramatically, and with those increases comes a question – have developers reached the potential of the platform? If not, where will it go from where?

Frankly, there’s quite a bit of material to cover on the topic, so I’m splitting this into two parts. In the first, I’m focusing primarily on classic gaming elements like visuals, physics, gameplay, and controls. In Part II, I’ll discuss some of the more abstract qualities like updates, replay value, multiplayer capabilities, and the App Store back-end.

Interview: Com2uS

Recently, I reviewed The Chronicles of Inotia: Legends of Feanor, and at the end I mentioned that I’d be contacting Com2uS and asking them some questions about their game. After being published to the iPhone Games Network, here it is, in all its glory. Enjoy:

Mobile Gaming: A Healthy Dose of RPG

If there’s one game genre that I really, truly love, it’s RPGs. You could take away every other game I’ve got, and I’d be happy for quite a while with the likes of Nethack and Fallout 3.

That being said, I’ve been bummed for a while that there haven’t been any truly good RPGs for the iPod Touch / iPhone platform. Most of the offerings there have been your standard puzzle games that most people like to play, ports of card games, etc. There’s certainly a market for that, but those of us who game for reasons other than burning a few minutes here and there want something more.

That’s where The Chronicles of Inotia: Legends of Feanor comes in.