Another Free iPhone Games Review « Super Amazing Number One

31Dec/091

Another Free iPhone Games Review

The New Years Blowout

Another batch of iPhone Appsters has gotten together for a combined iPhone App Store promotion. Unlike the Appvent Calendar, most of these are discounted instead of free. Let's take a quick look at the games that have been discounted for this New Year's sale:

Dragon Eye

This is another version of Simon. There are 4 colored buttons. The game plays back a sequence of lighting them up and you need to tap them in the same sequence. There are three difficulty levels and achievements. I've come to the conclusion that Simon was a lot of fun 25 years ago when it came in a physical box with tangible buttons but not so much now on the iPhone. Please stop making Simon clones developers! The graphics are nice and there's a decent amount of polish here.

Aqua Wars

Another ancient game design, though this time it's taken from older video games at least. There submarines moving across the screen at various speeds and depths. You have a boat on the surface that can drop depth charges. You can move your boat let and right using tilt controls. There is a little added depth thanks to upgrades you can purchase between levels using coins that you collect during them. These coins float up from the submarines you destroy. The graphics are another attempt at "kiddy" or "childlike" drawings that falls a little flat.

Volcano Planet

Here's the only game of this bunch that I found entertaining. Another very simple concept with added dimension. Volcano Planet is wack-a-mole on a sphere. You can spin it around and tap on volcanoes to put them out. They make musical tones when you do. Why? Who knows. It's fun in short stretches but I found it definitely a little easy. The planet has momentum so I found my self just spinning the thing around and tapping at any volcanoes that gas geysered out of. The geysers have nice particle effects but the screen is a little busy with numbers and scores for such a simple game. I'm keeping this one for now but it might wear out its welcome quickly.

Outnumbered

Outnumbered is a multiplayer 3rd person shooter. You have 4 options in weapons which autofire at your current target. You use an on screen directional pad for movement. There's no way to manually point your camera so you have to rely on movement and tapping on targets to get the job done. I'm not a fan of 3D graphics just to be 3D. The third dimension doesn't add anything to these flat environments. This game would be much more fun if it was just a top down 2D shooter. I'm pretty sure Outnumbered won't be staying around on my iPhone.

Hi, How Are You and Sword of Fargoal are both on sale. I already own them both and am mostly happy with them. They're priced at $0.99 and $2.99 respectively. Battle for Wesnoth is on sale as well for $1.99 and I'm going to have to bite on that one. I played that game a bit on the computer and it was great turn based strategy fun in single and multi-player.

In total, there are 30 apps taking part in the promotion. Head on over to The Second Annual New Year's App Blowout for the complete list and pricing.