Archive for September, 2010

In his typical fashion, Steve Jobs overstated a victory in sales of iOS devices versus Nintendo’s DS handhelds. Not quite, the DS has still outsold the iOS handhelds, but Nintendo (and Sony) should still be afraid of Apple’s mobile phone gaming platform.

Both Nintendo (via the DSi) and Sony (via the PSP and exclusively through the ill-fated PSPgo) decided that downloads are the way of the future. Sadly both of these platforms have soured me toward it, DSiWare is pretty much all crappy mini games and fanservice shovel-ware, and PSN overcharges for what are essentially boxless PSP games. (It’s the Kindle dilemma, if you want me to not physically own something, you better make it cheaper, Kindle fails at this too). The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad have tons of cheap and *good* games.

Frankly all of the above is a preamble to my list of awesome, must have, iOS games from this summer. Yes, in between my Dragon Quest 9 time, I’ve burnt all my gaming time on the following iPhone games:

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My favourite indie games of summer 2010:

Meow Meow Happy Fight

My most recent addiction, a pretty basic dual stick shooter that wins on fantastic style and wit as well as great difficulty. 5 hours in and I’ve unlocked 89% of the game. To get a feel for the flavour of the game check out some of the character bios. At $0.99 it was a steal, at $1.99 it’s still a bargain. I both look forward to more content updates in game (they’re coming) and future games from this developer. This game *begs* for bluetooth or wifi multiplayer, I hope to see it in an update, butwould gladly buy a sequel with this feature.

The Incident

A very unique game where you tilt the accelerometer to dodge falling debris. The pixel art style is even better on the iPad as it’s a Universal app. Very difficult game even a short while in. The music and art style are fantastic and give me a distinct EarthBound (Mother2) vibe, dunno why. Another bargain at $1.99.

Monster Dash

A side-scrolling rail shooter from the people who brought the very amusing Fruit Ninja game, Monster Dash is a charming endurance run where you see how many monsters you can slaughter and how long you can stay alive. Very polished and more content is on the way by the looks of things, an absolute steal at $0.99.

Super Mega Worm

Currently on sale for $0.99, this very 8-bit game pits you as a giant worm in the future against the inhabitants at earth. Nothing says fun like hearing a pixel woman scream ‘Ahh! My Baby!’ as you take out her baby carriage. Humorous, quirky and definitely addictive.

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My favourite mainstream games of summer 2010:

DoDonPachi Resurrection

Cave keeps up its onslaught of hardcore SHMUPs to the iPhone, and like Espgaulda 2, this does not disappoint. The control scheme is surprisingly great, and the game does not lag whatsoever, more than can be said about many of Cave’s PS2 ports. Maybe a bit more than most people want to spend at $8.99 (though well worth it) but wait for it to go ons ale for $4.99 again.

Phoenix Wright

All 5 of the GBA cases of this classic now available on the iPhone at 1/8th the price ($4.99), and recently on sale for $2.99. These are absolutely fantastic games, and work even better on a big iPad than they ever did on the GBA. Full of all the wit and 16-bit style that the originals had, Capcom’s support of iOS is fantastic. (Heck StreetFighter4 came out for the iPhone this summer, probably more major than all of these, but not my cup of tea)

Castlevania Puzzle of the Night

Konami’s entry into this mix is an RPGized clone of Super Puzzle Fighter. Very addictive puzzler where you build your character by playing a variation of Columns/Tetris through Dracula’s castle. Great game at $4.99, incredible when on sale for $1.99.

Knights of the Phantom Castle

Hudson’s entry into this mix isn’t really a summer title, in fact it was a very early iPad game. But this summer brought an update converting it into a Universal app so iPhone users can enjoy it as well, as well as a price drop to $4.99 (and a sale for $1.99!). This micro-management heavy click, flick and drag RTS has a cute little story and fantastic graphics and music. Highly recommended, and looks absolutely gorgeous on the iPad.

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Does the iPhone have any Dragon Quest 9 caliber games? Not yet. But it will one day as more developers are swayed away from the traditional handhelds. (See some of SquareEnix’s recent iOS offerings) These 8 games are just some of the hundreds thousands of great games that came out this summer. It is the best platform for indie developers, with an exceedingly low cost to entry (buy a Mac Mini iMac, you’ll like it), and a huge audience with next to no marketing cost required. DSiWare and PSN just don’t compare and the many Android stores lack the eyeballs. Steam has been really helping the PC indie scene, but it pales to what the AppStore is doing. Hate on the AppStore all you want (the policies are surely flawed), but developers are bringing more quality stuff than any other platform.

Something I’d meant to do since the day I did it was to add the rewrite rule so that I could exclude the l? from URL shortened links my social bookmarker generated. (I had been repeatedly poked for leaving this out too) The original idea->implementation was 30 minutes, so this takes it up to 35 minutes for the project, and only took a few months to implement. My entire .htaccess including the WordPress business is:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]{3,3})$ l.php?$1 [L]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

And everything seems to be working as it should. That brings me up to 122 characters for the messages that accompany my URLs!

So about two weeks ago, my flat tire monitor chimed on driving on the QEW. We pulled over, checked the tires, they all physically looked fine so we drove off. When I got home I took out the tire pressure gauge and sure enough the drivers rear tire was low. I refilled it using the cars onboard mobility kit. While these are definitely *not* run flats, they are carbon fiber side walled, and as a result will never have a bulged appearance until they are critically low, which these were not. Watching it during the week, it appeared to lose a consistent about 2 PSI a day. After missing the noon closure last weekend, this weekend I managed to haul over early enough to Jensen Tire to get it repaired. A modest $25 later, a 2″ nail was removed from the tire, the hole enlarged, filled with new rubber and epoxy, patched, and then shaved down using a Dremel tool. After a balance and remounting, I’m ready to smoke them once again drive cautiously and in a mature fashion.

The other cool factoid of note is that the car is equipped with the FTM (Flat Tire Monitor) as opposed to the TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor). US cars all got TPMS in 2007+, though the guys at the garage told me some Canadian and European models kept the FTM. The FTM works by tracking wheel rotation and can detect if a tire is spinning too fast. It has to be calibrated after changing tire/wheel size or extreme temperature change, but at least it doesn’t have the breakable/losable wireless stem monitors.

The e86 chassis is so stiff, with the rear tire barely off the ground, the front tire freely spins around :)

So I’ll keep this short as most of my DQ9 thoughts can be found here. I beat Dragon Quest 9 on Saturday night, just over 40 hours. The final boss is woefully easy, and really is sadly a let down to the whole experience. The game could most likely be completed in 30 hours if you do no side quests or alchemy, and neither are really required for the story. Having said that, there is a ton of post game (and non-linear) content to be had outside the main story, as per the multiplayer focus, and definitely doing a bit post-game is required to get the full experience. (As per the usual DQ style)

I guess my complaint is that there are so many awesome job classes, abilities and equipment, but you don’t *need* any of it to finish the story. Not even close, in fact my party was lacking such abilities as ‘Kazing’ and ‘Kaboom’ at the time of beating the final boss, in fact I learned ‘Multiheal’ about 5 minutes before reaching it. I’d love to alchemize more awesome weapons, build up a couple Sages, and teach my hero a fourth skill set (he already had Paladin, Warrior and Minstrel) but theres no point. No motivation to grind (didn’t sign up for an MMO) and with tons of great games to play and very little time to play them… no thanks. The story should have been at least 50% longer, at least to cover more of the character building the game possess.

Having said all that, it’s a great game, and worth your 40 USD and 40+ hours of time. I’ll say it thusly:

upside

• Solid story, albeit short
• Great classic music and sounds
• Excellent character design and visuals

downside

• Main story is hardly challenging (and short)
• No point to building awesome characters
• Focus on multiplayer and MMO-esque fetch quests

Buy it, play it, but I pray DQ X is single player only and more of a throw back to the story length of DQ7 and story depth of DQ8.