Girl Gamer

Munday 4/13/09

By AndrewSeely 2 years, 9 months ago • 2 Comments

Well as you can tell this week’s Mobile Monday is late. I’m gonna blame…taxes. Yeah the IRS, they can take the fall. No one likes them anyway.

Since I know you waited until 30min before midnight to do yours, you probably need a way to blow off some steam. Or if you are really like me, then finish your extension and then play some games to procrastinate from actually finishing your taxes.

App store accessed on 4/10/09 12:06p cst. (in case you are wondering why sometimes it’s pst and others it’s cts, I travel and it’s just where I happened to be)

The paid app this week is Bowman coming in at #5 for .99c (after #1 Flight Control, #2 PocketGod, #3 MLB.com at Bat 2009, #4 ParkingLot). Bowman is a simple game based on angles and trajectory. Your object is to aim, pull and try and spear your enemy with as few shots as possible, while hoping your opponent can’t hit the side of a barn. There are three modes for you to take aim at. Vs iPhone, vs human, and Bird hunting. It’s a touch based system where you drag your finger across the screen to determine strength and angle, both which show up on screen to help you aim subsequent shots. The AI in the vs iPhone is ok, your best shot is a fatal headshot which can be turned on in the options. The vs human mode is self-explanatory. The bird hunting mode is what you would expect, birds fly overhead and you take aim and see how many you can down in allotted time. The only thing that would make this mode better would be a smirk looking dog that laughs at you when you miss or retrieves your birds for you. I’m split on this game, as to give it a buy or a pass. But let me tell you why. At 99c it’s not like you are breaking your piggy bank to pay for it. Though I must admit that I have been beta testing the soon to be released Ask A Ninja iPhone game, which I can’t exactly talk about, the ninja knows where I live and said he would kill me if I talked about the specifics. And if you were me and I were you, I would save my .99c and put towards the Ask A Ninja game when it comes out. If you have .99c that you MUST spend right now then go ahead, otherwise I’m giving Bowman a pass.
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Our free app for the week is iFighterLite (behind #1 AwesomeBall). This is a game that made it to my phone before it came up as our top pick for the week. As a “lite” title it is only the first level of the game, only because the full game is still being worked on. Which is expected to show up in the next few weeks. iFighterLite is an airplane shooter in the vein of 1942 and other overhead shooters. Where iFigherLite shines is the use of the iPhone’s accelerometer and touch screen. You are given a wide array of options to choose from. You can move your plane, via motion, swipe (moving your finger on the screen to move the plane) or joypad. There are also a manual (tap the screen to shoot) or auto fire. The configuration I use most often is the motion/auto fire. I find it hard enough to dodge incoming fire, to have to mess with a finger or two on the screen. I find that there’s no real difference between rate of fire when you tap or just let it auto fire. And the motion controls are very responsive and work well. Prior to the weekend there was only a default difficulty setting, but the developers pushed a small update, which added the joypad movement and 3 difficulty settings. The original setting was quite hard and actually was frustrating me enough that all I could do was replay the game hoping to do better the next time. The settings make the game more manageable. I was able to beat the level on my first try downgrading the level to normal. If you want a challenge go straight for hard. There are a variety of enemies for you to face and a good array of power-ups to be picked up throughout the level. Points are collected by both destroying enemies and picking up stars and metals that are left behind after you destroy an enemy, but you must fly over them to collect the points. All in all this is a buy for sure. I can’t wait to see a final product and most likely will throwdown the cash to get the full game. Simply put it’s a simple, yet well developed game. If the rest of the game is anything like the free version then I doubt that most would be disappointed.
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Since it’s Thursday morning, all I can say is hang in there folks and I hope that you are getting a large refund that you can spend on more iPhone games. If you haven’t already heard Apple is gearing up for their billionth download from the app store and if it’s you, you win a boatload of good stuff. Go “here”: http://www.apple.com/itunes/billion-app-countdown/ for all the deets. As always let us know what you are playing and what you think of these games in the comments. See ya next week.