Portent

I’ve been playing this game on Windows for 7 or 8 years and it made it to the iPhone a few months ago. Although it’s ostensibly a wargame, it’s as much a puzzle. I’ve written about Slay Tactics on my darkgames.com website if you want more background.

The game is simple. You play against 5 computer players and have to expand your territory by conquering theirs. The game play is simple, just 4 sizes of soldiers with type 2 defeating type 1, etc. Each turn you can move any of your soldiers to any location adjoining the territory they start the turn in.

However the higher the type, the more support costs and if you buy too many and can’t sustain them in each territory (more areas provide more support) then all in that territory starve. Add in to this mix, support reducing wasteland that spreads fast and trees that spread slowly and it’s quite challenging.

Of course the move to a touch interface changes the character of the game considerably and the first version wasn’t much fun to play. The current version is much improved and if you like strategy type games this is definitely worth the £1.19 (UK) or equivalent.

Link

Mafia Respect & Retaliation is quite stylish looking and has a completely graphical interface. It also has a shooting range, where you tilt the iPhone to aim, and I suspect a little more depth than the other games. I found the shooting range a little tricky but with practise…

I’ve had a message pop up offering me a fight on occasions at which I am usually totally floor wiped and robbed of some cash.

This is a free game or you can pay up to £30 (in the app store) by buying respect in the game. You can also top this up- $99 gets you 2,500. Who says you can’t buy respect! It is though quite a stylish interface in red, black or white. I think there’s a bug buying stuff- it seems that the 1 quantity is disabled and you have to select 2 then do it a second time and change it back to 1. Not a big bug.

I do like this interface with a scrolling right hand list. Another suggestion though, some of the buttons respond when you press them by changing colours but the Job buttons don’t which makes it tricky to know if you have pressed. That would certainly enhance it. Player interactivity doesn’t appear to be as intense as iMob Online but otherwise this is a 7/10.

Link

PS. In case you’re wondering, I have no financial gain from any review or links to the App store. The adverts money pays a bit but that’s it…

iMafia was my least favourite game for just one reason. Every time you did anything, you’d see a Connecting to Server for 4-15 seconds on 3G, a bit shorter on WiFi. It’s very distracting and put me right off this, which is a shame as otherwise it looks quite reasonable.

This game follows the standard model of game play but makes it more interesting my having all of the actions done through clicking on a building. There are 9 buildings spread over the two screens (The picture btw is my combination of the two screens, normally you only see the left half or the right half. ). Clicking on for example the Police station gives you a list of targets to hit, and the reward offered. Loyalty/Respect points are called Honor points in iMafia. You get some to start with and can have more than 1 gang member; I’ve got 2 now. There’s also a set of 10 tutorials to speed you into the game.

If they could fix the Connecting to Server Message then this would be as good as the others and it is a free app, but for now I give it just 4/10.

Link

This is the only paid one in the four reviewed: Mafia Live which costs £1.79, or about $2.99 (I guess). I have to say it is my favourite of the four but it has a basic flaw in the game design. It relates to recruiting members.

To get more mobsters into your gang, you have to get friends or acquaintances that you know to join.  Not exactly viral marketing but that sort of thing and it involves them basically being slightly spammed by you.

Not everyone has lots of friends who want to join up so if you haven’t then you are doomed to fight alone in your one man gang. This affects your combat strength as only one your best rated vehicles can be used – if you’ve bought say a town car and a BMW M3, it’s the M3. A gang with 2 members uses both cars.  It also stops you doing bank jobs etc. I can only steal or trash cars, shop lift or at best rough up rivals.  Bigger gangs can do bigger jobs which net them more money and experience.

I spotted this flaw early on so gave up trying to win fights. I armed myself with the minimum needed to conduct beat-up rivals missions, let everyone beat me up and concentrated on building up my property portfolio. After 4 days I have acquired 5 Hot Dog stands and 2 Gas Stations and quickly expanded up t0 ten jewelry stores. The bigger weapons and vehicles will milk you dry in support costs so I figure expand first and then arm myself to the hilt.

I’ve also been attacking against stronger gangs to lose and to lower my health. Below about 20 (of 100) no one can attack you. It’s an essential part of money management and you lose health when attacked or attacking. You heal a point every 290 seconds.

Every 50 minutes (real time) all my properties give me cash. If I’m attacked with money on me I lose some of it (about 10% per attack!) so I have to pay it into the bank for safety 1losing 10% in fees. In iMob the banks charge you 15%! I lost $125K while asleep last night. So every 48 minutes I log into the game, beat up as many rivals as I have energy points and pay all of the resulting cash into the bank. When its enough, I withdraw it and expand my property empire.

This isn’t the best looking which is probably iMob Online. Mafia Live uses a web page for its controls (Don’t believe me? Keep your finger pressed on a link like Banker and you’ll see the URL popup). To give it its due, you don’t see the network connection animation when it connects and it’s pretty quick, even on 3G.

I’m now at Level 29 with each level taking more and more points to get up. This comes from the experience gained in missions. Levelling up gives you 5 Zen Points to spend on improving your attack/defence, energy or stamina. It also brings newer weapons and vehicles every 5 levels. Most of mine has gone into energy which recharges at the rate of 10 points every 50 minutes.

Overall I’ll keep playing this for a few days more but its not the most interactive game. I also discovered a way to make a lot of money from one player which nobody else has done on me! If you attack someone and beat them you get money. If they have a lot of money you get a fair whack- my biggest is 55K. So long as you have the stamina and health and they have the health, (both healths must be 20 or higher) you can go to the My Hood tab, view the fight log, click on the link showing the player you last beat up and then fight them again and again and if your health goes to low you just pay to have it restored. You can’t attack anything except other gangs.

Be great if you could trash cars or blow up their buildings and increasing gang size without spamming your friends…  Rating 7/10.

I like Mafia games, I’m working on one for the iPhone and there are now at least four Mafia games, 1 paid and 3 free. So this is a group review of all four of them with lots of screen shots.

As a game designer I find that all of these games are somewhat derivative and a bit one dimensional. They are similar to many the web based mafia/gangster type games. But these are Al Capone type gangster games, not the modern “Rapper/Hos/Pimps” genre. The four reviewed are

1. Mafia LIVE
2. iMafia,
3. Mafia Respect and Retaliation (Henceforth known as Mafia R & R) and
4. iMob Online.

I didn’t review Mafia Boss which seems a different type of game. Of these four, Mafia R & R is also available in various paid versions with the amount of respect points (called Loyalty in Mafia Live, Honor in Mafia R & R) varying according to how much you paid. These points get you extra men or money so you can start with a big advantage. The 1250 point version costs £29.99 about $45!

Essentially these are all spreadsheets. You have some cash and use it to buy weapons and/or property. Weapons and manpower let you undertake more interesting and gainful missions that brings in more cash and experience that is used to level up. Property gives you income and several of the games use the binary model of having to buy land and then develop it by building Hot Dog stands, Jewelry shops, malls etc. You also have a stamina that is decreased by undertaking missions and increases with time.

I’ve split this review into four posts and will put them up over a day or two.

In the UK, the mapping of postcodes to latitude and longitude is controlled by the Post Office who charge you very large sums of money (like several thousand dollars a year) to use it , either commercially or for nion-commercial use. This is the PAF: the Postcode Address file.

Many British tax payers feel that as they paid for this data, they should not be charged for it. The USA for example doesn’t charge for Zip Code to Lat/long mapping. Hence the Free The PostCode campaign was setup. Volunteers use GPS systems to map postcodes to latitude and longitude. It’s been running several years though probably has a while to go until they catch up with the PAF’s 28 million entries 9each accurate to 100M).

Now a Liverpool,UK developer John McKerrell has created a free App to let UK iPhone owners map postcodes to latitude and longitude using their iphone and submit it to the campaign. Just install the App, run it and when accuracy drops below 100M submit it. Easy to use and you can even download the source code that John has published. If you have an iPhone and are visiting the UK, you can also help.

Link

What can you say about the works of Shakespeare? I wasn’t that keen at school, having Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice forced down my throat but over time have come to appreciate the cultural contribution and story telling that his plays brought.

For instance these words were first seen in his plays, though that doesn’t mean he invented them, just used them.

1. Eyeball
2. puking
3. skim milk
4. Obscene
5. Hot-Blooded
6. The Game is Afoot
7. Epileptic
8. Wormhole

None of which is relevant to this review! That said, it’s elegant, fast and lets you view all of the plays act by act. And it’s free. If you like Shakespeare and you have an iPhone then it is a no brainer. It was released in early September.

Link (to Shakespeare in the App Store)

This is a bigger review than usual, complete with animated gif which I’ve put together from screen dumps. I’ve been playing LootWars for a week or two now on my iPhone so feel qualified to give an in-depth review.

Its a Multi-player Mobile Game (MMG or MMO?) which is significant itself and not that expensive at just over £1. the object is to get to the top of the leader-boards by picking up scrap and bashing othr people to steal theirs. But you are limited to holding just 6 pieces of scrap.

Gameplay: After you run the App you get the first screen with rusty logo. Top right is your three important stats: A for attack total, D for defence and E for energy. the latter is important as it maxes out at 20, is used when you scavenge or fight and only recharges at the rate of 1 per 20 minutes of realtime. The game is server based but plays over 3G, Edge or Wifi.

At the start you loot (2nd icon) and when players trash your items after they beat you in a fight. The 2nd screen shows my player (portent by the way!) not looking too healthy because I’d just scavenged two low power items. the attack is the sum of the 6 items attack, defence is the total of the items defence. Scavenging gives you the odd good item but mostly crap so you have to beat people and swap your inferior items stuff for their better ones.

Fighting takes place in the arena. You can search for players matching a name (or part name so a matches a number) but you only so 24 or 25 maximum. It would be better if you could see more or there was a next button. If you put in a and search you get the first 24 that match a every time. Press refresh and you get a random selection. Once you pick someone- I picked ordieth who was a lot stronger than me (the colour codes show green weaker, yellow about the same and red stronger) a fight takes place which I won. Items always seem sorted by total value with weakest at the top. Ordieth had what I call a 80-93 spread. His weakest item was 80, strongest 93.

After I defeated him, I swapped my weak Sheriff badge (26) for his strong DVR box (93!) that must have pissed him! (There are over a 1,000 items with levels and other factors that are hinted at in the help. You can trash someones items rather than swap yours with theirs.

So it’s a simple albeit repetitive game that is quickly played. I tend to leave it for a few hours, do a few fights to recover what I’ve lost and hopefully get stronger. I get the feeling that the creators are tinkering with the game. Some people were dropping crappy items so they couldn’t be attacked. If you have 5 or 6 items you are vulnerable. 4 or less and you can’t be attacked. But they have stopped players dropping items temporarily.

I think that with a few minor tweaks they will have a better game; its not bad now but could be improved. I could think of a few different ways to improve it but they can’t make big changes suddenly. for instance you can visit the town to mingle and swap items but I’ve never seen that work. Some more info on the item colours would be good.

So my experience has been scavenge to get initial and replacement (for trashed ) items then fight to improve items. I’ll keep you updated on how this progresses. Currently I’m starting to find it a bit stale. But I think it will improve so I’m hanging in there. They do encourage feedback but haven’t responded or acknowledged mine. You can also visit the their website.

Graphics are very nice though are just window dressing. It works well even over edge and they’ve just changed servers which suggests they’ve got overwhelmed with players. It’s significant as one of the first wave of multi-player games for the iPhone. So if you like games and have an iPhone, give it a try! Rating 7 out of 10.

Link

If you want to show an iPhone application to impress your friends then this is it. Back in the early 1990s Solitaire tile games (aka Mahjong) were very popular and you could even get all sorts of tile sets for them. Now it’s here for the iPhone as both a commercial version and a free taster which I’m reviewing here.

This is in 3D and the iPhone touch controls let you rotate, slant and zoom in or out. It makes very nice use of the touch pad and works at all angles. Just touch both matching tiles and they fly upwards. That’s a clever bit of work to have the touch display work for tile selection at all viewing angles through as you’d suspect it can be easy to hit the wrong tile when you’re zoomed out.

The free game comes with 4 boards and 2 backgrounds. The commercial gives you 25 plus a layout editor and 5 backgrounds with more promised. Everyone I’ve shown has been impressed with this; you will. The only misgiving is that many people will probably be happy with just the free version- it’s that good! Released September 6th 2008.

Link (to the game in the App Store)

This application costs money (£3.99) but for me it’s worth it. If you are connected to your iPhone on a wifi network you can access files on the iPhone via a WedDav interface. This means for example that you can map a network drive in Windows or your Mac/Linux box to it and copy files by drag/drop. The screenshot shows it mapped on my PC with a gif file I copied there.

Other features include security via login+password (or disabled) and a quota set on the storage so you don’t take up too much room. Best of all is that files lets you view many file types including Office 2007 and graphics files like the gif file shown above. Copy Mp3 files and ‘view them’ plays them.

I like the clever use of transparency when you are viewing files. You get the full height of the display but touch the screen at the bottom/top and you can set a bookmark, move to the top/bottom of the file and of course delete it. You can also delete files from the list by the usual swipe to get the delete button up.

it’s a handy way to move files and doubly secure by only having access when the files app is running and if that’s not enough then having to login. It also (dare I say it) means I guess that a number of users might be able to swap files if they were all logged into the same wifi. You’d need a PC for that of course. It would be a nice touch to have iPhone <=> iPhone file moving as well (hint!) but that’s not currently supported. Recommended!

Link (to iPhone App Store)

This is a clever application that uses anamorphic perspective with a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees) and appears to make the object appear to jump off the screen.

This technique draws the image at an angle which when viewed at the 35-45 degrees viewing angle gives it the 3d look. It’s clever stuff and the video looks brilliant. How easy it is to make it into an application is another matter!

Link

Tube Status Screenshot

I bought an iPhone six days ago and this was one of the first applications to go on it. It’s what you’d call a “Does what it says on the tin” application.

If you travel on the London Underground (The Tube as we call it) and have an iPhone this is a must. It shows you the current status of all the London Underground lines and by clicking on the icons you can see what the problem is. You could use the Safari browser on the iPhone and get this info from London Underground but this packages it up nicely. Highly recommended.

There’s a similar paid app but I haven’t tried that yet.

Link

(Note: Links go to UK Apple App Store)