1961

Pocket Tactics is great. Touch Arcade is also worthwhile.

1962

I read Pocket Tactics and the BoardGameGeek iOS blog. They post a lot of the same stuff, but that’s okay.

1963

Touch Arcade is fairly good, but you will be overloaded with games you don’t really like. I like to browse it just to see what’s out there (outside of my normal types of games), but PT and BGG iOS blog are probably the ones that get me excited about games more consistently.

1964

I mostly go with Pocket Tactics. Owen, who runs that site, sometimes links to PocketGamer and the general consensus seems to be that TA is full of overly generous reviews. PT mostly covers strategy/RPG/Simulation stuff so, generally, if it comes out in one of those genres, it will show up there.

1965

Can anyone give a review of Great Battles Medieval? Or Assault Wave?

1966

Also curious, might take the plunge, but unsure if I should do ps3 or ipad.

1967

I’m with you. The expansion is $3 and I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of Ascension, even if it died today. I’ll be first in line to buy the wholly new version for iOS, assuming I’m not yet bored with the game. That sounds like a good assumption, since I’ve played the game every day since I purchased it, which was about 2 years ago.

1968

Well, I paid $5 for Assault Wave, and it crashes every time I complete the third campaign mission. So I would have to rate it Do Not Buy. At least until they fix it.

The game seems fairly simplistic, also. You have a list of available units (three or four in the missions I was able to play), which you drag into the deployment area (bottom inch or so of the screen). Then they just walk forward and shoot at stuff until they either exit the screen or die. You also have a couple of commands (charge, heal, mortar attack) which you deploy in exactly the same way. Each unit and command has a cool down, after which you can do them again.

That appears to be the entire game.

1969

stupid Star Command question that wasn’t covered in the tutorial:

I hire my first crewmate for a room I’m who’s not the captain and I’m prompted to assign tokens without any idea what it does for them. Any idea?

1970

For those who don’t check the endless parade of Kickstarters in that thread:

Shenandoah Studios (makers of Battle of the Bulge) are kickstarting a new game from Eric Lee Smith on Gettysburg. It will be hex-based at a lower level than Bulge. It won’t use the same engine, but I’m sure they’ll put the same level of care into it.

They also update on El Alamein:

We’ve been working on El Alamein since the start of the year. As it stands, the game works well as a historical simulation, but the battle itself was relatively static and attritional, with a lot of slogging through minefields. The fun in the situation comes from operational-level choices: deciding when to attack and how to build up and use scarce supplies. Consequently we extended development to add those elements to the game.

Many apologies to the many supporters who have been waiting patiently. We decided we’d rather ship a great game late than a good game fast.

El Alamein is currently scheduled for this fall; when you see it I hope you’ll agree it was worth the wait.

Note that we are bringing a second development team on to build Gettysburg: this new project won’t impact El Alamein’s schedule one way or the other.
The Gettysburg Kickstarter says release is March 2014. So it’s possible we’ll have no new Shenandoah Studios games until next year. That’s unfortunate. I suppose it’s for the best in the long run.

1971

Hi Josh,

thank you for buying Assault Wave. Sorry to hear you’re having trouble.

If you have iPad 1, we recommend you close all other open applications before playing, as that has an effect on memory usage.

In the next update (1.1) going live in couple of days, at least campaign crash bug has been fixed: the bug was when you played a battle in the campaign and won, if the game crashed before the summary screen, the result was not saved. After the update, if the game crashes, the end result is saved, and when you continue the campaign you are taken to the next battle.

The design of the user interface in intentionally simple and easy to use. If you’re interested to read a preview that presents some of the tactical choices you have in the game, I’d recommend one from Armchair General:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/assault-wave-ios-game-preview.htm

In single player campaigns, and in the Online multiplayer, you gradually unlock more Units and Commands.

In total there are currently 13 different Units and 9 different Commands. A bit later on well release an update that adds 4 Units to the multiplayer (both Online, and On Same Device).

In game the tactical choices come e.g. from which Units you send out for the objectives like conquering a Victory Location that generates Battle Points that you need in order to win, or collecting a Collectable from the battle field, and naturally what units to use against what enemy units.

Also the terrain has an effect: if your unit is in a forest, ruins or bocage, it gains some protection against incoming fire.

I’d recommend giving the On Same Device multiplayer a go with a friend, or trying out the Online multiplayer, might be you’d like those :)

1972

Thanks for the response. Glad to hear a fix is incoming. I am curious to see if the game gets more interesting as more units and commands become available. (which I’ll be able to do once the fix arrives).

1973

I forgot how much fun it is to play casual games of Ascension against the AI. It’s less frustrating when the cards don’t come out like I want in multiplayer. The game will be over in a minute and then I can start a new one!

Just about all the iOS boardgame conversions I’ve tried are fun to play this way even though the AI is never that challenging.

1974

Thanks guys. Pocket Tactics looks good. Those are exactly the type of games I was talking about. I’ve been to Touch Arcade a few times, but I find it to be very messy.

The thing I’d like though is to get more than one person’s opinion about these kind of games. And more than that, what are the mobile games that gamers have given their stamp of approval? As of right now, I feel like the best way to do that is reading this thread. So I’ve been working on a site that attempts to do that. The idea is that it’s community driven and they determine what games rise to the top or not. So you can easily see what mobile games are worth checking out based on gamer consensus. Also breaking down what the monetization scheme is. Is it free to play, pay to play, pay to win…

Is this something of interest? And if so, what would you like to see from it?

1975

Since there are no longer green and yellow AI difficulty levels (now green and red; no third slot, previously reserved for the promised pre-IH red level), is the old yellow equal to the new red, or is the new red equal to the pre-IH promised red level? Hmm…

1976

I’m pretty sure it’s just the old yellow (prioritize mechana and honor above all else.) I doubt they put any more work into the AI than was necessary, given the expiry date.

1977

I have only played the new AI on the two newest decks, but it’s actually fairly improved. It doesn’t do a lot of stupid things like burn trophy cards immediately at the end of the current turn to no effect and seems to have more reasonable card acquisition patterns. It seems to put a reasonable effort into deck trimming. I wouldn’t call it fantastic, but it seems like it understands more of the rules of the game now.

1978

Hey, Reed, your idea is intriguing and I’d definitely check it out when it’s up. Just in case you haven’t run across it, I sometimes turn to Quality Index for a kind of mobile-game Metacritic.

1979

The thing I’d like though is to get more than one person’s opinion about these kind of games. And more than that, what are the mobile games that gamers have given their stamp of approval? As of right now, I feel like the best way to do that is reading this thread. So I’ve been working on a site that attempts to do that. The idea is that it’s community driven and they determine what games rise to the top or not. So you can easily see what mobile games are worth checking out based on gamer consensus. Also breaking down what the monetization scheme is. Is it free to play, pay to play, pay to win…

The TouchArcade forums are very active, and while it’s not quite a cream-rising-to-the-top system, you can pretty easily tell which games are played a lot by gamers by seeing which threads have hundreds of posts.

1980

For the first time ever, BANG! [HD] the Official Video Game is being offered for free for a limited time (iPad only).