iPad Games Thread

The web looks better on the iPad but for efficient surfing and reading of web content I’ll take the iPhone hands down. Perhaps that will change as I use the iPad more. I don’t even know how to hold the damn thing half the time. My wife recommended I patent a Velcro glove system for the iPad.

It is beautiful and awkward like a newborn foal.

Wait. Pinch-flicking for size or double tapping to reduce (depending on varying text sizes) and a slower browser makes for a more efficient experience? Huh.

Just to let some folks know, there are “embiggened” versions of existing games to support the iPad. Isotope, Metal Gear Solid Touch, and NYT Crosswords all were updated with iPad support (for free), and all play much better with the larger screen. My only complaint is that the NYT Crosswords app doesn’t support the kind of “next/prev clue” tapping that I liked, so it’s taking some time to get used to it.

Other thoughts…

[ul]
[li]The Street Fighter IV game, which is an amazing achievement, plays terribly when blown up 2X because the virtual stick is also larger in size, meaning the amount of screen real estate you have to travel with your thumb makes it almost unplayable at that scale.[/li][li]Some games look just fine when doubled up, but most don’t. And a few others, like Bejeweled 2 look almost as good but play even better with the increased screen space.[/li][li]ESPN Pinball is a very mediocre pinball title that incorporates some touch elements (for example, there is a ball sink that allows you to “spin it up” by tapping it repeatedly before it kicks out the ball again)[/li][li]Civ Rev looks undeniably worse doubled up, but it’s not so bad that I felt the need to upgrade it for the HD version for $12[/li][li]Battery life on the iPad is really impressive. I played games and surfed the web for about 12 hours on the first day on a single charge.[/li][li]GTA CW just controls better for me in the 2X display, but a friend of mind didn’t like how far away the buttons were because of the resulting scale up.[/li][li]Dragon’s Lair is much more playable to me because the input indicators are much large and my thumbs don’t cover them up anymore.[/li][li]Astraware’s Solitaire game is a very respectable game for it’s $0.99 purchase price[/li][/ul]
I know this isn’t the “official” iPad thread, but if there’s anyone on the fence about I have to say that I’m really, really loving mine after the first 48 hours. It’s not a content creation device, so if you want a good drawing tablet or like to code at home, then skip it. But if you want an excellent content consumption device, then this is a great machine. I see no reason why I would every buy a notebook or netbook after the iPad. Those devices now fall into a no-man’s land of doing neither particularly well. From now on, it’s going to be a fully capable desktop and an iPad for me.

Try surfing on the iPad with a cup of coffee in your hand. The browser is faster but I am finding that the iPad has a harder time maintaining a solid connection to my router. It reminds me of the first gen of iPhone in that way. So depending on where I am in the house it can be faster or slower than the phone.

You can’t put the iPad in your lap or on a table or desk?

I have a Touch, and I can’t really surf the internet with that and a cup of coffee in my hand, either…because different websites used different font sizes, so I’m always having to enlarge or reduce text. About the only way to do that is to set the Touch down on a flat surface…and in that case I’d rather do it with a bigger surface area like the iPad, which theoretically thanks to the bigger display requires less screen resizing.

Nope, don’t see it.

Double-tap the text you’re reading and it automatically resizes. I’ve never had to set my Touch down to mess with text.

Another fun game is Cogs HD. I never played the iPhone/iPod version, but the HD version is pretty fun so far.

Cogs on PC is awesome! Any idea if the iPad version has more levels?

This is the first version I’ve played, so I’m not entirely sure. But, from the following press release, it doesn’t sound like it.

From: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/57338/Cogs_HD_Now_on_iPad.php

“We’re excited to bring players all of the same puzzles from the award-winning PC game for half the price.”

I can’t believe people are playing all these iPhone ports, and not one single person has impressions for us of Warpgate.

I’ve been waiting a year for the damn game, and it’s actually available on the iPad at launch.

Anyone get it?

I actually beta-tested the iPhone version, and have been playing around with the iPad version. So here’s a brief review.

First let me focus on the main downside (since the rest is pretty much upside). Combat is not manual. Once you enter the combat zone the only ability you have is to fire weapons. There’s no maneuvering around and dodging enemy fire like you see in Escape Velocity or Star Control. There is a bit more strategic thinking though in terms of weapons load out and what weapons to fire then it initially appears though. But anyone hoping for an action combat like Escape Velocity is going to be disappointed.

With that of the way, the rest of the game is pretty damn impressive. All of what I consider the essential aspects of a Escape Velocity game I think they got down. The economy is actually dynamic. You will notice that prices for items for a sector will fall or rise depending on how you’ve been trading. Like Escape Velocity, paying attention to news items will help you discover good deals (“famine wipes out food supply thus jacking food prices through the roof”). In fact if there’s one complaint that I have is that, at least in the beta, sometimes the deals were a little bit too insane. Like selling an item more than twice the amount you purchased. Also, sometimes you’ll pick up cargo that has expensive items, and if you wait for a great deal before selling, you can make an insane killing even in the near beginning of the game. I had barely encountered the second faction and went from $10,000 to $1,000,000 in the span of about ten minutes just due to the cargo I got. I’m not sure if they’ve fixed the balance on that.

The only downside to the market is that because they focused so much on making a true dynamic economy, there aren’t that many items you can purchase in the market for each planet. (There are a total of six items per planet, though I’m not sure of the total number of items available in the entire galaxy. I’m guessing around 50 or so.)

Like Escape Velocity, Warpgate has a faction system, with branching storylines depending on which factions you support. I don’t believe that Warpgate has distinct individual storylines like Escape Velocity: Nova did, but you can choose to side with certain factions over others. Doing so will affect your reputation, and close off or open certain quests and storylines to you. Again though I’m not sure if there’s only major storyline, or different distinct ones (ala Nova), as I never finished the game.

I only got briefly into the third faction before stopping the game (unintentionally as I accidently wiped out my saves), so I can’t comment too much on the story. I can say that the various races are very well thought out, with distinct backgrounds and motives. In fact the backstory of this game is extremely detailed for an iPhone game. The designer of the game took great care in really fleshing out the universe and the backstory of the various races. Land on a planet and you’ll get a brief history of that planet and also a bit more into the overall universe. And each race has very distinct and quite interesting motivations. If you liked playing Escape Velocity because of the exploration aspect, discovering more about the history of the universe and the various races, then you’ll love this. It’s that excitement to discover something new about the universe, and my interest in the various races, that really makes playing the game compelling for me.

If anyone else has any other questions let me know.

Apple is going to reveal iPhone OS on thursday, presumably shipping June-September. Will be interesting to see the split between iPhone and iPad capabilities. The drumbeat is getting louder for Multi-tasking, will be cake to do that on iPad, iPhone could have battery issues with it tho…

I just have to say that Plants vs Zombies might be the perefect iPad game.

Word.

Blighted Earth is satisfying my Tower defense jones too. Can’t wait for GeoDefense to be updated tho…

Coolest non game: Star Walk.

This strikes me as such an awesome war-game platform, or at least it has the potential.

Anyone try Command and Conquer yet?

On the iPhone, they should at least just make it an option for power users. So if I want to listen to Spotify while browsing the web, I could just tick it on (then off later if I want to save battery life).

C&C has too may buttons on the iPhone, and it seems like it wasn’t actually fixed for the iPad.
We need someone to come with a fresh concept of UI for RTS games on touch screens.

Yep, I picked it up mainly because we do RTS here at Relic. For the most part I found it quite easy to control although power users are going to sorely miss all the hotkeys they’re used to.

Graphically it is just okay. It is not competitive at all with DoWII or StarCraft II, which is to be expected, but I still can’t help but feeling that because you can’t rotate, only pan and slight zoom, that 2D is still the way to go if you want to do something that is beautiful on this hardware.

I haven’t gotten to a battle with a lot of units yet, so I don’t know if there’s any slowdown, nor have I tried WiFi multiplayer, but there is campaign, skirmish, and multiplayer for the 3 armies and it’s just good ol’ fashioned C&C fun…if you like that sort of thing. ;-)

Ohhh can we expect some Relic ports? That would be awesome!!