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Posts tagged with "games"

Flight Control for iPhone Update: Online Multiplayer, Voice Chat

Flight Control, popular iPhone game from award-winning development studio Firemint, was updated a few hours ago to version 1.9.2. As promised by Firemint developers before the public release of iOS 4.2 in November, this update follows “HD” iPad version and introduces support for online multiplayer through Game Center, with the possibility to start a voice chat with your opponent.

You can invite a friend to play, or let the app search for a random match in Game Center. The voice chat option is turned off by default but can be activated at any time. I just tried the online multiplayer mode with one of my Game Center contacts and it works pretty well, although I noticed some lags.

Flight Control is available at $0.99 in the App Store. Check out the full changelog below. Read more

Infinity Blade Now Available In The App Store - Not The U.S. One Yet

Infinity Blade is one of the most anticipated games for iPhone and iPad to hit the App Store this holiday season. Demoed on stage at Apple’s event back in September and released as a tech demo known as Epic Citadel back then, the game is built on top of the Unreal Engine 3 for iOS devices and it shows impressive graphics and animations. Apparently, Steve Jobs couldn’t believe the game was running on an iPhone when he first saw it either.

As previously confirmed in November, the game changed its name from Project Sword to Infinity Blade and was set to come out in December. TouchArcade also revealed that the app would be released on December 9th at $5.99, but we just took a look inside the New Zealand App Store and found out that, as usual, iTunes started propagating the app on its own due to time zone differences.

Infinity Blade is available at $8.29 over there, and you can take a look at the screenshots and full description from iTunes below. The app isn’t available in other stores for now, but we believe it’ll start propagating in European ones in 10 hours. The app is universal and runs on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPod Touch 3, or iPod Touch 4 – with Retina Display-ready graphics optimized for the iPhone 4.  From what we can read in iTunes, it seems like there will be customization possibilities, a “dynamic single player campaign” and support for Game Center leaderboards and achievements.

We’ll take a deeper look at the game once it becomes available in the U.S. Store. Read more

EA Gives My Friends One More Reason To Steal My iPad: Monopoly Classic

My closest friends are addicted to two things in this world: Monopoly and my iPad. Either they play the board game, or they grab my beloved tablet to play Fruit Ninja HD. I can tell you this happens every week, on a regular basis, and the only advantage of the iPad is that the battery eventually dies. Otherwise, they would play all night trying to break my girlfriend’s 912 points record at Fruit Ninja’s arcade mode. They’re currently stuck somewhere around 810.

The problem is, anyway, those two addictions will soon merge into one because of Electronic Arts, which is bringing Monopoly to the iPad. The actual Monopoly, the real one – in fact, the game will be released as “Monopoly Classic for iPad” later this month. Just before Christmas. Oh boy. Read more

Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition for Mac Available→

Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition for Mac Available

Bloodthirsty bandits. Vicious monsters. Tons of loot. Lock, Load and face the madness. Gearbox Software’s acclaimed sci-fi hit comes to the Mac complete with all four expansion packs. Borderlands is a unique hybrid of first person shooter and role-playing game with a super sharp visual style and a compelling 4 player co-op mode.

The game is out on Amazon now, or you can buy it on Feral Interactive’s website. I played this on a PC months ago, it’s a real gem.

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There’s A New Minecraft Clone In The App Store

Fans of popular indie sandbox game for Mac and PC Minecraft have been asking for a native iOS porting for months now. While it looks like they won’t be getting an official iPhone or iPad version anytime soon, clones approved by Apple are here to help.

After a brief appearance of “Minecrafted for iPhone” two weeks ago, there’s a new app in the App Store called “Eden - World Builder” which looks and behaves a lot like the original Minecraft. The app is available now here, and it’s priced at $4.99. Although the app’s name doesn’t carry the Minecraft brand, the description on iTunes says:

Explore a vast pristine world of infinite possibility. Build your own personal Eden. Eden brings the creative block building genre, pioneered by games like Minecraft, Infiniminer, and Blockland, to the touch screen.

Whatever. From what I can see in the app, though, looks like you can break any block with 1 hit, and I haven’t seen monsters around. Perhaps I just need to play more.

Anyway, grab the app before Apple pulls it, it’s available here.

Angry Birds Seasons Now Available→

Angry Birds Seasons Goes Now Available

From now on, every season is an Angry Birds season. After the special treats of Halloween, Angry Birds Seasons returns with another gift that keeps on giving: Season’s Greetings for the Holidays!

Seasonal theme, “25 days of Angry Birds” until Christmas, Game Center support, new achievements. 99 cents in the App Store. Looks like a nice update.

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John Carmack On iOS Performances→

John Carmack On iOS Performances

From Ars Technica’s interview with John Carmack:

Whether the iOS devices will reach that same level of performance before the next console generation ships is quite an interesting question. There are some very different designs for power consumption considerations that go into their hardware design, and cranking things up to give that level of power but gets burning hot in your hands and uses up the battery in 30 minutes is absolutely possible with the form factor right now, but it’s probably not the right decision from the standpoint of what the device really is and is supposed to be. But even at the same power draw, they’re going to be doubling and doubling again the performance level.

In the not-too-distant future, we’re going to be seeing multicore on mobiles, and I’m very interested in when the transition to 64-bit addresses is going to come in the mobile space.

If there’s one thing that’s holding developers from creating full-featured game experiences on iOS, that would be battery life.

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Soon, You’ll Be Able To Control Chopper 2 for Mac With Your iPhone

A few weeks ago we saw the first screenshots of the next version of The Incident, which will allow you to mirror the game on your TV and control it with your iPhone. Admittedly, the iPhone can serve as a great “external” controller, even better than when you’re using it to control and play at the same time because you don’t have the actual game covered by your fingers. With a small multi-touch surface in your hands, the possibilities for TV gaming are endless.

The next version of Chopper for Mac, Chopper 2, will allow for a similar setup, although the TV isn’t involved this time. Instead, Chopper 2 will let you pair your iPhone with your Mac and control the game on your computer using the accelerometer and multi-touch technology on your iPhone. The demo video below gives you a brief preview of what’s coming, and it’ll be interesting to see whether Mac games that will be published in the Mac App Store will take advantage of this pairing technology or not.

What’s for sure is, the iPhone can be a great game controller. Read more