Best iPhone games of the year picks start to roll in

Gamasutra wins the award for being the first (that I've seen) to pick awards for their best five iPhone games of the year, and the list is respectable, if a little short for such a huge set of possibility. Unfortunately, they don't win any TUAW points for going with Skee-Ball over our preferred Ramp Champ, but Rolando 2 was a worthy sequel to a worthy game, Edge (now Edgy) and Eliss are both great games (too bad you can't play the former, but the latter was underrated for sure), and Space Invaders Infinity Gene deserves to be on almost any end-of-the-year iPhone game list.

Good picks in there for sure. DigitalTrends also has a long list, though strangely, they tend to stick to big names and brands. There are a few gems in there -- Spider, UniWar, and Vay may be a couple good choices that you haven't heard of yet. And here's another top 10 list with some repeats from the ones above and a few more nice picks. I guess with the end of the year upon us, we'll probably have to choose TUAW's favorites of 2009, too, eh? Stay tuned.

Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26237/Gamasutras_Best_Of_…

Categories

Analysis / Opinion Gaming Software Developer iPhone App Store

Gamasutra wins the award for being the first (that I've seen) to pick awards for their best five iPhone games of the year, and the list is...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

8 Comments

Filter by:

iswingswing

Hi! This is SwingSwing Christmas 2009 App Developer
We launched rythme action game at 15th Dec 2009.
You can see our game on in the game free app category Apple App Store.
Thanks your supports.

December 24 2009 at 5:21 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Marko

Really? No, UniWar? UniWar is insanely addicting and there are always thousands of people playing online multiplayer. It's awesome!

December 16 2009 at 5:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Thomas Houston

Eliss and Canabalt are personal faves.

December 15 2009 at 12:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dano

I agree. Ramp Champ looks great (so does Skee Ball) but RC left me bored. Skee Ball feels better and has more excitement for me - and I think because it's based on a real game I get more out of it. The physics and reaction in RC don't do it for me, either.

December 15 2009 at 11:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

robertwilliams21

I agree with #1 & #3 - Skee-Ball is vastly superior to Ramp Champ. I was so excited to try Ramp Champ for free, and after a couple of days, I removed it from my iPod and went back to Skee-Ball.

December 15 2009 at 11:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Hal

I'm not sure why everyone thinks Ramp Champ is better than Skee-Ball. Ramp champ's physics are very 2-D, and the game has no nostalgia factor, because it's not like any game I've played in real life. Skee-Ball feels more realistic, and is exactly like the arcade game we all used to play.

December 15 2009 at 9:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Hal's comment

Galley

Um, because the goal in Ramp Champ aren't always obvious? Hint: you have to hit certain targets in a certain order to unlock new targets. Skee-Ball has only one set of targets.

December 15 2009 at 9:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

vesperblogs

I'm with Hal here! Skee-Ball is "way" better than Ramp Champ. Sure, Ramp Champ has some interesting lanes. However, if you can't control the ball what's the point. Ramp Champ has horrible physics that make it near to impossible to do anything with it other than randomly hit targets. With Skee-Ball, I can almost consistently hit the 100 point targets.

Also, look at the iTunes ratings. Skee-Ball has 4*'s with 50% of it's ratings at 5*, Ramp Champ has a 2.5* rating with only 24% of it's ratings at 5*'s. It's pretty clear who iTunes patrons feel has the better "Skee-Ball" game.

When Ramp Champ gets a physics engine like Skee-Ball's, then I'll agree with the author that Ramp Champ needs to be considered.

December 15 2009 at 9:44 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply