Epic Citadel shows the bright promise of iOS gaming's future

Cool graphic :)
Epic Citadel is App of the day on Moblly - http://www.moblly.com/iPhone_Epic_Citadel

It's an amazing environment!!! looking forward to more games running the engine.

The iPhone 4 has hardware far more powerful than PSP, which is 6 years older (not to mention NDS). It would be a massive fail if it was not able to do better in a scene with no movement and almost only flat surfaces to show!

The Apple A4 embeds 512MB of memory when the video processor of the PSP can count on... 2MB VRAM. The LEAST the thing could do is show nice textures!!!

Now even if the iPhone 4 had better hardware than the upcoming 3DS and whatever Sony has planned for us, that is not a good reason to say "Nintendo and Sony had better step up their game".

I'm not saying this statement is right or wrong, but I really don't think a 3D demo can settle that argument. Macs have very decent video hardware since quite a time now and we're still waiting for it to compete with PC games or console market.

I think all this new hardware does is open new ways in gaming. Now even the casual gamer has access to decent 3D, but the fact is he stays a casual gamer. Even now there is room for something that can do it all and game specialized devices (home console are still here although every PC can display decent 3D on a TV).
Doesn't mean there will not be a convergence one day. But it's too soon to say if or when this will happen.

I was beyond impressed by the graphics after seeing this in the presentation. Amazing!

This is a *great* tech demo and good for building buzz, but as others have pointed out this is not much more than a level viewer. Once action starts and AI/physics are heavily involved it will have to take a notch down somewhere - either in the game design to preserve the areas of visuals or it will just get visually downgraded. The iPhone is no slouch, but all games suffer from this when the reality of gameplay and game behaviors are taken into account.

Speaking of gameplay, I am not a fan of the slide around on the touchscreen perspective. I don't find it confusing, but I do find it as awkward as I do playing these sorts of games on a console. Anything 1st person really needs to have mouse keyboard to really be effectively played or you have to crib them with autoaim and other nonsense to make up for the fact that you can't effectively navigate the environment with your thumbs.

I'm very much of the opinion that graphics don't really matter. Yes, the demonstration is very impressive but it needs to be coupled with a game that is fun to play. I still hold that the best games ever produced were for old systems like the NES and that newer gaming systems really haven't advanced things much in the time since (with the possible exception of the Wii and the Wiimote). Keep it simple and keep it fun.

While this looks fantastic, I wonder what could actually be achieved once some sort of gameplay is actually implemented. The visual quality would doubtlessly be betrayed by imperfect or low polygon character models lacking the ability to cast real-time shadows upon themselves. This is all not to mention that my iPod began to get abnormally warm while running only this demo. It is honestly very beautiful however and I do agree that it looks better than any psp title. I don't believe I can recall one with such high fidelity or high resolution textures

This demo looks amazing. Even my wife, who couldn't care less about technology, thought it was astounding that my iPhone 4 could do 3D graphics that realistic.

"The graphics in Epic Citadel easily surpass anything I've seen on the iPhone before, and they put the Nintendo DS to shame."

Yes, congratulations. The graphics on your mobile gaming system has just surpassed that of a system with hardware that is six years old.

Anyone recommending "Metroid other M" for anything other than a skeet target has lost all credibility.