e3 posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: Real Tennis 2009

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 12th, 2009

The last preview we've got for you from E3 last week isn't really a preview -- Real Tennis 2009 was the first game due out from Gameloft that we played in their party bus outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, and sure enough, it's out right now in the App Store for $4.99 (all of the games we played with them last week, including the impressive Castle of Magic, are due out before the end of June). As a tennis game -- Gameloft claimed it was the first on the platform, though that doesn't seem true -- it plays pretty well, though the players are controlled with onscreen buttons rather than touchscreen gestures. Serving is the only activity that tries to take full advantage of the iPhone's controls: you can target your serve with the accelerometer, and then tap the screen anywhere when the serve meter is full. The action is pretty fast, and sometimes too fast: if you don't get moving in the right direction right off the ball, your player will get to where they need to be way too late.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the game lies in multiplayer: though we didn't see it in action, we were told that the game offers up to four-player WiFi multiplayer (even before 3.0 is set to make it easier for developers to do). So that's pretty impressive in and of itself -- if you can find three other people with iPhones and the game to play.

Continue reading “TUAW at E3: Real Tennis 2009”

Tags: app-store, castle-of-magic, controllers, e3, e3-2009, gameloft, games, names, preview, pros, real-tennis-2009, tennis, tuaw-at-e3

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: Guitar Rock Tour 2 and DJ Mix Tour

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 9th, 2009

While we really liked Gameloft's Castle of Magic at E3, these two music games in their lineup didn't impress nearly as much. Guitar Rock Tour 2 is a sequel to Guitar Rock Tour, and as you can tell from the picture at right, it's more or less a Guitar Hero knock-off: hit the notes as they pass the line at the bottom, and you'll hear whatever song you choose to play. At this point, gameplay on all of these games is more or less the same, so song selection makes the difference, and that's where Guitar Rock Tour 2 falls short: the game contains only four original tracks, and fifteen covers. While they do lay claim to tracks by Judas Priest, Panic at the Disco, Wolfmother, Placebo and Twisted Sister, Tapulous pretty much has the market covered in terms of getting great music playable on the iPhone, and we didn't see anything during our hands on that would attract us away from Tap Tap Revenge and its various forms.

DJ Mix Tour is the other music game they showed us -- this one had a club feel and had you pressing notes on a turntable rather than guitar frets. There were some interesting choices in that game -- we saw some covers of Britney Spears club mixes, as well as Lady Gaga and Darude's famous Sandstorm tune, so if you're a die-hard techno fan, there might be some new tunes in there for you among the sixteen total songs. But again, Tap Tap Revenge is so polished after all their updates, and already has such a great selection of tunes that it's hard to recommend Gameloft's versions.

Both will be available for $5.99 in the App Store sometime this month.

Tags: britney-spears, club, dj-mix-tour, e3, e3-2009, gameloft, guitar-rock-tour-2, judas-priest, panic-at-the-disco, placebo, techno, twisted-sister

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Odds and ends, Other Events, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: Castle of Magic hands-on

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 8th, 2009

Gameloft was kind enough to show us their whole upcoming stable of iPhone and iPod touch titles at E3 last week, and the most impressive game we saw in their "party bus," parked outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, was Castle of Magic. It's a 2D platformer with colorful and great-looking 3D graphics in which you play a young wizard trying to get a girl back. So it's pretty well-tread ground, especially as platformers go (so named because you spend the game jumping from platform to platform), but it's one of the first straightforward examples of the genre on the iPhone.

The game's controlled with a virtual d-pad right on the screen, as well as two ability buttons that change depending on whatever powerups you have at the time. And powerups are found throughout the game world -- there are five themed overworlds to choose from (space, water, ice, forest, etc.), and three levels each within those worlds, and while the kid can pick up some abilities any time (a magical beam to shoot enemies with is a pretty common one), each world also has its own ability (you can be a spaceman in space, Robin Hood in the forest level, a swordfish while swimming, and so on). The game's graphics are immensely charming, and given that, like most platformers, there's plenty of doohickeys to collect, there's a good amount of replayability here as well.

Continue reading “TUAW at E3: Castle of Magic hands-on”

Tags: castle-of-magic, e3, e3-2009, gameplay, hands-on, platformer, robin-hood, spaceman, tuaw

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: The Sims 3 for iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 4th, 2009

The Sims 3 pretty faithfully recreates the Sims experience on Apple's handhelds, albeit in a more streamlined version. While the handheld port avoids a lot of the new complexity of the latest PC release, the core Sims experience is still here -- you can create a Sim, give it a personality and a house, and then help your little avatar live its life, from going to work to following goals and dreams to completion.

To a relatively new Sims player (I've never been a huge fan of the games), the variety of things to do here is pretty impressive. There's the usual tasks around your house -- eating, cleaning, sleeping, and so on -- but as you play, your Sim comes up with new goals to lust after, and it's your job to make sure those things happen, all while trying to preserve your Sim's health and sanity. For instance, just a minute into playing, my Sim suddenly got it in his head that he wanted to "use someone else's shower" (which seems like an exceedingly creepy goal to have, actually), but instantly I started thinking about all the things I had to do to complete it: go to town, meet someone, get invited to their house, and then somehow find an opportunity to jump in the shower.

Continue reading “TUAW at E3: The Sims 3 for iPhone”

Tags: e3, ea, experience, fun, goals, iphone, maxis, release, simple, streamlined, the-sims, the-sims-3

Filed under: Gaming, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: Mass Effect Galaxy on the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 4th, 2009

EA brought a few iPhone games to the show in Los Angeles this week -- first up, we got a look at the Mass Effect entry for the iPhone, recently titled Mass Effect Galaxy. The game takes place in the same universe as the popular console game (and its sequel), but it focuses around a separate, non-customizable hero named Jacob Taylor. And while the game was designed by Bioware, it plays very differently from the regular console versions. It's much more action-based, and while it does tell a pretty enticing story, it's much less of an RPG.

While Mass Effect played as a third-person shooter, Mass Effect Galaxy actually goes with a top-down view, and takes basic aiming controls out of your hands completely. Instead, you send the main character running around the map with the accelerometer, and he aims and fires at enemies for you. Along the side edge of the touchscreen are your bionic abilities, and you can throw them in as you fight, but mostly, the game is just about navigating Jacob behind cover by tilting the accelerometer.

Continue reading “TUAW at E3: Mass Effect Galaxy on the iPhone”

Tags: app-store, bioware, e3, e3-2009, iphone, jacob-taylor, mass-effect, mass-effect-galaxy, tuaw

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

TUAW at E3: Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem for iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 3rd, 2009

I'm spending the week at E3, and while iPhone games are somewhat few and far between (odds are that we'll see most of the App Store's goods next week at WWDC), there are a few gems to find out on the floor. In the Vogster booth, I got to play Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem. It was originally seen on the DS as a classic real-time strategy title, in the style of Warcraft and Starcraft, and it's kept that standard gameplay on the iPhone -- you can create units and control them along with heroes, tech up with different buildings, and control bases and maps. The top screen of the DS has become two panels on the side of the iPhone's screen, but navigation is still pretty easy -- click to select units, click to direct them. Hardcore strategy fans won't find any surprises, but it is a solid, classic-style RTS that runs well.

There will be 17 singleplayer missions shipping with the game, and the team is working on getting multiplayer to work as well -- it currently works over WiFi, and they're aiming to even allow online play before it releases to the App Store in August. Vogster producer Alan Martin even told us that they found developing for the iPhone even easier than the DS -- different factions in the game are shown by applying different colors to the units, and while on the DS they had to make sprites for each color, the iPhone allowed them to simply change the primary colors with a variable. RTS fans especially should be sure to give the game a look

Tags: alan-martin, app-store, ds, e3, iphone, ipod-touch, mobile-mayhem, robocalypse, rts, starcraft, title, vogster, warcraft

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Other Events, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

CES expands iPod, iPhone exhibit space at next year's show

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on May 25th, 2009

I'm lucky enough to be heading out to E3 next week, so I'll be puttering around the show looking for great iPhone apps and games to tell you all about, but it looks like CES might be the place to be for iPhone software in 2010: the show is going to expand the exhibit space for Apple's mobile platforms by 5x. We knew there was going to be a bigger iPhone/iPod related event there, but we didn't know it was going to be quite that big. Organizers say that the App Store's huge growth justifies the size of the event, but of course Apple's exit from Macworld (and that event's move to February, away from the Vegas CES show in January) didn't hurt either.

Don't look for any official iPhone or iPod setups at CES -- Apple says that trade shows aren't a huge part of their marketing plan any more. We can't really blame them; they already have their own events whenever they want, well-attended and well-covered by the press. But this show will probably be a nice opportunity for iPhone developers. There's a lot of apps out there, and every chance developers get to show off to the press will probably be welcome.

Tags: apple-events, ces, e3, exhibition, ilounge, iphone, ipod-touch, macworld, pavilion, space

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Apple, iPhone, App Store

TUAW Hands-on: Spore Origins for the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jul 18th, 2008

In the Electronic Arts booth here at E3, nestled in among the raucous noises of various first-person shooters, is a completely white room with a few cell phones on tables. This is the EA Mobile space, and it was here that we got to play Spore Origins, the iPhone version of Will Wright's sure-to-be masterpiece.

Like the EA Mobile space, Spore Origins is pretty simple and clean, and stands out as a fairly calm experience among the racket of a lot of other iPhone games. Spore takes you through a civilization from ameoba to space travel, but Spore Origins sticks with just the ameoba stage. You play a creature of your own creation and float through the microbial ether, eating things that are smaller than you, and running away from things that are larger.

Read on for TUAW's impressions of one of the most anticipated iPhone games, and why it might not be all we had hoped.

Continue reading “TUAW Hands-on: Spore Origins for the iPhone”

Tags: e3, e3-2008, ea, electronic-arts, games, gaming, iphone, mobile, pr, spore, spore-origins, tuaw

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Video, WWDC

John Carmack id tech 5 demo from WWDC

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 13th, 2007

Here's the demo of id tech 5, id Software's new graphical engine, running on a Mac at the WWDC keynote. It looks very nice (it should, at 20gb of textures), and Carmack says the engine will allow programmers to come in and get the game right first, and then let their artists loose on it. Levels can be designed before anything else, and then artists can come and design the landscape and the colors around that.

I'm not sure how well that works, but we'll see soon: Carmack also says he'll have this showing on both consoles and desktops (Mac and PC) at E3, as well as "another Mac related announcement" that he can't quite bring himself to tell us about at this point. Considering all of id's games are already available on OS X (released by Aspyr, who have to be shaking in their boots after all the announcements this week), we have no idea at all what that might be.

Tags: e3, engine, games, id software, id tech 5, IdSoftware, IdTech5, john carmack, JohnCarmack, mac, wwdc keynote, WwdcKeynote

Filed under: Gaming, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends

An Apple IIe at E3

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (RSS feed) on May 15th, 2006

Forget the Nintendo Wii (pronounced "wheeeeeeeeeeee!"), Sony PS3 (or the "Rockefeller Machine" as I call it), or Xbox 360 razmatazz... The real action at this year's E3 was hidden deep in the bowels of the show: an Apple ][e. Apparently the ][e had been gutted, and replaced with a net-aware time machine, connected to an abandonware site, which was playing... uh, I have no idea. That game looks awfully familiar, but I can't name it. Any takers? I found this via the blog of one "Greg," who is a senior software developer with AOL. So, Greg: you read Joystiq but not TUAW, and yet your favorite gadget is an iPod?

Tags: e3, game, joystiq

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