There's a whole lot of promise in the Watchmen: Justice is Coming game for iPhone/iPod touch. Unfortunately, the game is beset by some bugs and gameplay fumbles. The more I played, the more I got used to the quirks, but eventually there's a certain monotony to the game that left me rather unsatisfied. Hopefully, as Mike reported, Last Legion Games will take note and keep improving the experience. I'm not saying it is bad -- it is an amazing glimpse into the power of Apple's mobile platform -- but it's more a tech demo at this point than finished game.

The gallery will take you through most everything in the game that I've found thus far. Essentially you start with a male or female character, do a cute "personality test" and your stats are generated. Your bikini-clad crimefighter is born, and aside from a username/password for accessing the server, there's not much customization you can do -- yet. As you go through the streets you're able to check dumpsters, where you'll pick up more costume parts. As you fight more bad guys (there are preset NPC's throughout, but you can also challenge other human-powered characters -- this is a MMO, after all), you'll get more experience and you can eventually level up and enhance various skills.

Life in the game is simple, but there's a story too. In fact, the game has a point system based on your random adventures as well as points for the story. So you can ditch the story and wander around, or you can focus on finding your sister. I won't spoil any more of the story, but it's not bad, and the progression is well done. If you're a fan of the GTA series, where you can wander around or go on missions, you may be a little disappointed. There aren't missions, really. Just one story arc and a bunch of random encounters to be had.

I haven't finished the game, but I will say that, after I rebooted my iPhone to stop the incessant crashing, I find myself playing Watchmen every other day or so. Keep reading for more about the good, the bad, and the ugly in Watchmen: Justice is Coming.

I love massively multiplayer online games, I love my iPhone, and I love Watchmen, the genre-defining graphic novel series of the late '80s (of which, I'll brag, I have a whole set of first edition copies) that's very soon to be the first movie blockbuster of 2009. That's why the news, over at our sister site Massively, that all of my loves were coming together in what's meant to be a Watchmen-branded MMO game for the iPhone made my day.

Watchmen: Justice is Coming will have 3D environments, customizable avatars, and thousands of players interacting in the game at the same time. Massively's got some video from G4 showing off the app, put together by the apparent newcomers Last Legion Games. Unfortunately, while the concept is lofty (they've got a long-term vision for improving the game based on player feedback), the gameplay itself looks like clunky adware -- the kind you might expect from Warner Bros. and the iPhone deals they've come up with so far.

So we're reserving judgment on this one until we can give it a try, and fortunately we won't have to wait long -- the devs say they've lined up the game for release later this week, right along with the movie. That timing doesn't impress us either -- usually, when a game and movie release simultaneously, one's been hurried to make the deadline, and trust us, it usually isn't the movie. It's Watchmen on the iPhone, so it's hit two of three bases with us already. But it'll need to bring a good game, too, if Last Legion is hoping for a home run.

The folks behind the popular Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have decided to share their work creating a "social MMO" system on the iPhone with other developers. They've just announced a system called "OpenFeint," which other devs will be able to license and use in their own games. OpenFeint will supposedly allow a developer to put together a multiplayer community in an iPhone app, complete with profiles, news boards and chat, in under an hour. They're also providing a server for developers to use, so devs won't have to host their own server software -- they'll just have to make their client work with the existing system.

Wild. It sounds like they're just making the systems they've already developed in their own games available to anyone who wants to use them. Right now, they're looking at a private beta (interested devs can sign up on their site), and eventually the service will be free for a limited number of users, with certain costs as the userbase grows.

The cynical side of us wonders if there's a catch in there somewhere -- presumably, all of the users in OpenFeint will keep their information on the Aurora Feint-owned server, so we'd guess there's a chance that at some point in the future, they could use that list for less-than-honorable actions (Steve Demeter's Onyx Online plan is another service that aims to be platform-wide, which seems to have similar risks). But that's just us being paranoid -- taken at face value, this just seems like one team of indie developers opening up what they've already done to help other devs. Very cool.

I kind of like the idea behind snOwned, a new wintry app on the App Store that claims to be a "multiuser, online snowball fight." I think there is some great multiplayer gaming to be had with the iPhone, and, if enough people are interested, there might be some in snOwned.

You download the app from the App Store (it's 99 cents, which is cheap but maybe not cheap enough for what it is), and then sign your email up along with a username. Once you've activated, you can then "throw snowballs" (which consists of three little fun minigame steps) at anyone else with the app installed on their iPhone or iPod touch around the world. And they can throw them back at you, you can play a short game to defend, stats are kept on the site, and so on. As with most social games, it all depends on who's in the game with you -- if you've got friends along to keep up rivalries with, it could be fun. But just throwing random snowballs at random people around the globe, as I did (my ingame name is "toucansamurai") isn't really worth the dollar's admission.

Still, it's a start -- the game can also track your location when you throw, so you can see where your snowballs are going on the globe, and who's throwing at you. I think there will eventually be a runaway game of this kind, where we're all playing with each other socially on our own phones in different places all over the world (Loot Wars is another game that's interesting in this vein, even if it's not quite there yet). And snOwned is another step closer to that. But as any MMO company will tell you, the only way to make a social game great is to have everyone playing it, and I'm not sure there's enough going on in this one to pull in a lot of really interested players.

Our good friends at Massively got an opportunity that turned us green with envy -- they got to sit down with the devs of Aurora Feint, one of our favorite iPhone games, and see how its fulfilling the "MMO" promise they've been offering up since it first debuted on the App Store. The new game is called Aurora Feint II: The Arena, and while it doesn't exactly offer real-time MMO gameplay, it does let players compete with ghosts -- the game will record what you or your friend plays, and then offer up that re-play as an opponent. There's also a new "Tavern" feature which will let players leave messages to each other from right in the game.

And the goals don't stop there -- they're working on a third version of the game, which will eventually feature an offline MMO mode, as well as a very, very deep experience for a fairly casual iPhone game. "Warcraft on the iPhone" -- it's not a phrase I'd use to describe Aurora Feint yet, but it's one the creators will happily use for the future.

The early MMO features are in the App Store right now -- the app will normally be priced at $9.99, but it's currently in there for $7.99 during the holidays (the free, non-MMO version is still there as well). Pretty amazing -- this was one of the games that jumped to the forefront in terms of presentation and quality right when the App Store opened, and it doesn't look like the creators have any plans to slow it down.

Ah, game developers (especially EA game developers, of which id software's John Carmack is now one, after their announcement at E3 that they'd work together to publish games). They thrive on hype, and live, it seems sometimes, off of speculation. That's probably why Carmack has told Forbes that not only does he love his iPhone, and not only does he not want to "announce anything specifically," but id wants to make a game for the iPhone and "it would be," according to Carmack, "a graphical tour de force." See what we mean? Ah, game developers.

Anna Kang, who's the president of id Mobile (no relation), says that any id game they might be working on for the iPhone wouldn't be a new IP, so that puts it very much in the range of a Doom, Wolfenstein, or Quake game, and considering that another Wolfenstein sequel is being worked on right now, that probably makes it the most likely.

For his part, Carmack sounds really excited to have the iPhone as a platform (especially since he hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with Apple) -- he equates it in terms of power to a PS2 or Xbox, and says that a company could easily shell out $10 million on an iPhone game, be it a first person shooter or a deep MMORPG. But he admits that the 99-cent sales in the App Store can't support that yet, and it probably wouldn't be the best thing for id Mobile to pour their resources into something like that quite yet. Nevertheless, we'll wait and see what they come up with.

[via Joystiq]

Massively, one of Weblogs, Inc.'s newer gaming blogs, recently started a Mac-centric feature devoted to all things MMO. MMOS X is published bi-weekly and tells you all about the latest native Mac MMO's ... none of that virtualized or Bootcamp stuff, only the good native games.

So, if you're looking for some great MMO's for your Mac, be sure to head over to Massively twice a week.


Thanks to Barb for the tip.

The Weblogs, Inc. network of blogs (of which TUAW is a part) announced its newest member today, Massively (covering news about MMO games, and co-lead by yours truly), and right there on the launch page was great news for Mac MMO fans. CCP, the company that makes the great EVE Online, has announced the release of a Mac client for the game next week.

The update will come in the form of a new patch for the client (called Trinity), which will also feature new ingame ships, lots of new items, and updated graphics textures. I've only just recently gotten into EVE Online, but it's a good time for a space-based MMO-- really complex economy, harsh PvP, and excellent skill system. I know some Mac users have already been playing it with Boot Camp and Parallels, but it'll be nice to finally have a native Mac client.

The patch is supposed to drop next Tuesday, so the Mac client should be available on the site sometime soon after that. Get ready to head into low sec space on your Mac, but be careful-- the rats are out in force.

I heard a few times that Disney's new casual MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online went live yesterday, but MacWorld reminds us that it's out for both Windows and Mac. Metacritic doesn't have too many reviews up as of this writing, but our friends at Joystiq found it to be a fun, easy to get into MMO when they played an earlier build of it, so if you're craving some pick-up-and-play pirate MMO gaming, it might be just what yer lookin' for, matey.

Unless you're running Leopard, that is. Currently, the game's system requirements only list Tiger, and while MacWorld doesn't know whether Leopard is supported or not, they're not alone-- I called Laurie at "Pirates Online Customer Support" (boy, Disney sure poured a lot of money into this one), and while she was very helpful, she didn't know whether Leopard was supported or not. I threw a note into their system to try and check, and if I hear back, I'll update the post.

Of course, you could just try downloading and running it yourself in Leopard, but then again this is only one day after Halloween, and running unsupported Disney software on your Mac is pretty scary -- might be a little much along with everything else.

Update: Never mind-- our illustrious commenters say it runs just fine in Leopard. Keelhaul away!

Apple is releasing games for the iPod. EA and id show up at the WWDC keynote. And the rumors say Nintendo may team with Apple for the iPhone. All signs point to an Apple that seriously wants to reenter the gaming market, an arena that has been dominated by PCs and consoles for quite some time. But exactly how can they do it?

They're doing some of the right things already, and we can expect them to do more in the future. But here's five suggestions (or predictions, if you will) about what Apple can do to attract gamers back to the Cult of Mac.

1) Put (even more) games on iTunes. Steam is a nice digital distribution system, and Xbox Live Arcade is a better one. But no one has done digital distribution like Apple has with iTunes-- first music, and now movies and television shows. What they need to do is add games to the software, and even go so far as to create a kind of "iTunes Arcade," where you can buy games for your iPod, your iPhone, your Mac or MacBook, and even your Apple TV. And I'm not talking dinky downloads like Lost-- I'm talking EA's Madden, Need for Speed, and even Battlefield 2142. Run patches and updates through there as well (EA's Link might not like that, but it hasn't been successful enough that they wouldn't consider joining iTunes if asked), use CoverFlow as a cool browsing and launching interface, and you've got the key not only to a solid revenue system, but also a promotion and distribution channel.

Joystiq is reporting that Disney has released a Mac version of Toontown, an MMO cartoon game where users can create cartoon characters, join quests to save Toontown, race carts and even hurl wedding cakes at each other. The game seems to be fairly successful so far, as over 15 million Windows users have already been busy doing the online cartoon character thing. The Mac version is a Universal Binary so everyone on our side of the fence can play along, and the monthly subscription fee is $9.95. Of course a free, though short, three-day trial is available as well.

Thanks Barb!