I have been in love with Gameloft games on the iPhone since I bought my first one last year. Not only do their games have great graphics, they also have great controls and game play. Gameloft has recently released several new iPhone/iPod touch games, and I'm going to give you a first look at three of them: Terminator Salvation, Assassin's Creed, and Let's Golf.

Terminator Salvation ($5.99 US)
If you have followed the Terminator franchise or television series, then you may already know the plot of this game. In this third person shooter, you'll travel around as John Conner, the leader of the resistance against the machine invasion. The game is in a 3D landscape of Los Angeles in 2018, and the gameplay is what we've come to expect from a Gameloft game. There is an "analog" control in the bottom left of the screen that allows you to move around; when you are ready to pan around the landscape, you can do so my touching and dragging anywhere on the screen. By touching the fire button in the bottom right of the screen you can fire the weapon.

There are four different control types to choose between: using the Virtual Pad (details described above), the wheel pad (drag your fingers along the corner of the screen to adjust viewing angle), the accelerometer (tilting the iPhone/iPod touch to move the characters around on-screen), or reversed accelerometer. You can also reverse the orientation of the screen in the controls; this is a feature that I think all iPhone games should have. In the game, you can play either the roles of John Conner or Marcus Wright -- when you assume each of the characters, you will gain different abilities. There are 6 weapons and 8 levels that you can unlock, which will undoubtedly provide you with many hours of play.

This game really packs a punch in the iPhone gaming scene and is definitely worth a look. You can check out Terminator Salvation on the App Store for $5.99 US.



Assassin's Creed ($9.99 US)
Assassin's Creed has been around for a few years on many of the larger game platforms (PS3, Xbox, etc.), but recently came to the iPhone/iPod touch, and puts the same great gameplay into the hands of players around the world. In the game you play a master assassin named Altaïr who goes out on a quest to find an object that will end the crusades in the Holy Land.

In this realistic 3D RPG, you'll find yourself in sword fights, learning combat moves, and in hand-to-hand combat with enemies you encounter. You will be able to earn 6 weapons throughout the game, and there are mini-games to unlock. I love RPG games, and this one definitely kept me coming back for more until I completed every level. Hands-down, this is the best iPhone game that I have ever played -- I was blown away from the first time I picked it up. Beautiful graphics, great controls with virtual "analog" stick, and great cinematic cuts in-between levels and missions.

You can check out Assassin's Creed on the App Store for only $9.99 US -- this will well worth the price in my opinion.


Let's Golf ($4.99 US)
The iPhone has its fair share of golfing games, and I've taken a look at a few of them myself, but I have yet to find one that provides both great gameplay and great graphics. Until now. Let's Golf provides the right amount of features that any golfer would love to have, such as the ability to control what your player looks like or precision controls for your swing.

You have the ability to choose between several playing modes including instant play and tournaments. There are also over 63 holes located in 4 separate 3D environments: Fiji, America, England, and Scotland. If you are a casual player, you'll enjoy the basic controls, but if you are an experienced virtual golfer, you can switch to the advanced controls where you can precisely adjust the power of the swing and even add spin.

For $4.99US, this game is packed with features, and even includes a local Wi-Fi multiplayer mode that will allow you to challenge your friends to a golf match. You can check out Let's Golf in the App Store.

I happened to try iSniper Lite [iTunes link] the same week I was offered a chance to preview Shooter [iTunes link]. If you've played iSniper, you get a sense of what the basic gameplay in Shooter is like: use the accelerometer to move a sniper's scope around a board and shoot bad guys. But Shooter (from Paramount) improves upon the basic iSniper game in several important ways... and yes, it's based on the movie of the same name starring Mark Wahlberg. The game just hit the store and is currently being sold for $.99.

Shooter adds a "hold your breath" mode that is designed to slow the moving view down a bit. Like the "focus" mode from the Matrix videogames, you can only hold your breath for so long. While in this mode the view did slow down, but I found it hard to move the sight as well. It's as if your actions are muted instead of throttled, forcing you to move the iPhone really far in one direction to move the view. Update: Peter notes in the comments that you're supposed to use your finger to move the sight when in this mode. Still, that's a bit tricky while holding the iPhone and holding a breath button and needing to push the fire button...

One other complaint: reloading. iSniper features autoloading, which makes it easier to pick up and play and gets the gameplay moving a lot faster. I realize the designers likely chose to use manual loading because it does add to the challenge, but I wish there was an option to turn on autoloading. Still, that's a minor quibble. This is a game you'll be playing for some time. Read on for an explanation why, or check out the gallery.

I've said in this space before that I'm not always an enthusiastic gamer, but lately some really cool games have appeared that use the iPhone's capabilities to the max.

A good example is First Contact [App Store link], a new game for the iPhone/iPod touch. The game is US $2.99 and certainly packs a few bucks worth of enjoyment and excitement. The scenario involves protecting your colonies on a distant planet from UFOs, incoming missiles and other dastardly space hardware.

The game is rendered in beautiful 3D and the inferface takes some cues from Google Earth. You can rotate your planet and zoom in or out with finger gestures. You'll need to be doing that, because the incoming nasties can hide behind your planet and you have to keep things moving to protect your colonies. You touch all the targets, and your defense system launches missiles to prevent them from finding their targets. Of course, as the game progresses, you'll be moving pretty fast to keep up with the increasing threat.

You can also shake your iPhone to detonate some screen clearing nukes, and you can post your high scores online to see how you are doing against other players.

A couple of small nits to pick: The instructions were quite hard to read. The text is too small. Another issue is that the pause button is on the lower right of the screen, and frequently while tapping to mark targets, I inadvertently paused the game. On the plus side, if you bail out of the game, you are given the option to resume from where you left off. You'll use that feature a lot, I suspect.

I think you'll get hooked on this game pretty quickly. The aliens get more numerous, and increasingly more aggressive. It's always a nice day when you can save a planet.

Here's some images from the game:

Thanks, Nick!

Here we go -- Doom on the jailbreak aside, the iPhone hasn't really had a nice example of shooter gameplay, though Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes (iTunes link) seems like it might be the breakout. It's made by Gameloft, who've been making mobile games for a while now, but the good news is that it doesn't look like a mobile game at all. The graphics are 3D and vibrant, and the sounds are very impressive. The control scheme is interesting -- it's more of a third person shooter, as you use the lower left wheel to move your character, and you can use the touchscreen to move the aiming reticule (seems like there's a little autoaim help in there as well). There are even cutscenes, multiple weapons to choose from, vehicles to drive, and a cover system (though there kind of has to be, with aiming that slow in places).

Still, very impressive for an iPhone game, and a very good bar-setter for the first major shooter we've seen on the platform. As you might expect, this isn't going to be cheap -- it's $9.99 in the App Store, and while this would be the perfect title for a demo (how else do you expect to sell a $10 app?), there's not one to be found at all. Still, if there's going to be such a thing as a premium game on the iPhone, this is probably it. For all of the colorful little puzzle and wordplay games on the iPhone, sometimes you just want to shoot some Nazis.

Thanks to an independent developer, Quake II has perhaps become the oldest game to have been updated as a Universal Binary on Mac OS X. In order to use this software to play Quake II, you will still need a full copy of the game to grab some of the core game files, and I think the full source from id Software themselves (scroll down about two thirds of the way) might do the trick. While the source code there is listed as a PC version, I think the core game files you need to use this UB enabler for Mac OS X will work just fine. If anyone else knows better, feel free to sound off and list a link, if you could be so kind.

Either way, it sounds like setting up this software is pretty simple, and in no time you too could be fragging aliens circa 1997!

Quake 4, a game that could literally destroy my productivity in one swooping install, is now shipping as a Universal Binary for Mac OS X. Getting back to its first-person storyline roots, this latest installment picks up after the events of Quake 2, in which you are part of an elite marine force whose mission is to stop an Earth invasion and blow a ton of stuff up. Check out Aspyr Media's Quake 4 product page for more storyline details and system specs, as a PowerPC G4/G5 at 1.67 is required (which we've mentioned before), but they recommend a G5 or Intel-based Mac.

Quake 4 is priced at $49.99 and is available from Amazon.

[via Macworld]