Feature: iPhone Games Round-Up

Flight Control

59p. That’s all you have to spend to get one of the best and most addictive games around. The concept is simple. You have two runways and one helicopter pad, each one colour coded, as are the planes. The idea is to drag a flight path for each plane to their respective runways. Sounds simple, but it gets devilishly hard. Soon you’ll find the skies filled with aircraft and only one crash leads to the game over screen. It’s so good even Phillip Schofield loves it.

With a ranking system depending on how many planes you land, the ability to upload your scores to the internet and the simple graphical style make this a must have purchase.

Gamestyle score: 5/5

Peggle

This game needs no introduction. The best and most addictive puzzle game since Tetris jumps on the iPhone, where quite frankly it doesn’t get any better. If somehow you’re unaware then Peggle is essentially like a variation on pachinko. Fire a ball form the top of the screen, as you hit each peg it disappears, clear all the orange pegs in each stage to win. Power ups are well varied and it comes with a good selection of game modes, not to mention one of the best uses of music in any game.

If you’re addicted to Peggle on the XBLA then having it on the go (and for the price of £2.99) is almost too good a proposition. Just be warned, due to the addictive nature there’s a good chance you’ll lose your job!

Gamestyle score 5/5

Texas Hold’Em

It’s Texas Hold’Em. What more is there to say really? This version though has digitised actors, which we hear was all the rage back during the old Mega CD days. Why they went with this approach we’re not sure, but it is nevertheless unintentionally hilarious. You have all the classic stereotypes, an oil baron, a cowboy and some gold digging females. The ability to stop in the middle of a hand is a welcome addition and you also have multiplayer.

Looking at the reviews a lot of people find the AI gets the good cards a lot more frequently than you, though we never noticed such cheating it is entirely possible (due to the frequency of the complaint), but at the end of the day it all comes down to how much you like the actual card game. If the answer is yes then it’s worth the £2.99 price tag.

Gamestyle score: 4/5

Resident Evil: Degeneration

Now this came as a massive shock. As soon as we saw it on the app store we automatically thought this was going to be similar to the RE games of old. Nope, instead it has more in common with Resident Evil 4, as staggering as that sounds.

Based on the terrible CG movie of the same name. You control Leon Kennedy whose character model has been ripped (and downgraded) straight from RE4 and placed in the middle of an airport where a biohazard outbreak has occurred. It’s quite funny that the long awaited return of the series classic zombies would happen to be on the iPhone. Controls are surprisingly effective, though not perfect. The 3D stick is actually depicted on the screen, as well as the different stances (shooting and running). Really there is no better way to do it, so in that case we give the developers a round of applause for making it all workable. The reintroduction of the shambling corpses help, as there slow nature makes it easier for you to aim.

They’ve even introduced a new merchant character who will sell, buy and tune up your equipment. Unfortunately he looks a little too similar to the zombies, so from a distance it’s quite simple to mistake him for the walking dead. Though zombie designs are reused constantly it’s still a massive technical achievement for a phone. There are even cut scenes (with text) and the games very own version of QTE’s where you touch certain parts of the screen at specific times to avoid certain death.

The iPhone’s pick up and play nature isn’t sacrificed either with the game having no save points, instead you can just quit the game and load it back up right from where you last left. Overall then, definitely the best showcase of the hardware and for £3.99 an absolute bargain.

Gamestyle score: 5/5

Words by Adam Gulliver