New games flood App Store before impending holiday release freeze

@fkjsdlkjfdkls

Reported.

@(Unverified)

I've been playing it for a while. It's surprisingly good. Haven't tested the multiplayer though, since my connection will be slow all day.

@(Unverified)

I'm not too much of a fan, and I loved it on PS3. The textures are very muddy and the polygon count on characters is really really low. Looks like a PS1 game. After games like Infinity Blade, Rage, and Gameloft's shooters, there's really just no excusefor that.

It's not all graphical issues either. The controls are pretty unresponsive as well.

@Sly C

"After games like Infinity Blade, Rage, and Gameloft's shooters, there's really just no excusefor that. "

oh god, already... Blade and Rage have barely been out and now people have this smug attitude towards game quality. How about give EA or whatever game studio time to copy or clone what Epic and Id did with their engines.

@(Unverified)

Oh, I know it's bad to expect graphics like Blade. And I don't. My point was that it's pitiful that it has damn near PS1 graphics on a platform that can very clearly do much, much better.

@Sly C

Well, when a game is cheaper than Tetris, I tend to not care about it having top of the line graphics. Honestly, I don't even need graphics on PS3 games. Only for them not to look like crap.

@InDurdenWeTrust

I got the free one a while back and it was cool. The new one isn't any good? Looks decent.

1st NOVA is not on sale :( I will still pick up BC2 but not until I get back home where there is wifi. Even tho I have 3G Unrestrictor, I'm not going to bother downloading 200+ MB over 3G, especially when I'm not going to have a chance to try it till I get home anyway.

@Levi

It's because of EA's massive holiday sale. If I remember right, it's supposed to be like $10. I'm not all that happy with it at $1, but maybe that's just me.

@Fillem

These guys are usually spot on with their iOS reviews:

http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/aralon-sword-and-shadow-review

They loved it. I'm going to wait a bit for the inevitable update.

Oh wow, thanks for that site. Bonus christmas points for you.

@Faceless Troll

I'm having trouble keeping ANY free space on my 32GB 3GS. They really need to give the phones the 64GB memory...

@Baha05 Coming before the end of the month, according to Squeenix.

@LordAbsu Where did they say that? Last I heart of SoM on the iPhone was the day they announced it.

@Kamion Fairly well, although the fire-trap is a royal pain in the ass to defuse. They wonk out at the weirdest times.

@182

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14055229/lightenup.JPG

@Wazzup4567 Not sure why they listed Riven in the iPad section... It's built for iPhone, so while it runs on the iPad, it's definitely not built exclusively for it. Go forth and enjoy! :)

Yeah I noticed that.

I got the game, and have a couple things to say. I think Gameloft has shooter control schemes for touchscreens down about as good as they will get. The trackpad style aiming is far better than a virtual stick, and for precision aiming, it might even be better than a real stick. I still find the movement side to be a bit annoying, and having to lift your thumb off the screen for a moment to shoot is very cumbersome as well. Finally, on the small iPhone screen, the trackpad style aiming requires you to move your thumb too far into the screen at times.

I think games like Modern Combat, Battlefield 2, and NOVA would all play a bit better on the iPad, as the aiming function wouldn't block the action nearly as much. But even then, a virtual stick for movement is still wonky, and no dedicated physical shoot button makes aiming and shooting simultaneously kind of a burden.

If we could orient the screen so that the volume rocker was on top and use volume up to shoot, it would bring a WORLD of difference to these shooters. However, devs aren't given access to that button. The jailbreak community has unlocked that feature, and I can use the volume button as the camera shutter, for example. But there's no way to natively map it to a screen input (yet; I guess it would be possible for the jailbreak community to develop something like that, but they haven't yet).

Haven't tried multiplayer yet, and I'm curious. But I had issues trying to sign up last night.

Anybody play NOVA 2? Is it > NOVA 1?

@Harrishun

Because the holiday Angry Birds has been the second/first seeling app store app for weeks, seems like the smart thing to do.

@Smugleaf

That's a bit of an understatement