OnLive announced today that their OnLive Client Mobile App is finally available for download on smartphones and tablets.  This App was originally exclusive to the HTC Flyer tablet (which no one bought) but now, nearly a year later, it has been made available to those of us with better shopping sense.

The OnLive app requires at least Android 2.3 Gingerbread and has been tested on the following Android Device:

Also he Universal OnLive Wireless Controller has been tested with the Acer Iconia Tab A500, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Toshiba Thrive.

I have three Android devices (Stratosphere, Droid 2, and Transformer) and an OnLive console with wireless controller.  Will be testing this thoroughly when get back to Atlanta from Chicago.

As expected, IOS devices are supported.  They are demoing it with an Ipad in the commercial.  Can’t miss that Apple logo.

The game saw first light here with the Nintendo DS remake in 2006. The DS version was a complete overhaul with 3D graphics and character personalities abound. You see, in the original version of the game, the four ‘warriors of light’ were just generic, lifeless placeholders. Square went the extra mile with the remake, which achieved critical and commercial success. Fast-forward to 2011 and now we have this wonderufl DS game staring back at us through the iPad!

The iPad version features a higher resolution (1024 x 768) and crisper graphics. Thankfully, they also got rid of that janky font.You also have native touchsreen controls that have been adapted to the interface. When you drag your thumb (anywhere) on the screen, a little joystick appears and you can move your character. RPGs are rife with menus, so they just went ahead and made the options buttons that you can touch. I was suprised how well the game plays in this format.

The game also features an emulation-esque quick save feature. You can quicksave at any point in the game. You are warned that the quicksave will be erased when you select “new game” or “load game.” I learned that your quicksave is erased when you fall in battle or return to the title screen. If you kill the game (literally: open the iOS task manager and close it) before the title screen loads, the save will still be there when you restart. I also learned that the game quicksaves before every random (or not so random) battle.

The wifi connectivity is completely gone, but that’s not such a big deal. The only thing of grave importance that was tied to the Mognet system (wifi powered) was the unlocking of a secret job class. The job quest has been changed to work around this limitation (to my delight). Unlocking the Onion Knight class on the DS was a headache!

Changes aside, this is still the same solid FF game that it was 5 years ago. I can’t really say that the random encounters have grown on me though. They are just as annoying and necessary to the challenging old-school gameplay as they ever were.

FF3 is solid, polished, and challenging. The job system shines just as brightly as it did way back when and this is one ride that is definitely worth the trouble. Square Enix is planning to release Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions for the iOS platform very soon. Move over PSP, I think I have found a new portable JRPG platform of choice! Here’s to hoping they keep ‘em coming.

You play as FBI Puzzle Agent Nelson Tethers.  He is just off the success he had in the fist game when he decides to take a vacation.  Instead of taking a proper vacation, he goes to visit the same small Minnesota town in which the first game is set because of unexplained loose ends left from the first adventure.  Here’s the part in the review where I suggest you play Puzzle Agent 1 before even booting up 2.

In the first 10 minutes of Puzzle Agent 2, Tethers interacts with established characters from the first game that are only lightly introduced in the second.  The game heavily references events of the first game and nearly all the characters you come across within the town are from the first game.  This isn’t really a “fault” per-se, but having not initially played Puzzle Agent, I was significantly detached from the initial story threads of Puzzle Agent 2.  The good news is that Puzzle Agent 1 is only $4.99.  Paying $14.98 for two Puzzle Agent games is a pretty sweet deal (it’s slightly cheaper if you go through Steam), just keep in mind these games are both light on content and replay value.

After establishing the main drive for the plot, the story goes in surprising and satisfying directions.  The juxtaposition of the quiet Minnesota town with the out of nowhere sci-fi angle of the story plays to Telltale’s comedic strength.  While not laugh out loud funny, the subtle ridiculousness of the mystery will leave you smiling.  The puzzles are often weaved into the story in overly contrived ways, but the characters do a good job referring to the puzzles as puzzles, as a way of saying “We know its kinda dumb, but hey this IS a puzzle game, you know”.

If you have played any of Telltale adventure games, you are familiar with item trading and item combining to progress the story.  Puzzle Agent replaces these mechanics with puzzles.  The traversal is minimal and at no point does the player have direct control of the character.  Most of the game is spent surfing dialog trees and solving puzzles.  Puzzle Agent has very little filler and absolutely no unnecessary mechanics.

Unlike Back to the Future (of which I played the first episode) where you are physically running Marty back and forth through town square looking for clues, Puzzle Agent only asks you to click once on the context sensitive portion of the screen and the investigation commences.  This is a relief and in the end makes the game infinitely accessible.

Now onto the bread and butter, the puzzles.  Many of them are logic based and others are abstract puzzle piece based, with other types popping in and out as well.  Depending on your intellect level and experience with puzzle games, the difficulty can range from too easy to moderately hard.  In my experience, the only trouble  I had with the puzzles were the ones that had tricky or confusing instructions.   The game inundates you with optional clues to use, so a player of any level shouldn’t be stuck too long on any given puzzle.

The only thing that may turn off players is the deliberate art style and animation.  The character designs are based on Graham Annable’s Grickle comic.  Its simple yet expressive and very low key.  Annable was actually a creative director on the game, so the art style is genuine, but I can completely understand why someone would not like the visuals in Puzzle Agent.

For $9.99 Puzzle Agent 2 is a good buy.  It’s fun and interesting, nearly any age can enjoy it and anyone that has experience with computers can play it.  Consider getting it as a birthday present for your quirky aunt or even as a gift for your mom to use on her newly purchased Ipad.  Its not going to break any records or blow anyone’s mind, but fun will be had and that’s all you really need.

Verdict:  Easy to Recommend

Now don’t get me wrong, this ain’t no Braid, but what it does have to offer is a fun, easy-going puzzle-platformer that will quickly begin to occupy your time. First a little background. Like a lot of iPhone games, this game originated as a flash game. Yeah, i know, sucks for the iPhone right. Well, maybe not. Certainly the iPhone’s 3D capability is worth more than the average flash/browser based game, but there is definitely a place for the better of the fore-mentioned genre to have a second coming. iShift is brought to us by the flash games site Armor Games and is more than likely the first iteration in a slew of games coming from this franchise, which we should see pretty quickly due to their already being four SHIFT titles freely available online (SHIFT, SHIFT 2, SHIFT 3, and SHIFT 4). According to the iTunes product page, the original SHIFT was released back in 2008 and has seen over 10 Million plays since. Quite the following.

What sets iSHIFT apart from other similar platformers is in the name itself, SHIFT. If you fired up the game, you would soon notice that the levels are entirely black and white. The interesting and compelling thing about iSHIFT is that pressing the shift key allows you to flip the level, and become part of the level of the opposite color. If you can grasp this concerpt, then you should quickly begin to see that possibilities of this title. This may not make much since by just explaining, so see the screen captures below. And yes, the SHIFT key on the keyboard originally performed this function. Thus the name.

As with all iPhone games, the control scheme has to be properly addressed. And with platformers in particular, the transition to the iPhone does not always go over so gracefully. I almost always shriek in horror at the very though of seeing an iPhone game with an onscreen joystick. How does iShift address this issue? Well, since the game was originally in standard definition aspect ratio, it simply adds that to the iPhone as the gaming area, and uses the bars on either side to control the direction the character is moving. Now here is the part that i like. Pressing both arrows at the same time allows your player to perform a jump. Not only is this pretty intuitive, but it allows you to pull off precision jumps pretty easily. Impressive. Also, the SHIFT button, has a few options depending on how your feeling. You may choose to control it via left/right tilt, backward/forward tilt, or use the shift button. Controls are great.

Well, here is the skinny. I am sad to say for all that praise that I can give this game I will definitely say that it has one very bad fault. There are NOT ENOUGH LEVELS. I can’t remember the exact count, but as I found myself really getting into this game, it was over before I knew it. And with little or no replay-ability, it is crucial to have a crap-ton of levels. I sampled the Lite (free) version of this game at first and was instantly hooked. I was more than compelled to purchase the full game. Like I stated earlier, to my dismay, it ended way too soon. That being said, it was only $0.99 so i wasn’t too miffed. My recommendation would be to just download the lite version on your iPhone, and if you really like it, play the full freely available version online.

Well, another week of iPhone gaming in the can. Happy Gaming! Three out of five stars!

[3/5 Stars]

TWIIG: This Week In iPhone Gaming

Let’s Golf, published by Gameloft,  puts arcade style golfing at your fingertips. No, literally. Shots are setup much like one would imagine. Tapping on either side of the screen moves the trajectory path in the desired direction. The lower left section of the screen offers a menu for easily selecting the club of your choice. The upper right section of the screen offers a map of the course and allows you to zoom in for greater precision of your shot. Shots are actually performed in one of two methods, classic or advanced. Classic shots are performed in normal 3-click systems that is used by most of the popular golf games of the past, one click to start the shot, one for power, and the other for precision. The advanced shot system is perform by moving your finger backward across an on-screen arrow to pull your club back, and the moving your finger forward across that arrow to actually perform the forward swing.

Personally, I prefer the classic swing. I found the advanced swing is okay, but there is a minor learning curve. That being said, I’m a precision junky, but I do feel the advance swing can be mastered with time.

Graphics are pretty much what you would expect here, like most other games on the platform, they fall between the PSP and DSLite/DSi. The game has four anime style characters with largely over-sized heads, which are very similar to those of Hot Shots Golf. It also features 63 holes in four different locations; Fuji Beach, American Mountains, English Countryside, and Scottish Lochs.

Game modes include instant play, multiplayer, tournament, and free hole. Instant play chooses three random holes for you to dive into for a quick game, which I find convenient whenever you have five to ten quick minutes to blow. The multiplayer mode includes two multiplayer types, which are hot seat and wireless. In hot seat multiplayer, you are able to take on someone with a single device. I guess this is okay, but I would find it really annoying passing the iPhone back and forth. On the other hand wireless multiplayer allows you to join up over Wi-Fi to take on a friend over your local network. This too is okay, but I would have really liked the game to have some type of online challenge that enables you to take on people all over the world via the internet. Unfortunately, I’m finding that this is a major drawback with a lot of iPhone games. Other modes are tournament, which allows you to play a full tournament round, and free hole, which is for practice.

All in all, I would have to say this one is a keeper. The $5.99 price tag is not something that I’m happy about, but the quality is there to warrant a slightly higher price. If you love golf games, especially Hot Shots Golf, i would definitely recommend that you pick this one up. Four out of five stars!

[4/5 Stars]

First off, I have never really been a true handheld gamer. Albeit often times dazzled by them, I have never owned any of the Nintendo Gameboy/DS handheld devices, and have purposely stayed away from the Sony PSP. I had pretty much given up on the handheld gaming market as a consumer, until I was greatly surprised to find that the Apple iPhone had serious gaming chops. Sufficient to say, owning an iPhone has been a pretty awesome experience. TWIIG, my new column (This Week In iPhone Games), is all about iPhone games and setting apart the gems from the crap. First up, Fastlane Street Racing!

Racers have long been one of my favorite game types to play and often the genre that I have excelled in the most. More recently though, I have found the transition to gimmick racers (and when i say gimmick, i just mean different control interface/type) like those on the Nintendo Wii to be more of a struggle. Which raises a question that I have seen a lot, “Do new gamers become adept to different control types faster than avid gamers who are use to the old way of doing things?”. Probably so.

The iPhone brings its own ‘gimmick’ to the genre, with the use of the accelerometer. Fastlane Street Racing, developed and published by ATOD-AB, is a 3D racer for the Apple iPhone that attempts to bring you quality racing on the go in said fashion. We all know by now the iPhone brings a certain uniqueness to gaming, but how does this translate to game types that we have played forever with direction pads or a keyboard and mouse? Certainly the notion of using the accelerometer for steering in a racing game may seem cool at first, but does this actually translate into great gameplay? The easy answer is… Yes and No.

FSR allows you to use the iPhone as an impromptu steering wheel. Smartly, the ATOD-AB guys have adjusted the in game camera to tilt opposite the way you turn, so your view stays steady for the most part. For basic turning and weaving through traffic, this scheme gets the job done. But herein lies the problem for someone like me, I want precision. I have found with the use of the device for steering, that it is almost impossible to be precise. For someone that is use to perfect runs, it’s more than frustrating not being able to turn the corner, or hit a drift just as you had intended. And while you don’t get punished as much for hitting a wall on easy mode, hard mode is almost impossible.

FSR has five game modes, ten original cars, eight city routes, two race circuits, and six challenge tracks. As you could have guessed, it follows the pattern of most games these days by allowing a few tracks to be played several different ways (i.e. regular, backward, the grouped tracks) and the standard unlocking tracks/cars by achieving first place status in a race. As far as the cars, your not going to see anything branded here, nothing but generics are available.

As far as graphics are concerned, I still find it hard to believe the 3D graphic power that this device is capable of producing. The quality of the graphics for this game very much remind me of the arcade-like graphics of a Sega Dreamcast. I constantly wonder how far they actually can push the graphics of this device. It will be interesting to see the graphic quality of the games that are being produced a year from now.

Now let’s take a look at the sound. FTR offers an eight track soundtrack that is upbeat and techy. It would have been nice to have an option to play your own music rather than the music that came with the game, but I’m sure that will be added with an update later. While iPhone speaker quality is another topic for another day, I would always advise using your headphones when playing an iPhone game, or listening to music for that matter.

What the future of the franchise? Who knows, but here are a few things I would like to see. I would be very much interested in seeing this game use the Wi-Fi or 3G network connectivity to make this game online compatible. With any racing game, multi-player compatibility is a must. And with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK there may even be a possibility for this game becoming multi-player via Bluetooth connectivity for short range multi-player matches. It would also be a nice feature to be able to export video or images of a run to you iPhone.

In conclusion, I would definitely recommend this title if you like racers and you own an iPhone. Shortcomings aside, this is still one of the better racers on the platform. Fastlane Street Racing is currently available in the iTunes/iPhone App Store for a mere $1.99. Three and a half out of five stars.

[3.5/5 Stars]

Two years ago, if you would have told me that Apple was coming out with a gaming device, I would have called you a liar without blinking. And if you told me it would  initially be masqueraded as a phone, i would been even more skeptical. Let us be honest, as far as gaming goes, APPLE COMPUTERS have never really been a viable gaming platform. But what Apple could not do in the desktop/laptop arena on the gaming side, they have more than made up for in the handheld space. Let’s take a look at how Apple has positioned themselves to become a strong number three, behind Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, in the handheld gaming arena.

A Formula For Success?

If I were to build a formula for success in the gaming industry, the first thing I would do is find someone that’s fairly successful and emulate them, while adding things that I feel are important to me. I know this may be blasphemy to most Apple fan boys, but the iPhone software platform is similar to what Microsoft’s XBOX Live has done in a lot of ways.

• Provide an awesome platform for development
• Allow anyone to distribute through an online store

Essentially, in many ways, the gaming features in the Apple iPhone SDK, can be equated to the Microsoft XNA. Both provide tools which allow for the development of games on hardware which can be mass distributed. Likewise, the XBOX Live Marketplace, is the equivalent to the iPhone App store.

The average Joe can make a game for the iPhone, submit it to the app store, and instantly get it published for millions to download and purchase. I have even seen a few games by the same developers popup on both platforms.  Also, as far as getting your app in the Marketplace/App Store, I’d probably choose Microsoft’s peer review systems over the Apple app store review, simply because of the level of clarity and disclosure on things that would allow/prevent certain games from making it into the App Store.

As you could have guessed it, there is a downfall to this user submitted systems, crap ware. You can easily overlook a great title while wading through the crap. Lucky for us, Apple provides top apps functionality when browsing for a new title.  Also the app store allows for demos, which let allows the user try before buying, which is a huge plus. Next let’s take a look at where the iPhone falls amongst the big two handheld gaming platforms, Nintendo DS and Sony Playstation Portable, or PSP.

In Comparison

Okay, I think first and far most we should look at the obvious things, what sets the iPhone apart from the big two and what are their similarities.

The Apple iPhone graphics easily fall between the the great almost Playstation 2 quality graphics of the Sony PSP, and the subpar Nintendo DS graphics. As we know from the PSP, great graphics does not always translate into great games. Let’s not kid ourselves, clearly Nintendo reigns supreme in the games arena. Playing on nostalgia and uniqueness of play (i.e. stylus and duel screen), the Nintendo software library is far superior to that of the PSP. In fact, the number one complaint about the PSP platform is that there are no good titles, which is also a common argument towards the PSP’s big brother. Where does the iPhone fit into all of this?

The iPhone is in a perfect position to play on the gimmick’s of the DS and the better graphics of the PSP. The touch screen and the tilt sensor has allowed for game programmers to provide a uniqueness to games that often only comes from Nintendo (DS, Wii). While the enjoyability of tilting your iPhone back and fourth on a racing game, or something like Sega’s Super Monkeyball can be disputed, there is no question as to the innovations this platform provides.

We have also seen that Apple has increased the graphics capabilities with each iteration of the iPhone/iPod Touch, with the latest iPod Touch having the most powerful graphics. Also, the product cycle of the iPhone and iPod touch is about once a year, which provides great potential for Apple to incrementally position itself, since the life cycles of the DS and PSP are about three years and ten years respectfully.

The Future

Sufficient to say, the future is looking bright for the iPhone gaming platform. With at least one hardware iteration and one major software update a year, the iPhone is well on it’s way to becoming a major contender in the handheld gaming space. The only question is will developers continue to create new and interesting titles that will continue and expand this gaming platform. We are also looking for the iPhone/iPod Touch game that will make this device a must have! (Oh, and maybe a hardware add-on for buttons/d-pad!)