Patrick’s 15 Must-Have iPhone Games

With so many crappy iPhone games out there it’s hard to know which ones are worth buying. This list was created to help you decide what to spend your pretty pennies on. Some of the games on the list are free so it looks like we all win. Check out my 15 must-have iPhone games in order.

15. 2079 Tilt! – This game has to be the closest game on the market to the XBLA title Geometry Wars. It’s a very simple but impressive dual-stick shooter, and it’s only $0.99 so that’s awesome. iTunes Link

14. Sudoku Unlimited – I was never really into Sudoku until I got an iPhone. This version is one of the best I’ve played so far. I like how you can customize the look by changing the background. This game will run you $2.99. iTunes Link

13. Touch Hockey: FS5 - This is a simple but very polished air hockey game that lets you play vs. a computer, another person on the same phone, or another person over wi-fi. Oh, and it’s free. iTunes Link

12. Harbor Master – Maybe it’s a rip-off of Flight Control (with ships) but it’s a pretty great rip-off. With regular updates this game doesn’t get old. Direct the boats to their ports by drawing a line. Harbor Master is a steal at $0.99. iTunes Link

11. Flight Control – I think everyone knows about this game. You direct the airplanes to their landing strips by drawing a line with your finger. The object is to make sure they don’t crash into each other. FC is only $0.99. iTunes Link

10. Modern Combat: Sandstorm – This game is kind of like Modern Warfare on your iPhone. It’s the first FPS that really caught my eye out of the whole bunch. MC:S is currently $4.99. iTunes Link

9. Sol Free – This is a simple solitaire app that is free, hence the name. It’s the best looking and playing free solitaire app that I’ve seen so far. iTunes Link

8. Stone Loops! of Jurrassica – Even though it’s temporarily unavailable due to a copyright complaint it’s the best match-three zuma clone in the appstore. It’s very polished and quite lengthy.

7. Peggle – I’m sure you’ve played Peggle on just about every gaming console you own but this is the most intuitive version. The touch controls work great and the screen resolution makes the game look super sharp. Peggle on the iPhone is the cheapest you’ll see it on any console at $2.99. iTunes Link

6. Eliss – I can’t even explain this game but it’s one of the my favorite because it breaks the mold of your typical iPhone game and brings multi-touch into the picture. Eliss is only $2.99. iTunes Link

5. Edge – I would consider Edge to be one of the classics but it still outshines so many of the current iPhone games out there. The object is to roll the cube from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. It’s not as easy as you think. Edge is temporarily unavailable due to the stupid “edge” name copyright issues.

4. Labyrinth 2 – Labyrinth 2 is probably one of the most polished iPhone games I have come across so far. With the option to download user-made labyrinth levels as well as create your own this game really brings the concept of a labyrinth to the next level. Labyrinth 2 is $4.99. iTunes Link

3. iDracula – Minigore? I don’t think so. iDracula is easily the best survival game on the iPhone. It’s full-featured and highly addictive. This is the only game on the list that made me sweat while playing it. It’s currently $2.99. iTunes Link

2. Star Defense – I’m a sucker for tower defense and Star Defense is the best TD offering on the market if not one of the best TD games I’ve ever played. Forget Fieldrunners. Star Defense is beyond a steal at $0.99 (originally $9.99). iTunes Link

1. N.O.V.A. – This was an easy pick. NOVA is a Halo clone for the iPhone and it’s easily the best game available. If you want a solid, highly-polished FPS that isn’t a struggle to play then NOVA is the way to go. It’s also great for making your non-iPhone/iPod Touch friends jealous. NOVA is currently $6.99. iTunes Link

Honorable Mentions: GTA: Chinatown Wars & Guerrilla Bob – At the time of this writing I hadn’t had a chance to play either of these games. I did play the DS version of Chinatown Wars so I know how great of a fit it would be on the iPhone. As for Guerrilla Bob, it’s the dual-stick shooter in where you have to get from point A to point B. GTA is currently $9.99 while Guerrilla Bob is $2.99. GTA Link. Guerrilla Link.

There you have it, my 15 must-have iPhone games. Don’t agree with the list? Think there is a game that I forgot? Express your opinion in the comments section below.

30 Reviews in 30 Days, Day 24: Peggle

Some games are just addicting in a way that really defies explanation. Tetris was that type of game. All we actually did in this game was complete lines, and yet we played it for hours on end. If you think about it, there are probably several different games you could list in this category. Just think of those games you go back to time and time again and yet really cannot explain just what draws you to them. I bet you’ll come up with a few. I certain can.

To me, Peggle falls into this category. At its heart, this is such a simple puzzle game, but I would dare anyone to spend a little time with it and not get hooked.

All you do is launch the ball

When it comes right down to it, the gameplay for Peggle is extremely simple. You have a little cannon launcher at the top of the screen. You use it to aim at the pegs on the board, the plan being to send the ball ricocheting off those pegs. The majority of these pegs, which in later levels can be bricks, are blue, and hitting them just gives you points. The pegs you need to focus on are the orange ones; to advance to the next level, you must hit all of them. Every time you fire a ball out of the cannon, you use up one of the balls in your stock for that level. Run out of balls before you hit all the orange pegs, and you do not advance to the next level.

That’s it. That is the basic gameplay. Seriously, that is the basis of the entire game. Now granted, you do get the ball slowing down when it is about to hit the final orange peg, and if you do hit it, ‘Ode to Joy” starts playing as your ball travels to the bottom of the screen to get your bonuses, but that is the whole point of the game.

It may not look like much, but Peggle will keep you coming back for more.

It’s the ways the game designers tweak the game from there that makes it so addictive.

Gems, Powerups and Extra Balls

Remember how I said you use up one of your stock of balls every time you fire one out of the cannon? Well, you can gain extra balls in the game, which makes it easier to pass levels. You can gain these extra lives, if you will, a couple of different ways. The easiest is to make sure your ball drops into the little cup that moves back and forth across the bottom of the screen. The other way is to score enough points in one shot that you earn an extra ball. You do this by hitting more pegs in a single shot or by accomplishing skill shots, which are ricochets that occur over a great distance.

Then there are the purple pegs. Before each shot, one of the blue pegs will turn purple. If you hit this purple peg, you get a higher score for that shot. Once you hit a certain number within the level, you are taken to another board where you use the bumpers to bounce the balls and collect the gems to gain more points, which in turn gives you extra balls.

The green pegs are the ones you really want to hit, however. Each level will have two green pegs. Hitting these pegs will activate a special power. The power varies based on what master you ware working with in the adventure mode. They include such abilities as gaining a guideline that shows where your ricochet is going to go, fireballs that will go right through pegs, magic hats that highlight any pegs they touch as if the ball hit them or the zen shot, which adjusts your shot just a touch to give you a better score. These power ups are what really makes this game so addicting.

In the end, Peggle is not some phenomenal, groundbreaking game that makes you rethink puzzle games. It is incredibly addicting, however, and I guarantee you will find it very hard to stop playing. It may not sound like much, but trust me; you just need to try it to get hooked. Peggle gets a 4 out of 5.

Peggle

A few weeks ago I decided to download Steam. I had heard a lot of good things about it and wanted to finally give it a try. But this post isn’t about Steam (we’ll save that for a later post), it’s about Peggle, a game that I downloaded very quickly and conveniently through Steam. I had heard about Peggle from the guys on 1UP Yours and they said that it was pretty addictive. Other than that I hadn’t heard much about it. Turns out Peggle is a full-fledged Pop Cap game which you can download to your computer too. I decided to download it in hopes that it would be a replacement game for my wife’s addiction to Zuma. In the end we both ended up getting addicted to it. Maybe it’s the cheesy characters (groundhogs and unicorns). Basically the game has you shooting a little shiny ball at pegs that make the ball bounce and hit other pegs. After that ball falls down to the bottom those pegs disappear. In each level there is so many orange pegs that you must make disappear and you only have so many tries to make it happen. Each level is also arranged very differently. Along the way you will be given opportunities to obtain different types of power-ups by hitting certain pegs. All-in-all Peggle is highly addictive and I will be sure to buy the full version soon. I suggest you give it a try right now.