APPetite for Distraction

This should really be my next purchase

It’s been a while since I put virtual pen to paper, mostly because I seem to lack inspiration when it comes to finding subjects to write about, or I have a great idea but don’t follow it through because of my apathetic nature and gaming tends to be the same these days.  Recently, gaming for me has mostly involved Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit; both excellent games that are enhanced by good solid multi-player action, and then I got to thinking about my iPhone and how many game apps I have on there.  I quickly realised that they probably provide far more of a distraction from my daily life than my Xbox ever really has.  I mean, I’ve always got my phone with me wherever I am and usually, when I have a few minutes of not doing much, I’ll have a quick play on something simple.

First of these dirty little distractions is Angry Birds… a simple game involving green pigs in various hideouts and constructions, and the Angry Birds being catapulted at them by a flick of the finger in order to break down those barriers and rid the screen of their green presence! All good fun, and not as simple as it may sound, assuming you’re not familiar with the game, as you only have a limited number of birds to get the job done. The creators of the game (Rovio and Clickgamer) really do have a superb little thing going there with just under two hundred levels in the original game plus fifteen Golden Egg levels, and now we have Angry Birds Seasons – a Hallowe’en special of forty five levels plus two Golden Eggs.  At the time of writing, we also have their latest addition: Season’s Greetings – an advent calendar game where each new level becomes available during December, culminating in what one hopes will be an awesome one on the 25th.  Within each of the games are little achievements to be had, popping up in a similar fashion to those in Xbox games, generally prompting a quick look at the list to see what achievements are still to be had and a groan when you realise some of them will mean playing for weeks yet.

Other games lurking on my phone include Bubble Shooter Pro, Bejewelled 2 (including Blitz, which links to the Bejewelled Blitz application on my Facebook account), Scrabble, Words with Friends, Driver and… Fingerzilla!

Fingerzilla is a funny little thing. In each level you’re presented with a cityscape as the game sets you up as a Godzilla type beast on a rampage. You don’t actually see your character on screen and, instead, you just tap as quickly as possible to destroy buildings, trees, cars, helicopters and people to cause as much devastation as you can in order to build a score large enough to move on to the next area. Essentially, your finger IS the monster and the presented city map is your playground, making it an inspired concept which keeps me amused no end. What is it that they say? Little things please little minds… while bigger fools look on!

A few of the games are what’s known as “flick” games, where you skim a finger across the phone to kick a ball such as with Flick Rugby, or twitch the phone to emulate a physical movement like the casting of a rod  in Flick Fishing – great fun looking for the biggest catch. These are usually just a quick flash in the pan for me, but one other game recently caught my attention and has me enthralled, and frustrated, for considerable length of time: iTrials.

With a portable version of TrialsHD to eat up your time, all you need now is a robot to do all your work for you

It’s basically a scaled down version of Trials HD, although this offering from Tooko isn’t quite as tough as the original from RedLynx but is still very frustrating at times as you try and control your tiny little rider through the obstacles presented. Another simple concept, beautifully realised and implemented. The controls themselves are on-screen with buttons to go, stop and reverse as well as a little sliding control that lets you lean your rider back and forth to maintain balance, pull wheelies and flips, or just bash headlong into something when you inevitably mess it up! Much preferable to another similar game I’ve seen being played where you have to rely on the iPhone’s gravity module where you tilt the phone to achieve the same result, but I admit that I’ve never actually played that one myself as it looked far too tricky to get right. As with Angry Birds, iTrials is another game with achievements and goals to keep seekers of such appeased.

All in all there are over three hundred thousand apps available on the iPhone.  Some are good, some bad, some just plain weird but a multitude are either games  or gaming related.  All of them are casual, and a distraction to the daily grind, but is it gaming? Well, I believe so. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but definitely an escape from the daily toil if even for a few minutes at a time, and often a way of keeping your hand in on those skills that gaming people seem to have.

Apps away!

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