Gravity Hook HD

This morning I downloaded Semi Secret Software's latest offering for iGadgets, Gravity Hook HD. I hadn't played the free Flash version of the game, so I was pretty much going in sight unseen. Still, coming from the creators of Canabalt, I was eager to see what new challenges they had cooked up. I made the right choice.

Mmm...Donut Games

So yeah...definitely haven't been here in a while. Plenty has happened in games in the past few months and I just haven't nutted up to comment on any of it. My bad. I do have some chewier topics I want to post on soon, but today isn't the day. Sorry. I'm also starting to thing about PAX 2010 on a daily basis; I have my 3-day passes...do you have yours?

I've been stuck with a lot of mobile gaming lately, but that's being made all the better by the offerings from Donut Games. They publish on the web and iGadgets, and since Cat Physics went free as part of Free App A Day, I've really been digging Donut's style. No matter what the game is about, the developer has a unified style in the menu design that always makes things easy to navigate. I love the graphics, too. Donut Games always has a 16-bit sprite-based graphical style, as if everything were running on a SNES. Even their menu font looks like the font from Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. It's a retro-game veneer on games that are fun, quick, challenging, and perfectly designed around the iPhone/iPod Touch interface. I don't always focus on mobile games, but Cat Physics and its brethren have sucked me in for hours at a time.

What I'm Playing:

• Main Campaign: Torchlight
• Side Quest: Cat Physics, Castle Smasher, Traffic Rush

Eliminate Pro

Eliminate was first announced by ngmoco at the Game Developers Conference, and at the time it was touted as the next step in mobile gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It would take advantage of the horsepower in Apple's newest devices, as well as the new policies that allow apps to offer paid in-app downloads. The game is now at the forefront of the App Store, but for me it has fallen seriously flat.

Eliminate asks a valuable question of the iPhone gaming audience: if a game is given out for free, will people pay money to play more of it? The business model is similar to other free-to-play, pay-to-improve MMOs where you can play as much as you like for free, but can always pay a small sum to get little advantages like experience points, better gear, or other in-game advantages. Eliminate applies this to a first-person shooter, where you're given a set amount of play time per day, and can pay to gain extra play sessions beyond that daily allotment. You can have unlimited practice time against AI-controlled bots, but only by playing against live human opponents over the net can you gain credits that can be used to buy new weapons, armor, and other buffs.

The problem with this experiment is that it has to be attached to a game that one might want to play. Eliminate has real gameplay and presentation flaws that keep me from wanting to stay with it for more than a few minutes, let alone over multiple daily sessions. The textures are cold and flat, character models are lifeless robots, and the arenas are claustrophobic. The bland narrative of employees in a weapons testing facility builds no connection via a storyline. In all, the game design aims for a Quake 3 benchmark and still falls below that. The virtual thumbstick controls feel mushy and slow, and while auto-firing when a valid target is in the crosshairs helps, it doesn't turn the game around.

All of this is especially disappointing given ngmoco's pedigree. I'm proud to have played many of their games, and it's sad to see a publisher known for smart innovation shove out something like this. If the company wanted to see what could be come of a microtransaction-based mobile game, it should have been something that takes advantage of the iPhone's unique capabilities. I really don't know who Eliminate is meant to serve: it's overcomplicated for the casual gamer, it lacks the features and precision that would attract someone likes to commit to a strong FPS, and there's no sense of coolness in the presentation. If anything can be learned from this experiment, it's that publishers, even ngmoco, really can't rely on old game mechanics that aren't suited to the iPhone platform.

What I'm Playing:

• Main Campaign: Forza Motorsport 3
• Side Quest: Splosion Man