RockingPocketGames has released the 3GS specific of their Blue Skies [$0.99] helicopter shooter that was originally released back in August 2008. The new version is amongst the first few games to offer 3GS specific features:
The 3GS enhanced version makes use of the pixel shaders that are ONLY found in the new iPhone 3GS. It has per pixel bump mapping and amazing dynamic animated water that demonstrates the true power of the new iPhone 3GS!
Aside from the visual enhancements, the game content remains the same. If you've never played the game, it's was a solid shooter when it was originally released. For a side-by-side comparison, you can download the Lite version of the original [link].
Star Hogs [App Store] saw a price drop to $2.99 this morning, and IUGO has plans in the works for two updates, one of which has already been submitted.
We first saw Star Hogs at WWDC, and when we finally got the game in to our hands, it was just as good as we expected.
Star Hogs is less of a Worms clone, and more of an evolution of Worms-like turn based combat. The variety of options for ships, 32 single player levels, free play (which is basically just online play but with AI or human opponents sharing the same device), and the potential of online multiplayer makes for a solid title that can easily hold its own amongst the other $4.99 games on the App Store.
Star Hogs Lite [App Store] is also available, and if you ever enjoyed a Worms game in the past, you owe it to yourself to at least give the free version a try.
Only now, instead of $4.99, Star Hogs is $2.99. The update which has already been submitted to the App Store addresses some online game balance issues and fixes a few bugs. The next update coming down the pipes features improved graphics, in-game messaging for multiplayer battles, and an optional purchasable map pack which will bring 32 new campaign levels.
IUGO's Sarah Thomson has been extremely active in the Star Hogs thread on our forums and is collecting community feedback for future updates. So if you have comments, questions, or other ideas for Star Hogs, don't hesitate to post them.
RockingPocketGames posted a video of a new version of their Blue Skies helicopter shooter that was originally released back in August 2008. The new version (which is a completely separate version) makes it amongst of the first games to offer 3GS specific features:
The 3GS enhanced version makes use of the pixel shaders that are ONLY found in the new iPhone 3GS. It has per pixel bump mapping and amazing dynamic animated water that demonstrates the true power of the new iPhone 3GS!
There's been some debate about the practicality of offering 3GS-specific versions of games in the future. While most developers will likely target the broad market, but obviously some will certainly experiment with some of the new features to gain a bit of an advantage.
Here's a video of the existing version of Blue Skies
The 3GS version of Blue Skies has been submitted to Apple for approval but has not yet been approved. It will be a separate $0.99 purchase over the existing version.
Update: It appears the 3GS version will be a separate app rather than an upgrade that we had originally indicated. Apologies for the mistake.
The graphics in SurrounDEAD [App Store] aren't amazing, and the simple tap to shoot gameplay isn't anything we haven't seen before, but if you are lucky enough to be playing on an iPhone 3GS you are in for a treat.
SurrounDEAD is one of the first games available that not only has the standard tilt controls for previous-generation devices, but also utilizes the compass on the 3GS as a control method. Standing up and spinning in circles as you pan the area for zombies feels just as strange as the Amiga 3000-based 1000CS virtual reality machines that often served as the crown jewels of arcades of the early 90's.
Facing different directions in real life to face those directions in games adds an extremely odd level of immersion to such a simple game. In its current state, it's little more than a tech demo for 3GS owners to show off the fancy features of their phone. In the iTunes description it mentions updates coming soon to add more zombies, zombie AI, a shotgun upgrade, and some kind of level structure. However, as it stands, you just tap to shoot zombies until you get overrun and eventually die.
If you own a 3GS, SurrounDEAD is worth throwing down a buck at because the compass control method is really cool, but other than that, there's not much to this game.
Firemint's Real Racing [App Store] is the game to show people when you're showing off the graphical capabilities of your phone. The immersion experienced in the cockpit view is substantial, and the remarkably lifelike AI makes the game extremely fun to play. I even made note of how great it felt playing against the AI opponents who actually play like people do when playing against others online in my review of Real Racing:
Real Racing is an entirely different animal. In my previous hands-on / first impressions post I mentioned how great the AI is, and countless races later I still feel this is Real Racing’s greatest asset. The AI opponents play how they should play; they’re not mindless drones following a simple line around the track, they’re extremely competitive racers that just flat out won’t put up with you trying to cut in front of them, or leaving yourself open on a turn.
Now imagine this, but not against one or two racers, but forty. Allow me to introduce you to an excerpt from the latest post on the Firemint blog:
Real Racing has up to six cars on the track at any one time. Since the game uses a high fidelity physics engine, adding cars is a good test for pushing the hardware. We started our tech demo with 8 cars on the track, then 10, 12, 16 and 20, and the 3GS still didn't break a sweat. We finally stopped when we got to 40 cars on the track at the same time, still with no perceptible drop in frame rate. We think the results are mind blowing.
Unfortunately, this is just a tech demo by Firemint. They don't actually have plans to release a version of Real Racing to allow for 40 racers at once. Regardless, this serves as a remarkable benchmark of what the iPhone 3GS is capable of.
The iPhone 3G S launched today, and we've managed to pick up our new iPhone 3G S devices and play through a few games to see if we noticed any differences. The most obvious immediate difference is the quicker launch times of many apps. It may not be the most relevant to gaming itself, but is the easiest to demonstrate on video:
A more dramatic difference in this user posted video of Peggle:
2nd Generation iPod Touch owners have already benefited from a faster processor and have enjoyed comparably faster launch times for some time now. In our additional testing, the 2nd iPod Touch was much closer (but still behind) the iPhone 3G S in launch times.
In other more casual testing, most 2D games felt about the same on both iPhone devices -- which would be expected. The most notable improvements were seen in 3D games such as Real Racing and Star Defense where the animations seemed significantly smoother. The findings, again, were most notable between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. The differences between the iPhone 3G S and 2nd iPod Touch were far less apparent. iLounge has posted a video comparing launch times and in-game play between the 2nd Gen iPod Touch and iPhone 3G S.
We did run across one strange hardware-specific bug in Snowboard TnT. On the iPhone 3G S, the graphics were clearly wrong (left, below). On the right are the usual graphics as seen on the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. All devices were running iPhone firmware 3.0 so it was a hardware specific issue with this game:
It seems to have been the exception so far, as all the other games we've tested have been working as expected.
As we have more time playing games on the various devices, we'll be able to give you a better feel for the differences between devices. The most dramatic differences are yet to come as developers further utilize the new iPhone 3G S graphics chip which allows for more advanced 3D techniques.
The graphics in SurrounDEAD [
