While the game itself is incredibly basic, the trailer we posted last week was too good to not at least check the game out when it finally launched. Jared and I give it a spin in today’s TA Plays, and, well, not many people are playing it yet based on Game Center leaderboards.
If you don’t have any friends, but still want to play pong, One Player Pong is just what the doctor ordered. I still feel like the game needs something to spruce it up a bit, but I guess wallowing in boredom and loneliness is what the developer is going for.
Thanks for playing the game, your coverage is still very surreal to me, as I'm a huge fan of the site! It is pretty simple, at least in this iteration, as I was trying to capture the feel of the original Pong (eh, who am I kidding, it's super simple because it is one of my first attempts at programming a game on my own in Unity). If enough people dig it, I'll definitely start adding gameplay modes and features!
Also, some of the best things in life are simple: hot dogs, the plot to the movie Taken, my brother James...
Guys! You totally should've kept at it and made the video "In which Eli gets the top spot in One Player Pong"!
As of this comment, the top score is 77 points, something which I thought was impossible. Of course, until last year, I thought it was impossible that a third Taken movie would get greenlit, so what do I know.
I've noticed a few bugs while playing, sometimes the ball went out but bounced back.. ? :o also when I hit the ball to fast it bounces back and fourth, only to go in a uncontrolable direction.
Would you lose some respect for me if I told you that I've noticed those bugs as well, and have absolutely no idea what's causing them? If not, that's the case. If so, I think it's your phone or something : /
Seems like the the first issue I mentioned is triggered when you hit the ball with the side of the slider/bar (?). The last thing happens when the slider hits the ball at such a sharp angle, causing it to bounce sharply into the other angled piece of the slider, making the direction confusing. I have no idea how you can fix that though, seems tricky with the angled slider.
Looking forward to play different game modes btw, if you'll add that.
Sweet! Is TA plays back? It was by far my favorite part of toucharcade
Limited character ? iap purchase ?
Naaah I better watch one of his movies !
I'm all in
"Let your form be like water"
7 please no hate for Lonnie or i will send the TA hall monitor monster after ya.
Slow news week I guess.
Always slow when they have to post some thing from immature Lonnie!
Are there are a bunch of jack booted thugs bursting into your home, forcing you to watch the videos? Exactly how does something that you can scroll past, affect you? Might want to grow up, kid.
What does that have to do with growing up? It was an honest statement.
Says the guy watching a retarded kid.... We can still see the name lonnie either in the title or in the article... And it's pretty damn annoying
"'Temple Run 2' Adds Bruce Lee as Playable Character" Meh, I'll skip the article- "Watch Lonnie Play as Him" lol, okay, I'll check out the inevitable hate comments. :P
Seriously though, why not skip the article? I mean, are videos of an allegedly annoying gamer really the type of thing to complain this much about?
I think my original comment looks too insulting, sorry about that... Didn't really mean it...
Is it just me or are TA all about trolling their core audience these days? Why do you hate us DX
Lonnie videos are getting anywhere between 3-5x the traffic of TA Plays. Look at yesterday's Monster Dash video. At the end of the day we've got bills and writers to pay, as mad as Lonnie videos make a few very vocal people.
Do you license his videos?
I understand the difficulties of online journalism, it is tough. It does seems like TA is increasingly hostile to the values of its fans (Lonnie, irrational-gate), and I don't think this is a small vocal minority - look at how many upvotes the comments in the story on Apple' Premium promotion are getting. Obviously I'm not privy to your behind the scenes discussions so I won't tell you your business, but why not be the bastions of premium "old fashioned" gaming on iOS? Casual gamers will move on to new fads eventually.
So this is what's kind of a mystery to me about all this: Some people look at these very specific stories that don't interest them personally and get really upset and say we're ignoring our fans, totally disregarding the fact that TouchArcade is by far the best source on the internet for long-form articles on very hardcore games, and these hardcore games represent the bulk of what we actually cover. But, it doesn't matter that we have nearly 20,000 words written across ~just articles to do with Dragon's Quest~ because we post Lonnie vids?
TouchArcade has a really diverse audience BECAUSE we offer content for everyone. While these videos may not specifically appeal to you, or other vocal commenters, they do appeal to a significant portion of our more mainstream readers. The main difference is, those people aren't getting all mad in the RPG Reload comments because all they care about is games like Candy Crush.
Something to consider is the reason I can afford to pay Shaun and Eric to specifically focus on spending tons of time writing content that appeal to our hardcore gamer fans is because of the traffic generated by articles on mainstream stuff that always, without exception, get exponentially more hits. While Lonnie vids, free to play guides, and articles on Flappy Bird might not appeal to you to the point that it makes you angry, the harsh reality is the traffic generated by those stories are specifically what allow me to have a budget for writers producing the hardcore content that only appeals to a niche portion of our overall audience of millions of readers.
Looking at it from the realist standpoint, a more rational mindset isn't "Ugh I hate free to play stuff and Lonnie vids quit posting these," it should be "Well I don't care for Lonnie but thanks for posting this because it pays for the content I DO care about." If you ask me, that's the true "irrationalgate."
The casual gamers everyone loves to hate are who pay the bills for the hardcore content, like it or not, it's the world we live in. The misconception here is that we value ALL of our fans, not just the loud ones. I put a ton of effort into tailoring the types of stories we post to cast as wide of a net as possible. I like being able to pay my mortgage. :)
TA is a great site. There are few sources of good gaming journalism left, I think that's part of the reason people get to vocal when they feel TA is bowing to these pressures.
If Lonnie and evangelising F2P are the price we have to pay for TA to continue operating, so be it! It's a pity that gaming has been hijacked by these things, but I'd rather not see TA go the way of Joystiq.
Well, as a media platform you always want to be growing as your influence is what affords you the ability to land cool exclusives and let me do things like negotiate with major publishers on writing stories on OUR terms instead of by their specific marketing plans and embargoes. As you get bigger, you start to make the rules, which arguably pushes us more towards "real" journalism than a lot of people realize.
The iOS market is exploding, but it's blowing up in the casual space, not the hardcore world. For TA to grow, we need to also have content that interests the bazillions of people downloading Clash of Clans. Before we started doing that, our traffic had flatlined, which is never a good thing.
We're never going to turn into a casual games site exclusively because honestly that kind of thing just isn't that interesting to me personally... But it's irresponsible to ignore the demands of the market and limit our growth as a business AND a media platform just because I (and some vocal commenters) don't really care that much about things like Game of War.
More traffic means more cool exclusives and larger budgets to do things that we think are neat (like investing time in our own video content). Regardless of how much you hate casual games, Lonnie, and mainstream stuff, it's important to realize the role that those articles play in allowing us to do more interesting and creative things.
Fair enough - a man's gotta eat. However, as an old-fashioned elitist gamer I reserve the right to hate on screechy YouTubers, F2P, and timers. I earned that right when I downloaded Dropship in 2009... no one can take that away from me!!!
"A man's gotta eat, Mr. Lahey."
I'm glad TA has been around so long and has been able to grow successfully. The JRPG is my favorite genre and I'm always looking forward to the next reload. Anything that grows your audience and bottom-line so you can continue to cater to so many segments of the gaming community is fine by me. Although this Lonnie vid wasn't so great, I actually have enjoyed some of them.
Do you pay him for the use of his videos?
No.
Trolling aside, this is a great point that Eli makes. There is no site up to the quality that TA offers for iOS gaming; even big sites like gamespot barely give any coverage to mobile gaming so it's nice to have a site that does such a good job. (Eli, not trolling, really sincere statement, thank you)
"The values of its fans"???
WTF? Like most people I come here because I'm interested in iOS gaming. My values have nothing to do with iOS gaming or this site. They're more concerned with things like racism, homophobia and generally treating people well.
It's quit hilarious actually, Bruce Lee would never run away from a fight because he couldn't. He suffered an injury to one of his ankles. Because the injury was so bad, it was impossible for him to run for a period of time.
Loved the video. Can we have more of this guy please??? He does his work really well and I'd like to see more videos from him. I'm almost tempted to download a Temple Run again.
Next up, Lonnie plays Candy Crush Saga. 😁
That video was actually pretty cool. I especially enjoyed the crack about martial "art," where he paints people punching. That got me. ARE YOU HAPPY GODS GRUNDLE :D
I had TR 2 on my iPhone forever and just deleted it a month or two ago. All those perks lost... but for Bruce Lee?! I'm very tempted to reinstall.
The guy is annoying. I've been coming to this site for ages and I'm beginning to think I should stop, I just hate how TA spams his videos everywhere now.
What kind of games do you like?
Also, the fact that he doesn't know who is Bruce Lee and what his know for is disturbing.
Temple Run 3? No? Oh.
Darn it! You tricked me ta! All i see on the app is temple run 2 adds bruce lee... So i click on it and see its a lonnie article.👎
Is it that difficult to click the back button?
Sarcasm
Googling Bruce Lee before posting a YouTube video would have been the smart move. Lonnie's even less informed then usual in this gameplay video. Now that's impressive.
"More effort went into the trailer than the actual game" - This is the new trend, but who doesn't like trailers