From the Wii, to the DS, to Kinect, to iOS, developers continue to leverage non-traditional input methods to create gesture based gameplay. So far, their efforts have been met with varying success. For every pile of flailing shovelware or visionary title in the genre that just didn’t pass muster, there’s an Okami or Max and the Magic Marker out there to restore balance to the Force. The concept works.
Art Penguin [.99] takes the concept of drawing objects on the screen that then materialize in the game, and merges it with the tried-and-true auto-runner gameplay that iOS gamers are only too familiar with. A surprisingly smooth experience, the game offers the tension of twitch gesture input and a surprising amount of depth. As is wont to happen in game design, the title’s strengths also are the source of its greatest shortcomings. That being said, there are more than enough reasons to give this game a spin.
In Art Penguin, the goal is to complete levels by drawing objects that help the aforementioned penguin (who sports an adorable pompadour) to circumvent or destroy obstacles. While you can influence the rate of speed by tilting in one direction or another, the penguin is continually moving forward. As such, the two challenges of the game are to first select the right items to draw and then to execute the gestures before the poor little guy waddles headlong into the Grim Reaper’s arms.
The drawing controls are responsive and precise, which is important when looking at the variety of gesture the game features. You can draw 16 different objects, from items as simple as planks and ramps to more complex gestures that summon springboards, plants, and rainstorms. Each object is useful for navigating specific environmental hazards or for removing gang-banger enemy penguins and other baddies from the screen. Having such a variety of tools at your disposal makes the game challenging and fresh throughout.
The problem here comes in the form of the auto-running mechanic. Even when tilting to slow the penguin to its minimum speed, the game provides very little time to see obstacles, assess the proper object, and then input the gesture in time. While this is not a major issue in the first few levels, as the difficulty ramps you’ll be rapidly pushed into trial and error territory where you must know what is coming in order to survive rather than simply reacting to what the game is showing you.
This is truly a shame, because the exploration, experimentation and twitchy fun of the early game devolves over time into having to memorize entire levels in order to succeed. Games like Max and the Magic Marker circumvent this issue by pausing the gameplay while you draw, but Art Penguin can’t afford that luxury without sacrificing the auto-running mechanic that provides the game its sole challenge.
The art and production values here are surprisingly sharp; this is one pretty prinny. The characters and environments are colorful and expressive, and the music will consistently push your happy sunshine buttons. The user interface is intuitive and minimal, leaving the needed real estate open on the screen for gesture input. A handy guidebook icon is always on the screen for when you need to pull up a list of available gestures.
Art Penguin weighs in as a strong effort in a genre that is often poorly executed. It’s certainly worth the $.99 download, and if the memorization factor doesn’t rub you the wrong way (it wasn’t an issue for some in the forums) you can drop an additional $.99 on IAP to unlock all the levels from the get-go. I certainly had my issues with the game, but the technical execution, precise controls, cohesive and fun production elements, depth, and variety of gestures make this one impossible for me not to recommend.
WHERE IS KEITH COURAGE AND THE ALPHA ZONES? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
Oh man, Keith Courage!
My faves were Neotopia and Valis II
wow, that is some pretty shitty data analysis. I would have commented on the source site but I didn't see a way to do that.
would have been interesting to see the various android os smartphones and ios phones in there as well to put things in perspective.
Hey - at least it outsold the Atari Jaguar!
Yes, let's keep believing that iPad will continue to dominate. Please avert your eyes from dual booting Android/Win8 tablets.
I have an iPad2, but I still wish it could do things that the Asus Transformer does.
Isn't that kind of like saying "Yes, lets keep believing the iPod will continue to dominate...gosh, I wish my iPod touch could do things that the Zune can."
Android is already eating away at iPad market share despite everything you've read.
http://www.gamasutra.com/vi...
Again, wait for dual booting Android/Win8 tablets/netbooks before celebrating
On Aug 12, 2011 3:29 PM, "Disqus" <>
I remember when we were supposed to wait till the JooJoo came out ...then HP Slate (and everything afterwards). Now it's wait till dual booting models come. The funny thing is that it seems only Android fans care about 'celebrating' when one day an iPad killer will emerge. iPad users are busy being happy ... one and a half years ago.
Point is that around 26,000,000 iPad users don't give a sh*t about Dual Booting, nor other crapload of specs. I'm part of that 26m group, if I want Dual Booting or killing specs then I get a laptop.
Again, you all may be right. And again, I own an iPad2.
What I'm saying is, wait until real competition exists.
Smartphone wise, Android already beats iPhone. Price, options, form factor, all of these things are the result of Android beating iPhone in total OS market share for smart phones. Just this week Gartner said 43% of all smartphones sold this quarter were Android.
The "tablet" market just started. Until recently it's only been an iPad market.
From the Gartner article - "Consumers in mature markets are choosing entry-level and midrange Android smartphones over feature phones, partly due to carriers' and manufacturers' promotions,"
My friend is on Verizon and his phone is due for an upgrade. The only decent feature phone offerings start at $99 on contract, and why would you spend that when you can get a smartphone for the same price?
The difference with iPad is that it is not subsidized, and a tablet is currently a "luxury" item. People use tablets in their workflows, but they are by no means a necessity for most that own them. With iPad 1's selling for around $300 then most people will find little reason to look to Android tablets. And the Playbook not having a native email client makes it much less attractive for everyone who does not have a blackberry.
Now Windows 8 is something different. I don't think it will take over the tablet market, but it has a good shot at the convertible/ultraportable market. A laptop/tablet combo with Windows 8 on it will probably do well. Of course, most Windows 8 tablets will probably be ARM powered which means they will lose their main advantage - backwards compatibility with all the windows software that people already own. I predict a lot of people will be pissed when they get their W8 tablet and find they can't load up their old version of MS Office that they have on their desktop.
Regarding the Gartner article, no matter which way you slice it, Android killed it last quarter. You can rationalize anyway you want. Thing is when iPhone comes out Sept/Oct, Apple will kill it then. Problem is that Apple releases one phone a year. And Android has seen the Nexus S, Evo 3D, Infuse 4G, GS2 and yet more phones have been announced like Acer with a 4.8" at 1024x600 and 720p displays of varying size screens like 4" 4.6" and 5.3" which is an insane resolution. These are the high end phones that will entice the gear heads. Then you phones that carriers can give silly deals on.
I don't want to claim anyone the winner of the tablet space yet, but I will say that it will be DAMN hard to topple the iPad. Regarding Windows8 and reading about system wide virtualization and leaning down the kernel from legacy stuff even on x86, I have to wonder if MS hasn't already thought about using emulation for x86 on ARM. They did a really good job on the 360 emulating x86 xbox1 games. I don't know if they will attempt that, but I think they might because people ARE going to want that backwards compatibility.
The thought process for Windows 8 seems very much hardware agnostic especially leveraging .Net framework and HTML5. So it's still going to be wait and see.
dude, you need to wake up!! android is not a phone. it's an operating system. and google will license it to anyone who will pay a fee. if there was a group of monkeys making phones out of bananas google would let them put android on it. same goes for tablets. apple puts it's operating system on one phone and one tablet. theirs. they also only offer it to certain networks. that goes for every country. that would be like saying windows is killing macs. meanwhile apple computers keep rising in market share. iPhones are second only to nokia. and that's comparing every model nokia makes to the iPhone. iPhone is by far the most profitable though.
if android his so awesome why are so many more developers on iOS than android?? i bet there are only a handful of android only devs. but there are 1000's of iOS only devs. most android phones are crappy plastic handsets. i've held and tried quite a few and none are are well made as an iPhone. also apple's iTunes is a much nicer and easier way to sync everything.
as far as tablets go. there are 10,000's of more iPad apps made specifically for the iPad than android tablet apps. most adriod apps are just double sized because there are too any form factors to make apps universal. i have apps on my iPad that you can still only dream to have on an android tablet. ampkit+ for one. it's better than anything i've ever used on my desktop, including what i thought was the best guitar amp, guitar rig which costs around $400. ampkit is better and easier to use. the drawing and music programs destroy what android has and most aren't being ported over.
so if you want to give android props for more units being sold with their os on it then yippee!! you are right. apple prefers quality over quantity. how many had set carriers do you think would give their left ball to put iOS on their phone set to gain access to iTunes and their app store?? but apple doesn't let any banana phone monkeys use iOS, thank goodness for that!!!
I think you are forgetting that when people say iphone they don't mean iphone 2G, or iphone 3G or iphone 3GS or even iphone 4, they mean devices that are phone and run IOS. It isn't ONE phone that is selling more.iOS is dominating not just because it is on iphone but also because it is on ipod touch and ipad.
I think the point everyone else is making, the whole world has been waiting until "real competition" exists, yet not a single company can actually deliver.
You're right. And Android already took 20% of the market share away from the iPad and they haven't even *started* competing yet.
"Smartphone wise, Android already beats iPhone"
..you mean by the odd metric of 'lumping all manufacturers out there together, in all price ranges and every version of Android out there from Donut to Gingerbread'?
Apple competes with hardware manufacturers.. It's silly to put their hardware sales against software distribution numbers.
Eating away? More like snacking.
I'm not sure it can be counted as "eating away", since iPad manufacturers were working as fast as they could to satisfy demand lol, more like, some people got desperate and bought another tablet while waiting in the queue.
That's actually a pretty interesting point. It's probably true to a certain extent.
They lost 20%.
I wouldn't go so far as to say this is eating away at the iPad market share, more like nibbling. The iPad was sold out for weeks, they couldn't keep up with the demand or else they would have sold more.
You also have to realize how many different devices run android. You can pick up a crappy android tablet for less than 300$. You are essentially saying that a Ford car is better than a Lamborghini because they sell more cars. On these cheap tablets you will NOT be getting the performance of the Android Operating system, you are just getting a cheap piece of junk.
Another problem with the chart is that it is counting all Android tablets, not just the tablets that run a tablet operating system. Again I wouldn't put this towards your tablet figure because it is running a phone operating system, it is really a giant phone.
Android floods the market, that's how they work.
And finally, Android's numbers have never really reflected a good user experience. All the manufacturers are still making slow, bloatware filled devices. Developers are having a hard time making apps because of the immense amount of differences in the phones (See Rovio, maker of Angry Birds). Android is not getting the quality apps, the user experience is only getting worse with manufacturer modifications, and you may not even get to see the latest and greatest because with more modifications comes less updates.
What makes you think people want a dual-booting tablet. I think that the majority of the consumers would be confused as to why the music they put on their tablet is only showing up in one of the operating systems and not the other, because the two don't stay in sync. You don't even know how well Windows 8 will run or how well it will be adopted in the tablet arena. I don't think that with the first dual-boot tablet people will throw their ipads to the side so they can dual boot windows.
20% is a nibble? I think this provides an interesting perspective on the US obesity epidemic.
"I have an iPad2, but I still wish it could do things that the Asus Transformer does."
You mean stuff like provide poor performance and get crappy reviews?
They sold out of Transformers. Asus had to ramp up production to meet demand. I would say that the Transformer didn't get rave reviews, but I didn't read many that thought the Asus wasn't a good buy for $400. Solid IPS display, honeycomb, notebook docking feature that extends battery life even further.
Perhaps I didn't read every review though.
They must have only made 50 transformers if they sold out. Telling me they 'sold out' doesn't mean much.
Why get a transformer for $400 when you can get a much better tablet from apple or even an android provider for only $100 more?
Hm. Those iPad numbers are sales and the Android numbers shipped to stores but not sales... or?
With a gap that large, I'm not sure it even matters. :P
Q: What does it mean that I have a Jaguar and iPad and not an Android tablet?
A: Gamers know that Android sucks for games.
Better Answer: I've learned my lesson about wasting money on a crappy platform ..WITH NO GAMES.
I owned a Jaguar. Not many good games. But the part that sticks in my memory is that gigantic controller. These days I can play better games on a device that's probably one fourth the size of that monster. (Though now I have a craving to play Alien vs Predator again...)
Indeed, the only good games are Tempest 2000 and AvP. There are other not-completely-terrible games but they are still slightly terrible.
For anyone that was around for those systems, they're not obscure. Perhaps "poorly received" would have been a better description, but I don't know any gamers from the 80s that don't know each of those.
Also, where's Neo Geo?
I loved my 32x! Virtua Fighter!
The TurboDuo was such an amazing system. For my money, the best of the 16-bit era for those willing to import. It's certainly never been topped in the area of pack-in software: Ys: Books 1 and 2, Ninja Spirit, Gate of Thunder, Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge and the original Turbografx-16 release of Bomberman as an unlockable easter egg.
Wait, you're comparing sales figures of systems that were sold for years against devices that have only been out a couple months? (Since decent android tablets have only just started coming out recently)
It's hard to count the Sega add-ons since they are add-ons, but the other dedicated consoles all pretty much were either considered failures or didn't perform well enough to continue that venture. Most were axed very early due to sluggish sales.
Of course then you have the terrible 3rd party game developer support problem where another platform gets all the attention. Sounds familiar.
Wow the 32x really only sold that much? And the TG16 out sold the Sega CD? Hmm interesting.
I LIKED MY SEGA CD,
it was not marginal it was awesome.
i don't care about the android vs ios debate. its pretty silly.
people who have reasonable jobs and can afford the best will get an IOS. People who are from third world countries and in the working class, will do fine with android. its a good IOS imitation.
cant we all just get along.:)
Nah, I wouldn't call android working class, the best Andoid phones cost more than an iPhone. It's not really an "IOS imitation" either, but whatever. At least you're trying to get along. =)
Sorry TA, but I love my Asus Transformer. All the emulation you'd ever want without having to "jailbreak".