Well, the Rage 2 trailer came out. It's pretty interesting, if you're in to post apocalyptic destruction and games that look an awful lot like Borderlands. But, y'know, shinier. But since that sort of non-portable game really isn't our bag here at 148Apps, we thought it'd make sense to make a list of games that are a bit like Rage 2 that we actually do care about.
One of them was a pretty easy choice. Can you guess which one it was? Even if you can't, make sure you give the list a read, and if you think we've missed something out, let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article. Or if you just want to tell us we've wasted our time and should be doing better. Say something.
Midnight Star has the guts to go for a new approach to the mobile First-Person Shooter genre, and while it's certainly innovative, it's just not that much fun.
You are such a turkey. And I mean that in the bowling sense.
On This Episode:
Carter and 148Apps' own Chris Nitz talk about recent iOS game releases RAGE HD, Kingdom Conquest, and Smurfs' Village.
Carter speaks to the developers of The Great Land Grab about the iOS version of their location-based Monopoly-esque game that has players competing to buy and control land, based off of where they are located.
Who We Are:
Host: Carter Dotson
Co-Host: Chris Nitz - 148Apps, The Portable Gamer, EvilCast
It's not often that we have four major new games released on the same day, but that's exactly what happened yesterday morning. Thanks to a confluence of events and the alignment of the planets, RAGE, Lord of the Rings Middle Earth Defense, Splaterhouse and Mushihimesama Bug Panic are all available right now for iOS devices. Forget holiday shopping for others, time to buy yourself some gifts!
RAGE is the latest offering from John Carmack and id Software, the folks behind the incredibly popular Doom franchise. The game finds players in a post-apocalyptic game show where they must survive waves of mutants and scrounge up enough money to win their freedom. This should be a nice appetizer for the console version of the game, which is slated to be released in September of next year. By the time that edition arrives you should be well-versed in all the different ways to slay mutants.
Just in case you were wondering, no, the Lord of the Rings franchise will never go away. This latest entry takes on the tower defense genre with an iPad game centered on protecting Middle Earth from Sauron. Players can positions and upgrade heroes to fight the hordes as well as call on allies to thin the enemy ranks. If you've been missing Aragorn and company then here's your chance to jump right back into Tolkien's fantasy realm.
How far would you go to save the woman you loved? Would you put on a cursed mask and enter a mansion full of demons who hunger for your flesh and only exist to cause you pain and suffering? Or would you instead just remember that there are plenty of fish in the sea and she was kind of a nag anyway? If you chose the former then welcome to Splatterhouse, where senseless violence has never been so fulfilling. If you chose the latter then congratulations, you are a sane and reasonable human being.
First off, if you can pronounce the game's name correctly, you win a dollar. Once you've struggled with typing the title into the App Store search (good luck AutoCorrect) you can gain access to a great new update on a classic arcade game. One warning though, you have to have the absolute latest model iPhone, iPod or iPad to play this game, otherwise it simply won't work on your device. Thankfully a warning is posted prominently on the app description so hopefully there will be minimal cases of people downloading the game and then not being able to play it.
To most people, QuakeCon is an event that is custom built for showing off the latest and greatest in big gaming software. John Carmack, the genius behind id Software, usually gets up on stage and wows the crowd with his new FPS, but this year, it was a bit different.
In his keynote he whiped out his iPhone 4 and said, "iPhone. Rage. 60 frames per second". Rage, his newest FPS, was only expected to be released on the current generation mega machines, so when his iPhone came out, the crowd let out a pretty hearty cheer. What Carmack showed was only a tech demo, but it had all of the textures, lighting effects, and speed that you would expect a solid FPS to have.
The demonstration was built on the id Tech 5 engine, the same engine used for the XBox 360, the PS3, and the PC, which is so advanced that it can run the game at an acceptable speed on a first gen iPhone.
Carmack says in the speech, after explaining how cool the app looks on the iPad, says that the Tech 5 engine could "kill anything done on a previous generation console, like the Xbox or PlayStation 2.".
He does mention the lack of tactile feedback, but I fully expect John Carmack to fix that too. I'll be waiting, Carmack.
Unfortunately for us, id will not be licensing Tech 5 like they do with the majority of their other tech. In an interview with Eurogamer, id's Software boss Todd Hollenshead said that "It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties. It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish - not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."
Here's hoping that there will be a slew of great Bethesda titles for the iPhone in 2011.
