iPad Games Reviewed: Is it Good For Gaming?

Fieldrunners for iPad

Developer: Subatomic Studios
Price: $7.99 / £4.99 from the AppStore

Fieldrunners was one of the games that convinced many people - us included - to take the iPhone seriously for gaming. We featured it on the blog, swapped tactics in the office and then quickly decided to put the Apple section of bit-tech's games pages to good use by reviewing iPhone and iPod touch games.

Needless to say, one of the first games we downloaded for the office iPad was the new version, entitled entirely without mystery, Fieldrunners for iPad. It's a tower defence game where a variety of enemies run... across a field. It's up to you to build defences to stop the enemies, and you can choose from a range of defensive emplacements - machine guns, missile launchers and lightning towers, plus a goo gun which just slows the enemies down.

Each of these weapons can be upgraded several times, and once built, they target and fire automatically. The catch is that they cost, and killing makes you money, and each wave of enemies that comes at you is faster and tougher than before. The game fluctuates nicely between tense moments when your glaring at your last gun and willing it to kill the incoming wave of baddies, to times when you're flush with cash and can spend a little longer thinking about making the design of your defences more intricate and devious.


This pacing - and the indirect nature of play, where you design the combat, rather than actively fight - makes it well suited to the iPad, because like Plants vs Zombies, you don't need to be holding the iPad constantly. It looks gorgeous, too, opting for a richly saturated, hand-drawn style that's strongly reminiscent of 16-bit games from the MegaDrive and SNES.

Since its release on the iPhone, Fieldrunners has had plenty of content added, including new maps and achievements, and most of this is present in the iPad version. You get two maps that on the iPhone you need to pay for (at 59p each), but you don't get the iPhone's version's 'social' mode, which allows you to play challenges and see high-scores from friends.

Verdict: As is the norm for iPad games, Fieldrunners for iPad costs more than the iPhone version - £4.99, compared to £1.79. On the one hand, this disparity is hard to take, because the only difference are slightly-improved (but not different) graphics. On the other hand, £4.99 feels fair for the game; it's addictive, suits the device and you'll certainly get a fiver's worth of gameplay out of it.

Real Racing HD

Developer: Firemint
Price: $9.99 / £5.99 from the AppStore

Real Racing was initially shocking - it might, as we wrote in our original review have been a fairly standard touring car racer but it did feature fully 3D graphics and move at a decent pace - on your phone. While the graphics were as good as what you would expect from a mid-life PS1 game, the controls were well done too - using the accelerometer to steer actually worked, as did the auto-acceleration (with you touching the screen to brake).


Developer Firemint has created a version of the game, Real Racing HD for the launch of the iPad, and it shares the same massive list of features as the iPhone version - multiple different circuits, different cars and events, local multiplayer and online leaderboards, along with 3D graphics. The controls are just as good as before, with the game reading the accelerometer so that you can steer accurately but without needing to throw the iPad all over the place.

Unfortunately though, there are faults - and the biggest isn't really to do with Real Racing, but rather the iPad itself. The iPad isn't light, and holding it up like a steering wheel does begin to get a bit tiring after a few races - you might chortle but that 680g of aluminium and glass is over twice as heavy as the PSP (the full version, not the Go), and over three times as heavy as a Nintendo DSi.

It's not just the iPad's weight that's an issue though, as Real Racing HD has some flaws of its own. On a phone, the sheer fact you can get a 3D driving game that's pretty good is enough; on a device like the iPad, which costs a lot more and is much more of a computer, you find yourself with higher expectations, and the handling in Real Racing HD isn't good enough. Hurling a car into a corner at 130mph and bashing the brake should result in a loss of traction and a powerslide or skid. Not in Real Racing HD though, which resorts to a clumsy judder to move your car off track, and which reduces the overall appeal and excitement of what should be a high-octane racer.

Verdict: On the evidence of Real Racing HD, driving games aren't well suited to the iPad thanks to the device's weight. In addition, the limited handling model becomes more apparent. There are better ways to spend £6.