iPhone and iPod Touch Games Round-up

Tap Tap Revenge 2

Developer: Tapulous Inc.
Price (as reviewed): Free from the AppStore

Tap Tap Revenge is, quite simply (and practically, literally) the Guitar Hero of the AppStore. It almost exactly the same except for a handful of interface tweaks.

For those of you who’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few years and don’t know what that incredibly obvious comparison means, it’s actually quite easy to get your head around. You listen to music, see? And as you tap your foot to the beat these blobs fly towards the bottom of the screen in sync to the music and you have to tap them before they disappear.

Spelled out like that, the game doesn’t sound like anywhere near as much fun as it actually is. It sounds like some (more) boring version of Tetris, not a face-paced rhythm game with a fiendish pace and a collection of free songs. There is a reason it’s the most popular game in the AppStore, y’know.


The songs themselves are a fairly obscure bunch, running the likes of Stroke 9, Senses Fail, Daft Punk and Prodigy, but mostly staying firmly in the hard-rock and trance-dance genres. It’s there that the best and quickest beats are to be found, which is what Tap Tap Revenge is really interested in – fast beats. The difficulty settings offer something for all skill levels, but the lower settings aren’t nearly as interesting as the higher difficulties , even if you don’t stand any chance of getting on Online Leaderboard. And you really don’t.

Verdict: Fast-paced, colourful, simple and free – Tap Tap Revenge offers enough difficulty to keep even the most talented of virtual musicians tapping away for a long, long time.

Frotz

Developer: Craig Smith
Price (as reviewed): Free from the AppStore

We’re bending the rules a little here as Frotz is strictly an emulator, not a game, but we still think it’s important and relevant enough to include in this feature – especially since it’s available for free. Really, we think it should be one of the first Apps you download for your iPhone.

Frotz is a port of the popular PC interactive fiction interpreter of the same name and offers players a simple way to play literally thousands of totally free text adventure games. The core download comes packed with a collection of popular stories to lose yourself in, including the original version of Zork, but if that’s enough then you can hook it up over WiFi and seamlessly download new tales.

Frotz obviously isn’t going to be for everyone, naturally. The old idea of being sat typing into a parser trying to guess the right verb or getting lost in textualised mazes are likely to put plenty of people off. The good news though is that the days of having to ‘Adumbrate the Elephant’ are mercifully past. Today’s parsers and adventures are a lot more streamlined and intelligent, with a lot of games preferring a shorter and more repeatable structure – so if that sounds fun then we suggest taking a look at Aisle, Photopia and Pick up the Phone Booth and Die.

Frotz isn’t perfect and the text input capabilities of iPhone do leave a lot to be desired unless you’re a real text-wizard but, as with a lot of iPhone games, the fact that it’s free can compensate for an awful lot.

Verdict: Using the iPhone keyboard can to enter so many commands at such a speed can prove problematic, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Frotz has oodles of free content and gameplay.