Own an iPhone? Then these are (in no particular order) the twelve best games of 2011 that you simply must download and install on your iDevice. iRight now. And the best news is there are still three months left in this year – some may even surpass the genius already out.
It takes a goliath of a game to knock any mention of Angry Birds from the top list of iPhone games. Cut the Rope: Experiments is the right man for the job and has the gameplay as well as the cute factor needed to ensure its success. In Cut the Rope, your job is to get a piece of candy from a dangling cord of rope and into the mouth of Omnom. This simple physics-based puzzler is insanely addictive and well worth your iTunes credit.
Duel-stick shooters were practically made for the landscape of the iPhone, with Gun Bros being the worthiest contender. Murder robots and humans alike in the single player game or share the love with two-players online, both are included with this ‘freemium’ game. Fight an endless rainbow of enemies and earn new weapons and armour or pay your way to the top with real money. The graphics and sound are fantastic for an iPhone title with the online multiplayer supporting voice chat for added brotherly love.
A zombie/bird/candy game hybrid would most likely shift a million copies in a day, but for now we must be content with Zombie Gunship, an almost Zen-like experience which copies the aerial gunner section from Call of Duty, turning it into a fully-fledged game. Zombies slowly shuffle their way towards a human-filled bunker and you need to rain hellfire from above! Each kill and saved human nets you some cash, your weapons are upgraded and the cycle endlessly loops until you find yourself on the top of the global leaderboard.
Retro gaming usually plucks at the heartstrings of children from the eighties and further back. Pix ‘n Rush is a love letter to these gamers. It is straightforward enough, placing you in the shoes of a pixelated cat (as far as I can guess) which must collect coins in order to ‘downgrade’ the appearance of the game. The better you get, the more retro Pix ‘n Rush appears. This is gaming LSD at its very best.
Undulating hills welcome a tiny bird which is unable to fly. Your task: control the bird as it slides up and down hills, using natural momentum to propel it through the air. Collect coins, complete tasks and upgrade your nests in this surprisingly addictive game which goes to show how a single tap can become the basis of an entire control scheme.
For those who belittle the iPhone for ‘ruining’ gaming, they have yet to play Real Racing 2. Here is a title which, when played on the iPad, gives Gran Turismo and Forza a run for their money. HD graphics, hundreds of cars to choose from, customisation options for each vehicle and smooth gameplay have to be seen to be believed. This is the future of iPhone titles.
It’s hard to believe that Starcraft could fit on the iPhone. What Gameloft has done, in cramming the very best portions of a hit strategy game into the diminutive dimensions of the iPhone, seems like the impossible. The game may be an unashamed clone of Starcraft and it may not be the most polished game on the App Store, but its ambition and endless hours of gameplay both offline and online make it a winning title.
This is a peculiar sort of game and one that delivers entertainment in five minute snacks, or in five hour gaming marathons. Tiny Tower turns you into a landlord who must care for your tower, build new apartments, manage tenants and grow your business into a towering success. The Nintendo-era graphics and jaunty music add to the charms of this game which is currently scaling up the App Store’s charts.
Quantifying this game into a paragraph seems like a terrible injustice, but here goes: this is the best ever fantasy-adventure game and is now available for your iPhone (also see Gearburn’s Danny Greef’s love letter to this game). It is as good, if not better then the Legend of Zelda, Kings Quest or any retro gaming title from the past. The script is an exercise in gaming prose, the graphics are sublime pixelated art and the sound is liquid gold for your ears. You owe it to yourself to play this.
Further proof that the iPhone is a serious contender for gaming platform of the decade – how did EA manage to squeeze the terrifying nature of Dead Space into this application? It seems like madness, yet the game plays much like its Xbox counterpart and has the scares to equal any horror film. This is a genuinely impressive title which becomes twice as playable on the iPad.
Super Meatboy. Super Mario. Sonic the Hedgehog. They all quiver in fear when confronted by the League of Evil — whoever said that a platform game could not be accomplished on an iPhone was hugely mistaken. Here is a responsive and insanely difficult platform title which will call on your greatest gaming skills in order for you to conquer each level. It’s hard to top the best and League of Evil robot-punches its way to the top of the evolutionary chain.
For a match-three title (think bejewelled, puzzle quest) to survive the current flood of casual gaming, it needs to have its own unique edge. Zookeeper has it with 16-bit graphics, fairground music and fuzzy animals which need matching. The control scheme is what won us over though as the drag-to-match controls allow for smooth, hassle-free gaming.
Steven Norris: grumpy curmudgeon
Steven Norris is a born writer, living in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town and educated in the ways of graphic design but destined to follow in the footsteps of the worlds greatest authors. He has had many years of experience as an SEO copywriter, learning the ropes the hard way before utterly mastering them. He loves training others to write, how to create stories from nothing and how to deliver them to a wider audience. His passion is gadgets, video games, and sorting jellybeans by colour and weight.
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