May 19, 2011
Some of the coolest, sweetest, and most brilliant additions to gaming in the past ten years have involved the development of mobile platform specific games such as those created for Apple’s iOS, which powers the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Mobile gaming is nearly surpassing console gaming in some circles, and there are a lot of reasons for this.
First of all, you’ve always got your portable device with you, and there is no better way to suck up spare minutes while you wait in retail store lines or the doctor’s office than to break out Angry Birds and let a few fly. I mean, those pigs are really asking for it, aren’t they? And somebody’s gotta do it. If you’re like me and you have a serious Birds addiction, you’ve probably downloaded every available version (and even paid for more than one of the same version just so you could enjoy it on your iPad in HD as well.) At first, I tried just bringing the iPhone app over to my iPad and 2x-ing it. This worked really well, actually and I probably could have gotten by without the HD iPad version — but the temptation got the best of me and I snapped it up, too. I have no end of fun trying to beat all the levels on both of my favorite devices, in all versions (including Angry Birds Rio HD, which was free when I downloaded it last month.)
Another great game is Plants Vs. Zombies, where you have to defend your suburban house without a Home Security Device and garden from an onslaught of creepy undead dragging themselves across the street towards your home with certain damage in mind. Your weapons of defense are sunflower seeds and seed-shooting plants, that let you plant more seed-shooters and fire on the zombies as they encroach. You begin with fairly few zombies coming, and more than enough flowers at your command to fend them off — but it soon becomes nearly overwhelming as the zombies’ numbers increase. You earn extra weapons and special attacks as you go, though, so applying some strategy is helpful.
Cut the Rope is a fun game where you have to feed little Nom-nom his candy. You have to cut ropes the candy is suspended from, to help it fall into Nom-nom’s reach so he can munch down happily. If he misses the candy, you hear a pittiful little sound that makes you a little sad. This discourages you from miscalculating where to cut the ropes and which ones to cut, because you instinctively want to feed the little monster and make him happy. Very sweet game.
All in all, I would say that the mobile gaming industry is firmly rooted and here to stay, and the outlook is only getting brighter. Gaming apps are among the most popular downloads in the Apple App Store, and even the Android App marketplace is experiencing an upturn in game downloads. These games seem to appeal to a broader demographic than some of the console games, possibly due to the quick availability of them and their relatively lower cost.
