Archive for the ‘WiFi’ tag
CES 2010: Parrot AR.Drone – An iPhone-Controlled Quadricopter
While we won't be on the floor of CES until tomorrow, the internet is already on fire with buzz surrounding the Parrot AR.Drone remote control quadricopter that is controlled by creating its own WiFi network that either an iPhone or an iPod Touch connects to. The Parrot AR.Drone is then maneuvered using the accelerometers of the iPhone combined with a video feed from the forward facing camera on the drone itself.
A smart piloting system intelligently compensates for wind and other environmental conditions, and utilizing a second camera which faces the ground can perform a flawless stationary flight on its own. If at any point you take your fingers off the iPhone autopilot engages stabilizing the drone, and if you quit the controller app or lose your connection to the Parrot AR.Drone's WiFi network the drone will stabilize itself and land all on its own.
As seen in the following video, the Parrot AR.Drone has two different hulls– A fully enclosed hull that protects the rotors from bumping in to walls and furniture indoors, and a hull for outdoors that sacrifices rotor protection for better maneuverability.
As if being able to fly around a drone using nothing more than your iPhone wasn't cool enough, an additional video on the demonstrates some augmented reality games you can play with the Parrot AR.Drone complete with picture in picture showing what the video feed and in-game HUD looks like. It apparently can even recognize shapes in 3D space to overlay different 3D models, such as the boss fight seen at the end of this video:
On top of all this, Parrot even has a featuring whitepapers that detail how to develop third party games that use the Parrot AR.Drone via an open API. All of these resources are available for free, and while the games shown in the above video were cool, I can't even imagine the potential if third party development support takes off.
Needless to say, we'll be keeping a close eye on the Parrot AR.Drone, and will post more information as it becomes available.
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A Snowy Weekend’s ‘Lites’ Roundup
Lots of readers along the Eastern seaboard of the U.S., myself included, are heavily snowed in this weekend. And, so, what better time to check out a few free, 'lite' titles to see what you might've missed? Here's a short list of lite releases definitely worth a look if you're still a stranger to them.
- () — A fun, high quality physics puzzler with intuitive controls and a full level creation and online sharing system. iBlast Moki made it into our Best iPhone Games roundup for September — it comes highly recommended.
() — The iPhone installment of a real time strategy game series that's been evolving for two decades, The Settlers challenges you to build a community, establish means of income, and expand your territories by force. Setting it apart from many RTS games, The Settlers focuses more on strategic planning than hands-on micromanagement of resources — this can be a positive or negative depending on your particular taste in strategy games. The game offers a deep experience with beautiful graphics and elaborate world maps.
() — Returning home after a 35 year mission in space, the crew of the Nimeh discovers that Earth has been taken over by machines. Such is the plight of the characters at your command in the fast-paced, turn-based strategy game, Rogue Planet from Gameloft. The title delivers a solid play interface, lengthy battle sequences, and excellent enemy AI, in a game that's somewhat reminiscent of . The paid release is well worth the price of admission. Strategy game fans who haven't picked it up should have a look at the lite release.
- () — Tak Fung's MiniSquadron can be most easily described (well…) as a side-scrolling, physics-based aerial dog-fighting game. In MiniSquadron, you take the stick of a cartoonish, fixed-wing fighter in a frantic bid for supremacy of the skies across eight different worlds — all set to a series of classical compositions. Local WiFi multiplayer is also supported. Action fans who haven't tried it, give the lite a try.
- () — CobraMobile's futuristic racing title, Low Grav Racer 2, is the closest thing in the App Store to the classic Wipeout. Control any of six futuristic racing craft across 18 different planet and space-based tracks. With more track complexity and tighter action, LGR2 is an improvement on its forerunner. If you like racing and it need not be all about rubber on asphalt, Low Grav Racer 2 might be for you.
- () — InMotion Software's I Dig It Expeditions picks up where the original release left off, after your farmer avatar paid off the bank thanks to the subterranean treasures gathered with his tractor-turned-digger. That sorted, he's decided to travel the world with his digger seeking more treasure. With particularly impressive graphics and various improvements over the original, including an in-game map and waypoint system, I Dig It Expeditions is one it's hard not to dig.
Sometimes, being trapped in the house can be a good thing.
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‘N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance’ – Deadspace Halo Prime
Few games have generated the amount of hype that Gameloft's N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance [] has, and even fewer have managed to live up to that same hype. NOVA is one of those rare instances where a upcoming game is everything we wanted and more. It's not perfect, but there aren't many games to even compare it to on the platform. NOVA feels like a complete video game experience, something which is quite rare indeed on the landscape of bite sized games that make up the App Store.
In Nova you play as Karl Wardin, an ex-space marine who has been reactivated to investigate some strange alien activity in a futuristic setting where the Earth has depleted its resources and no longer can sustain life, forcing humanity to live on nearby orbiting colonies. Admittedly, the plot isn't anything to write home about and the voice acting ranges from passable to downright cringe-worthy at times– Especially whenever Karl himself speaks. Thankfully, the gameplay itself more than makes up for these shortfalls.
The first series of levels will leave you wandering around on a space ship while you're guided by various characters communicating over the radio. An arrow guides you from objective to objective, and gameplay amounts to simply following this arrow, killing anything that moves, and flipping switches to activate or unlock different objects and areas. Deadspace fans will feel right at home when the game asks you to traverse the hull of the space ship, even going as far as to mention enabling your magnetic boots. What do you do while you're outside the ship? Run from pressurized area to pressurized area while avoiding incoming asteroids of course. (If you haven't played Deadspace, you do exactly this several times throughout the game– The hull is even laid out similarly.)
Eventually after fixing a few different parts of the ship and killing oodles of aliens, you will make your way to the bridge to initiate the self destruct sequence and escape back to your ship. You then fly down to a planet with beautifully rendered lush forests which also happens to be infested by these same (although slightly different colored) aliens. The rest of the game continues in a similar fashion, with different characters telling you where to go and what to do across 13 different levels that take place in five distinctly different environments.
The run and gun action is broken up by mini games, a level where you man the turrent on a warthog-like truck from Halo, and even a couple boss fights. Scattered throughout the levels are locked crates which must be opened by playing a brief mini game where you move different objects around on a grid to solve a puzzle where you're directing a laser beam from its source to the target. None of these are particularly difficult, and depending on how you feel about mini games you will either find these to be enjoyable distractions or just too annoying to bother with. Thankfully, it seems like there is enough ammo dropped by enemies and laying on the ground that the crates are optional but you will be forced to solve a few of these puzzles throughout the game as you "hack" things to progress.
Similar to Halo, your life is measured by a shield meter at the top of the screen which depletes when you take damage and recharges slowly afterwards. Your shield gauge also serves as your oxygen supply when you're in space, and your super abilities also take off a chunk of your shield's power. Super abilities? Oh yes, straight out of Metroid Prime you will slowly gain new abilities such as the ability to freeze enemies, shoot a charged up energy beam, and even run faster with speed boots.
If you've played Modern Combat: Sandstorm [ / ], the controls in NOVA will be instantly familiar to you. If not, the game uses a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen for movement, and moving your thumb around the right side of the screen changes your view around. Different buttons frame the screen that do things like fire your weapon, toss a grenade, change weapons, reload, etc. There are two other included control schemes, one where the screen is split in half and moving your left thumb anywhere controls your movement while your right controls your view (essentially just removing the virtual joystick) and another with two virtual joysticks where you tap the screen to fire. I've found the default controls to be fine, although I did spend some time fiddling with the sensitivity.
Another nice feature is the ability to move all of the elements of the game's UI around. I've moved the reload button closer to the fire button because I'm a compulsive reloader in first person shooters, but you can customize it however you want. (Although currently this option only seems available by adjusting your controls mid-game, and not from the main menu.) Strangely enough, even though it seems that Gameloft has put a great deal of thought in to different control options and customizations, the ability to invert the Y-axis of the camera control is notably absent. What will leave you scratching your head even more regarding the lack of invert look is that Modern Combat: Sandstorm, a game which shares a similar engine to NOVA includes Y-axis inversion. You can however flip the screen orientation, something that should make iPod touch users happy.
The performance of the game is phenomenal on the iPhone 3GS with fast load times, high frame rates, and everything else you could ask for in a first person shooter. Meanwhile, reader reports all the way down to the have been said to be smooth. Even while playing online in NOVA's four player deathmatch mode, which surprisingly enough seems to be working just fine for everyone, a nice change of pace from Gameloft's recently released Modern Combat: Sandstorm multiplayer update.
Playing online requires both WiFi and a Gameloft Live account. Registering for Gameloft Live is easy, and once you're online you will have the option to play deathmatch or look at the worldwide leaderboards of players with the most points and kills. When creating a deathmatch game, available options include choosing one of the five maps, as well as enabling or disabling weapon stay and aim assist. Games can be set with a time limit or a frag limit, and both can be set to none to play for as long as you'd like.
When joining a game, you're thrown in to a lobby which lists available games that have open slots for you to join. Those of you waiting for an Eliminate "killer" will be disappointed to discover that currently there doesn't seem to be any random matchmaking, or the ability to have friends-only private matches. All you can do is create a game and hope that three of your friends join it before other people do.
Despite its limitations, online multiplayer (as well as local bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer) is a lot of fun and performs surprisingly well. I haven't come across any lag or connection issues, and so far it just works– Although the true test of NOVA multiplayer will be how well it holds up once players start getting good at the game and scrutinizing the weapon balance. It's too early to say how large the online community will get and what kind of staying power NOVA's online presence will have, but it seems quite enjoyable right now.
If you're a fan of first person shooters, or any of the previously mentioned console classics that NOVA is obviously inspired by, then you too will also likely really enjoy NOVA. It's one of the most ambitious iPhone games I've played so far, and despite the questionable originality of the game I've really got to hand it to Gameloft for creating such an amazing iPhone experience.
App Store Link:
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SGN Releases ‘Skies of Glory’ – Free with Downloadable Content
SGN has released their latest aerial combat game Skies of Glory. The follow-up to their popular F.A.S.T. game takes on a World War II theme and adopts a "freemium" business model. The game itself is free to download and play, but offers additional content through in-app purchases. Game features include:
- Multiple skirmish modes, campaigns and tons of training missions with more to come
- Engage with opponents from around the world in 8-player combat over the internet via 3G and WiFi
- Fly with friends over any local network for up to 8-player combat
- Buy more planes for your hanger to maintain a competitive edge over your opponents
Give it a try for free. Feedback and impressions are being .
App Store Link:
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‘Need For Speed: Shift’ In Depth Hands-On Preview with Video
We got our hands on EA's upcoming Need For Speed: Shift this week, and after spending the last few days playing through the game I'm confident in saying that EA has succeeded in bringing yet another amazing racing game to the platform. With in-game options to tune the difficulty to the point that your car is almost driving itself, Shift is not only an extremely accessible racing game, but also can be a very technical driving experience for veterans of the genre with all of the assists turned off and the manual transmission mode enabled.
Believe it or not, Need For Speed: Shift is the thirteenth in the Need For Speed series which originally debuted all the way back in 1994 with Road & Track magazine heavily advising on both the sound design and vehicle physics. Since then, the Need For Speed saga has been through many iterations covering everything from super cars to underground street racing to police chases.
With recent Need For Speed games taking sharp turns towards the arcade racing genre (Such as Need For Speed: Undercover [] for the iPhone.) it's nice to see EA getting back on course with what feels much more like an actual racing simulation in Shift.
The 20 included real licensed cars can have both their visuals and performance upgraded. In the visuals department you can add a body kit, change paint colors, buy ridiculously huge spoilers, and change out your wheels. If you care more about your car actually going faster than looking cool, you can upgrade its top speed, acceleration, nitrous oxide system, as well as tires and suspension. Each of these upgrades come in multiple stages and once you've hit a car's limit to remain competitive in races you will need to buy new cars.
Cars in game must be bought with winnings from races, and available cars are slowly unlocked as you progress through the game. Initially, Chicago is the only locale you have access to, but both London and Tokyo are eventually unlocked granting access to all 18 different courses included in the game. In each locale you can participate in seven different types of events which range from standard races to drifting competitions, time trials, and the driver duel which pits you against a single AI opponent.
Each event has an associated set of stars that can be earned while racing to unlock additional events. You will always earn stars for being in the top three, with additional available stars for doing things like being in first place for an entire lap, never going off the track, and beating the track's lap record. These stars go hand in hand with the in-game score system which tallies points for both "precision" and "aggression" based on different actions.
Doing things like following a perfect racing line or taking a corner well will earn precision points, while actions like riding an opponent's tail or bumping them out of the way earns aggression points. At the end of each race, these points are totaled on your persistent driver profile that the game is constantly building along with a custom racing emblem which gets an additional component added to it as you level up.
While overall the whole aggression/precision system doesn't have much impact on anything in the game, it's still fairly cool that two people will likely never have the game build the same emblem based on their career. Currently I've been towards the precise side of the spectrum, and my emblem is a target with a pair of crossed spark plugs. If my racing style focused more on bumping in to people, my emblem would consist of things like crossed axes and other more aggression-oriented objects.
Aside from your driving style, "badges" also can be earned which act as Shift's achievement system. Badges come in multiple ranks, and are upgraded over time based on your performance. For instance, the Iron Man bronze badge is earned by placing first in three consecutive events, and can be upgraded to silver by placing first in five consecutive events.
Need For Speed: Shift features several different control options which should satisfy the needs of most racing fans, unless you prefer virtual joysticks to tilting to steer– an option that is notably absent. In rookie mode, the game practically plays itself. Your car accelerates automatically, brakes automatically, and there is a racing line made of arrows on the track for your car to follow. In rookie mode, it also feels like it's difficult to not follow this racing line, almost like your car falls in to some kind of groove that is difficult to steer out of if you want to overtake an opponent.
The next control option is the professional mode, which turns off all the assist options and actually allows you to drive your car around where you want. Unless you are just really bad at racing games, I'd recommend just immediately turning on the professional mode before you even start your first race. The next step up is expert mode, which takes professional mode and adds a manual transmission and there's also a custom mode where you can enable/disable each control feature as you see fit.
Swiping up or swiping down on screen shifts the gears of your manual transmission, and while I'm sure there are people out there who will be in love with this game because of this functionality, I've never been one for changing gears in racing games. Regardless of which control mode you choose, acceleration is handled automatically and touching the screen applies the brakes. If you've upgraded your car to have a nitrous oxide system, tapping a button in the bottom right corner engages and disengages the nitrous. There's also a button on the top of the screen for changing the view from cockpit, hood, first person, and third person views.
With so few truly high quality 3D racing games on the App Store, comparisons are inevitable, and we've already had some heated debates on our forums regarding Need For Speed: Shift versus Real Racing []. In my opinion, both games are worth owning. Shift edges ahead of Real Racing due to the inclusion of real licensed cars instead of generic sports cars and Volkswagens as well as having a better career mode.
But, on the other hand, Real Racing seems to have better, more realistic, and much more aggressive AI opponents. Shift seems to fall victim to the same problem as many other racing games on the platform with opponents that just seem to want to follow their own little racing line and generally just ignore you entirely. Also, while I can't completely confirm the existence of irritating rubberband AI in Shift, I been in a few races where I've pulled very far ahead of my opponents only to see them zooming up behind me on the mini map from out of nowhere. I suppose it's always possible they decided to dump their nitrous tanks to catch up to me, but it does seem suspect.
Both games include local multiplayer, although I haven't been able to test this functionality in Shift. In the multiplayer mode, you're able to select both WiFi and bluetooth as connection options, as well as choose from many of the different tracks and included game modes. Online multiplayer would have been nice, although it's not unexpected to see EA preferring to stick with local multiplayer.
At the end of the day I think Need For Speed: Shift's greatest flaw is that it shares the same title and likely a lot of the same expectations of the XBOX 360 and PS3 console versions of the game. Having spent a great deal of time in the XBOX 360 game, what I was looking forward to most on the iPhone wasn't tons of cars or tracks, but only the insanely immersive sense of speed. On the 360, as you go faster and faster the edges of your screen slowly start to blur along with other visuals that make you feel like you're going very fast sitting on your couch– Also, there are all kinds of great visual effects when you crash. Out of all this, the only thing that made it to the iPhone is a vaguely reminiscent red tinge to the screen when you hit something.
Regardless, Need For Speed: Shift is a remarkable iPhone racing game. With licensed cars, control options that should make most people happy, and a very cool yet mostly superfluous driver profile and performance tracking system, Shift is a must-have for fans of the genre. Looking to the future, and seeing how much EA has tweaked and refined the racing experience between Need For Speed: Undercover and Need For Speed: Shift, I doubt I'm alone in being very excited to see what's next in the Need For Speed series on the App Store.
Need For Speed: Shift is coming soon.
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‘Super Monkey Ball 2′ On Sale: 50% Off This Weekend
Earlier this week we took a look at Sega's recently released Super Monkey Ball 2 [], a followup to their popular App Store launch title. The game commands the premium price of $9.99 but, for this weekend only, Sega is offering the game at 50% off, bringing the price down to $4.99.
As we indicated in our review, Super Monkey Ball 2 improves upon its forerunner by delivering notably enhanced visuals, improved controls, mini-game support, and WiFi multiplayer. Those who've played the original on the iPhone should find this sequel an overall much more enjoyable game.
Those who were held back by the launch price may want to consider grabbing Super Monkey Ball 2 while it's only half as dear.
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Sega has submitted a version 1.1 update to the App Store, which addresses certain user-reported issues.
App Store Link:
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‘Super Monkey Ball 2′ – A Vast Improvement, But Not Quite There Yet
With its monkey rolling, twitch-balancing action, the Monkey Ball series seems like an easy sell on the iPhone. Despite stemming from a console franchise that’s been around for nearly a decade, the concept almost feels like it was grown specifically for the iPhone. If anything, this was a series that was waiting for the right platform to come along. But when Super Monkey Ball was released alongside the AppStore launch last summer, the results were anything but super. The controls were poorly executed, the visuals felt like a hand-me-down from the days when 16 bit gaming was trying to step out of 2D – the whole experience just wasn’t up to par. Now, 18 months later, Sega gets much closer to delivering the Monkey Ball game that everybody wants.
The objective in Super Monkey Ball 2 (like all games in the series) is to guide a monkey who is trapped in a ball to an exit without letting him roll off the playing field. You’ll navigate a variety of wild and well designed environments all the while using the power of tilt to control the ball. The game relies heavily on the concept of momentum, so you’ll need to make sure that you’re always moving at a controllable speed so that you can navigate the treacherous terrain laid before you.
Super Monkey Ball 2, while far from perfect, is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor. Visually the game has stepped boldly into the world of 3D graphics, looking a fair bit like the Gamecube games that paved the way for the series success. Both the main characters and the environments look completely up to what you’d seen in its home console brethren. Considering the last game felt less like a modern portable and more like the bonus stage from Sonic 2, this is a massive and welcome improvement.
While stepped-up visuals are nice, the real sticking point with the series previous entry was the controls. The game sees a major improvement here as well, but it’s still far from perfect. The good news is you’ll never have a problem telling your monkey where to roll anymore. The bad news? You can’t set your default position for the tilt and you can’t control tilt sensitivity. To keep your monkey perfectly still you’ll need to hold your iPhone at about 10 degrees from a perfect upright position. That means you’ll need to prop your iPhone directly in front of your face if you want to control you amiable ape without much difficulty. Those of us who don’t want to look like schmucks while rolling our monkeys around on the bus are completely out of luck, as holding the iPhone near your lap is really going to ramp up how difficult it is to get a handle on your monkey.
The lack of a tilt sensitivity adjustment definitely came across as an annoyance as well. Sure anyone can adjust to what’s offered in terms of tilting, but I found that sensitivity was just far too touchy for my liking. I had to make extra tiny delicate little moves to control my simian without bowling him clear off the playing field. As a big, brutish, relatively careless gamer, the forced precision seemed a little excessive. Tilt sensitivity controls would have fixed all of that.
Despite these annoyances, the controls still feel far more responsive than what we experienced Monkey Ball’s first iPhone outing. This time around the controls are manageable and anyone can adapt to what’s on the table.
The game has seen other improvements as well. Mini-games have always been a staple of the franchise, but they were conspicuously absent from the previous endeavour. This time around the game features Monkey Bowling – a complete bowling game where you roll your monkey ball instead of the tradition three-holed variety. Two other mini-games – Monkey Golf and Monkey Target – have placeholder spots in the menu with big “coming soon” messages attached. It’s a shame that the content wasn’t included at launch, but at least we know more is on the way.
Multiplayer is also a welcome addition, supporting up to 4 players over local wifi. The multiplayer offering isn’t incredibly deep – you can race against friends to complete each level in record time and play mini-games together – but that doesn’t keep it from being a nice bonus to players seeking a party experience. If anything, it’s what games like Monkey Bowling were made for.
Monkey Ball fans are going to be delighted by the improvements here, but it’s hard to deny that Super Monkey Ball 2 is far from perfect. Should Sega decide to introduce some tilt adjusting options when they release the extra mini-games, Super Monkey Ball 2 would be a much easier offering to recommend. In the meantime, I still found it just a little too twitchy and sensitive to keeps the waves of frustration at bay.
App Store Link:
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