Due to reviewing a lot of iOS games of late, I now have an RSS feed that spits an overview of every new iOS game into Google Reader. And, my word, there’s an awful lot of utter crap out there. While I remain of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming system to date, it probably also has the worst ratio of good to bad games.

Ironically, much of the problem stems from Apple’s openness. Yes, you read that right. People bitch about the App Store approvals process, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get a game on to the App Store than, say, make it for the Nintendo DS and get it on to store shelves. Apple recently in its review guidelines made a plea for quality, saying professional developers didn’t want their apps surrounded by ‘amateur hour’; from what I can tell, they already are.

So, if you’re planning on releasing an iOS game, I’ve provided some helpful tips below; and if you’re an app dev, now chuckling to yourself, switch ‘game’ for ‘app’ and see if you’re still laughing.

1. Are you planning on releasing ‘My First Game’, just because you can? If so, don’t bother, unless it’s actually ‘My First Game, Which, Objectively, Is Actually Pretty Damn Good’.
2. Are there already dozens of similar games on the App Store? If so, don’t bother, unless your title makes substantial improvements and changes to the genre. We don’t need yet another sodding Solitaire game, for example, or another 99-cent Reversi. Just stop it already.
3. Can you think of at least a few dozen people who would buy your game? If there’s no market for it, don’t bother trying to sell it—just send ad-hoc builds to your friends.
4. Does your game look and sound like utter crap? If so, consider getting an artist or musician on board. “I’m not very good at art and music” is not an excuse when there are loads of people out there who’d love the chance to collaborate with you on a project.
5. Have you found a game on another platform and just ported it right across, without any consideration for the unique aspects of iOS interfaces? You’re not Sega, you know. (And if you are Sega, just set fire to your Mega Drive/Genesis emulator already.) The best games on iOS are the ones that take advantage of its specific features, not the ones that try to fight the system (man).

In my next post on this subject, I’ll return to a subject that fills me with an equal amount of HULK SMASH: app and game websites, which developers are still screwing up with alarming regularity.

If you’re an American, you can rent TV shows on the new Apple TV. Companies like Warner have bitched about low revenues, but they’ll change their tune when Fox and ABC start making money hand-over-fist. It’s also been shown that Apple TV runs iOS (Wired), the same operating system that powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. However, since it has little on-board storage, it’s unlikely you’ll be stuffing if full of iOS apps and games any time soon, according to just about everyone.

The thing is, Apple TV isn’t about stuffing it full of anything. The idea is to stream content or rent. To that end, I wonder whether Apple will provide games for the system, but using some kind of rental model. Shove Game Center into the mix and you wouldn’t lose your scores, so you could download Soopah Arcade Funk for a buck, play it until your brain melts, then return to it via another rental a few months later and continue where you left off.

TechRadar reports that Angry Birds is to get a new Mighty Eagle character. Available only as an in-app purchase, it changes your weapon to a sardine tin, which upon landing causes a gigantic eagle to come down and obliterate everything. Rovio argues that this will aid users who cannot get past certain levels.

Since Angry Birds has several difficultly walls—levels that abruptly require an insane level of precision to complete, despite being surrounded by far more forgiving ones—adding a paid-for cheat is a pretty loathsome tactic. It’s a band-aid to cover up for poor level design and a rather cynical way of generating revenue (rather than adding value with extra levels, which would be worth 59p).

Still, at least Rovio hasn’t broken Angry Birds in terms of scoring. Using the eagle doesn’t enable you to get a full three-star quota for the level it’s used on. Compare this to Bejeweled Blitz, totally ruined by PopCap when it added ‘boosts’ that can be bought using Facebook credits. With these, PopCap rendered its online high-score tables largely irrelevant, since players no longer start on an even playing field. It’s the rough equivalent of pitching two Pac-Man players against each other, only in one case a player’s yellow dot-muncher is accompanied by the Ghostbusters and a priest. Here’s hoping Rovio stamps on the brakes regarding ‘cheats’ before Angry Birds suffers the same fate.

So I just installed iOS 4.1 on my iPhone and started farting about with Game Center. Like Ping, it does make me wonder if Apple understands that when it comes to social networking, it’s best not to avoid the ‘social’ and ‘networking’ bits.

The good

Game Center has a pretty straightforward interface that shows up the likes of OpenFeint as being even more of a mess than you originally thought they were. I can take or leave (well, if I’m honest, leave; well, if I’m really honest, set fire to) the casino-like gambling table green-fuzz and wood visual appearance, but at least the navigation is fine.

The bad and the bonkers

In the case of Game Center, ‘the bad’ and ‘the bonkers’ are both the same thing. Currently, most of my social gaming happens on Facebook, but via iOS games that happily connect to my Facebook account. I sign in, and immediately I have an arcade-game-style high-score table, populated with my friends’ scores. It’s great, and it’s simple (one click and a sign-in).

Because Apple hates relying on others, it’s eschewed this approach, instead forcing you to go through a protracted set-up to get your Apple ID talking to Game Center, followed by an invite system that’s either by known username or by email (seriously).

The modern web and online services are entirely based around networking, and are successful when these services all talk to each-other. By sealing itself off from the rest of the world and existing social networking (be it Facebook, Twitter or other services), Game Center irks. I don’t doubt it’ll be a success—there are too many iOS gamers and excited developers for it not to be. But it is awkward, unwieldy and unnecessarily time-consuming to deal with, and these are direct opposites to the things Apple has historically been known for.

Update: Game Center also cunningly provides usernames only with friend requests. I’ve already had a request from someone who I’ve no idea who they are. Gnh.

Update 2: ‘The Rev’ writes in the comments: “It’d be nice if it worked, too – the Flight Control leaderboard is showing my first score today, not the better score from my next attempt and not my best score from before Game Center launched.” Oh dear. Follow-up-o-tron: “It’s actually my FIRST since GC – not best since. I’ve done better today and it’s not uploaded. Other people okay, though.” Fire up the Bug Kill Machine, Walter!

Namco’s iOS games have been underwhelming, with little imagination and a tendency to trot out the same old properties they’ve been reselling since the days of the GBA (at least). That said, Pac-Man games work nicely on iOS: on the iPhone, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man: Championship Edition are all great games, if often rather ambitiously priced.

On the iPad, Pac-Man was, disappointingly, an upscaled version of the iPhone game (no universal updates in Namcoland!), with nothing added—until now.

Observant readers will notice that there’s a less-than-subtle ‘thing’ on the screen grab above, which certainly isn’t part of the original Pac-Man arcade game. Namco calls this ‘Pac-Man for iPad [being] equipped with Namco’s online community powered by UniteSDK’. I call it something rather different: a hideous monstrosity.

Whatever compelled Namco to ruin its pixel-perfect Pac-Man port for iPad with this nasty button that you cannot remove, I’ll never know. It’s ugly, and it’s a distraction; worse, it’s totally unnecessary. Did someone at Namco really think: “You know what? When I’m mid-game, fleeing Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, the one thing I really need to do is tap on a social network icon, just to check on my ‘achievements’ and messages”?

This now-aesthetically-ruined game now merely serves as a lesson to other iOS developers: by all means integrate gaming social networks into your games, but don’t have them ruin things with permanently on-screen graphics or irritating notifications.