Our final look back at the past two years takes us to the final moments of 2010 and in to 2011 and the great unknown. What lays in store for iOS gamers in the year to come?
2010 Continued
Last year was a big year for gaming, full of grand titles with amazing new Retina Display graphics that dazzled iOS gamers old and new. At the end of December we witnessed a mad rush of top titles all released on the same day. There were so many that, truth be told, we’re still catching up now.
But one game above all else got people talking at the tail end of the year. We are, of course, talking aboutInfinity Blade.
It all started with a demo to show off Epic’s Unreal Engine on the iPhone. an almost free roaming environment with graphics so good they made some people question whether they could ever be implemented in a game in real-time.
Maybe the Epic Citadel demo gave off false impressions, but there was some surprise when it was announced that the forthcoming game based on the content of this demo wouldn’t be a free roaming adventure. Instead Infinity Blade was a fighting game which used swipes and button presses to dodge and attack against some massive enemies.
Amazingly designed as the enemies were, many felt that the game seemed a bit shallow compared to what they were expecting. However, after a short time playing through and discovering that the death of your character wasn’t the end, it soon became clear that there was more to Infinity Blade than it seemed.
In an interesting twist, you ended up playing as new generations of the same heroic family, gaining your forebearers strengths and equipment and levelling up in a quest to finally defeat the God King. The RPG-like levelling and the challenge turned the game into something completely new and original.
Infinity Blade would have closed 2010 on a high note all by itself, but another game appeared on an equally good footing. In late December, Firemint rolled out their racing sequel Real Racing 2.
As with the first game, Firemint had managed to do the impossible again and exceed everyone’s expectations. As I explained in my review “In short, if there’s one game you need to get for the iPhone, it’s Real Racing 2.”. 16 players online, amazing Retina graphics, even better physics and support for the iPhone 4’s gyro for steering.
Though it was a tough battle between the two, Real Racing 2 just pinched the top spot in our Top 20 Games of 2010.
Overshadowed by these huge games, but no less important came the release of Gameloft’s final game of the year, N.O.V.A.2. The space shooter, so obviously based on the Halo franchise, improved on the first game in the same way that Modern Combat 2 did, with better multiplayer, Retina graphics and a great campaign.
N.O.V.A.2 became our First Person Shooter of choice and is still very popular on-line for multiplayer Deathmatch games.
In addition to iPhone games, 2010 also saw the emergence of tablet gaming with the release of the iPad. At first, it was hard to see why anyone would want to lift a heavy tablet to tilt or steer, but after playing a few games on Angry Birds or Lego Harry Potter the extra screen space and ability to use far greater control on the large touchscreen soon won people over. Even titles that required picking up to play were so impressive that gamers would risk arm ache to play iPad versions of N.O.V.A. 2.
The iPad became a middle-ground between the iPhone App and a fully fledged PC or Console game. The big screen showed off the amazing graphics (in some cases, at least) and suited strategy games far better than the cramped screen of an iPhone. It seemed to catch Apple’s attention too as they pushed forward with their plans for the coming year.
