IOS Gaming not so interesting now

I dont like freemium at all, timers are even worse. The huge amount of runner games is depressing.

BUT there are still so many great games out there, granted theres more rubbish there but iOS is so popular theres a huge choice. I'm looking forward to Oceanhorn hopefully this year, iOS controllers should make our devices even more like game consoles so that means more and more games.

I've had a few quiet weeks recently but it'll pick up, plus it means i can go back and play some of the other games i've bought and play those much more. If anything iOS gaming should get even better soon with more and more games

I mean i've got 500 games on my device, love dipping in and out of so many.

I mean i've got a 70's folder for old old games like Asteroids, Atari stuff etc. An 80's one for 8 bits and 8 bit retro style games, a 90's one for Mario Land type games and Sonic etc.

Then theres amazing apps like Pinball Arcade, Vectrex (an early 80's console), so many great platformers (proper ones with buttons !), huge epic adventures from the past and also new graphical ones. Some great sport ones i can keep playing forever

The variety is huge, i could not buy another game for a year and i'll still have plenty of games to go through on my device. Plus the best thing is i can take all of these with me at all times.

So yeah its depressing about freemium/timers but theres so many other great games out there. But we need to support these devs, too many times i see an indie dev with a decent title and people saying 'anyone take a risk on this 99c game ?' or 'i'll wait for a price drop (if its 2 dollars'). They're the first to moan when its full of freemium rubbish. I mean a 1 dollar game and someones waiting for reviews of it ! I can only imagine when they get a house and a huge mortgage and will probably wait 3 months to make their mind up ! Its a dollar game, just buy it !!

Support your indie devs !!

 

I hate freemium and I also hate how successful it is, but it isn't a giant picture of the entire app store. There are still hundreds of quality games out there with no freemium-esque items in them...we should make a list for those games

 

This is actually a fantastic time for iOS gaming. Huge competition between big name developers and indie developers, high quality production, amazing graphics, deep storyline in some of these newer games, and a new addition to physical game controllers to iOS 7. This couldn't be any greater time for iOS games!

Yes, there is a gigantic share of freemium games, and if people keep buying into that, game developers will still make those. However, there are two new trends that I've been noticing lately:

1) Freemium games with the premise that you don't need to spend money if you're good at the game. If the promise holds up as advertised, then I find these to be pretty good. I've been playing Real Racing 3 since February and Plants vs. Zombies 2 since July and I haven't spend a cent on those. They're both excellent games in their own right, I didn't need to spend a dime on them, and enjoyed them just as much (even more) than their predecessors.

2) Complete premium games with no IAPs, but more expensive: We're seeing more of these. Most notably was XCOM. You pay $20, and you can play through the whole game without even thinking about IAPs. This is a great experience, and fits console ports very well. Minecraft, GTA 3, Vice City, and Max Payne were all full premium games, and they still hold places in the top charts.

Seeing all these different payment models and how each developer reaches it is very interesting, and adds a lot of variety to the App Store. Plus it means iOS gaming can reach to different demographic of customers, which ultimately means more developers will be making more games.

Maybe you're bored of your devices or bored of the current games you have, or you want to move up to a console or PC games. But saying iOS gaming is not interesting is simply not true. Exciting times coming ahead!

As a side note, the forums here and the members will always recommend you the very best iOS games.

 

I tend to agree, but it's not because there are no good games but rather the amount of tripe you have to wade through. The upsell focus has takien the emphasis off actual game design in my opinion, a lot of could be great titles being released, hampered by non game focus.

 

This year iOS gaming has had some unexpected surprises on the premium front, with some major franchises - Deus Ex, XCOM, Call of Duty, Star Wars KOTOR, with others like Hitman to follow suit - dipping their toes on the mobile scene at high-priced rates and managing to get, as far as I know, substantial profits. They have performed so well, in fact, that some of the devs have admitted that future ventures are almost assured (at least 2K and Aspyr Media have done so). Were other companies/developers to decide to follow their lead and back the premium model, we'd only see that, I should think, next year. With KOTOR (and the at-the-time imminent release of XCOM) people were already announcing a bright new era of premium gaming, but something like that wasn't going to be arriving immediately, hence why I think/hope next year we'll see the effects of this year's small surge.
Have we been getting a lot of freemium lately? Sure. That's always guaranteed to rake in download numbers and profit (after all, a vast majority of people who play on their iPhones and iPads are casuals, and they'd be more likely to spend 5$ on a game they already play than the same amount for a one-off purchase for a game they know little about. The drug dealer principle, basically). However, in the future, I'm expecting to see more offerings on the premium scene than we're currently getting (and let's face it, it hasn't been so bad lately: Infinity Blade 3, Angry Birds, Riddick, Call of Duty, Asphalt 8, along with many others I'm not recalling. I'm just saying, it's not as bad as some people are painting it to be).

 

Well if you have played a few bad games, the good ones will shine even more.

 

I agree. There's been about only 5 games that have kept my interest this year. iOS gaming just isn't as interesting as it used to be.

 

Ninjin
Orborun
Incredipede
Line Bound
14px
Penumbear
Strata
Pivvot
Incoboto
Breach and Clear
Lums
Badlands
Draw Rider Plus
Stickman Downhill
Reaper
---
All quality games, all either premium or free with a game unlock or IAP for only impatient players

IOS gaming isn't dead by a longshot. But I know what you mean. Poorly done F2P, with timers and paywalls...I have no patience for that stuff. But there are still many under-the-radar or even better known devs like Foursaken who respect us and deliver quality premium titles

 

I don't think it's fair to say that it's not as good as it used to be, it's just that your standards have risen, so it's more difficult for developers to make a game worthy of your expectations, if recent games were released 2 years ago you'd be stunned at how incredible they are

 

Too many games that are going freemium and balanced for huge inapp purchases. A real downer.

 

iOS Hardcore Gamer

I will say that there are a few iOS gems out there that are certainly worth the download. I will share with you:

(In no particular order, however, bolded games have my highest recommendation)

1. jubeat plus ("jukebeat" in U.S. AppStore) [Music Game Arcade Port]
2. REFLEC BEAT plus [Music Game Arcade Port]
3. Galaxy on Fire 2 (get HD version if you have an iPad2+) [Adventure]
4. Lionel Battle Train [Action]
5. Tetris Blitz [Puzzle]
6. Magic 2013 [Card]
7. Order & Chaos Online [MMORPG]
8. Order Up!! To Go [Cooking]
9. Injustice: Gods Among Us [Swipe Gesture Battles]
10. Dungeon Hunter 4 [Action RPG]
11. Starbase Orion [4X]
12. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions [Strategy RPG (PS1/PSP Port)]
13. Uplink [Hacking (PC port)]
14. XCOM: Enemy Unknown [Strategy RPG (PS3/X360 Port)]
15. DRAKERIDER [Unique RPG]

I only have time to show you the arcade music games for now since most of you are not familiar with KONAMI's BEMANI series (outside of DDR):

jubeat arcade machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA2ZpKvZxMY
REFLEC BEAT arcade machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloGyIV9CTw



Hope that helps some of you.
BTW, I'm not a big fan of games that only work online...I kinda dislike that kind of dependency. The only game like that in the list is Order & Chaos.

 

Personally I will never buy IAP unless its for a permanent thing that can be used over and over again thus far I never have and rarely have I ever downloaded free games unless they really stood out so my opinion on this is biased in a way as I never even look at free games anymore but it's practically guaranteed that there will always be f2p games on the AppStore I'm hopefull though that this ends so far though within the following months I have a number of premium games that stand out on my watch list so I must say the number being made seems only to be increasing.

 

That's kinda paranoid. You must be missing out on a lot of great games.

Also... Shorter sentences. And more of them.

 

Bad wording and terrible with punctuation. I meant to say that I only glance over them. And I am probably very peramoid as I sleep with a machete or a knife by my side.

 

We could turn that into a game. With ridiculously priced machetes & knives, a bed taking forever to upgrade, a very justified timer because you need to sleep and some naughty ads taking place inside your dream as a minigame

 

You can't really generalize all F2P games like that. There are way too many monetazation models, and not all are bad.

I do agree however, that this is the worst time to be a mobile gamer...

 

Agree with this comment. It does not mean that the game is boring now. There are a lot of great games, but a lot of them are freemium.

 

Try Shadow Vamp. Or any of these games.

 

I'd say I will agree with OP, sure ,there're some more good ports or sorts of things. such as XCOM, COD...
but it's not something new and special, it's in fact a sucker version of the console counterparts.
what we'd ever have is real racing which turned into freemium.
gameloft tends to make more freemium games now.
zenonia---even more freemium
even PVZ is not premium any more
blame the pirate and Apple
I would suggest that the pirate somehow increase the sales of I-device to some extent.
Apple keeps an excellent balance between app store income and money from hardware sales combined in terms of business.
the company don't really care about the situation for gamers and developers, that's why we still have no offical ios gaming controllers.