Hacker News Reader

Comment by ge0rg | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting how most of the games look like ports of old PC games (not a critique, just noticing). I suppose this underscores the sad state into which the "modern" game developer studios have maneuvered themselves.

View on HN

The sad thing is that while I spend about 1000 a year on non-mobile gaming and 300 a year on mobile-gaming (DS), the phone/tablet market gets exactly 0 of this because either everything really sucks or I am just unable to find anything that does not cause me to uninstall the game in disgust after playing it for 3 minutes.

And it's pretty unnecessary; I would be happy with something like HoMM2 or a successor to Master of Magic, which would fit the tablet form factor and user experience perfectly.

...HoMM2...

I'm actually surprised I figured this one out (unless it's not Heroes of Might and Magic 2)... a lot of the younger people here probably wouldn't. Might be one of those titles to write all the way out and possibly send some interested parties on an internet quest for further information. :)

HoMM is not a dead franchise - 6 was released in 2012, though perhaps not with the same kind of cultural impact as the first 3 (or 4 depending on who you ask) games since the studio change.

I've played most of them, and the only one I still play is HoMM III (Complete). It's more enjoyable, somehow. Don't know why.

Though the world generation sometimes had... issues.

I actually prefer the slightly older version, without all of the expansion packs - I think they broke some of the balance of the game making those changes.

Modern smartphones just aren't really good gaming platforms. That's sad though, because all that computing power could support good games, but most of the mobile games are quite boring. Compare this to 2004-2006 period when Java games for dumbphones were popular - I remember playing a few really good ones. I think the key difference is that dumbphones had keys and were more like an actual controller. With touchscreens the situation is very different. I tried playing some NES games on an emulator, but the controls were awful. The "draw the keys on the screen" approach clearly doesn't work when it comes to games. Yes, there are special controllers that you can buy and use with your phone, but mobile game designers can't assume that everyone will have them, and they have to design their games with the touchscreen limitations in mind, which leads to games being not very interesting.

I don't know that it's worse—more different. Maybe there are particular genres of action games which are not possible, but games like cut-the-rope, angry birds, flight control, etc, wouldn't be possible with a console controller either.

The genre that really feels unexplored in my view is long-form adventure games—touch feels like a natural fit for a game whose structure is "go there, now there, observe, repeat". This is what Republique was supposed to be about—it's supposed to be excellent; perhaps if it is a commercial success, others will follow.

Well, for what its worth you'll find a number of adventure games for tablets - Monkey Island was redone for iOS, and there's some other good ones here:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/topgames/view/iphone_and_ipad

I bought Year Walk yesterday and so far it's engaging, though I've only given it about 20 minutes so far.

However, I weep for the loss of buttons. It's sad that my favorite Android devices was an HTC Touch Pro 2 (a Windows Mobile 6.5 device!) running a custom Android rom. The keyboard was to die for.

I think your analysis is spot on, although HoMM 2 (which your parent poster is talking about) would be perfectly playable on a tablet/iphone, since it's not fast paced and most interaction could be done by tapping.

I'd love to see HoMM 2, too.

There are a couple of genres that work really, really well with touchscreens. Unfortunately, they're not really in vogue right now. Turn-based strategy is one; Skulls of the Shogun is a good example, as is Frozen Synapse. Bullet hell shmups are, surprisingly, another. Check out Danmaku Unlimited 2: it's one of the few iOS-native games that compelled me to keep playing for more than an hour. http://doragongames.com/danmaku2/

Because I only have time time to play games on the comute to work, for the last year or so, I game almost exclusively on my nexus 7.

Finding a decent game is difficult and there are not as many, but I have found a few, mostly in 3-10$ range:

Total War Batles - nice simplified rts Anomaly Warzone Earth/Korea/2 - nice strategy, reverse towerdefense

Shadowrun Returns - direct port of pc-game, nice classic tactical rpg

Deus Ex - The Fall - as long as I play it as a point and click and forget that it is supposed to be a FPS, it is pretty decent :)

I am still searching for something aking to Homam, but so far not as lucky ... there is Kings Bounty, but it is F2P, and I need something without internet conection requrement. Then I tried several ports of Battle For Wesnoth, but it port has barely some optimization of the ui to be used on touch screen ...

This may just be a function of the blogger's particular interest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com