Not just a novelty anymore

I'm going to gush about my iphone a little. So if you don't care about the iphone, just move on. I find myself playing a lot more games on it. At first, it just seemed like a novelty. You've got this neat phone with all sorts of neat apps, and it plays games... sort of. A lot of them were just ported from existing flash games. There is scarcely a bigger slap in the face than buying a game, and seeing that you could have played it online for free. Unless the format brings something new with the capabilities of the iphone, it ends up a bit of a waste.

Now, though? Now there are a multitude of really interesting games. Things designed specifically for the iphone. The multitouch screen and accelerometer have really been taken advanage of by developers. A lot of them place controls like two analog sticks on the screen. It actually works amazingly well. Driving and flying games often use the accelerometer. And goddammit Apple, you make it so easy to blow money. Oh what's that Apple? You'll save my credit card info and allow me to just click a button and buy all these fun $2 apps? Neat! How much could I blow on $2 apps?

Turns out a lot.

But the some of these games have really grabbed me. I just spent an hour playing a game called "The Void". It's a totally passable space shooter that uses the accelerometer for manuvering. It feel like using a handheld console... oh and did you know the iphone is a phone too? Yeah, I know... it's easy to forget sometimes (especially those times that you're madly tilting it and tapping at the screen to kill something or another). I hearby decree that the iphone is a gmae console. No, I don't have the authority to decree things like that, but it's true.