Minesweeper
Anybody that had access to a windows computer before windows XP came out has probably played this before. Basically its the exact same game that used to ship on all computers, its a classic game and great fun. I have to admit that I am USELESS at minesweeper, but its still great fun to play. There are several options to increase or decrease the difficulty so it should be good for any skill level. As a bonus, even on an iPhone 3g the app is quick loading, so on newer models there should be little delay which is great to see on any iPhone application. Also, it costs nothing so there is little to lose by giving this app a go.
Live Poker 7K
If you enjoy playing poker, this app is pretty good considering that it is free. It allows you to play against real people over an internet connection which is always much more fun than playing against a computerised opponent on a game of this type. A drawback would be that as you have to wait for each player to play their turn, you can easily spend a long period of time playing this game without realising it but I guess an advantage is that you aren't losing real money at the same time. Considering the quality of the app, I am actually surprised that it is free, the graphics are better than the average app of this type and it also has push notifications, and a leaderboard to compare you to your friends on Facebook. There is also a built in chat feature which you may enjoy if you are the kind of person that enjoys talking to random people.
Free app a day.com
freeappaday.com is a website that informs visitors about apps that aren't normally free that have been put on promotion for a period of time so the user can download them for no cost. The first thing I noticed about this app was that the graphics are shockingly bad, even on a non-retina display iPhone 3g, so on an iPhone 4 they must be truly horrendous. Also, a lot of the promoted apps are promoted for a very good reason, they aren't very good and will hold your interest for only a short period of time and I imagine most of the apps presented will spend only a short period of time on a users device before they are deleted. It would make little sense if you had to pay for this application and as expected it is free.
Archetype
Archetype is billed as being the first truly decent iPhone FPS style game. This is an interesting market for the iPhone as most of the popular games on the iphone presently are unique to the iPhone and not really aimed at "hardcore" gamers. Hopefully with the release of this app, this will change. As a FANTASTIC feature, archetype is playable online in a similar manner to console first person shooters such as HALO. The best thing about this application is that it shows great potential for the future of iPhone gaming, however at the moment there are several flaws that will hopefully get updated in a future iteration of this app. In my opinion at the moment, the controls for this game could be greatly improved. Basically the game uses two "joysticks" on the screen that the player uses to control their character in the normal FPS manner. I think that these controls are not sensitive enough and they rely on the player moving their thumbs a large distance across the screen before their input is registered. However, this should be relatively easy to correct in a future version update.
I also noted the speedy performance of the application. Considering the fairly good graphics for the platform and the fact that the game is played online the loading times are extremely brief, even on the older ios hardware. To be picky, I would note that the in game sounds are relatively poor however.
Archetype is available for £1.79 in the app store and I would recommend it to anyone that plays console games of this genre to highlight the fact that this type of game is very playable on the iPhone's hardware. It will be made even better in the future when apple adds the "game centre" into their firmware as players will easily be able to compare high scores in a similar manner to xbox live.
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