[Every week, Gamasutra sums up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor Matt Burris and guest editor Danny Cowan.]
This week's notable items in the iPhone gaming space, as covered by FingerGaming, include the debut of Apex Designs'
GTA-like
Payback, the release of
Fantastic Contraption, and a review for EA's iPhone port of
SimCity.
Here are the top stories over the last 7 days:
-
Politically Charged Pay2Play Submitted to App Store
"Mere weeks after the controversy that followed the rejected
Prohibition 2: The Dope Wars (and its sugary-on-the-outside sequel
Prohibition 3) comes
Pay2Play, a
Dope Wars-styled simulation title that parodies the recent scandal involving former Illinois governor and accused Senate seat auctioneer Rod Blagojevich."
-
Payback Hits App Store
"
Payback includes nearly all of the features and details seen in
Grand Theft Auto's early days, and comes complete with a similar overhead viewpoint. Players will carjack dozens of different vehicles and travel through 11 different cities to complete missions and cause a good deal of general mayhem."
-
Review: SimCity
"The problem with
SimCity is that while it's admirable that they've crammed
SimCity 3000 onto the iPod Touch/iPhone, the already tiny, isometric graphics aren't especially suited for such a small screen, and as a result it will be rare, if ever, that you manage to select the area on screen that you wanted to first time."
-
Reo Nagumo Returns to Rhythm Gaming with Aero Series
"Seeing as how
Beatmania basically invented the kind of rhythm-based gameplay seen today in games like
Guitar Hero and
Rock Band, Nagumo's contributions to the genre are not insignificant."
-
Super Monkey Ball Gets Free Lite Version
"Today, Sega released
Super Monkey Ball Lite, a free demo version of their flagship iPhone title that includes three levels from the full game, along with a tutorial."
-
inXile Releases Fantastic Contraption
"A physics-based puzzler in the vein of
The Incredible Machine, Fantastic Contraption challenges players to build motorized vehicles from simple parts in order to solve each of the game's 21 levels."
