Wholly Schmidt!

Well, it’s Bomberman, and it’s on an iPhone (or iPod Touch), but I can’t really recommend it. It’s very no frills: no multiplayer, and boringly-conventional single player Bomberman. It’s still got the innate quality of simply being Bomberman–it’s no Bomberman Act Zero debacle–but there’s no compelling reason to have it on your iPhone.

Controls are equal parts cool and frustrating. The big bomb in the bottom right is what you tap to drop bombs, but you just touch and drag nearly anywhere else on the screen to indicate the direction to move. Slide your finger left, Bomberman moves left (not specifically toward the place you touch, just moving in the direction you slide). It’s smart not to limit you to a lot of buttons you have to tap, but it breaks down when you try to make slight movements and it misinterprets them.

It’s well produced for a iPhone 2.0 “launch title” so it stands out from the pack of sillier and simpler games, but I expect it will quickly be forgotten when more real games are released. If you need to try it for yourself, you can find it here (iTunes link).

Chipping away at the pile of unfinished games is actually yielding some results.

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is a lot of extremes. It’s probably the simplest game I’ve played in a long time. It’s probably the most charming. It’s one of the easiest. It’s probably one of the most accessible. It’s definitely the Legoiest. Its most unique quality is that it makes me wish I had kids to play it with. If I’m a father someday, I hope they’re still making games this awesome. There isn’t much on my shelf I could see myself sitting down and playing with a six year old.

Assassin’s Creed a lot of things too. The plot is convoluted nonsense, and the structure of the game is terrible. The introduction is a series of false starts before getting into the game proper, at which point it becomes one of the most repetitive titles you’ll play. It puts the burden of motivation almost entirely on the player; you have to find your own reason to continue playing. It was a technical joy though, and for me that was enough. Despite its failure in the big picture, it does enough masterfully that I really got back into it once I started playing in the last couple weeks. The three cities (Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus) are truly beautiful and make Assassin’s Creed one of the few games to give GTA4 a run for its money when it comes to a fully realized world to run around in. The acrobatics as you traverse the cities from rooftops to alleys would make Batman jealous, and the lovely animation carries over into what would otherwise be fairly routine combat. Even at the end of the game, which is nothing but combat, I was still occasionally surprised by new counter-attacks and brutal combos unleashed when I thought I’d seen everything the swordplay had to offer. It gives me a lot of hope for a sequel.