Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Harry Slater'
Why Pokemon should come to mobile sooner rather than later
We’ve seen it with Square Enix releasing its back catalogue of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, we’ve seen it with shoddy ports of the first two Tomb Raider games, and now Nintendo is actively embracing mobile, I think it’s going to happen. What’s going to happen you say? Well I think we’re going to see the Pokemon games getting official ports onto iOS and Android. There’s almost literally no reason why this shouldn’t happen, and plenty of reasons why it should. And so I’ve made a list of the reasons why it should. You know, what with Sun and Moon being out now and that sounding like a lovely SEO trap for people to stumble upon. Eh here…
The Tuesday Best of - Auto runners
In this week’s Tuesday Best Of, I thought we’d have a look at the best runners on mobile. I don’t know why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. The endless and auto runner genre is often full of really terrible games, but these ones aren’t terrible. In fact they’re really good. Which is why they’ve made it onto this list. Makes sense if you stop and think about it. All of these games are well worth a play, so whether you’ve never picked them up before or you’re a veteran, why not spend some of Tuesday poking your screen while these games are happening on the other side of it. Boson X A wonderful chase through a particle collider,…
The Monday Musing - Why icons matter
Look at it this way - there’s an awful lot of psychology going on on the App Store. It’s basically a shop, and shops are designed in such a way to make you buy as many things as possible. Although to extend that a little further, the App Store is more like a mall. It’s given its millions of tiny shops the chance to show off their wares, and it’s up to the individual proprietors of those shops to try and hawk their goods as effectively as possible. And to do that they need to showcase what they’ve got in as quick and precise a way as possible. Which is where the icon comes in. It’s usually the first thing you see when you’re browsing for a new game,…
4 iPad and iPhone games to warm you up this winter
Winter is closing in. It’s cold, it’s miserable, and you’ve probably started digging around in your drawers to find that scarf you so haphazardly stowed when spring rolled around. Unless you’re in the Southern hemisphere, in which case it’s probably quite hot. But I’m not in the Southern hemisphere, I’m in the Northern hemisphere, so we’re going to roll with what I can see out of the window. And what I can see out of the window is endless miles of grey misery. God I love winter. Anyway, here are some of the best chilly games to really get you in the mood for going outside and trying to avoid hypothermia. Alto’s Adventure A wonderful…
The Friday Rant - Show a little love for the arcade games
This week’s Friday rant isn’t a negative rant. Rants don’t have to be negative. This is a positive rant - it’s me stood on my big silly soapbox shouting about one of the things we should cherish about mobile gaming. And that thing is the resurgence of the arcade game. I grew up in arcades, crunching over dirty carpets to get my hands on some obscure helicopter shooter based on an even more obscure American TV show (Airwolf. Check it out). Which is why I’m always going to have a soft spot in my chest for the sort of experience that Crossy Road is peddling. AND YES I GET THAT IT’S JUST FROGGER. Good lord you have to let that one go. Anyway, what was I s…
The 5 best iPad and iPhone games this week - 18th November
Another week has passed us by, like so much time, moving in one direction, and then measured by our human hands into fathomable chunks. Time. Time. Tiiiime. Wow. So yeah it’s time to have a look at what I think are the best games that came out on iOS this week. You might disagree, but that means I disagree with you too. In the end, who’s the right one? That’d be me, because I can get into the CMS of the website and delete your comments. Bosh. Here’s a list. See you next week kittens. Go Rally A rally game. Oh wow, that’s novel. Actually it’s got some pretty cool ideas in it, including a track creation tool that pretty much lets you draw your own dirt…
4 mobile stealth games that are just as good as Dishonored 2
It’s a pretty sneaky week on consoles, what with Dishonored 2 and Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection stealthily swooping their way onto those big black boxes we all have stuck under out TVs. But it’s not just consoles that do stealth gaming well. Oh me oh my no. There’s plenty to choose from on mobile as well. If only someone was content savvy enough to create a list of them… Oh. Wait. I am. So here’s a list of some of the best stealth games that money can buy on mobile. You might agree. You might disagree. You might not care. Whichever path you choose though, make sure you’re loud and vociferous about it in the comments. Republique Okay so…
The Thursday Find - Neon Chrome
Oh hi there, and welcome to The Thursday Find. In this potentially regular feature we’re going to highlight a new game that’s just hit the App Store that might have passed you by. Why are we doing this? Well it’s part of our ongoing effort to make sure we’re separating the wheat from the chaff - basically we want to ensure that you know about the best games, so you can play them and be happy. So let’s just get on with it shall we? I mean I’ve set everything up nicely, it would seem annoying if I filled a paragraph with nothing just because I like having three paragraphs at the start of an AppSpy feature. Neon Chrome This week’s Thursday find is n…
The Wednesday Wonder - That time I was real good at Snake
Because I’m a sucker for alliteration, please give a standing ovation to the Wednesday Wonder. In this potentially regular feature, I’m going to take a look at one of the modern wonders of the smartphone gaming world. It might be a game, it might be a developer, it might even just be a thing that happened to me once. That’s the wonder of the Wednesday Wonder. All you know for sure is it’s going to be wonderful. Join me next week maybe for another look through the mobile gaming archive. But for now, here’s the first entry in the series. It’s an exciting one, I’m sure you’ll agree. Right? RIGHT!?! That time I was the king of Snake For this We…
5 other bits of the Harry Potter universe that should be made into mobile games
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has a mobile tie-in game. It’s coming out tomorrow. And it’s a hidden object adventure. I mean, that hardly fills my wizarding heart with joy. But it did set my mind a-wriggling about what sort of games Harry Potter and its spin-off series should be getting. And once my mind gets a-wriggling there’s really nothing anyone can do to stop it. So here is the product of my mind wriggle. It’s a list of bits of the Potter universe that I think would make excellent mobile games. Where to Find Them Okay so we’re getting a game based on the first half of the new film’s name, but why can’t we get one based on the se…
The Tuesday Best Of - Super tough platformers
Welcome to the first of possibly many Tuesday Best Ofs. In this potentially ongoing feature I’m going to look at slightly obscure genres and give you three recommendations that I think you need to try out. This week we’re looking at super tough platformers. I’m not talking nice and easy platformers. I’m talking SUPER TOUGH. The sort of platformers that make you wish platformers had never been invented. Hopefully there’ll be something you haven’t played in my three picks. And if you’ve got things you’d like to suggest yourself, feel free to whack them in the comments below. Because sharing is caring, and here at AppSpy we definitely care. Lea…
What do we know for sure about Super Mario Run after Nintendo's announcement?
I think it’s fair to say that the biggest mobile release of what’s left of this year is going to be Super Mario Run. In fact it might be the biggest release of the year full stop. Sorry Pokemon GO, I’m sure you were real big but quite frankly, who cares? And today Nintendo has hit us with some new information about what we can expect from Mario’s first outing on mobile. To be honest, it’s pretty exciting just typing that. Anyway, without further ado, here’s a break down of what we now know to be cold hard facts about the auto-running event of the century. Possibly even the millennium. Maybe even ever. Yeah, that’s right. Ever. When it’s comi…
4 things PES 2017 needs to do to win the mobile footballing crown
PES 2017 is coming to mobile. We don’t know when, we don’t know how (magic?) but it is. And that brings one of the fiercest gaming rivalries onto handheld. Which is pretty exciting, if you stop and think about it. And I did stop and think about it. I stopped and thinked about it for a good long while. And from that thinking I created this piece of astounding writing. Astounding I tell you! What does PES need to do to ensure that when you think of mobile footballing games its is the first one that springs to mind? Well, it could do these things, and that might be a good start. Actually let us play football FIFA Mobile is really only half of a football game. You only get a ch…
The Monday Musing - Nintendo Switch and the future of mobile games
Mobile gaming in its current form has been around for a while now. Touchscreen play has become the norm for a generation of players, and midcore strategy titles constantly top the charts. But change is the nature of everything. We either stagnate or we move on. So where is mobile gaming likely to go next? Well if you listen to Nintendo then mobile gaming is going to start to blur into the console ecosystem. At least that’s what the big N wants to happen with its recently announced Switch console. It’s certainly an interesting take on a new style of mobile play. A gadget that you can take out with you and continue the same gaming experience whether you’re on a bus or plug…
Friday rant - Where have all the good games gone?
Look I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I just wrote a list of what I think are the five best games that came out on iOS this week. They’re good games, don’t get me wrong, but here’s the kicker - almost all of them came out elsewhere before they landed on mobile. F1 2016 isn’t a direct port, but it’s a squishing down of the console experience to fit on mobile. Rome: Total War, Steamworld Heist and RunGunJumpGun have all had other homes before they were welcomed into the mobile fold. That leaves us with Titan Brawl. Which is fine. Titan Brawl is a fine game and I won’t hear too many bad things said about it. What I will hear bad things said…
