We'll always have Tiny Wings.
I had an 80GB iPod Classic before it was considered “classic.” I won it raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation back in, like, 2007. It is large, heavy, and has a click wheel. Over the years, dust got under the screen and I was not confident enough to pry the cover open and clean it off. It seemed like I might irreparably break it. I had movies on there, a few photographs, lots of music, and I never even cracked 20 gigs. But as these products are wont to do, my iPod eventually started breaking down. It wouldn’t respond to the click wheel, would shut itself off for no reason OR would refuse to shut off, and most importantly, the battery life became absolutely terrible. At some point, I had enough. I started shopping around for my next iPod but was devastated to learn the iPod Classic didn’t come in anything cheaper than like $250. And modern iPod touches were similarly expensive. What to do? Well, as luck would have it, fellow staffer Grant Buell was selling off his iPod Touch in anticipation of getting an iPhone. I bought it for a song and quickly became addicted to it.
It has a Twitter app, you know, and boy do I love Twitter (@zmiller1902). I can check my email accounts without having to turn on my computer. I can buy songs right from the device by tapping an icon. I can download the latest Frozen North Dinnercast—or NWR Connectivity—and listen to it right away! Clearly, I can never go back. But you know what really blew my mind? Oh, I hear you all groaning: iOS games.
iOS games held no special appeal for me before I acquired my new device. They amounted to a bunch of podcast discussions I generally fast-forwarded through. “Oh great, people are still talking about Infinity Blade.” But I dipped my toes in that vast new oceanic frontier with a little game called Tiny Wings, and it was all over.
If you haven’t played it, Tiny Wings is an incredibly simple game where a small, flightless bird attempts to fly as far as he can before nightfall. Because of the bird’s tiny wings, he cannot actually fly, so he slides down slopes to gain momentum and ramps up the next hill. When you touch the screen, the bird tucks and drops down, gaining momentum. The series of slopes he navigates are increasingly close together, steep, or otherwise. You’re basically trying to take advantage of parabolas and a slingshot effect. There are goals to attain and achievements to unlock. There’s a leaderboard. The music is great, the art is charming, and each game lasts about three minutes.
Stunted, underdeveloped wings.Tiny Wings is insanely addictive. To a point.
Eventually I hit a wall where I wasn’t hitting any goals or unlocking achievements, and I was getting about as far in three minutes as I was capable of getting. I pretty much stopped entirely. There was a big update recently that supposedly added content and new modes but I haven’t bothered checking it out.
During my addiction to Tiny Wings, I discovered a lot of free (or temporarily free) games and games that were on some kind of hyper-sale. I downloaded a ton: Jetpack Joyride, Where’s My Water, Dead Space iOS, MinoMonsters, Trees of Doom, Robot Unicorn Attack, Monsters Ate My Condo, etc. I discovered certain games were not compatible with my iPod Touch (it’s whatever version was the last to not have a camera—I know, it’s fossilized). I only played one other game as much—if not more—than Tiny Wings, and that’s Jetpack Joyride. This game had it all. Action, achievements, missions, power-ups, variety, a killer soundtrack, a prize roulette, a mechanical dragon, and other things that spoke directly to me. You can “prestige” in Jetpack Joyride, and I did so several times. Just when my interest was starting to trail off, they released a patch that added new items that completely changed up the gameplay, and I was right back on the wagon. This lasted for a few more weeks, but, like with Tiny Wings, I just kind of stopped.
Dead Space iOS is awesome, and if you have an iPad, you should buy it. If you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, the screen is WAY too small to be practical, and I’m not sure how much I enjoy a touch-controlled Dead Space game. I would like EA to port this to the 3DS or Vita with traditional, Dead Space-like controls because it is, if nothing else, an incredibly impressive on a technological level. With headphones, it’s absolutely engrossing. But again, you need a bigger screen. Dead Space iOS also caused my iPod Touch’s battery to drain like water spraying from a hose.
In most other situations, you would be running AWAY from the trial of blood.The battery issue is actually one of the major reasons I’ve just stopped playing games on my iPod Touch. Granted, it’s an old device, but I really don’t understand why the battery life is so downright horrifying on this thing when my DSi, which is like six years old, still has an AMAZING battery life. I played the shit out of that thing and there is seemingly no battery backlash. I can say the same for my GBA SP. Yeah, I clearly need to upgrade my device and get a more modern iPod Touch, but seriously, the battery life shouldn’t be this bad after like three years.
But the other problem with these iOS games is that they’re all basically WarioWare: Touched! games. You only have one control input: tap the screen. Okay, a few use the gyroscope, but they’re a small minority by comparison. Games that use a virtual D-pad and buttons can die in a fire. The most reliable way to control these games is to touch the screen, and there’s just not a lot you can do with that. You could never play something like Super Mario 3D Land on an iOS device, and that’s the kind of game I want. I used to carry my iPod Touch around with me and play Jetpack Joyride on elevators or in the bathroom, but now I just carry around my 3DS. It’s got like 60 games on it (not even kidding), the battery life is great by comparison, the games are more complicated, and I don’t have to deal with fingerprint smudges on the screen.
YES, I’m one of those guys who hate fingerprint smudges. I keep a microfiber cloth right next to all my handhelds and I judiciously wipe them every day. Do I have OCD? It’s possible. It’s also possible I just don’t like fingerprint smudges. The DSi was amazing for a lot of reasons, but the best to my mind was its matte finish.
Now, let’s pretend for a minute that some of these iOS games get ported to 3DS or even Vita. Would I re-buy Tiny Wings for a device with better battery life (and, frankly, a better screen)? I’d certainly consider it, but the vast majority of my iOS games will never be touched again. Now, I would spend money on that Dead Space iOS game with actual button controls, so I hope EA makes that happen someday. My brief stint with iOS games taught me to love my portable gaming devices more than I already did, so thanks for that, Apple.
DISCLAIMER: I can’t guarantee that, should I ever get an iPad specifically for reading paleontology PDFs (it’s the only way I’ll catch up), I won’t re-download some of these games to play them on a big screen in HD. But that’s a rant for another day.
