Windows Phone 7 Games Catch-All

I just bought EvilHomers HD7 what games should I be picking up (besides those mentioned)?

Burn the Rope is now live in the marketplace. Deal of the week is Full House Poker. Haven't played burn the rope but I have FHP and I quite enjoy it. At the higher levels the AI is pretty good. At the lower levels it can be pretty stupid. Graphics and sound are good and if you drop out of a hand you can fast forward. Normally $2.99 on sale for $1.99.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Deal of the week is Full House Poker. Haven't played burn the rope but I have FHP and I quite enjoy it. At the higher levels the AI is pretty good. At the lower levels it can be pretty stupid. Graphics and sound are good and if you drop out of a hand you can fast forward. Normally $2.99 on sale for $1.99.

As someone that has played a ton of live and online poker, read several books (Dan Harrington is God), I have to say that I was totally surprised by how good FHP is got both XBL and on the phone. The main weakness some opponents have is that they are a little to easy to bully. But they seem to play a solid game for the most part, including the ability to check raise, bluff when it makes sense, and not stick around with poor hands.

Computer poker is always going to be kind of a pushover for humans, but I find the game really fun, and it will be nice challenge for casual poker players.

Yesterday we reported that Full House Poker is the Xbox Live Deal of the Week. It still is, but we’ve learned something unusual. Something magical… There are four Xbox Live games on sale this week instead of one. Madness! Joining Full House Poker (on sale for $1.99) are Puzzle Quest 2, Brain Challenge, and Gamechest: Logic Games.

- WPCentral

Orbital and Kinectimals are now live in the marketplace. The deal of the week is Beards and Beaks.

I bought B&B a while ago and was really turned off by the ease that you could do microtransactions. Combine the $1 per transaction, the ease with which you can make them, and the fact that a 6 and 8 year old play on my phone I thought it was a recipe for a $30 charge to my credit card. The game was actually fun and if you could lock the transactions I'd have kept it. Since they didn't I removed it. I really think the mushrooms you use in this game are a complete cash grab and so I uninstalled and gave it a poor review.

I had to go to the webpage to find Kinectimals. I bought Kinectimals and played about 2 minutes of it (more a game for the kids). Mostly, I bought it to see if my son would enjoy Kinectimals on the 360.

Orbital is a "breakout" game where you shoot orbs. The orbs all have numbers and you have to hit them that many times to destroy them. Each time you shoot your missile, though, another orb pops up. I played about 10 minutes of it and I enjoyed it. Each game is very short. The game ends when you fire a shot and it bounces back at you and hits the bottom. I suppose you could get quite good at it but my high score is 11. Orbital looks great and the audio is excellent as well. The trial version lets you play full games (from what I can tell) and seems to give a good sense of what the game is about. I purchased the game despite feeling that the trial would be enough. The audio is really top notch with headphones.

Beards & Beaks is $1.99 and the other two are $2.99. In my limited play I found them all to be enjoyable but Orbital is the one that grabbed me the most.

Kinectimals is really cute. That's all.

There are several games on sale this week.
Assassins Creed, Sonic the Hedgehog, Full House Poker, and Enigmo.
FHP is probably the best game of those.

Survivalcraft was also just released. It's a minecraft clone. I'm not into minecraft but it looks decent.

Square Off is just $.99 this week. It's a pretty fun game and is similar to Rocket Riot.

I really hoped that with Nokia putting out a few new WP7 models that gaming would liven up a bit on the platform but it really hasn't yet. I assume it is just a matter of market share - WP7 doesn't have enough to make it worthwhile for developers to put their stuff out on it. Man I wish that would change since it is such a nice device.

I have more games than I can play but I don't think they are the type of game you play. WP7 is certainly not at iOS levels.

You could always try the new game gear emulator.

Also, Portals 2d is free until the 7th. I just picked it up and it's quite fun so far. The graphics are pretty ho-hum but the gameplay is fun.

EA is starting to bring games to WP7 as well. Need For Speed was just released and several others are coming (too bad many will be Nokia exclusives for a period of time).

I believe it is improving. There are now over 100 Xbox Live games and thousands of non-live games out there. I tend to stick more with the XBL games than non-live versions.

Have you tried The Harvest, yet? It's a great game with a lot of RPG elements. You also might look here for other RPG games.

Chickens can't fly just came out this week. I am having some fun with it. Not sure if the difficulty will be an issue later. It ramped up from easy to kinda hard pretty quick but it has been fun so far.

This week's Deal of the week is Orbital. It's a solid game good for a few minutes at a time. Levels tend to be pretty short.

Splinter Cell is also now live in the marketplace. Reviews are mixed on it.

More exciting to me, though, are the games coming out in March. They include Carcasonne, Pinball FX 2, Geo Defense Swarm, Shoot1Up, and Wordament, and Gerbil Physics. Several are XBox Live games that aren't out on iOS or Android.

Good to see some exclusives coming to the platform. Are any of those Xbox Live games cross-compatible with their Arcade versions, like Carcassone? (Ha! Keep dreaming.)

Based on the demo, I wouldn't bother with Splinter Cell. It's the usual wonky attempt to recreate a console game's feature set with a touchscreen.

And unfortunately, Chickens Can't Fly didn't even get a second look from me. It's a downloadable game with birds in the title with a name that suggests finding a way to make chickens fly (like a catapult?), so I assumed it was another Angry Birds clone.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

This week's Deal of the week is Orbital. It's a solid game good for a few minutes at a time. Levels tend to be pretty short.

Splinter Cell is also now live in the marketplace. Reviews are mixed on it.

More exciting to me, though, are the games coming out in March. They include Carcasonne, Pinball FX 2, Geo Defense Swarm, Shoot1Up, and Wordament, and Gerbil Physics. Several are XBox Live games that aren't out on iOS or Android.

Interesting!

I've been playing the free version of Wordament, and it's compelling (take a drink!). Will defo pick up the XBL-ified version, especially if it's also free.

I'm kind of done with Carcassone, and the idea of pinball on a teeny-tiny screen doesn't appeal. Interested in checking out Geodefense and Shoot1up.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

And unfortunately, Chickens Can't Fly didn't even get a second look from me. It's a downloadable game with birds in the title with a name that suggests finding a way to make chickens fly (like a catapult?), so I assumed it was another Angry Birds clone.

CCF isn't anything like Angry Birds. I don't get all the hoopla with AB and really don't care to play it after the first few levels. CCF is about chickens falling...with style. I purchased the full game and have enjoyed it. I would say it's more like doodle jump in reverse where you have to avoid platforms (buzz saws, barbs, cacti, etc) and grab power-ups to help you all while trying to grab as much corn as you can. I've never actually seen any game quite like it. You can flap your wings to slow down. You can use the power-ups at any time (you get about 5) and you tilt the screen to steer. The graphics are nice and are done in a cartoon style which fits the game. I quite like it overall.

This week's deal of the week is Mini Squadron. It's got about 3.5 stars in the marketplace. WPCentral has a review of it but it's a bit old. I'm not overly fond of high difficulty in phone games (or any for that matter) so I'm going to try the demo first.

Also this week we see the release of Civilization: Revolution for XBL. It's currently sitting at 4.5 stars on the marketplace and is only $2.99 (sams as on iPhone). I purchased the game and will give it a try today.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Also this week we see the release of Civilization: Revolution for XBL. It's currently sitting at 4.5 stars on the marketplace and is only $2.99 (sams as on iPhone). I purchased the game and will give it a try today.

I've read reports that it's a terrible port of the iOS version (which apparently was also quite bad), so I'd love to hear some feedback from yourself as I trust this forum much more than the general internet. Of course, I should also just download the trial...

Oscar wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

Also this week we see the release of Civilization: Revolution for XBL. It's currently sitting at 4.5 stars on the marketplace and is only $2.99 (sams as on iPhone). I purchased the game and will give it a try today.

I've read reports that it's a terrible port of the iOS version (which apparently was also quite bad), so I'd love to hear some feedback from yourself as I trust this forum much more than the general internet. Of course, I should also just download the trial... ;)

I've played it for about an hour so far. It's clunky, but it seems functional. The AI are all giant douchebags, but that's Civ, right?

I played Civ Rev for a few hours yesterday. The graphics are okay. The movement can be a bit kludgy if you have to move further than you can see. Pinching to zoom in/out helps but the movement is still a bit touchy. That was the only real issue I had. Otherwise, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Load times were not stellar but I didn't mind them when continuing a game. It certainly won't convert any non-fans to the genre but if you liked iOS civ I think you'll like this version. I don't see it as being significantly different than the iOS version.

Sid Meiers' Pirates has been released. From the post on WPCentral, "Thankfully this version’s visuals are quite clean and attractive, with no aliasing problems to speak of. It looks and plays like a faithful port of the 2004 Xbox version."

No reviews on it, yet. I have Pirates on the iPad but have actually never played it.

Also of note, there was a sale on Good Friday with several games for 99 cents.

Angry Birds
Burn the Rope
De Blob
Doodle God
IonBallEX
Max and the Magic Marker
Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp

Are they finally having real sales on games now? One thing that always bothered me about Microsoft and WP7 is they considered 4.99 a sale and not 99 cents like all other phone platforms.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Sid Meiers' Pirates has been released. From the post on WPCentral, "Thankfully this version’s visuals are quite clean and attractive, with no aliasing problems to speak of. It looks and plays like a faithful port of the 2004 Xbox version."

No reviews on it, yet. I have Pirates on the iPad but have actually never played it.

I actually picked that up after checking a review real quick to make sure it wasn't a broken game. I played 15 minutes of it or so, and it is a perfectly fine and functional port. I don't like mobile games, but I figured I'd pick up a couple just to have something on this new phone of mine. How could I resist buying "Pirates!"?

Wordament sure is good but damn do I suck at that game. It's really hard for me to break into the upper half. My brain doesn't work this way. It's still fun and rewarding when you find a long word. So far, that and Pirates! are the only games I've downloaded.

This weeks game of the week is The Harvest. This is one of my favorite WP7 games and is exclusive to WP7 (part of the reason I got a WP7 phone was to play The Harvest). It is an action rpg set in the future. Rather than playing a barbarian/sorceror you have a play have a mechanized suit you wear. You can level up skills. The story isn't great but the game is a lot of fun.

Final Fantasy is finally out for WP7. Not my thing but seems to be getting good reviews. I installed it and it seems like it could have been a better port. Seems to be running in an emulator and not an actual port. Back button doesn't take you out of menus or even work. Sure, I guess it's Final Fantasy but if you're not already a fan I think you can skip it. I am removing it and if I want an RPG fix I'll replay The Harvest. If you're a Final Fantasy fan, though, it's probably good for nostalgia.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Final Fantasy is finally out for WP7. Not my thing but seems to be getting good reviews. I installed it and it seems like it could have been a better port. Seems to be running in an emulator and not an actual port. Back button doesn't take you out of menus or even work. Sure, I guess it's Final Fantasy but if you're not already a fan I think you can skip it. I am removing it and if I want an RPG fix I'll replay The Harvest. If you're a Final Fantasy fan, though, it's probably good for nostalgia.

When I press the back button I get a do you want to quite prompt.

Good to see there are some quality WP games. I had a Nokia Lumia 900 and liked it, but returned it within my 30 days when I found out it would not get a WP 8 upgrade. It is going to be a tough decision this fall iPhone 5 versus new Windows phones. My decision will of course be 70% based on gaming potential.

I think it terms of volume, both iOS and Android are gong to beat WP8. But there are more than enough games available for my needs. But I don't view my smartphone, whether it's my wife's iPhone or my Quantum to be gaming devices. I just need to have a few games to keep me occupied when the need arises.

Between Wordament, Full house Poker (way better than a portable poker game has any right to be), PvZ, and Fable Pub Games, I'm good.

I will say that my wife is still stealing my phone over her iPhone every night to play a game (either Wordament or Square Attack usually) over her iPhone.

I'm in the same boat as you, though. Come January, when my contract is up, I will be getting a WP8 phone or an iPhone. I'd say I am 90% sure it will be a new WP8 phone, though. For whatever reason, I'm enjoying Microsoft's walled garden quite a bit. And I say that as a iMac, Macbook, and iPad owner that has no complaints about the Apple ecosystem at all.

In fact, I'm pretty close to having to upgrade from my 2006 iMac, and I'm really considering jumping full bore back into Windows when they release Windows 8. I'll add a Mac Mini at some point, and still upgrade my Macbook with a Macbook Pro. But I think Microsoft might have won me over for the desktop.

I might even become a PC gamer again! Well, I'll buy some game and never play them, anyway.

Numontu wrote:

Good to see there are some quality WP games. I had a Nokia Lumia 900 and liked it, but returned it within my 30 days when I found out it would not get a WP 8 upgrade. It is going to be a tough decision this fall iPhone 5 versus new Windows phones. My decision will of course be 70% based on gaming potential.

Same here. Unfortunately I don't see myself waiting for a WP8 phone. As soon as possible we are switching from our current provider. We've decided to wait until the end of september. If there aren't some WP8 phones around it will probably be an easy decision. That's too bad because I like WP better than iOS or Android but I'm not waiting any longer than I have to to get off of iWireless due to their terrible, terrible data network.

Lately I've been playing Mush, a really cute, really simple platformer where you control your character by changing her emotions. Happy makes her float, sad makes her sink, etc. It's nothing difficult or complicated, but the art style is really neat. Might be a good one for relaxing with or if you've got kids who play games on your phone.

I've also been playing DoDonPachi Maximum, a SHMUP from Cave. It's nicely tuned with good, responsive controls. It's the first SHMUP I've enjoyed playing with a touch interface. It is, of course, remarkably difficult, but that's just Cave for you.