The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘iOS’


The anti-social gamer 6

Posted on June 17, 2013 by

Hey, videogame developers! Fuck the fucking fuck off with this fucking cuntery:

despicable1

Thanks so much.

Read the rest of this entry →

I hate what videogaming has become 9

Posted on October 14, 2012 by

"Ooh, I fancy a game of Bombshells: Hell's Belles on my iPad today."

Read the rest of this entry →

Some people are on the pitch 58

Posted on September 05, 2012 by

As regular readers will know, we've always been keen admirers of Bruce Everiss's almost-unparallelled videogames-industry knowledge and expertise. So we've been thrilled to recently see him storming back to the cutting-edge as chief of marketing for David Darling's new company Kwalee, which has hit on the genius idea of making it big in the ultra-competitive App Store market by employing a vast team of staff to come up with two-player-only knockoffs of ancient board games.

The well-documented problem with the App Store, of course, is visibility. To have a chance of getting your game noticed you need it to get lots of great reviews, and when your games are extremely mediocre and competing against hundreds and hundreds of existing clones of the same thing which DO offer single-player play as well as online, the chances of that happening are slim.

Unless you cut out the middleman and write the reviews yourself, of course.

Read the rest of this entry →

How to lose $210m in two seconds 19

Posted on March 31, 2012 by

If your fingers exert even the slightest amount of pressure on the pulse of the mobile-gaming zeitgeist, the image below is going to set your deja-vu-sense a-tingling.

If there's one thing you can't accuse App Store developers of, it's being slow to rip off a success story. In this case, the success story in question is the astonishing overnight smash-hit Draw Something, which exploded into the news so dramatically that notorious idea-pirates Zynga (the same company who shamelessly cloned Tiny Tower) actually opted to pay a rumoured $210m for the company who made it rather than just banging out their own hasty barefaced knock-off like they usually would.

The game in our picture is functionally all but identical to Draw Something, except with more features. You get extra drawing tools and lots more colours to play with, and there are extra game modes on top of the straightforward turn-based picture exchange of OMGPOP's No.1 phenomenon. (Which in fact barely qualifies as a "game" at all, but that's another feature entirely.) The funny thing, though, is that it ISN'T a knock-off.

It's a game that came out two months BEFORE Draw Something, is basically exactly the same but superior to it in almost every way, yet has conspicuously failed to earn so much money that its bewildered creators can do little but giggle all day at their insane good fortune. Why? Well, of course we can't say for absolute certain. But we'd be happy to wager a pretty substantial amount of money on the fact that some complete dogturd-brained demi-wit decided to lumber it with the name Charadium II.

Read the rest of this entry →

The voice of the people 8

Posted on March 22, 2012 by

We've written before about the democratisation of criticism, and how it's all but obliterated genuine videogames journalism. Here's what the phenomenon has brought us, in the shape of some reviews of Angry Birds Space, which was released today.

Click to enlarge if you can't read them. (NB Unlike Amazon, you do actually have to buy/download a game on iTunes before you can review it.)

Read the rest of this entry →

The mack daddy of metagaming 23

Posted on February 25, 2012 by

Alert WoSland viewers won't need telling that there's nothing this blog enjoys more than a hearty slice of metagaming, and there can be little rational disputing that the modern-day maestro of the form is cranky old code-grump Jeff Minter. The ruminant-loving curmudgeon has just released another retro-flavoured reference-rammed remake onto the App Store, and it's his best work yet.

iOS Gridrunner is the latest in a long line of remakes of Minter's veteran Centipede derivative, and it's a brilliant interpretation. A tiny (12MB) universal app offering both iPhone/iTouch and iPad versions for a single 69p payment, it's got the VIC-20 and C64 games thrown in as bonus freebies and it also supports the iCade. Frankly you'd have to be some manner of total spoon-faced klutz to pass it by.

It's an all-action blast, and while we wouldn't say the MOST fun you can have with it is spotting all the bits he's nicked from classic 80s coin-ops, it's certainly an entertaining diversion. We're bound to have missed loads, but below are all the ones we've spotted so far. See if you can find any that slipped our notice and we'll make a definitive list.

Read the rest of this entry →

Do you want to be my friend? 4

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

Just a quick bit of housekeeping here, folks, nothing much to see. I'm not used to being popular, so I'm a tad mystified by the flow of Game Center friend requests that arrive on my iThings every day from people I don't know, and who, to be honest, I have very little interest in being pretend internet buddies with. I'm 44, y'know? I very much enjoy challenging personal friends, professional acquaintances or WoSland readers at games, but not some random adolescent from Bumhole, Nebraska.

The big problem with the internet, though, is that even many otherwise sane and decent people still insist on using absurd playground nicknames to identify themselves rather than proper human names, or at least – as in my own case with Game Center – the recognisable name of their app/business/whatever. So a request from "sUP3rKEWLd00d__87" might, horrendously, turn out to be from a person I actually do know in some way and would (inexplicably) wish to be "friends" with.

Read the rest of this entry →

Capitalism is weird, part 57 13

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

This page lists the various contract tariffs for the imminent iPhone 4S on O2. If you add them up, you get some pretty strange results.

(For the purposes of these calculations, we've worked out the total cost for the term of a 12-month contract, including a £6 "Bolt-On" for 500MB of data, and based on purchasing the 64GB model.)

Read the rest of this entry →

The extra mile 8

Posted on September 20, 2011 by

Videogame critics are a slightly different breed of people to gamers. The latter, partly because of the investment they've made in a product, will often be prepared to overlook a number of flaws and focus on the balanced pros-versus-cons merits of a game. Critics tend to be less concerned with such earthly matters and much more perfectionist, because they're focused on the game's place in the pantheon of artistic posterity rather than its instant here-and-now worth. The ponces.

As such, they (or I should say, we) can often be a lot angrier at games that are nearly brilliant than those that are just plain mediocre. This week's case in point: VS Racing.

Read the rest of this entry →

Free-App Hero: 500 not out 7

Posted on March 31, 2011 by

Sorry updates have been a bit thin on the ground for the last few days, viewers – I've been insanely busy with about eight different things, and probably will be until Monday. One of them was reaching a milestone with the mighty Free-App Hero, which has now featured a frankly amazing 500 games since being released four months ago and written 150,000 words (roughly two novels' worth) about them. Yikes.

Astoundingly, that translates to somewhere in the region of £5 million saved by the app's users since it came out, and all without having to spend hundreds of tedious hours wading through thousands of godawful ad-strewn games written by escaped mental patients in order to find the good stuff.

Anyway, here are some pictures of weird stuff I saw in the park last week.

Read the rest of this entry →

iOS freebie of the day 6

Posted on March 29, 2011 by

Is this extremely zippy line-drawing, trampoline-jumping game with beautiful graphics and almost limitless replay value.

Rather charmingly, it's called A Moon For The Sky. (There's a separate but equally free iPad version, A Moon For The Sky HD, too.)

Read the rest of this entry →

Game Of The Last 16 Hours 5

Posted on March 23, 2011 by

The world moves alarmingly fast nowadays, doesn't it? But right now, at this particular moment in time and until something else shiny and exciting comes along (probably around lunchtime), this is the best game ever.

With a certain amount of irony, then, (and for no very good reason that I can immediately discern), it's called Forget-Me-Not.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,787 Posts, 1,221,913 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: ““They’rrrrre grrrrreat!” 😀 https://www.frostedflakes.us/tony-the-tigerJul 13, 17:27
    • Lorn on According As We Need Them: “The one thing about politicians that I have discovered in my life is that, male or female, black or white,…Jul 13, 17:24
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Norway’s support per capita for our fighting friends in Eastern Europe is the highest in the world. I guess that…Jul 13, 17:23
    • Gaelstorm on According As We Need Them: “Surlely te issue is what were the actual questions in the survey?Jul 13, 17:06
    • Craig on According As We Need Them: “I fuckin despise Scotland now and what it has become, of all nationalities to be born, I had to be…Jul 13, 16:46
    • Young Lochinvar on According As We Need Them: “hurty feelzJul 13, 16:39
    • Colin Dawson on According As We Need Them: “I wonder how much of the Scottish budget gets spent on supposed “charities” that are almost entirely funded by the…Jul 13, 16:32
    • Young Lochinvar on According As We Need Them: “Oh oh! That’ll be you reported to the Polis hurry feels division Rev.. Tell them they’ll never take you alive,…Jul 13, 16:22
    • James on Just Good Friends: “You boys spooning again? How sweet.Jul 13, 15:59
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Large in size, small in intellectJul 13, 15:45
    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: “@Aidan In the interests of fairness and balance, Aidan, Fatso is anything but “little”. The twat can barely squeeze into…Jul 13, 15:23
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “If it’s such a cracking idea, why hasn’t the private owner of Grangemouth realised it?Jul 13, 15:08
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “The only relevant benchmark for Scotland’s ECONOMIC POTENTIAL is with our small nation peers, most of whom are in EFTA.…Jul 13, 14:59
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Yeah you don’t like people calling out your hysterical drivel do you little manJul 13, 14:56
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “norway has relatively high oil prices for its citizens but this hides a number of things – the duty goes…Jul 13, 14:52
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “https://archive.ph/SMuis we go backwards, the “backward” nations go forwards. Nigeria also subsidises energy prices for its citizens.Jul 13, 14:44
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “https://archive.ph/p2Bsf why doesn’t england shut down its 5 oil refineries and just import the refined products from amsterdam. – doesn’t…Jul 13, 14:38
    • James on Just Good Friends: “What an unending stream of pish. Away and lie in yer water.Jul 13, 14:35
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “You mean apart from the aforementioned £200m? Scotland is a declining market for oil products, due to policy choices that…Jul 13, 13:54
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““Aidan” That’s the whole point, prick, they can find money (our money) to save English refineries (a country with no…Jul 13, 13:34
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Who is “they”? The UK government who neither owned nor operated it?Jul 13, 13:18
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““Aidan”; Fuck off ya Yoon bampot. They closed Grangemouth. There is no longer an oil refinery in Scotland.Jul 13, 12:56
    • sarah on Just Good Friends: “War of the Worlds? It’s a guess as I’ve not read it.Jul 13, 12:33
    • James Cheyne on Just Good Friends: “Alf Baird, While busy clearing out the house, I came across a book titled ,The White Country by David D…Jul 13, 12:26
    • sarah on Just Good Friends: “@ agent x at 7.47 on 12th July “those links don’t work for me”. Sorry agent x, IT isn’t my…Jul 13, 12:17
    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: “@Aidan 😀 I’ve heard the expression “great oaks from small acorns” but this really does take the biscuit, good old…Jul 13, 12:13
    • James Cheyne on Just Good Friends: “Northcode. 12 july, 9:52 pm, Excellent post.Jul 13, 12:00
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “You mean aside from the £200m already committed to Grangemouth?Jul 13, 11:58
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““…The UK government is working to rescue an English oil refinery where hundreds of jobs are at risk. The Lindsey…Jul 13, 11:48
    • TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “A QUHEIN LETERATOUR, «We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy,…Jul 13, 11:33
  • A tall tale



↑ Top