• Format: iPhone, (version reviewed), iPod Touch, iPad
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Revolution
• Developer: Revolution
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.revolution.co.uk/broken-sword2-ios.php?id=112

The original Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror was released in 1997 on PC and later on the original PlayStation. This Remastered edition on Apple’s hardware follows on from the successful release of Beneath a Steel Sky, and the original Broken Sword on iOS. Indeed Apple’s hardware lends itself very well to the ‘point-and-click’ graphic adventure game genre. So, does the Smoking Mirror update translate as well as previous titles?

How are you going to get out of this, with only a lipstick and a pair of ladies panties?

The Smoking Mirror reunites the original game’s protagonists George Stobbart and his girlfriend Nico Collard, in an adventure that spans several continents and involves a conspiracy surrounding Mayan folklore and a forthcoming eclipse. Basically the enemy of the story is trying to resurrect evil Mayan God Tezcatlipoca, and it’s up to our hero’s to make sure Tezcatlipoca stays trapped in the aforesaid Smoking Mirror.

The gameplay is a classic point-and-click adventure, with the player combining items to solve scenarios that the characters find themselves in. The scriptt is well written, with several memorable characters and plenty of humorous exchanges to lighten the mood. The sleazy General in particular is guaranteed to make you chuckle. The problems that you need to solve to progress are, for the most part, quite clever – and with a bit of thinking you should be able to solve them. There are however a couple that push logical thinking a bit too far, and we required the use of the built-in hints system to progress.

The artwork has been updated for this new Remastered version.

The hints system is a great addition to the game and stops any frustration that might creep in if you get completely stuck. You get four hints which give you clues on what to do next. The first one is subtle, but the final one basically tells you what you need to do. It works really well, and keeps the game flowing whenever you run into a brick wall, and are left trying to combine ladies panties with a poison dart!

While the problem solving is well utilised, we felt that there weren’t many actual puzzles to solve, with only one ‘proper’ one towards the end of the game involving two wheels and some Mayan symbols. This puzzle really tests you, a lot more than the earlier problem scenarios, and even with the hints system can be quite tricky to solve. A couple more of these types of puzzle would have been welcome.

One thing that annoyed on playthrough was that the touch screen controls didn’t work as well as we would’ve liked. There were several instances where we clicked the ‘action’ symbol and nothing happened; this was also prevalent when we pointed to where we wanted our character to walk, and again we were left cursing at our motionless avatar. It’s not a game breaker, and hopefully an app update will remedy this in the near future.

The characters find themselves in all kinds of trouble.

This new Remastered edition brings several enhancements including the hints system and improved graphics with fully animated facial expressions, along with high quality music and a diary. The game also allows you to play the game on other iOS devices, with your game save transferring over via Dropbox. Game Center integration is also included with achievements, which is a nice addition. The all-new interactive digital comic from well respected artist Dave Gibbons is also a nice touch, and is a fitting intro to the main game.

The Smoking Mirror is a great game, with a well crafted plot that keeps you playing, and some unforgettable characters. If you own an Apple iOS device then you really should give it a go. It’s heartening to see these old point-and-click adventures coming alive again on these new touch screen devices, and we hope that Revolution and others are encouraged to create new adventures through their continuing sales success.

Revolution Software have just announced that Broken Sword – The Smoking Mirror: Remastered is now available to download from Apple’s App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The Smoking Mirror is the sequel to the hugely successful Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars.

The graphics have been updated from the original and look stunning

Broken Sword – The Smoking Mirror: Remastered features an exclusive interactive digital comic from Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons, as well as enhancements to the original game that include enhanced graphics and facial expressions, a context-sensitive hint system, and diary. It also comes with Dropbox integration, and a cloud-based save system that will enable players to continue their adventure on iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad simultaneously. The game also includes Game Center compatibility, with a raft of in-game achievements and many other enhancements to the original classic adventure game. Broken Sword – The Smoking Mirror: Remastered is available now for £3.99 on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

• Format: iPhone, iPod Touch
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Elite Systems
• Developer: Elite Systems
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.elite-systems.co.uk/elite/htdocs/user_home.php

It was with a nostalgic tear in our eyes, that we downloaded the ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection from Apple’s App Store. With the C64 App doing good business already, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone. Thankfully Elite Systems have obliged with this new collection of retro games, but how do these old games play on this new generation of gadgets?

Included in this App are six games from the ZX Spectrum library. For 59p you get Turbo Esprit, Saboteur, Buggy Boy, Frank Bruno’s Boxing, Harrier Attack and the classic Chuckie Egg. Sadly the games have dated pretty badly, and the rose tinted spec(cy)s were quickly replaced with sadness at how some of these once great games had become nigh on unplayable on Apple’s touch screen device.

In the good old days, games came on tapes. None of that digital download nonsense.

What doesn’t help is the ill conceived control scheme which gives you eight directional buttons and a ‘fire’ button. It just feels a little unwieldy, and anyone with large sausage like fingers will struggle to control any of the games included with the touch screen control scheme. Having said that though, the developers are working on a new 8-way joystick control scheme, which will be available with the next crop of games at the end of October/beginning of November, so hopefully that will sort out these problems.

Buggy Boy hasn't worn well at all, and is almost unplayable now.

Although the controls are flawed, the emulation is spot on, with all the old glitchy graphics and sound effects replicated perfectly. The only thing missing is the 15 minute wait while a game loaded, and the error message that, sometimes, appeared as the game had finished loading. The loading ‘static’ noise that was well known throughout the 80s, as you waited on your game to load is included, for that authentic Speccy experience.

Although most of the included games are not wearing well, Chuckie Egg has aged a lot better than some of the other games in the collection and plays just as we remember it, as you control Henhouse Harry in a pretty decent platformer. Fingers crossed they release the much improved sequel Chuckie Egg 2 in a future update. Buggy Boy and Turbo Espirit fare badly in comparison, with sprites not being particularly well suited to 3D driving games of the time. Harrier Attack, which is a side scrolling shoot em up, can also be annoyingly difficult to play, and is certainly no R-Type. Frank Bruno’s boxing is a button basher of a boxing game that is pretty average and Saboteur, a precursor to stealth games like Splinter Cell, is quite frankly boring.

Ah those old rubber keys, they don't work very well on iPhone mind you.

Although the initial line-up of games is a tad underwhelming, Elite Systems are planning on bringing a lot more games to the emulator, and the good news is that they will be free to all users of the app. The plan is to bring out several volumes of games, with around 200 earmarked so far. Elite Systems will also be adding an in-App shop to the emulator, so you can expect to see some of the all-time classics from the largest publishers of the 80s to be released in this way. So the chances are you’ll find your favourite games of yesteryear at some point in the very near future.

For 59p it’s well worth a nostalgic glance, but don’t expect it to drag you away from Angry Birds for any great length of time. But as the developers say themselves, the App’s a work-in-progress, and we’re hopeful the next update will solve the issues that we’ve mentioned, and bring classic Speccy games back to the masses for a new generation to enjoy.

There’s no denying recent Apple products are all design classics. From the stunning iMac to the svelte iPod Touch, their products are things of beauty, but they also have great functionality and simplicity to go with their good looks.

After some lean times, Apple really made a name for themselves with the release of the all-in-one iMac G3 computer. Its brightly coloured exterior crushed the idea that computers had to be packaged in grey plastic, and as a result they flew off the shelves. Then with the release of the iPod and iTunes they redefined how music could be packaged, and you could now carry your whole music collection around with you. Over the years the iPod has added extra functionality, with the ability to store and view photos, then the addition of viewing movies, surfing the net, and most groundbreaking of all the addition of Apps to the iTunes store. This finally gave Apple a handheld computer, that can do most things that a laptop can do but in a pocket friendly package. With the release of the iPhone they gained valuable market share in the mobile market. The iPhone and iPod Touch have proven to be major players in the gaming market, with their bite sized, and pocket friendly games proving popular with users. In fact Apple have started marketing these devices as gaming consoles, with the slogan “Next level fun”.

iPod Touch and iPhone have proved popular with gamers.

The evidence is certainly there that Apple are making an aggresive approach to getting a foothold in the gaming market. Already this year they have signed up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft’s European Xbox operations. They have also patented technology that mixes and matches media and games. The App Store is full of games from independents. These are low cost, and some are even free! All are at a price point that is very desirable to consumers. For instance, the old classic adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky is only 59p! Most are below the £2 threshold, but there are a few over £5. Compared to games for your DS or PSP at £30 a shot, these games offer great value. Now major players like Konami and Capcom are releasing their own franchises on the App Store as well.

Sony and Nintendo have obviously taken note of this and have released Minis and full price games to download for PSP, and DSiware for the DSi respectively. They have noticed Apple slowly but surely gaining momentum in the handheld market, and are quite rightly feeling threatened by them. The PSP was the multimedia powerhouse handheld when it was released, but when you compare it to the iPod Touch or iPhone the technology is not as sleek or as well implemented. For instance the PSP web browser is very poor and slow compared to Safari on the Apple machines. Most sites take forever to load, or don’t load properly, then don’t have the necessary plugin to view the page! Compared to silky smooth Safari it falls flat. Also, the release of the PSP Go is another reaction to the iPhone/iPod Touch, although it is a lot less appealing with downloads costing mostly the same as the equivalent packaged game, but without the resell value from second hand sales. The recently added bite-sized Minis are welcome, but are still a lot more expensive than similar games on Apple’s Store.

The PSP Go is a reaction to the success of Apple's service

So does this mean the imminent arrival of an Apple branded console for your living room? Apple certainly have the infrastructure already in place. With Apple TV you can beam movies and music to your TV from your computer. It wouldn’t take much of an upgrade to enable it to play games as well. All they would need was a Wii style remote or Project Natal camera interface linked to the Apple TV box, and a new console is born. Apple have already made massive inroads into the music, movies, and mobile market, so gaming is a natural progression. After all, old foe Microsoft haven’t done too badly out of it, have they? And anything Apple release would certainly look and perform better than Microsoft’s current console, that’s for sure!

One of the arguments against Apple going into console production, is the fact that they have no developers under their umbrella. There have been rumours of them purchasing EA, but this has never materialised. They have also previously released a console in conjunction with Bandai in 1995. This ill-fated venture was intended to be released as a low cost computer, but at the $599 price point, compared to the much lower cost Playstation and Sega Saturn it fell flat and flopped. Another hurdle is that there are already three established consoles out there. Can the market handle another console, and can consumers handle yet another box under their TVs?! Sony and Microsoft are losing a lot of money from each console sold as it is. Will Apple take the same risks and financial hits again? Only time will tell.

Could Apple TV be reconfigured to become a console?

Nobody imagined Apple releasing the iPhone when it was rumoured for so long, and there must be some truth in them looking at games as a major source of income, after the success of the App Store. Sony and Microsoft have battled it out for control of your living room with their media hub consoles, and I don’t think it will be long before Apple enter the fray and take a place in your living room as well as in your pocket.

And here it is the new Apple console…NOT!!

The growth in digital app stores can’t have passed by the average Critical Gamer (see what I did there?). Every device has one, from the DSi to the Playstation 3, and they have opened up new distribution channels for existing developers and publishers, as well as enabling new, much smaller creators to be able to reach out to the consumer and sell them new, less commercially attractive products.

Downloading games is not the ‘new promised land’ which platform holders are telling us it is. Firstly it’s not even that new. I’ve been downloading games to my mobile phone since around 2003 on what was, I believe, a Nokia 3650. Back then it was left to the networks themselves to provide the content as the hardware companies didn’t yet have the coordination or even leverage over the consumer (and with the networks) allowing them to provide these products themselves.

The ‘app stores’ in place then were far from being the seamless and enjoyable experience that today’s stores offer (well most of them), however they were hardly difficult to navigate either. All one had to do was go through a few WAP pages and then after spending £1.50 or whatever the cost was, you had your application in your games or download folder on the phone. Indeed I remember getting a rather good platform version of Splinter Cell! The trade press at the time often had articles on how this was the future (well, actually it was the present) and how traditional videogame companies would have to take this market seriously.

Downloading games to PC is also something which is not new. Valve’s Steam service has been selling games since around 2004/5 but it’s been possible to buy games directly from developers since before that. Steam was a milestone as it brought the idea of a games marketplace embedded into a gaming virtual ‘space’ where people can compete, collaborate and share gaming news and content together into a well run and branded experience. In many ways, Steam and Xbox Live’s developments were in parallel and have clearly influenced each other.

So since about 2002 we have been downloading games in a big way, and along the way there have been some failed to attempts to ‘wrap’ it together into a seamless user experience. Examples include an online component of the failed Dreamcast console to ongoing attempts by the mobile phone networks to somehow convert their phoning and texting customers to downloading and surfing customers. The mobile networks even started installing their own software on certain handsets to try to ‘lock’ the user into their experience.

What has stopped these efforts being successful differ but common themes include not having any interesting content or games consumers want to download. Additionally, the slow speed of the connection or the clumsy way in which the apps are downloaded have helped in putting off the consumer. Price, of course, is a major barrier to getting consumers to try something new as well. In recent years a number of these issues have been overcome, most importantly the price of storage and the speed at which data can be downloaded to a device at home or one which is mobile.

On the console and PC front, Xbox and Steam (and to a lesser degree Metaboli and Direct 2 Drive type platforms) have become the de facto standard for downloading content to living room or desktop machines. Sony’s PSN and even Nintendo with its Wiiware and Virtual console have followed suit with less success. In the mobile space success, although always predicted to be around the corner, remained allusive. Traditional consoles such as the DS and PSP still used physical media and mobile phone companies and the hardware makers were failing to provide a suitable solution which was being adopted by the mainstream.

Then along came Apple. Famous for having made buying music online something everyone could do, they brought along the same business approach to applications for their handheld phone – the Iphone, and subsequently their Itouch product. Their store was simple for everyone involved in it to operate, supply and purchase from. Developers only had to pay $99 and they could develop for it which was a first as other platform holders required developers to purchase expensive SDKs needed to code and produce content for their services. Consumers liked the service as it was easy to see what was available, fast to browse and very fast to download. Additionally the prices for applications were very cheap with many of them offering free trial versions. The other major plus point for Apple was that their hardware was easy to use, and of course, a phone – something people want anyway.

Now what’s been great about Apple’s app store is that it demonstrated the viability of small, cheap to produce apps. Small indie developers could come up with a game design, which would never see the light of day in a boxed game, self publish it and have an income derived from their efforts. The result of this success has been copycat initiatives. Xbox Live has welcomed more independents even going as far as having a secondary store for smaller, even more indie games. These are not vetted by Microsoft but instead quality control is given to the developer and community audience. Nintendo released Wiiware, which includes new indie games, and Sony have encouraged similar projects onto their PSN network.

It’s the handheld market though, quite rightly, which has been shaken up most by Apple’s move into digital distribution and portable computing. Nintendo’s Dsi is clearly a stop gap before the DS2 which allows it to offer some of the same features the ‘Iphone generation’ have already become used to and now expect. Hence it has (for Nintendo) some basic social community features (upload your photos to facebook from the device) and most importantly it has the DSiware store. This is is Nintendo’s digital app store! Similar to Wiiware, this is clumsy and uses some kind of cut down browser (with no cache from what I can see). Purchasing points which can then be traded for applications works (but seems dated) and accessing the content once it’s downloaded is well implemented.

Sony have released their PSPGo, but the hardware aside, they have used this as an opportunity to launch the Minis, a range of small apps. These are so similar to Iphone apps, that many of them are Iphone apps! Also, all ‘triple A’ PSP titles are being released on the PSN store and much of the back catalogue too.

So where does all this digital activity leave us? Well, clearly there is still lots of opportunity and it’s still really great for consumers and developers as a whole. However, it’s not all great. We now have a new tussle between Apple’s agenda and Sony and Nintendo’s. Apple, as with music, does not really care about how much it sells the software for, and so far, it hasn’t really shown much interest in maintaining the standard, rather just the quantity. This makes sense as they are in the business of selling hardware, and they are really good at it! However both Sony and Nintendo need to have their platforms seen as different from the Iphone (and the many Iphone lookalikes being released on a weekly basis). Additionally they make much more money from the software than Apple.

Hence both Sony and Nintendo are at present putting significantly less content on their stores with limited weekly updates, with the hope of helping developers to maintain the value of their content for as long as possible. Indeed games on the PSN store and Dsiware are on average £1-£2 more expensive than on the Iphone, and rarely do you get a free trial version in advance. Nintendo have not helped their cause by putting clocks and calenders on the store which should already be installed on the device or which should be allowed to be downloaded for free – it would be a good way of having people regularly come back to and engage in the store. Whilst there, they then might buy a high quality app.

The problem traditional videogame companies may find is that it’s too late. Just as the music industry allowed Apple to change the pricing model overnight it would seem that the videogame companies have allowed Apple to do the same thing in their marketplace.

The upshot is clear; more people can find a market to distribute their goods. The bad news is that many of them will have to distribute them for free or near to free, or find that in the huge marketplace that is the Appstore no one can find your app. Even companies such as EA are struggling, not quite sure what kind of content to produce, and then how much to invest marketing it, when the return is potentially small.

“Apple has achieved over two billion downloads since the launch of its App Store on to a device base of over 50million iPhone and iPod touch devices, this suggest an average of 40 apps per device. The volume of apps being downloaded per user suggests that the user’s behaviour is mimicking that on browsers, with users viewing lots of different sites; however, there are only a few which users visit repeatedly.” said Adam Leach, Principal Analyst, Ovum.

“Although Apple’s download figures are impressive and act as a harbinger for the industry, it is important to consider that the typical high-end iPhone users are not representative of mobile users as a whole”

“Apple has demonstrated for the first time that demand for third party applications can drive demand for devices”

Ironically it would seem that Apple have learnt a lot from their gaming competitors. Just as with Nintendo’s own Pokemon franchise (which is a license to print money), Apple have realised that the application and game consumers like playing most is the App Store itself. They can’t help themselves and they just have to ‘catch em all’!