My Top 5 iPhone / iTouch Games

I had a few moments so I thought that I would throw together a list of what my current 5 favorite iPhone / iTouch games are:

1. Oregon Trail

At the core of this game is the classic old educational Apple 2 game that we all had to play in school but Gameloft has done a serious facelift to the graphics and gameplay to make it more enjoyable. There are new resources mini-games (berry picking, fishing, telegram puzzle, hunting and panning for gold) that allow you to earn food, money and/or supplies the ability to choose a branching path to follow on the trail to Oregon and more. Its definately fun and a great bit of nostolgia, though I found at the end of my games I just skip all the mini-game options because I realize I do not need to do them all.

2. Kachinko

At the heart of this game is your typical match-3 puzzle game, but its been combined with a challenging Packhinko (or Plinko) like game aspect. Balls are randomly released fromt he top of the screen and will go through a varity of pegs and physics obstacles on its way to the bottom. Your job is to move the slots at the bottom of the screen to collect the balls in match-3 style gameplay. The game is only over if there are no more balls to be dropped or if one of your slots overflows, making Kachinko one of those perfect iPhone/iTouch games for a timekill while on the road or waiting for something, short, sweet and to the point!

3. Shift

Physics is combined with the accelerometer of the device to allow you to tilt the device in a direction to have various blocks or obstacles move in that linear direction. The goal of the game is to navigate your pieces through the puzzles that have been setup and there is a personal challenge to try to achieve this in a set number of moves. I like this game but there are some challenging levels that makes me have to put it down and come back later to it, but once again another one of those perfect iPhone games that last the right amount of time.

4. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Oddly enough this is one of those few ports of a PC or Console game that is actually very much like the main game. The game is more of a static platformer that requires the user to draw various patterns or symbols on the screen to utilize their lightsaber or powers. Beautifully done in 3D with a lot of prebaked bitmaps to sell the environment the only thing that prevents this game from being my #1 is that I find the iPhone and iTouch are devices you play games on for only a few minutes at a time, as such I have found it very easy to forget the patterns or symbols that I need to draw in order to succeed.

5. Vay

Vay is a port of an old Sega CD RPG game that is very reminiscent of a NES or DS Final Fantasy title. Vay can be a lot of fun, its probably one of the few RPGs I have found for the iPhone that doesn't resort come off as a lame Diablo clone and instead resorts to a clearn and classic look and feel towards its gameplay and presentation which I really appreciate (and wish they made more RPGs like this). If there is one complaint that I have, and it keeps the game at the bottom of my top 5, its that I found it pretty easy to forget which quests I was on adn where I was to go since like I said the device is more suited to 5 to 15 minutes of gameplay at a time than long spurts that a involved game like Vay requires. But still I have liked it.