FGotY 2009 [iPhone]

We’ll be starting out our list of Fun Games of the Year (hereafter FGotY) with the handheld games. We’ll start with the iPhone. Let’s get right to the list:

Nat – Wow! I spent $22 this year on the App Store and got 15 games. Every one of them was a winner, but I go between eight of the titles a lot. Bookworm, Monster Trucks Nitro, Space Invaders InfinityGene, bitFlip, Spider, Flight Control, Auditorium, and Muppets Animal Drummer suck a lot of my iPod’s battery. Bookworm I spent the most time with, but it’s Space Invaders Infinity Gene that rocked my world with it’s innovative game play, excellent music, simplistic graphics, and it’s retro feel—pre-1980s nostalgia. This little device got more play time than my PSP and DS this year. I see the trend continuing if Nintendo and Sony don’t get on board with the same pricing and open design philosophy for developers.

Brock – I played the “I wish I had an iPhone” game this year. It wasn’t fun, especially after seeing how much fun Nat has had with his cheap yet awesome games. [count me on this one, too – ed.]

Will – Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 update has pretty much made my iPhone 3G unsuitable for its basic tasks (like phone calls, emails and text messages), so playing games on it can be a challenge. For that reason, I give my FGotY 2009 [iPhone] award to the Zune HD’s Audiosurf Tilt. It plays very much like the PC game’s Mono avatar. I enjoy the very simple controls: tilt the device to the left to go left, and tilt right to go right. All you have to do is avoid the roadblocks and collect as many of the colored blocks as possible. This very simple game is a lot of fun, and whenever I listen to music on my Zune HD, I have a hard time not listening to it through that game.