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We love – the graphics, the controls, the characters
We hate – leaves you hankering for more content

Verdict – Street Fighter IV is the best one-on-one fighting game we’ve played on iPhone. It looks great, it feels great and we just wish there was an extra single-player mode or two

Street Fighter IV may bear the name of the latest instalment of the prestigious series, but this iPhone version is designed with the Street Fighter II fan in mind as much as relative newcomers. Aside from new character Abel, the eight fighters included here all come from the 1991 smash – and they look largely as we remember them, even after the next-gen redesign.

This is a good thing.

You control your fighter using an 8-way virtual D-pad and three additional buttons, and you’re meant to hold your iPhone as you would a console controller, primarily just using your two thumbs. This control method has caused loads of problems on iPhone in the past, leaving the few fighting games that have made it to iTunes feeling like disappointing compromises. We’re pleased to say that Street Fighter IV is the best traditional fighting game we’ve ever played on iPhone.

The special moves are easy to pull off, and yet don’t feel as if they’ve been excessively tamed for the iPhone’s touchscreen interface. We took Ryu for a spin – as is customary – and were letting fireballs and whirlwind kicks loose within minutes. Moves feel a lot like they did on console, but the more gesture-friendly interface means they don’t feel out of place on the touchscreen.

Accessibility is a big part of Street Fighter IV. At any point in a match you can pause and check out your character’s move list. Aside from the basic special moves, there are higher-powered specials you can perform once you’ve built-up your combo meter.

Compared with all other fighters of this type, Street Fighter IV feels exceptionally natural. Add this to the fab, detailed visuals and you have a game that makes a stunning first impression. Even if you do find handling the touchscreen controls a bit tricky, there’s the Dojo training mode to ease you in.

We still have a suspicion that hardcore Street Fighter fans might not be entirely satisfied. In order to make the touchscreen transition, Street Fighter IV for iPhone ditches some of the ultra-quick tautness that’s become characteristic of high-end fighters like Street Fighter. This is partly what makes Street Fighter IV feel so great on iPhone, but we’re left with a sense that there’s perhaps not quite enough content to fill in the resulting gaps.

There are lots of training options – sparring, training dojo and the dummy training – but there’s just the one tournament mode. With just seven characters to battle, this is all over quite quickly unless you crank the difficulty. Will Capcom offer us more modes as a paid-for downloads later? Or additional characters? Maybe, and considering the quality on what’s here we hope so. There is Bluetooth multiplayer to keep you playing if you’ve got some street fighting friends.

Street Fighter IV may not escape the sense of compromise entirely then, but we still think it’s a great gaming achievement on Capcom’s part. Fighting games can work, and they’ve proved it.

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Epic’s Josh Adams spoke of their intention to eventually bring the massively popular shooter series Gears of War to iPhone – and why wouldn’t they – but also made it clear that it’ll be no easy task. As he says, “You can’t expect to take Gears of War, hit a button and expect it to work on iPhone.”

He also said that Gears of War would only work on iPhone 3GS because of the Unreal Engine 3’s reliance on OpenGL ES 2.0, the 3D platform that the engine runs off. Epic demonstrated the engine running on the iPhone 3GS back in December, and we sincerely doubt it’ll end up working on the less powerful original iPhone and iPhone 3G handsets.

Caveats aside, Gears of War fans have reason to celebrate, especially if you’ve already got an iPhone 3GS or are planning on iPad-ing it up this April.

via Pocket Gamer

YOU SHOULD READ – Street Fighter IV released for iPhone — Fight!

News of this mobile first came through a report from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. The report included some basic specs for the Samsung SHW-M120S, including Bluetooth 3.0 and a tasty (if unusual) 3.3-inch AMOLED screen.

Bluetooth 3.0 may not sound all that exciting if you’re already used to doing everything over 3G, but it’s a huge step up over the current Bluetooth 2.0 standard. It allows transfer speeds of up to 24Mbit/second, where Bluetooth 2.0 is limited to just 3Mbit/second. Want to transfer some tunes to your mobile? Bluetooth becomes an attractive option at these sort of speeds — especially when you can’t remember where you left that USB cable.

We don’t know what the Samsung SHW-M120S will look like yet, but the specs revealed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group drop a few hints. We’re fairly sure the 3.3-inch screen will be a touchscreen, while the rest of the features are high-end faves — GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA. Given Samsung’s track record, a slick, slim black smartphone is a safe bet.

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Sadly, we don’t have any video clips of the XNA games running on the Asus Windows Phone 7 Series phone, but we can tell you what they were. The Harvest is an isometric action game where you use the touchscreen to control a futurstic warrior as he blasts through dungeons. Battle Punks is a one-on-one fighting title that debuted on Facebook.

With screen resolutions differing hugely, it’s unlikely that the games you see on the XNA service on Xbox Live will be the same games that hit the Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace, but they’ll be made using the same core tools. As you can see from the screenshot, they look pretty darn good. The games demonstrated were made using XNA Game Studio 4.0, the latest version of the development platform, which will also presumably go on to produce loads of Xbox Live Arcade XNA games.

Windows Phone 7 Series will start appearing in handsets towards the end of this year. This new gaming news has got us hoping that, unlike Window Mobile 6.5 before it, Windows Phone 7 Series will come out on time.

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This issue was initially reported by Panda Research’s virus-tracking blog, flagged up after the buyer plugged the phone into their computer, only to be met with warnings about the HTC Magic’s malware.

We approached Vodafone for a comment about the issue, and while it seems like this issue may have been a legitimate occurrence, it sounds like we UK buyers have nothing to worry about –

“The device involved in the incident was purchased by a customer of Vodafone Spain and is currently being investigated. The early indications are that this was an isolated local incident.

Vodafone UK has received no reported security problems from customers using the HTC Magic, although we continue to monitor the situation closely. We take our customers’ security and privacy extremely seriously and will take further action to protect our customers should it be necessary.”

It has been suggested online that the viruses may have been introduced using a memory card during testing.

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OpenGL is used to make 2D and 3D graphics across a wide variety of platforms, and is an industry standard for 3D games. The iPhone can use OpenGL, hence why it has quite so many great-looking 3D games.

For Android, it will let developers use “vertex and fragment shader programs”, which will mean much better-looking games will start appearing on the Android Market within the next few months. Yipee.

The Android Market hasn’t manage to scale the heights achieved by the App Store, and one of the many reasons why is that it doesn’t have anywhere near as many great games. It may be called an “app” store, but on the iPhone’s app roster, games generally come up top.

Android Community writes that apps designed for Android 2.0 and above will be able to make full use of these OpenGL features, which should mean more great 3D games for HTC Desire and Legend users.

via Android Community

YOU SHOULD READ — Street Fighter IV released for iPhone — Fight!

Capcom’s Street Fighter IV proved to be a return to form for the classic one-on-one fighting game last year, and now it has arrived on iPhone. It features all the main characters from the original Street Fighter II, plus Abel — a character that only joined the series in Street Fighter IV. There are eight characters in total, including Ken, Ryu and Blanka.

A mix of the old and new, Capcom has made sure to include all the classic special moves from the series, but the visual style is more Street Fighter IV than Street Fighter II. The characters are based on 3D models while the backgrounds are two-dimensional.

One feature we’re dying to try out is Street Fighter IV’s Bluetooth multiplayer. This will let you play against a friend as long as you’re in range. What could be more fun than beating a good friend to a pulp? Street Fighter IV is available for £5.99 from iTunes now. Tekken next!

YOU SHOULD READ — Street Fighter IV for iPhone – everything you need to know

The Toshiba TG03 will be the first mobile in the large-screened TG series to run Windows Phone 7 Series, with previous devices running Windows Mobile 6.5. This new information isn’t official yet, so we’re treating it as rumour, but it makes a lot of sense as the operating system is the primary boost the Toshiba TG03 gets over the Toshiba TG02.

Both phones use a very large 4.1-inch capacitive touchscreen and a muscular 1GHz processor. The Toshiba TG03’s camera gets a relatively minor bump up the cameraphone ladder, moving up to five megaxpixels from the TG02’s three, but it’s not a camera-focused device.

Windows Phone 7 Series is Microsoft’s boldest move into smartphone territory in a long time. It hopes that the phone’s operating system will become a major part of the draw for customers, so you’ll start asking for a Windows Phone 7 Series phone rather than an LG Panther, for example. Is it a pipe dream? It’s too early to tell, but at least the operating system itself looks markedly different from its predecessor.

via MsMobile

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Etsy user Craftsquach has started making Android cushions, letting your love for the little green guy and his operating system spread out from your phone and across your house.

The Android cushion is a 12×12-inch handmade square of filled polyester and fleece, and the design looks just like the Android robot we know. Craftsquach is based over in the US, so you’ll have to try you luck to see if you’ll be able to get one delivered to the UK. The Etsy page warns that you should expect to wait 2-6 weeks for delivery.

Craftsquach offers a wide variety of geek-inspired pillows, including ones based on the Facebook and MySpace logos, and those of many Adobe packages. Geek-tastic. The Android pillow sells for $19.99.

via Gizmodo

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Nokia’s self-charging phone technology works by converting movements – your movements – into energy that’s used to charge-up the phone. This sort of technology has been seen in watches, but applying the same idea in a more power-intensive gadget like a mobile is a different proposition.

Your movements cause strips of piezoelectric crystals to compress, which in turn creates the electricity used to charge the phone’s battery. Shove in a solar panel and a little wind turbine and we’ll be able to dump our chargers altogether – maybe.

Just because a patent has been filed, it doesn’t mean we’ll see any phone using this technology hit the market any time soon. We think that even when it does, the kinetic charging will only top-up your phone when you’re on the go. The standard charger will still be the top dog – unless you run marathons every day.

via NokNok

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