Mobile Linebacker puts you in the defense line of football as a linebacker. The developer guys at VIVA! Vision Inc. and VODA digital LLC probably figured that kids nowadays are woosies and should learn to catch some hits. After all, offense is just a matter of having guts; defense is all about being a real man and fighting ’til the end!

The game includes about 20 new plays, and was developed in collaboration with some kings of defense such as Joe Tafoya of the Arizone Cardinals, Chike Okeafor of the San Francisco 49ers and Running Back Kerry Carter of the Seattle Seahawks amongst others.

Today, a new update for the game was released, a reason for us to finally write about this game as it’s unique in the field of sports games for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

As far as programming, I have experience with BASIC (thank you Commodore 64), Pascal, C++, visual basic, and now objective C. But this site is not really about programming – rather, its about games. I’m not the greatest gamer in the world, certainly. However, I do have 30+ years experience obsessively playing all sorts of video games, from the afore-mentioned Commodore 64, to the PC an Mac, the SEGA Master System (and of course the NES), the Turbo Graphx (Express!) and Genesis, Xbox (and both iterations thereof), Playstation (I,II, and III), and Wii. I would guess that most of you have similar gaming pedigrees.

As I stepped more into the adult world of work and family, my time for console games waned. In order to get my gaming fix, I began, in about 2005, playing more games on my cell phone (at the time, a Palm Treo). The benefit of being able to play a game at any time, anywhere, outweighed the graphical and game play limitations presented by that particular phone. When I bought my first iPhone, in 2008, my obsession with mobile gaming only increased.

So here I am, now writing for your favorite (maybe?) site about iPhone games. I hope you will enjoy reading my reviews and articles as much as I anticipate that I will enjoy writing them. I hope that the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope you all go and check out Triple Entendre in the App Store. I hope.

His previous time working on Xbox materials are likely to phase into new ideas involved with the App Store in general and with its games. This comes at a time when the App Store and Apple’s products are hitting a new height in popularity. Their new products have been successful for years, but the dropping prices in refurbished iPhone- and iPad-models have brought the older versions of their products into even more homes.

Apple Turning Up its Game

Apple has seemingly started an influx of new talent with a strong background in gaming. They’ve already brought on gaming veteran Robert Saunders, who once worked a public relations manager for Nintendo. He’ll be taking the reins on promoting different applications for iPhones, iPods and iPads. This is on top of a similar adding for Apple with the move of former PR rep from EA, Activision and Xbox Nick Grange. He’ll take on the project of hardware for game apps, as they’ve aimed to really begun to focus their attention on the gaming market.

Throughout the gaming industry, Apple’s iOS devices have continued to gain steam and popularity in the recent years. Last year the smart phone market really took a strong hold on the gaming market, as nearly 58 percent of gaming software revenue recorded was traced back to iPhone and Android developers. This comes at the same time that handheld devices have started to experience real difficulties. The PlayStation Vita has been under much criticism ahead of its North American release this year, as it’s already debuted to underwhelming numbers overseas.

Third of Gaming Revenue Pie Going to Apple

Gaming has also continued to be a fair share of Apple’s revenue in the App Store. Last year, they took in close to a third of the total revenue for the store. Considering that smart phone software has grown over 30 percent in the revenue share for the gaming market, the same could soon be true for the total share in the application stores. Regardless, it seems as if Apple has taken a vested focus of improving games in 2012, not only with more resources into their PR and development, but also in attracting veteran gaming experts to join their team.

Will Wright, creator of The Sims, is moving beyond mere pixels, and taking gamers with him. Instead of letting you play god and housing designer to a group of non-sentient AI, his newest game will actually play games with your life with a little help from GPS, cloud storage, and your friends.

If it sees that you go to car shows frequently, it will mold the game accordingly. The more the game finds out about you, the more it’s going to be customized to your life. If you share absolutely nothing with it, you’ll be left with what should be a very generic, but perhaps mildly entertaining game.

It’s going to be able to tell whether it’s day or night, and where you’re at. If you allow it access, it can even use information from purchases you make and how much money you have. It really points to being mobile by the fact that it will also interact with Google Maps and point out places you may want to journey to. If it gets really in-depth, you may even see events in your area pop up through the game.

HiveMind will theoretically be able to solve problems you may have by tapping into the network of those around you who are playing. Wright hasn’t fleshed that part out (at least to the press), but it’s an interesting theory. Maybe you need the cheapest price for repairing your brakes, or to even decide if it’s your breaks that need fixed. It seems like it will run off of the unfailing ideology of crowd sourcing an individual’s problems to get the best answer. Like a human-driven search engine, HiveMind will let you find what you need, as long as you give it enough data.

Before the conspiracy theorists chime in with ideas on how we’re one step away from any science fiction dystopia you can think of, give Wright a little credit. Every single thing the game learns, it learns from you. You have to give it permission to do anything. It won’t sneakily grab your credit card information or your first born child.

However, in the days of LulzSec and Anonymous, users might be a bit spooked about putting information about themselves online. It’s a hurdle Wright and his team will have to overcome if they want to be successful. Users are pretty tired of being tricked and finagled into adding more and more data about themselves online (a la Facebook’s dubious privacy settings), so it will be a challenge to convince them to join in.

HiveMind sounds more like an augmented reality than an actual game, but we all know that if anyone can make paying taxes fun, it’s Will Wright. The ‘game’ sounds a bit all over the place right now (tracking fitness, solving your problems, knowing what time of day it is), but a lot of the hype is resting on Wright’s rather substantial laurels. We can all sit back and wait for him to make sense, and fun, out of what would be our standard daily lives.

The Game Center has been dead almost since it was introduced in Sept. 2010, but some iOS 5 updates could breathe more life into the stale medium. The idea was supposed to be a cross between playing games on Facebook and the social capabilities of Xbox Live.

The execution fell fairly flat, as friends had no way to communicate or really even interact with their friends except to compete with them. The person on the other side might as well have been AI for all the contact you would have with them. Kudos to the person who remembered to brag about an awesome Ms. Pacman victory when they met up with their friend hours later.

The update:

Several iOS updates have happened since its release, and none have really addressed the social issue fully. The newest update has actually taken enough steps in the right direction that it might be worth picking up again, or picking up for the first time.

The iOS 5 update makes picking it up for the first time even easier with friend suggestions. Unlike the rather annoying Facebook friend suggestions you’re probably used to, the Game Center’s will actually help you find people you already interact with on a regular basis and let you know which games they regularly play. The days of awkwardly hitting up your co-workers to see if they play Words with Friends are over. After all, gaming may be growing more social by the day thanks to cloud computing servers, but it doesn’t mean you want to have conversations about your Bejeweled addiction in mixed company.

However, in case you really do want to show off your proudest jewel-sorting moments, look no farther than the Achievement Board section of the Game Center. Much like its sister feature in Xbox Live, it will show you all of your high scores and achievements, along with all of your friends. If you choose to be matched up with strangers, it will show you their Board before you begin the match. iPhone gaming isn’t as intense as playing in a pro-gaming environment yet, but it is nice to know who you’re up against regardless. A crushing defeat is lessened if you know you’re up against someone who spends their entire day on their phone.

You can also add a profile picture to your account and find new games from the Game Center portal, which will hopefully encourage more developers to begin using its capabilities.

The remaining issues:

Puzzlingly for an Apple product, much of how the Game Center functions has been left in the hands of individual developers. It’s lacking the rigid, perfection-driven focus of most of Apple’s software. Matching is also left to developers, who may not care to find an even system and instead simply throw together players of whatever skill levels together.

The major improvement that should happen, though, is including some way for friends to communicate with each other. Game Center was supposed to pave the way for mobile social gaming. As it stands, Game Center still is hardly a social experience.

Galcon
There are a handful of great space-themed games on the iPhone, but Galcon sets itself apart. It’s a re-spawn of the classic Galactic Conquest, but optimized for the touch screen and multiplayer. In Galcon, you start with a home planet (or planets), and then attempt to conquer those around you. If you control a planet, it creates ships for you. You can send out the fleet all at once, or stockpile part of them to wait in defense. Sending out 70 percent of your ships could be the difference between keeping and losing your home planets, but you may not be able to conquer enemy-controlled planets without more.

Despite the seemingly complex gameplay, the mechanics are simple. Touch a planet to travel to it or to attack, and then indicate what percentage of your ships you’re sending. Consider yourself warned, though — the game is highly addicting. People tend to run down their cell phone batteries quickly trying to conquer the galaxy.

FieldRunners

Tower defense games have become almost cliché since Plants vs. Zombies blew up the genre. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t great games out there that have the same addictive powers minus the Miracle Grow.

FieldRunners is more of a classic take on tower defense that gives you nine different types of actual towers to protect your base with. You’ll have some success with just placing as many towers as you can around the base, but if you set up the towers to guide enemies into a maze of destruction that you control, you’ll really start seeing results. Some of the towers are designed for slowing enemies, whether by ice or by goo, while others like the lightning and mortar towers are built for raw force. They also all have different attack ranges, and some can do area damage while others are focused. The combination of several maps with different towers keeps the game interesting long after you’ve gotten your $2.99 worth of entertainment out of it.

Catan:

Tabletop gamers rejoice! The ever-popular board game Catan is on the iPhone. For those unfamiliar with the game, it centers around building up a medieval civilization by claiming spots on the interchangeable map that have access to brick, wool, grain, lumber, gold and ore. Build up your settlements into cities, and then protect them by fortifying them and adding a knight.

The principle seems easy enough, but when you’re racing for victory points against friends or the built-in AI, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact it’s just a game. You’ll likely find yourself looking up guides and reading about the different strategies. Between natural disasters, robbers, and competitions to see who can get the longest road, Catan is the most fun you’ll have for $3.99. Once you get the hang of it, you can also download the Seafarer expansion for even more fun with ports and shipping lanes.

Gaming:

Put the controllers down; all you need is your phone to have access to the most popular gaming platform. It might not be the only full-touch control gaming device (think Android phones), but it’s certainly the most popular out there.

iPhone gaming has taken new heights and inspired a line of peripherals with graphics that perform better than on some laptops. A year ago, the Unreal engine that powers games likes Bioshock, Mass Effect and Gears of War was used to create Epic Citadel, an iPhone game. The game itself wasn’t entirely successful, which many people blame on a loose storyline and not enough variety in the action.

What it actually means, though, is that iPhone games are progressing rapidly. They’re becoming just as good as console games, even if they are more condensed. Though many feel like the iPhone is the bastion of casual games, there are very serious, very legitimate games in the App Store.

Education/Learning

For students, the relationship between phones and life becomes even deeper. They’re using their phones for flashcards and writing quizzes for themselves on it. Online learning opportunities for college students become convenient enough that a student can take their studies on the road or even get in some reading time at work or when they’re commuting.

Apps like Kindle and Nook help students even more since they can rent and borrow books and textbooks from libraries and stores across the nation. Kindle even has an e-textbook program through the Amazon App Store.

The iPhone is especially great for college students because of programs like myHomework, which allow them the ultimate in custom organization. The influx of apps means that organizations can become intensely personalized to a demographic, and students are definitely taking advantage of that.

Memory:

By now, you’ve probably seen the study that was done to prove our brains are now storing things differently because of technology. Instead of remembering what things mean, we remember where we can look them up.

If you’re lost, you don’t grab your phone to call someone; you open up your navigation application and find your way out. If you need to look something up, you open up your Wikipedia app and find your answer there. If there’s anything you need, you can always find it through your phone.

iPhones have it set firmly into our minds that if you need something, it will be there for you. If you can’t find the proper app, you’re either not looking hard enough or you just have to wait a few weeks for it to be developed.

All of those changes are exciting. They’re not, however, that exciting to gamers.
So, on to  Siri, the magical little wonder that will make everyone’s life better. It does show incredible promise, even if it did take the place of an anticipated iPhone 5 release. For gamers, it can be the Kinect of the iPhone. Instead of shouting commands at Shepard’s squad in Mass Effect 3, imagine yourself controlling different puzzle pieces by only your voice while you slide others into place. Apple is giving developers access to Siri’s coding, so they’ll be able to use it in programs and apps.

Siri will be able to multitask for players. Awkward thumbsticks won’t be a thing of the past, but you won’t have to alternate between using them and hitting onscreen buttons. Hopefully, of course, there will be toggle controls so you won’t have to be the weird person sitting at the bus stop telling your phone to switch to the rifle.

More importantly than even decent inventory management systems, though, is what Siri can do for students. Online training is going beyond just using Google to look up definitions and find Wikipedia entries. It now consists of full integration between learning and the devices students use daily.

Imagine having a flash card program (already popular on the iPhone) that you can answer out loud. If you’re wrong, it may even give you a hint to point you in the right direction before telling you the answer. Anyone who has crammed for a 50-question history test the night before understands how important using every second of the day can be. If you don’t have to use your hands, you can even get by with playing World of Warcraft online while studying.

For educational games, look forward to handing your future (or current) children an iPhone that can teach them how to read. They can sit down with a book and try to sound out words. Siri will be able to listen and prompt them when they’re struggling and turn the page when they’re done reading it. It can highlight text by syllables to help them learn how to break up speech patterns and offer helpful suggestions on remember tricks like “I before E.”

Siri won’t replace education by any means, but it can act like a private tutor for your four year old. Because it doesn’t require any physical control whatsoever, Siri will make your iPhone even friendlier for toddler use. Teach them how to use the controls on more fun programs, like coloring, to ensure they don’t get frustrated with more advanced tasks, like reading.

Siri isn’t a game change for apps—it’s a game changer for technology. Give developers a few months to catch up, and they’ll start rolling out some exciting apps that will have you and Siri chatting it up daily.

iPhone games seem mysterious and complicated to build. They require coding, developing and even registering as an official developer with Apple. But like always, appearances are deceiving. Here are four easy steps to creating a game for your iPhone or your iPad. Happy developing!

Learn Some Code

In order to develop an iPhone game, you’ll have to know a little bit of coding. The principles are based on Objective C, a language Steve Jobs developed at NeXT. If you’re familiar with coding, making the jump to using it won’t be too difficult, since it’s similar to C/C++. If you don’t know any coding whatsoever and you’re willing to spend a while developing your game, go ahead and grab a “Coding for Dummies” book that will get you started. You won’t need a full it degree, but you can take a class or two to beef up your skills and make the developing process easier if you feel like it might be something you’re interested in.

…Or Not

Luckily, there are a ton of great programs for developing apps and games. GameSalad doesn’t require any knowledge of programming languages and will transfer to the iPhone, iPad or even a Mac. They also have an arcade of games available on their website, so users can see and support other budding iPhone game developers’ works. The system works off of HTML 5, which is a text-based animation programming language. What that means is that you can put your game anywhere that uses regular HTML coding. This means you can drop it in an e-mail or even post it on a forum.
If GameSalad doesn’t work for you for some reason, just do a little searching. There are plenty of programs out there for free and minimal costs that will let you build and showcase your game.

Write A Program

Once you know how you’re (or how you’re not) developing your game, it’s time to come up with an idea. Many first time developers choose to mimic an already-popular game like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja. It’s not a bad idea to get used to the mechanics and create something that you and your friends are guaranteed to enjoy.

If you’re creating an original idea, remember that most iPhone games work best when they’re somewhat simple. Think of Angry Birds. There are only a handful of bird types and structures. The variety comes from the developer combining those simple elements, which puts the weight of creativity on your shoulders. You’re going to want to keep the controls simple too, which will add another layer to your job. You have to create an engaging, varied game with a few pieces and a few user movements. Don’t be afraid to ask friends for ideas and collaborate with them.

Publish and Share

You’ll need to sign up with Apple as an official developer since they’re not an open market like Android. You’ll have to pay $100, but it will allow you to test your game on an actual iPhone, which could be well worth it. If you’re charging even a dollar for your game, you’re almost guaranteed to get your money back.

Sharing your game is almost as important as even publishing it. You need to spread the word that you’ve created a great game so people will know what to look for. The more you talk about it online, the more people will recognize it and download it.

Minecraft, perhaps the first game to have its own con before its official release, still isn’t coming to the iPhone just yet. Thanks to a nice deal made with Sony Xperia, indie darling Mojang has said that it will come to iOS, but Sony and Android will have a period of exclusivity. Details on exactly how long that will be haven’t surfaced yet, but publishers are saying it will be later this year.

For those who have missed it, Minecraft is a sandbox game that lets users build the world. Though it sounds a lot like Little Big Planet, Minecraft is more like virtual Legos, and LBP is like paper dolls. The world is seemingly endless, but the farther you go from point zero tends to have more bugs. Sound too constricting? The biggest map so far is nine times the size of the earth.

There are two versions of Minecraft in the Beta version. The first is creative mode, which lets users build structures without taking damage. Creatures still appear, but they can’t hurt players. Creative mode also gives you unlimited building supplies, similar to the first unpaid version of the game that surfaced. Survival mode features a health and hunger bar, and players can take damage by falling or because of creatures. They have to mine or find their own items, and they’ll need to acquire their own tools. The survival mode is new for the paid beta, and it’s proving a perfect challenge for experienced Minecraft players.

The free, classic version of Minecraft still thrives on the internet, but it’s no longer receiving updates. Likely, the world will continue existing for a few months after beta is released and developers will rely on the shiny bells and whistles of the paid version to draw free users in. The classic version will function nicely as a free-to-play lead-in to having players make the jump.

Minecraft, for those who enjoy living under their rock, has been rocketed to cult-status. It’s being used everywhere, even in classrooms. Joel Levin, an elementary school teacher has been using Minecraft to teach students about sharing, filling leadership roles and even settling disputes, giving new meaning to online education.

Minecraft is also being used to create music videos, dog parks and more.

When it does come to the iPhone, users can look forward to a version much like the Sony Xperia version. It will be scaled down slightly and probably use a mix of touch and traditional controls, which will be simulated on the iPhone. Since the iPhone is based on touch-controls only, chances are decent that if developers haven’t taken a lot of time on the project, it could come out slightly buggy.

However, that shouldn’t stop fans of the series from downloading it, and it certainly shouldn’t stop new devotees from joining. If you’re looking for a Minecraft-esque experience now, check out Minecraft World Explorer, which lets you download your Minecraft world into your phone. There are several other versions available, but World Explorer isn’t buggy and the controls work well.