peterb

My wish list: -Polish: smoother scrolling. -Polish: the pinch-to-zoom gestures are exactly backwards for iOS idioms. On iOS, "pinch out" means "zoom closer." -Feature request: cinematic camera. Sure, I can scoot my camera all over manually, but it would be even better if I could let the game drive: the game would decide when an event was 'significant' and take me to it.

I've posted my "first impressions" review at http://ipadwargamer.com/node/6. Enjoy!

Not counting the just-released Battle Academy, which at $20 is probably out of your comfort range, any turn-based wargamer should play and love (ranked in my personal order of goodliness): Uniwar Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion Mecho Wars Great Little Wargame Crimson: Steam Pirates Battle for Wesnoth HD Warlords Classic Battle Fleet The War of Eustrath HD (this one might juuuuuuust be 'below the line' for me) There are others, I have no doubt. Most of them are not "combat simulations" by any stretch of the imagination - they're more in the Advance Wars style of play. But they're still damn fine strategy games. There are also a significant number of RPG games that have wargame-like mechanics that I'm not including -- Avadon - The Black Fortress is probably the best known of these.

"Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Speaking as someone who has had years of experience in PC games and who has jumped into the iPad world with both feet, my observation is that iPad games often have some attributes that tend to make them better than PC games, although of course for any given game there's no guarantee. (1) The limited input modalities mean that the UI has to be good for the app to be good. There's no nonsense like "Press G to throw a grenade, but B for a Satchel charge and S for a molotov cocktail" (yes, Commandos, i AM looking at you.) Again, there's obviously no guarantee but developers who want to release a quality product are sort of FORCED to polish the UI. And that's a good thing. (2) Having the game with you everywhere is completely life-changing. (3) Having multiplayer turn-based games with you everywhere is completely life-changing. If I'm waiting at the car dealer, and they have wi-fi, I can play a move in my chess game, or a round of Battle Academy, or - soon - Combat Mission. I don't have to wait until I get home. This. Is. Freaking. Huge. (4) If the game has Gamecenter integration, then the way you find opponents for online play goes from "Somewhat annoying bespoke thing where I have to track individual passwords for each publisher" to "touch this button and you're playing." (5) Generally speaking, the graphics on the platform are way better than you would expect them to be. None of this is to say that all iPad games are better than all PC games. But the platform has some real strengths, and I think we're beginning to see developers start to exploit those strengths. In other words, while a game isn't better just because it's on the iPad I don't think it's a given that PC games are by definition 'better' either.

Hi, guys. I've long read the Battlefront forums but never posted before. This announcement came just as I'm in the middle of repurposing my blog, Tea Leaves, to focus more strongly on iPad wargames, which I think are a genre that is at something of an inflection point. I posted a "Oh my god, I can't believe this is real" sort of announcement at http://ipadwargamer.com/node/5, but given that I'm not in Australia, I haven't been able to try the game yet. I'd love it if any people who have already tried it could drop by and share their impressions. (On the one hand I feel sort of bad flogging my blog here as my first post, but on the other hand I figure it's in the service of getting the word out about Battlefront's new game. I think you guys are going to make a freaking mint. If this post violates the board rules in any way, please feel free to nuke it.)