The Infinity Blade or Minigore series, for example, or anything made by Illusion Labs. These games are genius and most consoles don’t even have a touch screen or utilise it well like some smartphone games do.
Also why do people look at me weirdly 👀 when I play games on my phone in public while waiting for something?
I see mobile games as the natural evolution of flash games from the old days. I used to spend my time playing those games and I had fun, but I would never insist on them being the best experience I’ve ever had in gaming. They were just cute games to spend some time on. To use your examples, Minigore is just like Boxhead. It may be fun but there’s nothing “genius” or ground-breaking about it.
In the end, gaming is just an experience, and our emotional attachment to it decides our rating. I hardly care about Call of Duty, but the people who spent their childhood playing online with friends rate it as one of their best/most formative gaming experiences. Surprise, people’s opinions on things are subjective.
By the way, as you’re the same guy who dunked on Uncharted, The last of us, God of war and Witcher for being games that rely too much on story exposition and have too little gameplay, you seem to have a preference for games with zero/near zero story and offer immediate gratification via gameplay. That’s also a characteristic that lots of mobile games share, so that may shape your preference as well.
Personally, I rate mobile games very low because I hate their monetization and I despise touch controls.
Damn i forgot about boxhead… I must have spent more hours in that game than anything in my Steam library back in the day.
No one in their right mind would do proper gaming on a phone. Touch interfaces are shit.
But I enjoy those mobile-only games 😅 How would I play them otherwise? And I think touch interfaces allow for some gameplay you wouldn’t ever get anywhere else, like swipe actions and multi-finger gestures, which you can see in games like Infinity Blade or Fruit Ninja (or even True Skate, which seems to have quite a following, not my fave personally but I can’t imagine that on any other device)
Those touch mechanics are things you don’t need on any other platform as opposed to literally the only option via mobile. Games as shallow as Fruit Ninja, seriously? You ever pay a Nintendo Wii? Or any of the Xbox Kinect type motion tracking games (i dont remember the Playstation variant)? That’s a hell of a lot more immersive than twitching your finger on your phone. Lets not even get into the world of VR gaming that’s been around for years now.
Multi finger gestures- like an entire PC keyboard…while moving your mouse? Can you use 10 fingers on your phone at the same time? Or multi button/direction combos on a controller? Plus the fact you can program multi-function macros on a PC.
Pinch zoom- mouse wheel: faster, more control, & way more range.
Swipe- like move your mouse? Or a controller joystick? Or the arrow keys? RTS or any top-down games have been using “swipe” variants to move around maps basically as long as the game genre has existed. Most mice come standard these days with thumb buttons that are pre-programmed as literally Forward and Backwards buttons (think page turn, or swipe left/right). Even the mechanic of hotkeys that most games have.
Add in the ability to right-click, or hold any button and click and you open literally endless opportunities for any sort of “finger” or “swipe” type control. A PC mouse is literally your hand with a LOT more fingers.
But lets go deeper…there ARE touch interfaces for other platforms. Not used much for gaming, but how do you think digital artists draw and paint?
Basically, these touch gestures you’re so hung up on are literally all you have- and it ain’t much. Anything else i could add has been said multiple times from all the other comments….
None of the examples you listed would be a good version of true skate, you swipe with two fingers simultaneously in different directions and at different speeds to get the tricks you’re looking for, the idea being that each finger is a foot on a skateboard. It is pretty unique and one of the better mobile games out there.
A PC mouse is your hand with one finger and lots of buttons… How would I use the multiple fingers you refer to to simultaneously move up with one and down with the other?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that mobile does everything better… Obviously a keyboard can make more use of multiple buttons than a touchscreen, that’s also true vs a controller but that exists too. Simplicity is sometimes what people want or need, I like being able to play games on a train journey so finding the decent mobile ones is very worth doing for me.
Also why does this comment read so angrily? We’re talking about casual gaming, just chill.
The default control scheme for the game Sessions is using a controller with 1 foot per analog stick, so that’s covered.
Well, I guess it’s time for my biannual reinstallation of true skate!
Mobile games get a lot of shit for some very valid reasons, but so many have written them off entirely because of the microtransactions and/or touchscreen controls when there are some very good games that don’t suffer from either of these issues.
You’re absolutely right though, it allows for things like true skate to exist which is brilliant. And if you can be bothered to hunt out the good paid games you can avoid microtransactions entirely. Bloons Td6 is arguably the best value game I’ve ever paid for given the hours I’ve sunk into it over a year or so. Cost me £6 once and has never asked for another penny.
Also the room series is fantastic, as is monument valley. The good ones are out there, but people will download a few free games, get bombarded by ads and microtransaction “deals” and write off the whole genre.
If you like the Room series, have you tried the Forever Lost trilogy or anything by Fire Mapel Games?
Some of the greatest puzzel games I have played.
I haven’t but I’ll give them a go, thanks!
I also enjoyed the rusty lake series if you like point and click mystery puzzle games.
I will look that up, never heard of it. Thank you too.
Nintendo Wii/WiiU/DS/Switch did it better.
I also have some Sim City game on my phone. It’s great for when you have a couple of minutes to waste waiting on a train or something. I have nothing against mobile games itself, but I wouldn’t consider that gaming.
As someone that used to be a somewhat competitive gamer back in the days, I don’t like being lumped in with people playing mobile games. We are not the same. Call me a gatekeeper, but my aunt playing candy crush just isn’t a “gamer” in my book.
It’s rare I find a mobile game that is truly a game and not merely a slot machine with a different appearance. And of those that are decent games, there are far better equivalent games on literally any other platform. For example, Galaxy on Fire 2 is a great little mobile game space sim like Freelancer. But Freelancer is still a better game and could work just as well on a mobile device.
I’d love some console alternatives to certain classic mobile games for me, do you know of any good dual-stick shooters (like Minigore or Guerrilla Bob), or swordfight/strategic combat type games like the style of Infinity Blade/Epoch/Dark Meadow?
Infinity Blade looks like Dark Souls on rails. You could try Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro or Elden Ring. If you want to get more in depth tactical swordfighting, you could try Mount & Blade: Bannerlord which also comes with the RPG, grand strategy and 4X elements in addition to the swordplay.
As for twin stick shooters: I really liked The Ascent which is the most current game of that genre I know of.
I watched the videos of minigore and boxhead someone posted
Looks like a couple steam games i have. Vampire Survivors (which just came out with couch co op mode)
And another one i was gifted that im very much enjoying is Halls of Torment
But they are retro 2d games so you probably arent interested at all. Basically the same genre so should be very relatable if you ever develop a stomach for it. But they will always be there if you ever change enough and start to feel nostalgic
Going back to your original point is phones because of their nature are very limited. From battery life to using half of the screen for the controls.
The types of games created usually have a better version on other devices.
But when it all boils down to it phones arent developed as gaming devices so devices that are designed to be gaming devices will naturally give developers the best tools to utilize that just a phone isnt going to offer.
None of this means you cant have more fun with a mobile game. Your experiences are your own. But when talking about things in a broader perspective rather than a personal one, its gonna be hard to compete with gaming specific devices.
Much like a pc assembled for gaming is going to offer a massive advantage over a literal supercomputer because in spite of the massive advantage in computing power, the latest super computer just isnt designed to play games, or rather, games arent designed for super computers so the superior hardware is not taking advantage of its capabilities.
I would be very interested in what a game designed for a supercomputer would be able to do, probably some VR thing that would blow all our minds, but until enough people have one in their home, whos gonna figure out what to do with all them FLOPS for a game?
Staggering would be the cost to develop such a game and it just isnt possible to recoup the cost of such a thing.
Again would love to see what the people who could do it would do with it but it wont happen in my lifetime and i could maybe see the year 2100 if science helps me out or im just freakishly lucky
I should note the best game ive ever played is a text based multiplayer game you can play on a telnet program (if it still existed) and was a free game. Nothing like it exists for me today, but i would play it again if i could get ahold of it. Its basically a text based mmo or what is the closest thing to it. It was probably wow that killed it
Many mobile games are just thinly veiled attempts at monetization. Get people hooked, then start adding time-bound gates you can unlock, add PvP with loot boxes and multiple types of premium currency that’s hard to keep track of. Doesn’t matter what the game is about - you can do this to racing games, fighting games, gardening games, whatever.
That said there are still mobile games that are fun and genuinely good gameplay - I used to love Minigore too. But these are few and far between.
The rapacious micro transactions we see in games today started on mobile. People associate mobile games with that model. I have some mobile games, but these days they’re all premium. The gacha system just starts to feel like work to me after a while.
As to the stares, non gamers always sneer at gamers. You’re playing games in public. They’d probably give you the same looks if you had a handheld console.
No offense but how old are you
7
because 99.9% of them are cheap cash grabs and little more than a clicker game which just changes some arbitrary numbers to simulate progression.
The vast majority of mobile games are not designed to be good games. They are designed to be addictive vehicles for advertising and micro transactions.
Multiple things:
- A lot of mobile games include ridiculous micro transactions
- a lot are copy paste concepts or are missing game depth and complexity (comparable with Minesweeper or Solitaire)
- the standard input device (touch) is not great for traditional games developed for physical button games
There are definitely exceptions to the problems, but I haven’t found a mobile game yet that catches me for 100h.
If you like tower defense games bloons td6 will.
£6 for probably an average of 30min - 1hr per day for the last year for me. With shit loads of content still not done and lots I haven’t learned yet.
Because the big majority of mobile games are filled with ads, pay to win, made for ipad kids, have a very simple concept and are generally just copy pastes of the thousands of shitty games on the store.
Part this and part gate keeping.
The only reason I can imagine people actually caring enough to look is if you’re playing with sound enabled in a public place, put your headphones on if so. No one wants to hear the sound from someone else’s phone.
I guess the only other thing I can imagine is if you get too into it, maybe? If you’re frantically tapping your screen, that’s gonna draw attention too.
When I game… I game hard 😎
No sound in public though, I would never be that obnoxious (or confident lol, too embarrassing)
I guess you’re twitching all over the place then.
gatekeepers gotta gatekeep
Infinity blade had a story. When people think mobile they think endless grind like clash of clans. Where the grind and wait is the game.
Problem for me is phones are uncomfortable to use for gaming in so many ways. My hands aren’t even that big, and my thumbs cover a lot of the screen. Then phones get hot when using them a lot. Not to mention staring that long at a mobile screen makes my eyes feel like raisins. Plus it’s really shit posture to sit with your neck bent at a 90° angle looking straight down into your lap. None of these are very enjoyable for a gaming experience.
I won’t even talk about the crazy predatory nature of most phone games being aggressive dopamine hijackers, cause that’s covered in the thread already, but that too.
Play whatever you want, I doubt you’re getting weird looks for playing anything in public.
I personally despise the mobile gaming industry as a whole for its propensity for going live service or shovelware in the vast majority of instances. Of course I can think of gems in the rough but in many cases it went for a business model I ended being disappointed in.
At the end of the day, the switch and steam deck are far preferable on the go gaming platforms that suit me much better.
