Apple is all about the services lately. Apple Music has been growing fast, but we already know that there’s a lot more on tap in the near future. Apple’s video streaming service is coming as soon as next month or so, and their new News service powered by the Texture acquisition should also be here by Summer. However, Apple may not be stopping there.
Once upon a time, it looked like Apple would finish off Nintendo as the leader in mobile gaming and proceed to take on the big boys on the big screen. The App Store was booming and games were the biggest hits you could find. The easy availability and cheaper prices meant that players could stock up and play all kinds of different titles. Sales of the Nintendo 3DS sagged, which spelled real trouble for Nintendo. Apple could also provide what the competition couldn’t- a quality portable gaming experience on a bigger screen thanks to the iPad. It looked like things were really coming together.
Who doesn’t like great iPhone apps? At iPhone Insight we definitely do. With that in mind, we offer up a quick review of an excellent iPhone app published here each week. Check out all out picks below and you’ll soon have a collection of stellar apps for your favorite phone.
This week’s pick is MMX Hill Dash — Off-Road Racing, by Hutch Games Ltd. Sometimes, or most of the time if you’re like me and rarely let loose for some fun iOS gameplay on you iPhone, you just want to play a fun game that allows you to check out for a little while and forget about everything else going on around you. With MMX Hill Dash you’ll get just that with a sprinkle of physics based racing that will leave you wanting more.
I’m a huge fan of the Asphalt series. Many racing games have come and gone on the App Store, from the excellent Real Racing games, to a myriad of awful Mario Kart knockoffs, but the Asphalt games have enjoyed a vibrant life on the iPad that few series have attained. My investment in the series is high, and that’s why Asphalt 8: Airborne nearly broke my heart.
For those new to the series, the Asphalt games are highly polished speed racers. They incorporate many real world cars and locations while maintaing a loose relationship with real world physics. Since Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, this relationship was strained further with the introduction of a nitro boost system, allowing cars to surge at exhilarating speeds. Asphalt 8 shatters this relationship completely by introducing ramps that allow for jumps, twists, and barrel rolls that take cars soaring sky high.
Surrounded by a groovy, neon-covered world pulsing with a rhythmic beat, there’s just one question on my mind: can I survive 100 seconds? This is one of the challenges that Pivvot presents. In this game, the controls are pretty simple: you are a circle moving along a twisting roller coaster track with the ability to rotate (or, if you will, pivot) around a smaller circle. The one rule: don’t touch anything.
Pivvot is an everything-is-dangerous survival game with five increasingly difficult gameplay modes. The first mode is voyager, which serves as a sort of tutorial/adventure mode for teaching you about the different obstacles you will encounter in the second mode, endless. In endless, your goal is pretty straightforward: survive for 100 seconds, and you win. It’s a lot harder than you’d think. From there, you can unlock expert versions of both voyager and endless, and the unspeakably difficult berserk mode.