Fresh off of some fantastic Wipeout HD playing I saw iSR on the iTunes App Store and thought “That looks like Wipeout for the iPhone. I want to have that!”

Ladies. Gentlemen. iSR is not Wipeout. Despite the large number of positive reviews and a lengthy period of front page time in the App Store, iSR is not even decent.

Looks like Wipeout, huh?

No. This game is garbage. Garbage out of a butt.

Now, I sorta/kinda/maybe subscribe to the reviewing philosophy of “it is better to support the good stuff than rag on the bad stuff.” After all, there are tons of iPhone games out there and you don’t need a schmuck like me to say “Hey, you see this game you don’t have? Keep that up.” It’d be a better use of both our time if I instead I said something alone the lines of “Yo dog, Eliss is off the hook.”

Because I talk like that.

But iSR is such a prominent feature on the App Store that I feel like I need to be the dude to point and shout “Hey, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes!” So I will tell you about how terrible this awful game is and how I can see its junk.

iSR is incredibly misleading with the Wipeout look and presentation. This is not even a racing game, since you are all alone on the track. Maybe your character got up real early to beat the rush.

You have the choice between three miserable tracks. What follows next is an time trial on an ugly, badly rendered Tron-inspired obstacle course. Tilting the iPhone moves your ship along the x and y axis of the screen (this is important to mention because it is the ENTIRETY of iSR’s game play). Then you do your best to avoid obstacles while hitting speed boosts. Then blissfully the game is over and you can move past the denial stage of grief.

Despite the outright lie of appearing to be a Wipeout styled game, iSR could have been saved if so much of it wasn’t clearly phoned in.

1. The vehicle has no weight to it. It zips around your screen like a neon bumblebee.
2. Everything about the game past the main menu is ugly.
3. When you hit an obstacle, the iPhone doesn’t buzz or make any sort of noise like I keep expecting it to. There’s no sort of response that has been standard in video games since Pong.
4. Furthermore, hitting an obstacle has no ramifications other that a slight slow down of your vehicle. So there’s no good need for you to play. You could get up for a drink and leave your iPhone on that table and it’d do pretty well all on its own.

I guess you could be proud of iSR’s success. I mean, you remember when it was just a freshly installed baby app. Now it’s finishing its tracks all by itself. Like a big boy!

Yet you can’t be proud. You can never feel anything but rage towards this awful, waste of space child– I mean App.

I don’t even do numeric scores but iSR gets a zero out of a jillion.

What I learned today: It’s depressing when I feel like I get a better video game shopping experience at Best Buy than I do at Game Stop.

Let me admit to something. This weeks iPhone game review was chosen because it is a small game. Teeny. Short. Simple. So naturally, I thought I could bang out a quick review. Instead, I’m stuck in a mental discussion between myself and another version of myself (with a neck tattoo) over what makes a simple game like Minigore fun.

Ugly guys and bigger ugly guys. Guess which are harder to kill.

Minigore is a duel stick shooter. The controls are simple. There are few power ups and they aren’t necessary to excel in the game. There is one map. Options are iPhone standard (such as the ability to play your own library’s music as the soundtrack) but sparse.

“Well” Neck-Tattoo Nick snarls, “Doesn’t sound like that fantastic of a game. Not much to do other than the run and gun game play on that single map included. Sure the developer has promised future updates (weapons, enemies, maps) but problems with their source code has kept any of them from reaching the iTunes App Store.”

That’s true. The game is plain. But I am drawn to it. The shooting is big fun and the increasingly difficult enemies that spawn keep me on my toes and challenged during each round.

“Pfft. You just like it because it looks cartoony.”

Well, that does play a big part in it. The fluidity of animation, the simple but iconic character designs, heck even the in game voice over work adds charm to what could exist as a ugly looking browser based Flash game. Does that mean the game isn’t good because of its simplicity? Or despite it? Tetris is simple and it’s one of our favorite games.

“Tetris was the trailblazer of the puzzle genre. There are dozens of shooters like Minigore,” Neck Tattoo Nick spits back at me, obviously angry I brought Tetris into the conversation. “Plus, the first couple minutes of this game are boring. It’s a cakewalk until the tougher enemies start showing up. There should be some kind of option to start a round at a higher difficulty. Otherwise you’re wasting time. You just complained in the last review how iPhone games should cater to short gaming bursts rather than twenty minute sessions. This one clearly doesn’t!”

Dangit. I know. I can’t help but feel that additional options like that might break the bare bones idiom of Minigore though. This is why I almost consider it an act of God they are unable to add the new content. It’s divine work like that which could have saved the zen-like Web 2.0 perfection of Twitter from things like “trending topics”.

Collecting 3 four leaf clovers turns you into a flaming minotaur. That's why they're lucky.

“I still think you just like this game because it is cartoony.”

Shut up. Just shut up. Despite everything, I can’t help but recommend Minigore. It’s simple. It’s fun. It looks great. It rewards skill over luck. Not to mention the fact that it is dirt cheap ($0.99 last time I checked).

Plus I only seem to have complaints for it while not playing it. Or when I have a neck tattoo.

I clearly have to work on some issues of mine.

What I learned today: A lot about carpet. A lot.

Alongside its brother, tower defense, the shooter genre has been the barrel that most developers dip their ladle into first for an iPhone game. These servings have been less than amazing.

Then with a BANG came Space Invaders Infinity Gene onto the iTunes App Store. It was a shooter which paid homage to the father of the genre while at the same time introduced a funky new theme of evolution interwoven with 80′s vector graphics nostalgia. Was this the game shooter fans have been waiting for while checking Twitter on their iPhones? Nah.

There are some things done very right with this game. The controls for Space Invaders Infinity Gene are perfectly simple. Hold your finger anywhere on the iPhone’s screen and move it around to maneuver your ship. The ship fires automatically as you waggle your 8-bit hoopty through the retro-motif badlands of invader country. Playing the game consists of dodging enemy fire and putting your ship where it needs to be to rack up chains of destroyed space invaders.

After destroying these evil space invaders… wait a minute. The invaders aren’t attacking earth this time… and your ship is clearly flying through unknown space. Is this a switcharoo? Are YOU the invader? This is revisionist history right here. We have got to alert all the elementary school history teachers to continue teaching that the Pilgrims and Native Americans were best friends and the aliens invaded us!

America!

Anyway.

The way the game is structured to unlock itself (or “EVOLVE”) as you play is nice and caters to my love of being patronized by software. Being told I unlocked “Easy Mode” is a feeling of success which honestly should be more fleeting. Yet here I am. Bragging about it.

Unlocking extra levels, weapons, and nonsense I’ll never use like sounds and graphics is entertaining enough that I still play the game. That being said, I never have much fun for the commitment of time the game requires.

There is where the problems begin. As the levels progress, they get longer with no way to save your

progress or restart from a checkpoint. I strongly believe iPhone games can be as grandiose as any game you choose to sit down to play while doing right by the people who just want a less than 2 minute burst of fun. In its pursuit of the grandiose, this game forgets that people are playing this game on their iPhones in the middle of their busy day.

Furthermore, maybe my eyes have been bleeding too much from playing Ikaruga but this game is pretty dang easy. If you are working on a game where you can beat most levels by keeping your ship at the center of the screen you should probably consider some game redesign.

For an iPhone shooter this is one of the best. Yet that is like saying it is the king of the AV Club. Sure, it can talk to a girl in class without its knees shaking. And sure, that one football player shouted “You da man!” to it in the halls. And sure, it understands when and when not to talk about Pokemon to people. But it is still just one of us– I mean just another iPhone shooter.

Unless you are starved for a shooter, I can’t recommend Space Invaders Infinity Gene. Hopefully, developers will look at what this game did right and expand upon it with future apps.

What I learned today: Giraffes are flippin’ weird to look at. Seriously. Try it. Weird.

You are a spider. You spin webs. You eat bugs.

Spider's gonna squat in that empty mansion till a job turns up.

Not only is that the worst poem I have ever written to win a woman’s heart it is ALSO the entire game play of Spider: the Secret of Bryce Manor, a 2D adventure game that stars the creepy-crawlies.

The game’s challenge level is set very low. You, the spider, can climb around the perimeter of any object in the 28 rooms you find in an abandoned mansion. Tap anywhere on the screen to make him crawl or flick the spider to make him leap. The spider leaps to get to other parts of the room, attack certain bugs, and to spin web. By making a shape with your threads the spider produces webbing which will then catch any bugs it touches. Sounds simple enough, huh?

You do have to work with a limited number of threads (and running out results in a game over) which presents a small amount of difficulty but you always have more than you need.

That is the game play, simplistic, innovative, and.

Notice I didn’t say fun though?

While there is nothing unpleasant about these mechanics, I felt no real achievement as I progressed through the levels. It felt less like reading a book and more like flipping through a magazine: active but without substance.

Any shape will turn into webbing, as long as it is made by the thread.

The charm of this game comes from its setting. Bryce Manor is a wonderfully detailed local and the aesthetics of the game convey a chilly, forgotten mansion perfectly. As the spider you get to explore all the parts a human would overlook in the environment. Through this exploration you get clues as to what happened to the Bryce family.

Perhaps I’m stupid though. I know many people have figured out the dark secret, but I still don’t really know what’s up. I think I’m missing the middle of the Bryces’ story.

Going behind a crack in a drawer to find hidden documents, or abandoned wedding bands are the spooky moments that make this game work. There is a Metroid-like quality to these secrets. You can finish the whole game without uncovering them, but you are guaranteed to be disappointed in yourself when you realize what you missed.

The atmosphere of this game produces. The music and the way the application starts with the title screen over the game in progress are both calm and dreadful. It’s like a horror movie without the suspense. All the shots have been fired, but you didn’t hear any bangs. Spider’s message is clear: “Something horrible happened in this house but you’re in no rush, just eat bugs.”

Alongside the adventure there are other challenge modes to occupy your time. These are much more gamey with time limits and additional difficulty. I can see myself playing them for a couple more weeks. It will be pleasant to revisit the disrepair of Bryce Manor.

A clue! Clearly the family hated lockets. Nooow I get it...

This game COULD work as a “quick play” game. Auto-saving and challenge modes makes popping in and out of Spider simple for someone with only a few of minutes to spare but I feel like that’s not the best way to experience this title. Exploring every nook and cranny, taking in just what the environment is telling you, and feeling the weight of ghosts on your tiny spider frame can’t be done while waiting for an appointment.

It must be done on the toilet.

Spider currently stands as another great example of what makes the iPhone a compelling platform for gaming. Plus, since it was programmed by a bunch of ex-big-game-company employees wanting to do something new, it’s all the more reason for the industry to take heed of the iPhone and what tidings it brings.

What I learned today: If you keep your XBOX 360 controller attached to your computer all the time, it will get angry at you every time you lose at Minesweeper