Android Gaming

I've delayed my review of Hockey Nation 2010 for a couple of reasons. First, the publisher has indicated DPad control is coming soon and I think the game will be much better with that feature. Second, I see they just released an update for the iPhone version so I have to hope our update isn't far behind.

Over the weekend I tried Caligo Chaser from Com2Us (get it... "come to us"?). Com2Us made the excellent Homerun Derby 3D. Unfortunately they haven't quite clicked that Android owners have limited storage for game resources in main memory and while I gather the plan is for that to be fixed in a future OS update we're still waiting. Meanwhile, Caligo Chaser weighs in at 22 MB of storage which is massive.

Caligo Chaser is an Action RPG and that's among the many genres I really like. But I'm apparently too inept to get past the first battle. Any hints? I get my weapons and training and head off on the confidence builder mission to the south. I thought I had the ebb and flow of combat down, but can't seem to kill anything and eventually die. The game looks awesome and I'd love to be able to dig deeper and give it an accurate review. Oh, and it does support the Droid's DPad in the current release which is also nice.

And speaking of DPads has everyone seen the GameGripper? It's for the Motorola Droid only and slides over the keyboard to provide a more traditional gamepad experience. At $15 it's not like it's expensive, but having purchased a phone with a DPad I have a hard time buying a DPad add-on... still the reviews are generally good. I already have a BGP100 bluetooth gamepad from my Windows Mobile days and there's an Android driver for it now... something else I need to try.

Finally, I've been pretty pleased with gaming on the Android, but a friend asked what I think I'm missing versus the iPhone. Good question as there isn't much... Madden 2010 (or a good football game) would be welcome, as would some of the strategy games like Money! and Ingenious. And then there are a few other misc titles like Sniper vs Sniper (also from Com2Us) and Ace Combat from Namco. But on the whole I've got plenty of games on my Droid that I haven't been able to give proper attention to which is positive news.