DOOM is one of those games that helped to define a genre. From running around with a myriad of realistic and ridiculous weaponry, to the blood and gore, and even the occasionally questionable imagery, DOOM helped define the First Person Shooter for what it was going to become. If you want proof of the games importance, you just have to watch the video here to see Bill Gates deliver a talk about Window 95 from inside the game. The games popularity saw it ported to pretty much every system available at the time in various flavours and forms.

Now, John Carmack himself, has brought it to the iPhone.

Continue reading DOOM Classic now available in the App Store for the iPhone

Always keen to give a zombie game a go, we were excited to try out Game of da Dead by Moyo studios in Sweden. The premise is fairly straight forward – planets are being taken over by zombies and you are the guy in the shooty tower attempting to defend the little dudes till they reach you and safety.

Everything about this game is geared towards the casual player. The controls took me seconds to work out, the play is fairly straight forward and there is enough going on to keep you interested. In fact, the developer promises over 100 maps to play. We haven’t got that far yet, but there is certainly a feeling of having just scratched the surface after playing 20-30 of them.

Continue reading Game of da Dead – A simple and very playable zombie Tower Defence

We have covered a lot of different dice rolling applications for role-playing games that are available in Apple’s App Store on this site. Over the past year that the app store has been around, these apps have started to fall into two main groups, namely, the Simulation group and the Random Number Generator group.

The Simulation group of apps seek to re-create the look and feel of rolling polyhedral dice. They often have beautiful graphics and sounds and can be quite fully features. The Random Number Generator group, by and large, are only interested in presenting the user with the calculated number of an equation.

We, in our gaming group, have players who prefer one or the other from the various groups, so we are going to do four of each.

Continue reading List of the Best 8 iPhone RPG Dice Rolling Apps

Wizards of the Coast have just put up 7 new made for iPhone wallpapers from their catalog of awesome pictures by their artists. They are a free download and look pretty damn awesome if you ask me. Images include:

Continue reading Awesome D&D wallpapers for your iPhone

Zombieville USA is one of those simple to play magical games that can distract you for hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over. It’s hard to say whether the charm stems from playing a trucker’s cap, flannelet shirt wearing redneck hillbilly shooting zombies with rocket launchers and flame throwers, or whether its the well designed control scheme or the simple but effective graphics. Whatever it is, it has deserved its place in the top of the game charts in the App Store for some time now.

Continue reading Zombieville USA beginner’s strategy guide

At long last Wolfenstein 3D, the classic first person shooter that helped define the genre (if not the industry), has been released for the iPhone. It’s all here, the cheesy sounds and music, the funny ‘Aiiieeee’ of the Nazi’s that you kill and the flat world that has no stairs. I spent far too much time playing this game, and I mean far too much time. In order to illustrate how much time I spent playing this game, as a right handed person, on a bet, completed the game left handed… Yes, that’s right, I had no life at university…

Continue reading Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone

With the plethora of RPG dice rolling apps out there, I am sure I am not the only person who has though about keeping my character on the iPhone as well. After a quick investigation, it proved to be not as straightforward as you might imagine. Well, I have put some thought into it, and I have a few suggestions about how it could be done.

Continue reading Keeping your role-playing game character on your iPhone

I’ll get right to the point – I love this game. It has an awesome visual feel to it – very Diablo in mood and atmosphere and the controls and game play are simple but effective. The graphics on the game, and the polished feel really add to the games appeal as well. Despite having great controls, this is also the first iPhone game to give me the beginnings of RSI (although I suspect that is more due to the hours I have spent playing it than anything else). Like some other games, I struggled at first, so I thought I’d post the lessons I have learnt playing the game in the hope that it helps a few others out there.

Killing Vampire ‘Bosses’

This stumped for a little while. At the end of a couple of levels, you need to kill the ‘Dracula’ boss (the vampire in the long red cloak). You can throw a lot at this guy and he’ll keep hurting you with his annoying green beam of hurty energy and not go down. This all changes if you are using the crossbow. Obvious, I know, but it didn’t occur to me that the developer’s would have thought of that (sorry guys…). One or two shots with the crossbow at the right spot, and the dude is out, leaving a nice glowing pentagram for you to collect…

Power Ups

This again stumped me the first couple of times that I played. There is a little green square that lights up when you earn a power up. Click it, and you are presented with a random list of power ups to choose from. I have my favourite combo’s, which look a bit like this:

• Bonus loot + Telekinesis = Lots of extra ammo and health. The bonus loot is really handy to get extra stuff dropping from slain werewolves and the like. This extra loot can be hard to run around and collect at times, so why not have it come to you. This is where Telekinesis comes in – the loot starts drifting towards you as you run around making the collection job a heck of a lot easier.
• Crossbow Master = Killing Spree. You get to fire three shots from your crossbow at once, and as crossbow bolts fly straight throw monsters and into the monsters behind them instantly killing everything that they touch, this is quite effective.
• Power Shot + Telekinesis = Safely keeping your distance. Power Shot pushes monsters away with each shot that doesn’t kill them to a safe distance. If you hit them again, however, any loot that they drop will be quite far away. Telekinesis (see above) is the obvious solution to this.

There are others that are useful to, like Fieldrunner (move quickly) Deep Pockets (carry more ammo) and Bloodlust (cause more damage when you are hurt).

Keep Moving

If you stand still, you are going to get swamped. It may be tempting to get your back to a wall, but that isn’t going to help you very much when you are surrounded by an endless wall of monsters. If you are worried about moving through packs of werewolves (and realistically, who isn’t these days…) then get the Ninja power up (allows you to deflect some of the attacks).

What the Weapons do

• Pistol – push back a little, require multiple hits per kill
• Shotgun – push back more, require two or so shots to kill, small area of effect
• Crossbow – no push back, usually one shot per kill
• Blunderbuss – no push back, like a grenade launcher, one shot per kill, area of effect
• Mini-gun – big push back, haven’t worked out shots to kill ratio (too dizzy from spinning the gun around wildly)
• Rocket Launcher – area of effect, great range, big damage

iDracula (iTunes link) $0.99 (AUD 1.19)

One of the great perks of writing for the Dice of Doom blog is getting asked to play with loads of iPhone dice rollers. We get a few gentle requests to try a new one out, and generally speaking we try to cover as many as we can. A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would like to try out dynamicDice, a new entrant into the Dice Simulation category (as opposed to the Number Generation category). Like Pip, Dicenomicon and MachDice before it, this RPG Dice Rolling app is designed to give you the feel of actually rolling dice in front of you without having to carry a dice bag around.

When reviewing a dice simulator, obviously the realism of the dice rolling is paramount. Using a true 3d engine, dynamicDice does this really well, although it currently suffers from some memory issues (which the developer assures me they are currently fixing and a free update will be upcoming) and sometimes the roll seems a little choppy (Pip on the other hand is very smooth). The quality of the graphics is extraordinary with reflections and shadows and is certainly on a par with Pip.

Dice are added to the table from the dice selection page by clicking on the die desired repeatedly (which actually works a lot better than many of the alternatives) and the entire dice selection can be erased easily by clicking the trash can. There are no adding of modifiers or adding of dice in the roll, keeping everything simple, much like Pip does. The ease in which dice are added to the table view is one of the things that dynamicDice does really well.

dynamicDice allows you to set up 5 tables with 5 differently themed dice sets, and has included d6 with round corners in both pips and numbers as well. The application comes with 20 table themes and 20 dice themes and they are all very attractive and are a nice touch addition to the app.

There is one thing about dynamicDice that I actually really like and sets it apart from some other apps, and that is its 3d perspective. You can move your iPhone around to get a complete 3d view of the dice sitting on the table. This is also supported in landscape mode.

All in all, this is a very good entrant into the dice simulation category and we look forward seeing what else this company puts out.

• dynamicDice $2.99 (iTunes Link)
• Dynamic Realms website

Zombie Attack! for the iPhone has kept me happily distracted protecting the beer shack vigorously against the zombie onslaught for more hours than I care to admit. The recent update has seen the game improved immensely with new ways of controlling the dude, cheaper building, a “secret” weapon in the beer shack and the dude and shack healing themselves.

With the upgrade of the game I have started getting to level 30 pretty frequently, and I assuming that that is not too bad seeing as a lot of my friends who play the game struggle to get to level 15. Being eager to help my fellow man during the zombie apocalypse (not a guarantee…) I am posting Rupert’s Guide to Killing Zombies for Zombie Attack!.

Step One – Hurt Zombies are Easier to Pick Off (or, Why the Cannons Don’t Suck)

Hurt zombies in Zombie Attack! suffer huge penalties. For lost limbs, they lose attack strength, for lost legs they start to wander in circles (taking longer to get to the shack) and if they lost their heads they wander aimlessly only attacking if they get to a target by accident.

Using this strategy we do two things. Firstly, use the Cannon to hit the groups of zombies as they arrive through the gate. The area of effect weapon is a good way of hitting lots of zombies with one hit. Flank the cannon with swinging axes as this will definitely remove a limb or two (see above).

If your cannons and axes are doing the job properly, then your zombies will be ready for step two.

Step Two – The Beer Shack Must Be Protected

Once you have your cannons and axes chopping up zombies, its time to clean them up. The Guns are not particularly good at taking out a healthy zombie before it gets to your shack, but they are very good at polishing them off if they are hurt badly.

I place one gun at the corner of the shack first so that it can hit the three areas you need to concentrate on – the direct line to your shack and the right and left flank. Build this gun up to its maximum and be prepared to man it bravely (see Step Three below). Follow this one up with a gun on each flank to protect the sides of the shack and to proved some crossfire (see Step Four below).

Step Three – Be Prepared To Die

One of the new additions to the game is that you get a 20% bonus to any gun that you man. This is extremely useful if you start to get swamped or just haven’t got the money to upgrade yet.

Zombies will also sort of chase your dude for a little while as well which can be very useful in distracting them from breaking into your beer shack.

If you are like me, the death of the dude is not important – he comes back and its not about points, its about killing zombies. Its not unusual for me to go through 3-4 dudes…

Step Four – Crossing Arcs of Fire

After the initial set up of your defences is complete, its time to make sure that your zombies are getting hit by at least 2 weapons at any given time. This is best done by making sure that your weapons at the back of the line are upgraded first so that they can reach the zombies at the front, and also adding new weapons around the central line as soon as is feasible.

If you aren’t playing the game, you probably should be, its not expensive and lots and lots of fun.

Zombie Attack! (iTunes link) USD 0.99 | AUD 1.19

If anyone is getting much past level 30 50, can you let me know how in the comments please?

Update: I am getting past level 45 almost every game now. I am posting the set up that I am using in the hopes that it will aid my fellow zombie hunters…