iPhone App Zealot

Samurai delivers gore and soothing music. It dropped to $0.99 on Saturday and will be on sale for a week. I have only completed a few levels, and I really enjoy it. Like other reviewers, I too find it a little repetitive, but the combo moves keep coming and the bodies keep piling around my noble Ronin. Then again, what games on the iPhone aren’t at least a little repetitive? It is novel, well drawn, and does a good job for a scroller at providing a nice 3D feel. For a buck$1.99, it gets my vote.

If you want to try it out, the lite version can be found on iTunes: Samurai Lite

If you can’t be bothered to try the lite verion, here is a YouTube video of gameplay: Samurai iPhone App Game Play

Update 20 Oct ’09: The sale is over. The price is to $1.99. It is still a great, unique game for that price. While free games good games are best, keeping a developer in business making innovative, fun games is good karma too. Check out the lite version. If you like it, make the devs day at Mad Finger Games and cough up the $1.99.

Ninjas by Storm8 provides yet another variant on the Mob, Vampire, Band, you-name-it, multiplayer game that seems to be coming out weekly by Storm8.  For the most part, these game all play the same. In spite of that, I find myself attracted not only to Ninjas but also to Zombies, Vampires, and iMobsters. Sure, I’ve tried all the other games they push like crack if you play any one of their games by offering free loyalty points or gear. You can, of course, buy loyalty points as well.

So what is Ninjas? You are a ninja who works his or her way up the ranks. It has the usual set of missions, attacks, and equipment panels entitled “Missions”, “Attack”, and “Dojo.” Home and Recruit screens round out the main panels. Like most of these games, there is a basic strategy of build up as much income and cash as you can before adding allies or at least before adding expensive equipment. The real break Ninjas makes with the other games of this kind are in the “Clients” aka income. Instead of just buying more of a given client at an ever increasing cost per unit income, you have a limited number of slots to fill with clients. You can then upgrade or drop any client. Dropping gives a partial refund of cash spent. This is a novel approach that still has me trying to optimize my strategy.

Bottom Line: I find these whole series of games enjoyable. At the price of Free, it is hard to beat.

Footnote: Storm8 was previously harvesting phone numbers from users without their knowledge. This appears to have changed with a recent update. Interesting post at iPhone Home focused on Storm8′s apps. This blog also rates a wide variey of iphone applications for data leaks and apps that do not share user data.