Gadgetory

the iPhone 8 is here and with it we also get the release of iOS 11 which for gaming opens up the really cool opportunity of true AR now there have been a are games in the past for iOS but it's usually just using your camera and then putting a bunch of objects on the screen not really having a great sense of where the floor walls or other objects are but now we have our games or you can actually have whole Maps built on tabletops or have objects bursting out of the ground in front of you so let's talk about the best AR games you can get right now for your iPhone now to kick things off I want to start with the game that I think is an excellent introduction to AR gaming and that's a more any one is a very simple game where all you're doing is using the AR camera to summon pieces of a stone statue in front of you that bursts out of the ground and you have to look at them to make them complete from the correct perspective now this starts off very very simple but coupled later personal start to get a lot more complex because they'll start throwing things in your way like extra stone pieces you don't make use of or boards that get in the way of making the image complete now the reason I think this makes a great introduction to our gaming is twofold first off there's not any kind of real time limit or challenge to this the game other than just looking around and trying to find the right angle so you can take your time get used to a are tracking and really get used to how to manipulate and look at objects in an augmented reality game the second reason is that you're going to look uh Turley insane playing this thing so you're gonna think it comfortable the fact that just like with any another AR game if you play this people are gonna think you look crazy and you need to be comfortable with that bag now after I'm on there's another game with a similar premise but it does gamify it a lot more and that's key do now keto is one of those games that it's already existed before and it messed with perspective gameplay a little bit where you could just tilt the screen to make platform must be lower or higher but with the release of iOS 11 they've added an AR level as well and with this one we're actually climbing a whole tower having to constantly move around and looking at different angles to make sure the character can cross safely now given this is only a single level they are hopefully patching more in time but I really like this one because this is a style of game that AR is messing with there's a couple different titles that have come out as well like arise which have the same basic premise but on all those games even though it's a single level Kito actually feels the most polished to me and actually is the best use of tracking and just feels like a very comfortable and great looking experienced third up we have Euclidean lands now just like with ki do this is a game that existed before already and it was successful fun little puzzle game that has regular levels still but with the release of iOS 11 you're gonna get special AR levels as well now now if you haven't played this game before imagine a mixture of the art style and kind of puzzle elements of monument with a Rubik's Cube where you have this sort of floating little stone thing where you can rotate it around move a character around to avoid enemy attacks and you have to get to a finishing goal point honestly even without AR this is just a fun game if you're a fan of puzzles but what these new levels added it's a great demonstration of what you can do with AR puzzle games all right nothin puzzle platformer games let's move on to some action titles starting with the game whose title pretty clearly explains what it is right up front and that's zombie gunship of revenant now the way this game makes use of AR is actually pretty interesting because it doesn't just use the basic camera out looked where you can actually you know see the room you're in instead it applies this kind of blackout night-vision effect to everything so it still looks very gamey even though you can still occasionally make out like you know where a table or chair is in the background a concept of the game is very very simple there is a base you need to protect there are zombies swarming you and you need to shoot them with your zombie gunship this game can be played without AR but actually find that it plays a lot better when they are activated especially if you send it up on like a table because it allows you to move around and zoom in a have a lot more freedom movement that just feels very natural compared to the regular gameplay now I'm not gonna lie this is one of those titles where advancement is somewhat slow and they're definitely gonna try and gouge you for it hey you want to just buy real monies you can do stuff faster you want to buy real money so you can do so fast or you want to buy real money so you can do so faster but it's not that bad actually if you just use it as an occasional kind of pick up and play sync a little time here and there it's very easy to unlock a lot of different guns upgrade stuff in a regular fashion and just have fun with it every now and then and we have the big flagship title that Apple has been really pushing as a representative of what AR gaming can become and that is the machines now on the surface level the machines is a very straightforward meat and potatoes RTS game you have your army you're moving around you have hero units that have special powers and ultimately your goal is to blow up the enemy's base but what's really interesting about it is how it shows off how much more dynamic and a our map can be a lot of other air games currently make use of very flat lands or just build a singular tower that you can walk around and look at whereas the machines has much more dynamically designed maps where you can actually walk around didn't really get a sense for the lay of the land and where you want your units to go you can look through little underpasses you can check out which areas higher than others to get an advantage it just gives you such a much more interesting map layout that other AR games just aren't really making use of yet so there you have some of the best AR games you can grab right now for your phone now aren't these the absolute just best games in general that you could ever grab no ARS and alergic technology controls aren't always going to go the way you want them to things sometimes get a little fickle but they are a step in the right direction that is really showing us where this technology can go and hopefully we're going to see some way better games in the near future