Modern Combat is the first convincing FPS on iPhone : realistic 3D graphics and characters, great sounds, voices and soundtrack, and really good performance. It seems however it uses a scaled down 3D engine (perhaps to allow these performance - could be specific to OpenGL ES for that reason) : walls angles when turning are somewhat false, and remind in someway the Dark Forces engine (wasn't a perfect 3D rendering like Quake, in order to provide good performance on low hardware - such as the LC475 25Mhz's 60840). Or perhaps the landscape is just huge images used as textures on a projection cube (as it was in Myst 4 or the recent Return to Mysterious Island - that is really fast), but then it would be fixed scenes (and Sandstorm provides free run).
(submitted at 09-06-09, 16:13 by cjed)

Real Racing isn't finally such impressive compared with the (old) Fastlane Racing (that is for me the best racing game on iPhone) : graphics are about the same details (perhaps more realistic but far more less various and less fun), and controls are more difficult : with Fastlane the tilt is very precise and we have only to move slightly the iPhone to find the right path, while with Real racing there is a hole (center) in tilt control, so we have to move the iPhone further. Then the path isn't easily visible (and it is worse as the display also moves to reflect the orientation - as with the HUD in an air combat game). Many settings exist, however the default ones aren't really the most suited (auto accelerate for example should have been set off by default, as automatic mode is frustrating - Fasltane accelerate and brake buttons were perfect so there shouldn't be need for auto accelerate).
(submitted at 09-06-09, 15:41 by cjed)