Ipod RPG reccomendations? Also, a question...

[Buddy]

Okay, so I swore off Ipod gaming until I recently got one and saw some great looking graphic adventures I thought I must have. So I took the plunge and bought quite a few graphic adventures and RPG's. I bought Underworlds which seems pretty awesome aside from control issues and The Quest which will probably be the first first person RPG I play through in 15 years. I got Vay which seems cool and Zenonia which kicks all kinds of ass. There's a ton more on here... anything else I should consider getting?


Now for my question...

What's the deal with all the bugs in these games? I'd say 5 or 6 of them crash all the time by either freezing the screen or the sound dropping out. The Earthworm Jim I got won't even boot up at all. For some reason I can play it if my Ipod is hooked up to my PC via the little connector cable, but take that off and I can't get it to boot up at all. A lot of people are having that issue, so why is it even on the app store? I downloaded one GREAT looking graphic adventure called Simon And The Sorcerer which is fun as hell to play and is very much like the Discworld games, but after the beginning of the game, it loos up CONSTANTLY. Very frustrating.

[MeshGearFox]

??? iPod is an apple product and apple products never crash ???

Seriously though, about the bugs? Probably just low quality control standards. I saw some graphics about it somewhere once but iPod game pricing's sort of this weird bell curve between profitability/non-profitability. RPGs are lengthier in general and have lengthier dev times and thus cost more. I'm guessing QA sort of well by the wayside.

[Tooker]

You know, I've yet to have many problems with mine crashing, but I have heard a lot of other people saying that.  What hardware do you have, Buddy?  And is it up-to-date on the firmware?  The one problem I had was when I bought Wolfenstein RPG - it just wouldn't get past the first splash screen.  I found some info online about doing a hard reboot, and that solved the problem immediately.  To do that, have it on and hold the "power" button down for a few seconds.  A slider will come up at the top of the screen saying "slide to power off."  After you turn it off, give it a few seconds and turn it back on.  Hopefully that helps.


RPG-wise, here's a list of everything I've played:
Dungeon Hunter - loved it.  Wrote a review for the site if you want more info.
Inotia demo - didn't like it enough to want to spend the money.
Inotia 2 - liked it enough to buy it, but got really annoyed by it later.  I wrote a review for the site if you want more info.
Zenonia - bought it, liked it, got myself kind of in a corner.  Gotta do a bunch of grinding before I'm going to be able to continue.
Dungeon Scroll - not RPG enough to count for the site, but it's fun if you like word games, and you do get stronger as you progress.
Wolfenstein RPG - it's not too RPG, but it's definitely interesting and unique.  If you haven't played it, I think it's worth the $2.
Song Summoner - your results will apparently vary greatly based on how many songs are on your iPod.  I thought it was pretty fun when they released it for the old iPod, but I have 8000 songs on my iPod Touch, and the loading time issues that creates completely destroyed the experience for me.

[Buddy]

Hard reboot? I thought holding that down until the slider thing comes up was just turning it off as oppsed to tapping the button, which basically just puts it in standby? I don't know about firmware, I'm an idiot about such things. I do know I have the latest model Ipod Touch (64 GB), and I have it synced up with Itunes, so I assume it has the latest hardware?

I did read your review, and the game looks great and I was about to buy it until I read that it didn't have a map. I get extremely frustrated with games with no maps because I get lost all the time. It just seems too archaic for me. I'll have to look into Song Summoner as it's 10 bucks. Not a lot of money, but more than I want to plunk down on a blind buy. I don't know how many songs I have, but this 64 gb Ipod is 80% filled up. Mostly with all types of Metal... Black, Death, Thrash, etc. And I think the kinds of songs plays into the game, right? Or more acurately, the speed and tempo?


Thanks.

[Tooker]

Well, it's tough to judge based on space, because the bitrate a song's encoded at makes a big difference in size.  But my 8000 songs (many of which were recorded at low bitrates) take up a little less than 30 gig.  Try the demo - you'll see pretty quickly whether your library size is going to be a problem.

How the songs are turned into fighters is kind of like Monster Rancher and its CDs - no one knows the formula.  I know I didn't find anything consistent in the original version.