The Thing about Mobile Gaming

With Gamescom coming up I am preparing to stand in long lines. Getting your hands on a popular game will mean about 1,5 to 2 hours of waiting. One way to pass the the time while waiting is playing a game on a handheld or mobile device.

Preparations

I packed my Nintendo DS and some games but I know that most of my handheld gaming will be done on my GPD G5A Android handheld. It is still my favorite device for handheld gaming because I am able to play both retro games (Emulators) and mobile games (Android), best thing is I will be able to play these games with some decent controls instead of the touch screen.

I updated all the apps, checked if everything was in working order and started my search for some recent Android games.

You can find more on Android handhelds in my previous post A different kind of Handheld.

It may look cheap but this is one nice handheld

The State of Mobile gaming

Mobile gaming is growing, this is not a surprise with mobile gaming generating revenues of 46.1 billion dollars (source). More "established" game publishers have started producing games for Smartphones. The latest news is that Namco is releasing a mobile version of Tekken (source).

Because of this growth the library of good games is getting bigger. Old favorites are getting a mobile version like sonic and Mario and new games like Badland and Telltale games are interesting enough to be taken serious by more dedicated gamers.

The selection

For my gaming purposes I installed the following games from Google Play:

• Maldita Castilla
• Badland
• Ignatius
• Assassin's Creed: Pirates
• Shadow Fight 2
• Swamp Attack
• The Wolf Among Us
• The Walking Dead: Season 2
• Zenonia 5

I figure that these games with the addition of Reicast (dreamcast emulator), ePSXe (playstation emulator), Retroarch (for genesis and snes games), PPSSPP (PSP emulator) and Mame (arcade emulator) will keep me occupied.

My favorites on this list are Shadow Fight 2, Zenonia 5 and the telltale games Wolf Among us and the Walking Dead.

Zenonia 5, I like this game a lot

The good thing about Mobile Games

• Price Tag
  The games are either cheap, free or freemium (meaning they expect you to do some in game purchases).

• Easy access
  Because the games are not meant for hardcore PC or console gamers they are easy to come to grips with. There is nothing complicated about mobile games.

In a way mobile games are much like Arcade games, designed to be addictive, easy accessible and fun for everyone.

• Short Sessions
  You can just pick up a mobile game, play for a few minutes and then stop. Try that with The Witcher, Horizon Zero Dawn or Destiny.

• No PC or Console needed
  2.32 billion people worldwide own a smartphone, that's a little over 30% of the entire world population. So basically 1 out of 3 people on this planet own a smartphone! That's a huge potential playerbase for mobile gaming.

The not-so good thing about Mobile gaming

In my efforts to find some suitable games, I came across some issues that annoyed me.

• Is it free or isn't it (freemium)?
  A lot of these games are presented as being free, but when you play the games you find out that to continue playing you need to buy items or watch ads. Shadow Warrior and Zenonia 5 both are games where you "have" to buy continues to keep playing after your resources are depleted. Of course this is not obligated and you can wait until more resources are available but it takes the fun out of playing.

• Pay2Win
  Well this one is obvious, buying in game items to get an unfair advantage in a game is a major no-no.

• In game ads
  In game ads are just annoying, seeing ads while playing is distracting and serves no function in my opinion. I even wonder if these ads really make a difference for the developers and advertisers?

• Always online, why?
  But my biggest pet peeve is that a lot of mobile games require an online connection. I really like Zenonia 5 but the game requires you to be online. This can be a problem because I never connect my handheld to the internet when I am out of the house. Sure I can tether my mobile phone to the device but it is a mystery to me why I wouldn't be able to play this game offline.

• Stability
  I don't know if it is the game's fault, maybe it is an Android issue but not all the games are very stable. Pirates keeps crashing on me. My first reaction is to blame this on Ubisoft who have a terrible reputation when it comes to optimizing games. But the fact is with so many Android devices and android versions things may be a little more unstable than what we are used on consoles for example.

Do you have any good suggestions for free Android games that I can play offline? Let me know in the comment section.

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