I recently got an iPod Touch, and as a keen gamer I instantly went hunting for great games to play on it, and I have to say I've been kinda disappointed with the selection. To me, it seems just like the PC market - A couple of gems buried deep within a mound of look-a-likes and shameless copies, and floating in the sea of poor quality trash.
Publishers like EA are putting out pretty high quality titles for reasonable prices - I've certainly enjoyed the few hours I've put into The Sims 3, even if it's not something I'd usually play. Surviving High School, again by EA, was something a little unusual for me that's been quite a good purchase.
Activision, on the other hand, have given me nothing but trash. I bought Tony Hawk 2 for nostalgic purposes (As you do), and I felt that half of the controls didn't work. Crash Bandicoot Nitro whatever seemed a bit poor, too. I also picked up Doom II RPG, and haven't picked it up after a brief play because it seemed very sensitive and slightly annoying, and The Settlers - Despite being a game I loved years ago - just wasn't altered for the iPhone/Touch. I felt that it was 'too busy' for the screen, and you don't have the precision a mouse could give you.
One thing I've learned from my brief experiences is that for the better titles, you need to look at ones you wouldn't necessarily buy or that are from smaller companies. I bought Scarlett and the Spark of Life, the debut adventure from Launching Pad Studios, after I saw it mentioned on Adventure Gamers, and I loved it despite my concerns over the price tag. Canabalt gets a lot of playtime for me, too, and I think it's been worth every penny.
I'm also enjoying playing strategy games on it - The three I have being Civilization Revolution, Catan and Stratego. Civ Revolution is a brilliant game, and for anyone finding Civ IV (Or even V) complicated, it's a great way to get used to some of the mechanics of the game without being buried in the politics and economics of the 'bigger' games. Catan is deceptively simple, and works well, but I do think the AI is a little geared towards being anti-human (Especially in single player), and I didn't notice any difference between the AI 'difficulties' that are available (Each character has their own strengths/weaknesses). Stratego isn't that great, I felt. It's a bit cramped and there's no tutorial for it, so you can end up playing it without knowing what's going on. I'm going to get Carcassonne, but that's linked to my next point.
Prices. I don't think £6 for a game is expensive as such, but when you have a market populated almost exclusively by titles in the £0.59 to £1.79 ($1 to $3, I believe) then the £4 and £6 titles begin to look very expensive. I'll gladly say Civ Rev was worth the £4, but a £6 title could mean 10 £0.59 titles, and it begins to look like bad value. I also think that pricing for some titles in the 'average' range can be poor, too. The aforementioned Scarlett game sold for £1.79, which when compared to the length, quality and re-playability of other titles, is very cheeky. For that price I'd expect at least some original background music to continually play during the game, not the near-constant silence you get.
So, yes, basically I think the iOS market is pretty saturated with poorer titles, and finding the good ones seems to be very hard. Might get some reviews up soon, though!
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