Apple Game Center First Impressions

Not more than just a few hours ago, Apple pushed their new Game Center platform live along with the iOS 4.1 update for their handheld devices. What is Game Center? It’s Apple’s attempt to bring some cohesion to the almost unruly state of gaming in the app store. Sure, there’s like 9.7 billion games to play, including some awesome gems like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, but it still feels like a wild jungle and shows that while they’re working fast, Apple is just a fish among a sea of gaming sharks. There’s fragmentation everywhere. Some games support Open Fient, other support Plus+ and even some side with Crystals. Each of these systems have achievements, leaderboards, and buddy lists, but they’re all in separate places run by separate companies. Will Game Center change all of that? Is this the Xbox Live for Apple? It’s too early to tell.

As of now, I was only able to find three games that actually worked with Game Center: Ms. Pac-Man, Real Racing, and Flight Control. While Ms. Pac-Man is a wonderful classic, I was a bit irked I was paying five bucks for a game I’ve spent so much money in the past to play on the 900 other platforms it’s been on. Since I already owned the other two, I sucked it up and bought it. I was set to start earning Game Center achievement points.

Firing up Game Center, I was asked to sign in with my Apple ID and make a profile. I noticed that after choosing a gamertag, you can change it again later, much like a Twitter account. The interface is quite basic. You have a main screen with a hub of info like total friends, games, and achievements. Here’s where the first goofy element comes up. I can’t see how many total achievement points I’ve unlocked. Since I didn’t actually have any at the time, I shrugged it off and fired up Ms. Pac-Man. (I had to actually open the game before the Game Center app knew that I had it on my phone. After that, you can launch the game from within.)

I was greeted by a “Welcome back” message from Game Center within Ms. Pac-Man. After breezing through a few levels, I went back to Game Center to check and see what was up. I had unlocked four achievements totaling in 120 points out of a possible 1000 for the game, which seems to be on par with Xbox 360 games. Naturally I went back to the starting page to see my total score, but it still wasn’t there. After a ton of finger mashing, I still could not find a total score. At this point, it would seem the scores are arbitrary to the game itself, and Game Center tracks how many achievements you have but not your total score.

Everything else you’d expect from a robust online gaming service seems to be here, though, and it all seems to be well done. It looks like developers get to choose to let players know if they unlock anything, and they can even style the pop up to match the game. Developer Firemint has done this well with Flight Control’s classic ‘50s style graphics. Namco, on the other hand, chose not to even alert me when I unlocked an achievement in Ms. Pac-Man. There’s a friends list but sadly no messaging system except for sending requests. The leaderboards update swiftly, and I’m hopeful it will stay that way after 25,000 games are added to this platform.

That’s it for our initial impressions for Game Center. Since the platform is only about eight hours old, we’re going to give it some more time and see how Apple learns and changes the system as more games are added and more users sign in.