Ok, Apple Arcade will probably be good

Apple Arcade is not likely to fear. Perhaps you have already assumed that because you are a fan of Apple or because you recognize that $ 5 for a selection of carefully selected games can be a good deal. However, questions remain about the service since the announcement by Apple last spring. After a few hours of reading some of the biggest headlines of the service before it was launched on September 19th, I'm timidly excited.

I say shyly because two hours are enough to test Apple Arcade. The demo games I played had potential, but they could all become stinky after a full game – or be the only good games ever on the service.

In any case, the Apple model for Arcade is unprecedented. For $ 5 a month, Apple runs a list of over a hundred titles that do not present any of the little troubles we expect from mobile games. There are no microtransactions, no strange currencies in the game that require you to spend real money, and no character or scenario that you can not experience by spending a few extra dollars. There is no nickel and diminging that is prevalent in modern mobile games. Instead, you get just over 100 titles that you download and play whenever you want. I played six of the eight games Apple offered to a small group of journalists: Finji's By the road, Annapurna's Sayonara Wild Hearts, Capcom's Shinsekai in the depths, RAC7 Sasquatch sneaky, and Skate City and Where the cards fall– the two of snowman.

You find the games in the App Store under a new tab, Arcade. Click on the tab and you will get that typical App Store experience, such as download suggestions.

The subscription covers the download of games on any Apple device, from the iPhone to the iMac. The games themselves are designed to work with both the touch screens on the iPhone and iPad and the myriad of controllers supported by Apple TV and macOS.

The quality of the support of the different styles of play depends at least on my experience. Finji By the road, a strategy game located in a procedurally generated post-apocalyptic wasteland, was originally created for the consoles and was played with a controller, or even with a mouse. Other titles, like Snowman's Skate City, a side-scrolling Tony Hawk, like a subway case, felt a bit clumsy with a controller, but was wonderfully intuitive on the phone. This is logical since Snowman is primarily a mobile application developer, having already created popular iOS games such as Alto's Adventure and The Alto Odyssey.

In general, most games were a drag on the iPad. A number of games like to use the device itself to mimic a controller when it is played on touch devices. It works with a phone, which is about the same size as a Sony or Microsoft controller. But using the iPad as a giant controller was really uncomfortable. My hands were too small to claim that a 10.2-inch iPad had joysticks on either side of the screen.

Aside from the discomfort of playing games on the iPad, my other hesitation is that a lot of games seemed really similar. By the road, Skate City, and Where the cards fall, all share an aesthetic that I came to associate with high quality iPhone games. It's the one shared by titles like Alto's Adventures, Lara Croft Go, and Monument Valley. A bit caricatural, extremely simple, but surprisingly attractive.

None of the developers on the site could explain why so many titles shared a similar aspect. It could just be a trend (and in the case of Snowman, who had two games, it could be a studio aesthetic).

Not all games shared the look. Sayonara Wild Hearts, a racing game where you switch between running, driving and even sliding across the screen on a map is an incandescent extravagance even though its basic style embraces a similar simplicity. The bright colors appear on the screen and seem to throb with the catchy soundtrack.

Capcom Shinsekai in the depths also apart. The game is fully underwater and similar to games like Metroid or Castlevania (The genre combining puzzle puzzle and action often calls Metroidvania). You slowly become more powerful and can go back to other points of the game to access areas that you could not at first.

The Capcom game looks like something you'll find on a PS4 or Xbox One. The graphics are sophisticated and look for realism rarely found on games for Apple platforms. The sound design is incredibly good too, with all the breath of your character's oxygen or bubbles coming out of the combination of your character resonating well and strong.

But more important than the appearance of the games or the way their controls work on a multitude of devices is whether they are fun or not.

They are really fun.

I found myself sucked Shinsekai and Where the cards fall in particular. The first comes from a genre that I like, while the second is a nice puzzle game in which you resize series of cards to navigate in cards. I wasted time trying to solve the puzzle at each level and I thought I could easily see spending $ 5 for Where the cards fall or Shinsekai alone.

But the case could change. The rest of the more than 100 launch titles for Arcade could be zero compared to the small collection made available by Apple. Or even worse, these could be the only good games ever offered by the service. At launch, Arcade will probably be worth it for the handful of games I've played before. They will certainly last a few months of entertainment, and as they are playable only with a subscription, I will be blocked as long as these games will give me joy.

But the question of the value of Apple Arcade will become important only months later, when the first games will be exhausted. If Apple can not maintain a constant stream of new content, $ 5 per month may not feel like a business and more like another subscription puzzle.