Let me start with a simple clear statement. Real Racing is the best racing game available on the iPhone bar none. There I said it.

Real Racing may even be the best racing game available on any handheld games console to date, it really is that good.

Firemint have hit the iPhone platform with titles that are so good, coding teams at other games publishers are now re-considering their future careers! FlightControl, Firemint’s first title has been a massive hit and Real Racing will I predict be even bigger.

A quick summary of some of the key features of Real Racing are:

• 36 cars, three classes, a dozen unique tracks and five game modes
• Three divisions to play through
• Massive career mode with 57 events to complete
• Six cars on screen
• Touch or tilt to steer, Manual or automatic acceleration and braking
• In-car cockpit view or external camera
• Local multiplayer over WiFi, Online league play, Online leaderboards

As soon as you fire up the game you will be struck by just how good the graphics are, the visual scenery is highly detailed and you get sunlight, clouds and even lens flare as you drive towards the sun.

Once launched and after the opening titles you will be presented with the menu screen, in this case a race car in the pit.  All the options and features are accessed from here.

You can dip straight in and have a quick race, or perhaps try and improve your times on the track with a time trial.  But for most of you it will be the career and Connected options that are played the most.

Firemint have deployed their Cloudcell technology to power the on-line leagues.  Multi-player is restricted to local WLAN games which was an initial disappointment but you can compete in on-line leagues and compare your scores which adds to the enjoyment and has you trying to better your scores time after time.
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Firemint’s Real Racing game has hit the Appstore and it’s a beauty.

We’ll be giving this a few laps today whilst we await the Keynote announcements later today (6pm UK).

It is a measure of just how good it is though, that having launched it in order to grab a few quick screen-shots for this post and I instead found myself battling through an entire race. You really do have to play it in order to appreciate just how good this is given it is running on a phone!

I haven’t had a chance as yet to explore the myriad of options but the in-car drivers eye view, auto acceleration and tilt steering work very well and you’ll be power sliding through the corners in no time at all.

Enough typing, I have a championship to win…..

Firemint’s long anticipated update to its hugely successful iPhone game, FlightControl, began hitting the various world-wide Appstore’s this morning.

Wired4iPhone were up early to grab a copy from the UK Appstore and so here are a few early screen-shots as we get to grips with the two new airfield layouts.

Two new airfields, from L to R, Classic, Beach and Carrier

No sooner was the app installed than we were playing and first impressions are superb. The first new layout, the beach airfield, adds a second heliport and instead of light aircraft you now get the low and slow amphibious planes that land on the sea.

The gameplay here is very similar to the original airfield although you need some skill to route the aircraft without collision (as always).
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It is one of the most anticipated titles scheduled for release this year and now the time has very nearly come.

Firemint announced this evening via Twitter that Real Racing has been submitted to the Appstore.

With 36 cars, a dozen tracks, WiFi and Internet multiplayer as well as leagues and a career mode, Real Racing has it all in spades.

Stunning 3D graphics, a true in-car view and accelerometer or screen based controls are sure to make this the sure fire hit of the year for racing fans.

Come on Apple, hurry up, we’re all waiting!

What’s the first thing you think of when you see a Film tie-in with a game, is it ‘Rubbish’?

Well all credit to Firemint then for Fast & Furious. Despite the film tie-in this is actually a very good game.

I admit I would normally have avoided this, the title alone would have put me off but having already sampled another of Firemint’s games, FlightControl which proved superb I thought it worth a play.

And so the adage, ‘never judge a book by its cover’ is as valid here as it ever was. Released by I-Play but authored by Firemint, Fast&Furious is a superbly implemented and eminently playable game. Making excellent use of the iPhone motion sensors for steering allows you to control the cars as you would if you had a full analogue steering wheel.
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I’m hooked on FlightControl, the iPhone App that has held the No1 spot in the Appstore for some time now, but damn is it hard once you get to the 80’s!

I thought I was doing really well until I read that others are scoring 100+, damn how do they do that? My arm hurts like hell after a couple of sessions at 80+ and there are so many aircraft that I start panicking!

Based as all great games are on a very simple premise, landing planes, it employs a superbly simple and utterly addictive control system. On screen is one large runway, one small runway and a heilpad. As aircarft appear from the sides of the screen you drag your finger from the aircraft to the runway and they will follow that path and land. Simple eh?

Well yes, very simple for at first. Light aircraft land on the smaller runway, jets on the main runway and choppers land on the helipad. But as more and more aircraft enter the patter and Jumbo jets which fly faster than the smaller jets appear it gets very very hectic. You can put planes in holding patterns with a swirl of your finger and you can change their course at any time by retracing a new path.

Each aircraft’s arrival on screen is announced by the lashing red exclamation icon and aircraft in danger of colliding with each other flash red with an alarm. If you fail to keep them apart they crash and you’re out.

With each game your score will rise until you reach the late 60’s and then it will get ever harder. At least it does for most of us. I managed a score of 108 once but more normally am in the 80’s but one YouTUBE video shows a guy in the thousands with aircraft almost covering the screen, wow!

This really is the most addictive and frustrating game I have ever played, four weeks in and I’m still trying to beat my 108 high-score (92 in the screen shot as OS 3.0 reset Grrrr).  If you have an iPhone/iPod Touch and haven’t tried it then you don’t waste a second more, get it now, www.firemint.com.