Gaming on Apple TV: Decent selection, hit-and-miss controls

Since the utter failure of the Apple Pippin in the mid-’90s, there’s always been a certain subset of the tech world obsessed with the idea of Apple swooping in to save the game console market from itself. That suggestion gained real traction, though, after the iPhone and then the iPad revolutionized the market for gaming away from the the TV, lifting mobile gaming from a Java-based joke to an industry that’s worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide.

The newest Apple TV model is the company’s long-awaited attempt to bring that mobile gaming revolution to the living room TV, complete with a unique touchpad Remote, optional support for more traditional, button-filled GamePads, and the familiar, wide open App Store model. The result is a product that captures some of the best and worst features of mobile gaming in a living room box, and serves as the most compelling gaming microconsole to date.

What if your TV was, like, a really big iPad?

Apple TV’s biggest strength is its easy integration with the existing iOS App Store ecosystem, which allows mobile app makers the option to update their apps for universal compatibility with the TV. As soon as I set up my unit, I found I already owned Apple TV versions of nine iOS games, some of which I bought on my iPod Touch six years ago at this point. Even better, some of those games were able to capture my existing saved progress from iCloud and let me continue from the same point when playing on the TV (and vice versa, if I switched back).

Building off the existing iOS gaming ecosystem means Apple TV launches with a pretty robust library of games ready to go. Apple was able to recommend about 50 on the front page of the Apple TV App Store on launch day, and there are dozens if not hundreds more buried deep in the bowels of the search and top rankings lists. That’s a pretty healthy variety of launch titles for anything this side of a Steam Machine.

Just like on mobile iOS devices, though, the large game selection is plagued with an almost total lack of quality control. For each of the highly polished games heartily recommended by Apple, there are many more pieces of cheaply made shovelware clogging up the deeper reaches of the gaming selection.

There are certainly some gems to be found in the bowels of the App Store, but spending the time and money to find them will be tough even for dedicated review sites, let alone single players just interested in browsing. The App Store provides the familiar charts of popular free and paid games, but it doesn’t yet include extremely basic search options like user review thresholds, recent releases, or games with MFi controller support. As with mobile iOS gaming, discovering the best games on the service is going to take some external effort.

Building a console full of iOS ports means a good number of even the well-built games are generally unsuited for the TV. The Apple TV launch library is full of the kind of simple, pointless time wasters that are amusing for a few minutes at a time but never really go anywhere, strategically or content-wise. Plenty of games that are perfectly fine for a quick session while waiting in the grocery line seem a bit less engaging on a big-screen TV, especially when Netflix and maybe a dedicated game console are sitting right there as competition.

Those who dismiss mobile gaming out of hand, though, may be surprised at the number satisfying iOS ports that have enough depth to sustain TV play. Lumino City is a beautiful point-and-click puzzle game. Dynamite Jack and Calvino Noir are well designed stealth-action titles. Geometry Wars 3 and Xenowerk are reasonably deep and well constructed dual-stick shooters (though both barely work without an optional, dual-stick MFi GamePad). Games like Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Transistor are fine ports of games that were designed for a TV console or PC in the first place (much like Geometry Wars). Oceanhorn is a decent if uninspired full-scale Zelda-style adventure.

Unfortunately, the game never really goes anywhere with its endearing concept. All three included mini-games boil down to swinging the remote in time with the on-screen musical cues, with only very slight variations between them. As huge fans of Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series, we were hoping for a little more variety and zaniness in the proceedings.

Graphics-wise, a lot of these titles also really benefit from the additional screen space of an HDTV and the lack of controlling fingers getting in the way of their beautiful visuals. Apple TV games aren’t going to give the likes of the PS4 and Xbox One (or even the Wii U) a run for their money. Still, titles like Asphalt 8, Shadowmatic, and Breakneck provide speedy 3D graphics that are far from embarrassing for a $150 box.

The really exciting thing about Apple TV’s initial lineup, though, is how much low-hanging fruit is still available for future porting. Sites like AfterPad list hundreds of MFi-compatible games that would be downright trivial to port to Apple TV (even if Apple currently requires support for control from the included Remote). Even many games that are designed more for a touchscreen interface would work decently well on the Apple TV with only a bit of reconfiguring (see below). We hope further porting efforts by developers will make the Apple TV a clearinghouse for the best that iOS gaming has to offer.

The Siri Remote as a game controller

Building off the iOS ecosystem also means adapting games that were usually designed for a touchscreen to work with the Apple TV’s thin, touchpad-equipped, tilt-sensitive Remote. These conversions have been extremely hit or miss in my testing, with some games making the transition just fine and others struggling for a number of reasons.

Some of the games that work best in this new control setup, surprisingly, are those that translate thumb movement on the touchpad directly into character movement on screen. Games like Edge, Oceanhorn, Breakfinity, and Electroball make this method work beautifully, with sensitive controls that allow for precise movement even if you just lean or roll your thumb along the surface.

The Remote is also a fine control solution for the significant subset of iOS games where tapping the screen (in any location) serves as the only input. This may seem trivial, but, when you look, it’s kind of striking just how many mobile games operate on this simple control scheme (Flappy Bird, anyone?) Even in this basic case, though, developers can’t seem to agree on whether a simple tap on the touchpad or a physical click should be needed to register input.

Once things get more complex than a single click or virtual joystick, Remote controls get complicated pretty quickly. Consider the many iOS games that break controls down to a binary choice between “left” or “right” inputs, for instance. On an iPhone or iPad, it’s simple to tap either side of the screen with a thumb to get this effect. On the Apple TV Remote, similarly tapping either side of the thin touchpad with a single thumb is imprecise and awkward.

Then there are the games whose input is based around swiping (often in a cardinal direction). This process is often frustrating on Apple TV, with the Remote misregistering swipes as mere taps, taking a split second to interpret them on screen, or missing them altogether. The small surface feels a little cramped for swiping even in comparison even to a tiny old iPhone screen, and getting swipes at precisely the right angles is tough when your finger isn’t overlaid right on top of the action (though it is nice not having to worry about your finger blocking your view).