Some notes on a few games I’ve purchased for my iPhone. I paid some minimum amount of money for all of these. Compare with the paid app roundup and the free app roundup elsewhere.

Flight Control - One of the first and one of the few I still play regularly. It’s just so simple, it’s the perfect fix for two boring minutes waiting for food at a diner. Played it fairly heavily for a while, then got tired of it, but it remains easy to get into. Gold star. Also bought the HD version on Steam just because, but the small handheld version is really the only way to go.

Harbor Master - Flight Control for boats. Alas, the main wrinkle, boats take time to unload at the dock, raises the frustration factor much faster than the fun factor.

Besiegement - A fun fantasy themed tower defense game. Many of the maps are pretty simple, but an interesting variety. Gold star.

Field Runners - More traditional tower defense. Almost no variety, but lots more of the nearly infinite waves of nearly identical foes style action.

Plants vs Zombies - It’s fun, but I felt like I was straight-jacketed the whole game. Each new level introduces a new zombie, and surprise, surprise, the perfect plant to counter it. Very little replay value for me. Besiegement lasted far longer for less money.

Strategery - Like mini-Risk. It’s fun for a while, but the easy settings are too easy and the hard settings are too hard. At least that’s how I recall it. At the harder difficulties, you’re lucky to survive a single turn, which has about as much strategy as five card stud.

Unblock Me - Slide wood blocks around until you get one out. Rewarding when you’re winning, punishing when you’re not. Not always a good game for a quick fix because you may fail to accomplish anything.

Civilization Revolution - This was tons of fun for a while. It’s a smaller, simpler Civilization. The games do take longer than most of the above, so it’s more of a commuter game, but very engrossing. After a while though, falls into the same trap as all the Civ games: most of the game becomes very mechanical. Even the simplifications made don’t change the fact that you’re going to be building a warrior dude and sending him out north/south/east/west exploring the vast black map. Silver star.

Final Fantasy - I’m compelled to buy this game for every platform possible. The touch controls were too awkward in battles, that didn’t convert well. Otherwise, it’s a classic.

Inotia (Legend of Zelda clone), Lost Empires (Warcraft clone), Hero of Sparta (God of War clone) - All of these were fun enough, but are rather involved. No casual gaming here. I was impressed with just how much Hero of Sparta feels like playing a real deal shrunken console title.