With the launch of the iPhone Apps store I’ve heard people all around the industry talking about the iPhone as the new gaming portable that will be the one to beat. Personally, I find that hard to believe and have no doubt that the DS will continue to sell hand over foot and the PSP will exist somewhere out there. However, the iPhone is a viable gaming platform and with more developers jumping on board it seems like my dream of having an all in one phone / organizer / computer / gaming device are that much closer.

Let’s take a look at EA’s iPhone offerings; Tetris, Sudoku and Scrabble.

Before I get into my reviews of each game, let me caveat the whole thing by saying that the biggest disappointment with all of these games is that you cannot play your own music from your ipod while playing them. This becomes particularly annoying when playing Tetris. Especially since the intro of Tetris has the original Tetris theme song, but then scratches it like a record in order to indicate the crushing of my dreams and the end of good music in the game from that point out.

Tetris
For me, Tetris is the biggie that I had to have. It just goes with portable systems like peanut butter and jelly, peas and carrots, Forest and Jenny, Mitch and Tim Schafer… you get the point. And like most iterations of Tetris, this one is fun and works just right for the system it’s on. The touch screen controls for the game work incredibly well and are very simple and intuitive and like we’ve experienced with the DS stylus and the Wiimote, physical interaction with a game like this just make it that much more engaging. The “magic” mode is especially fun because it gives you all kinds of cool touch-based items to use, like turning the blocks into poppable bubble wrap, a crayon to draw a shape on screen and have the block change and the ability to shake the iPhone and have little minesweeper balls come tumbling down and clear out blocks. Fun stuff.

However, this isn’t Tetris DS. There aren’t a million modes and crazy art direction and bells and whistles. But I don’t fault the game at all for that. For one, it’s a $10 game. Secondly, what is there is polished to typical EA level. Third, EA can push out an update at any time and add more content, which may or may not happen, but it’s nice to know it’s possible. They already pushed out one update which contained bug fixes and improved loading time.

So, despite my distaste for the music and the slightly long load time, this game is great. Come on, it’s Tetris on a portable. It’s Tetris on the snazziest piece of tech out there. And it’s done right. Grab this one.

Sudoku
Sudoku for me is a game that has been done really well in the portable world many times already. I think the best implementation was in Brain Age. Being able to write the numbers with the stylus was great. There have also been a few free Sudoku games available on the iPhone (via the Safari browser). Luckily, with the spit and polish EA brings, this one stands up there with the Brain Age version and far surpasses all the free ones I’ve checked out.

The game is simple, to the point, has the features you want out of a Sudoku game and has packaged it all nicely in a peaceful Japanese theme with soothing music. You can also create your own boards and keep track of all your stats.

Scrabble
Lastly is Scrabble. Let me just state for the record… I suck at Scrabble. Any incarnation of it. I can’t play it in real life, on Facebook or here. It’s not the games fault, I just can’t figure it out. My brain just doesn’t want to do it. So, in reality I shouldn’t be the one reviewing the Scrabble game, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway.

My take… well polished, but I still can’t do it. Seriously, who can play this game? I get smoked every time. I mean yeah, I can’t spell, so that might be the issue. I remember crying as a little kid because I was terrible at spelling class. Flashbacks! Really though, this game seems well done. I actually handed it over to my friend who plays Scrabulous all the time and she thought it was great. It’s very pickup and play friendly… just not spelling incompetent friendly.

Check ‘em out on the Apps store. A little bit of cash, a lot of time wasting fun.