Mirror’s Edge and Need for Speed Shift look cool on the iPad (video)

Seeing is believing when it comes to using the Apple iPad as a gaming device. The 9.7-inch screen, multitouch control, and motion-sensing accelerometer make for great features in games. We’ve been playing around with various games for the system since yesterday, and here’s our video report on two of them: Mirror’s Edge and Need for Speed Shift from Electronic Arts. These games work pretty well because they use simple control schemes and they look beautiful on the bring touchscreen.
In Mirror’s Edge, you swipe your fingers across the touchscreen to control Faith, a runner in a futuristic society. She is a courier who hand delivers messages in a time when all electronic communications are monitored. So she has to run and jump among the skyscrapers of the city. You’ll see it’s not always easy to control her with the touchscreen, but the game is still a lot of fun.
The Need for Speed Shift game, which appeared on the iPhone last fall, has been modified for the bigger iPad screen. This game looks beautiful as well and the sounds are quite good, despite the complaints about how there is no stereo sound on the iPad (unless you listen via headphones). In this game, you tilt the screen from left to right or the other way to steer. The braking is automatically handled as you go around curves, so all you have to concentrate on is the driving. These are just two of thousands of titles that are available for the iPad, since the older iPhone games will run on the iPad. For a launch title, it’s great. But as developers learn how to fully exploit the iPad, I expect we’ll see many better games in the future.
Check out the video below.