Today I bought GTS World Racing from the iTunes App Store for £4.99 after seeing a demo on YouTube a few days ago from the developers of the game, which you can watch below (my thoughts after the jump)…

My favourite type of games are definitely the racing ones. I have Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart which is my absolute favourite. I also bought Cro-Mag Rally but I find that very boring and definitely not worth the £5.99, in my opinion, although I have noticed it’s been reduced to £3.49 now. So, when I saw the demo for GTS World Racing I was itching to buy it.

I have completed quite a few laps on GTS World Racing and I’ve got to say first of all that the graphics are excellent and it really looks like a quality game. Soundtrack is okay as are the sound effects. The controls are also very good - no problems at all with steering. To accelerate you simply tilt the iPhone/iPod slightly forward but not too much otherwise the screen will go red and you’ll be told “Too flat!”. To brake you tilt the device towards you. It’s very quick and easy to get the hang of, unlike Super Monkey Ball

Now onto the tracks. This is where it falls down for me. All the tracks in every country available look pretty much the same. I picked ‘Japan’ hoping to see bright neon lights and a cityscape. All I got were mountains. It didn’t look any different to Peru, Finland or Scotland, so you pretty much feel like you’re in the same place, seeing the same things. If the surroundings were more unique for every track then it would feel much more thrilling. I hope we see some changes in future updates for that otherwise I will be quite disappointed.

Overall the game play is good. I have won every game so far, lapping my competitors on the track, although that is on the Easy setting so I may have to pump that up to Normal or Hard to ensure I don’t get bored with winning so easily all the time.

If you’re stuck between buying Cro-Mag Rally or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for GTS. However, if it’s between Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for Crash. The tracks all look different, it feels more challenging and after 3-4 weeks of playing Crash I’m still nowhere near bored - definitely worthy of the £5.99 price tag.

After an agonising wait all day Friday, I was finally able to download the iPod touch 2.0 software update yesterday for £5-99 which enables me to download lovely shiny apps from the App Store in iTunes to my iPod touch, aswell as benefit from the MobileMe features.

Friday was a long and painful day as iTunes frequently informed me that the 2.0 software update was available, but as soon as I clicked on ‘learn more’ I’d get an error saying the iTunes store was unavailable. So, I went to bed in the hope that it would be fine by the morning, which it was. I have purchased three apps so far: Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart for £5-99, Super Monkey Ball which was also £5-99 and Air Hockey which was 59p. The latter is quite boring and not nearly as much fun as the air hockey tables at the amusement arcade, haha. Crash Bandicoot on the other hand is a lot of fun and the graphics are superb. I bought Super Monkey Ball on a whim but it is going to take some mastering as it’s very sensitive indeed, so I haven’t succeeded in getting very far with that.

I have downloaded just a few of the free apps so far including Twitterrific, Facebook, Exposure, iPint, NetNewsWire and Remote. I won’t link to these in iTunes as I know it’s a bit annoying to have all that pop up at you and they’re easy enough to find in the App Store. Twitterrific would be great if it didn’t repeatedly ask me if I wanted to share my location. By repeatedly I mean every single time I access the app and sometimes even if I’ve been on it for a minute or two. I’d like to see an option in preferences to disable that rather than me having to switch off Location entirely in the device Settings which I have unfortunately had to do for the time being so that this pop-up doesn’t annoy the hell out of me.

With all the fun of looking through the App Store and playing Crash Bandicoot, I haven’t played too much with the ‘push’ services in MobileMe on my iPod touch yet although I do know this updates marvellously and instantly having put a date into my Calendar which showed up on my other devices like that *clicks fingers*. MobileMe is working fine now having made the long the transition from .Mac on Wednesday night, which took a lot longer than anticipated.

So, after a rocky few days I’m glad that everything has shaped up okay and everything I wanted to get my hands on is now in my hands. Sadly the same can’t be said by many people who wanted to buy the new iPhone 3G on Friday due to o2 and the Carphone Warehouse having ridiculously low stock levels which couldn’t meet the demand. You’d think Apple+o2+CPW would have guessed that much, wouldn’t you? But, I was watching TWiT live with Leo Laporte on Friday afternoon (which was so fun + first time I’ve watched Leo) who was covering the simultaneous launch across the world and it seems the long delays and short supplies were in full effect across the pond aswell. If you missed SKY News report on the UK iPhone launch on Friday then fear not, I uploaded it here…

Am I the only one who thinks that (forced) pillow fight was a little bit lame? No wonder the guy behind looked like he was thinking “Yeah yeah, just gimme my iPhone already!”.

But back to the apps for a moment: anybody got any game suggestions, especially for driving games which I seem particularly good at? I would love to see a Sega ‘Super Hang On’ app because that was my most favourite game on the Sega MegaDrive - that would take me to retro heaven!