iPhone It In: Guinness World Records
Some iPhone games are the picture of simplicity, honing a premise down to one, bite-sized gameplay idea. There are others though that take a kitchen-sink approach, seeing just how much stuff they can jam into Apple's portable. Guinness World Records, a reworked version of the Wii/DS release, is firmly in the latter group, but it thankfully manages to hit the mark more often than it misses.
%Gallery-67043%
After creating your own customizable avatar, you'll travel the globe taking on challenges (in the form of mini-games) and trying to set regional, national and world records in each. As you garner top marks, you'll earn money to purchase all the game's various challenges, everything from eating the most cockroaches to building the tallest skyscraper.
This is no individual effort, though. Up to three friends can create avatars and play alongside you, each trying to one-up the others' attempts. It's a welcome addition, especially if you need to entertain a youngster or two for an extended period of time. Through the game's GameSpy integration, you can also post the best scores on your device and see how you're stacking up with the rest of the globe.
It's a pretty complete experience, but it isn't ideal for those times when you're just trying to kill a minute or two. There's more loading than I'd like to see and an unbearable 15 seconds of logos and loading before the thing even boots up.
The real draw here is the sheer number of available games, 36 in all. A few, like the excellent "Video Game" challenge (how meta!) could stand as their own app and a few (like the cruddy balloon-popping game, which has to be the most embarrassing world record to hold) are real stinkers. But most fall somewhere between "pleasant" and "inoffensive" on the quality spectrum. While that may seem like restrained praise, for $4.99 it's a heck of a deal.
Guinness World Records ($4.99, Warner Bros.):
