iPhone App Reviews

Q&F: New Years Resolutions

Michael (Admin) | Dec 30, 2008 Entertainment, Quick & Free

User rating: (4 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

New Years Resolutions, aka the New Years Resolution Generator, wants to be a hilarious party joke but the reality is that it’s just kind of weird. Pretty much all you do with this thing is shake it to get a random “resolution”, and it might be entertaining if the resolutions were funny… or at least made a tiny bit of sense.

Here’s a quick sampling of the resolutions I get from five quick shakes of the iPhone:

I resolve to…

• Seldom be tapdancing.
• Seldom be tastelessly stealing.
• Stop jazzercising.
• Stop blowing snot bubbles.
• Stop mouth-breathing too irritably.

Naturally I like the snot bubble joke, but don’t the rest of these one-liners sound like they could have been written by your dead grandmother?

Well, the jokes may suck the big the one but at least Left Brain Games was kind enough to build in some nice scenery to serve as the backdrop for this comedy trainwreck. Take away the ridiculously bad “resolutions” and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent 3D snowglobe that would definitely rival any of the free ones I reviewed in my Christmas Snowglobe Roundup. Unfortunately, the resolutions are a permanent fixture in this app! Awwwww dammit.

"STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME"

Tags: 3D, free, New Year's Eve

Q&F: New Year’s Blowout Horn! And 2009 Countdown

Michael (Admin) | Dec 30, 2008 Entertainment, Quick & Free

User rating: (2 votes, average: 1.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Looking for something to blow at midnight on New Year’s Eve? Yeah I know… that almost sounds like a really filthy proposition, but I’m talking about party favors here! Uh, maybe that’s also a bad choice of words… let’s call New Year’s Blowout Horn! what it is: a noisemaker. It also displays a 2009 countdown timer but, dirty jokes aside, this app is all about blowing.

Hold your iPhone so that the bottom is facing your mouth and blow into it, and the little noisemaker on the right of the screen will extend just like the real thing and it makes an equally annoying sound! The iPhone’s tiny little speaker isn’t even close to being loud enough to be heard at a bar or an actual New Year’s Eve party, but I’ll give IntuApps an A for effort. And who knows… if you blow your iPhone horn in front of someone who’s wasted enough to be impressed you might even get lucky! Of course, that horny drunk would have to be about two sips from passing out, but you never know. :wink:

Hey baby, wanna blow my horn?

Tags: free, New Year's Eve

Sorry about the outage!

Michael (Admin) | Dec 29, 2008 Website Stuff

User rating: (1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Whoops. I just moved iPhone App Reviews to a dedicated IP address and I didn’t realize the move would put me out of commission for a few hours!

Sorry about that. Btw, if you’re looking for web hosting I use Bluehost for this and a bunch of other sites, and it’s a sweet deal. For $6.95-$9.95/mo you can host all the domain names you want, space is unlimited, a bunch of software is preinstalled (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB, etc.), and they give you a free domain name if you sign up for 12 months or more. How much it costs ($6.95-$9.95) depends on how long you sign up for.

My dedicated IP costs $2.50/mo. If you’re going to sign up for a new Bluehost account, please do it through this link. I’m doing their affiliate thing so that’s why I’m going to the trouble of saying how great they are! It really is an awesome deal, though. Here’s an info page if you’re still not sure about them.

Dress Up

Clint McLeod | Dec 28, 2008 Lifestyle

User rating: (1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

For 99 cents, Dress Up gives you the potential to coordinate your wardrobe to look your absolute best, whether its going to your job at GameStop or looking to impress your date at Outback Streakhouse!

So this app is interesting as it could really work.  However, in order for the program to reach its zenith, you are going to have to invest some SERIOUS time into snapping photos of yourself in all your tops and bottoms (including those stylish Raiders sweatpants you own).  The way the program works  is simple, it gives you an outline of a body (think CSI here) and you match your photo to the pose.  Then it divides the picture into your head (presumably for hats, eye patches and Hulkster bandannas) your top, and bottom.  Sounds silly, but it does work.

But the overall problem I see is that you need someone to take these pictures of you and unless you have a whipped husband or a friend as equally vain as yourself, then this program may not be for you.  Plus, is it truly that hard to hold a shirt over a pair of pants?  I think this app is great idea, but in the long run just doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Tags: $.99

Merry Christmas

Michael (Admin) | Dec 25, 2008 Website Stuff

User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Q&F: Free Mistletoe: Smooch or Smack?

Michael (Admin) | Dec 24, 2008 Entertainment, Quick & Free

User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

The iTunes App Store is overflowing with free mistletoe apps and Bottle Rocket’s version is as good as any. It tilts as you move your iPhone and it also features smooch and smack counters so you can keep track of your success rate as you make your rounds at the Christmas party.

Personally I have no use for the smooch counter because I always get smacked when I try to con girls into making out with me, but hopefully you’re not that pathetic!

The 5 smooches are from my dog

Tags: Christmas, free

Whack It: Santa

Michael (Admin) | Dec 24, 2008 Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas? Angry at Santa Claus for letting you down? Beat the hell out of him in Whack It: Santa!

MadInSweden has three versions of their Whack It game and the other two are Frogs and For Kids. The only one I’ve played is Santa, but I’m assuming they’re all the same but with different themes… tap the Santas/Frogs/Jungle Animals as they peek out of holes, just like the whack-a-mole game we all know and hate. I mean love.

If you like tapping stuff really fast, this game is for you. The difficulty ramps up pretty fast so be ready for your fingers to take a pounding, and you also need to keep an eye out for Bad Santa who shouldn’t be touched.

I can’t say that I’d pay $1.99 for this app, but the Whack It: Frogs game is only $.99 so if price is an issue maybe you’d be better off trying that one instead. Plus you won’t feel so dumb playing it on December 26th.

Tags: $1.99, Christmas, classic

Christmas Camera

Michael (Admin) | Dec 24, 2008 Photo & Video

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Christmas Day is tomorrow so you may be thinking that an app like Christmas Camera is already on the verge of becoming obsolete until next year, but that’s not entirely true. Christmas Camera is a collection of photo templates that you can put over your photos, and aside from Christmas templates it also includes “Love”, “Fashion”, and “New Year” designs for making your otherwise crappy photos a little more interesting.

There really isn’t a lot going on in this app… pick one of 31 templates, pick a photo or snap a new one, and save it. I have no problem with simplicity and not every app has to have more features than a Swiss Army knife, but the thing that stands out most in this app is its one gigantic flaw: it sucks at handling photos!

The templates are great. They’re colorful, they’re cute, and some are so sickenly gaudy that it’s kind of funny, but getting your photos to fit these templates is the problem. When you choose a photo from your camera roll you get the chance to Move & Scale, but you can only scale your photo to be larger not smaller. If this doesn’t sound important, wait ’til you’re trying to fit your photo into a template that has cutouts in very specific places… if those cutouts don’t match your photo, you’re screwed because photo repositioning is also a near impossibility.

One thing Christmas Camera does right, however, is it applies the template to your camera view when you’re taking a new photo so you can position it correctly. Nice move.

Wondershare can fix this app, but I think it’ll take some work. They need to cut out the Move & Scale step which is basically useless and allow the user to do all moving and scaling with the template applied. Being able to preview templates before taking or selecting a photo is also an important step that’s missing. We also need to be able to scale photos up AND down, rotate the image freely, and move/scale photos beyond the visible area. I know these things are all possible because I’ve seen them done in other apps! Christmas C@rds is a great example of photo handling done right.

Some of the templates in Christmas Camera, ie: ones with wider photo areas, aren’t so prone to the problems I’m griping about so I wouldn’t call this app a total loss… but I really don’t think it’s quite ready for primetime and it’s definitely not a $3 app. Yet.

Tags: $2.99, Christmas, Photo & Video

More reviews are coming!

Michael (Admin) | Dec 24, 2008 Website Stuff

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Sorry, I’ve had a busy few days. My next reviews should be up later today. Where are the writers I recently advertised for, you ask? One of them is on hiatus because his wife just popped out a kid, the other one is taking a break I guess… and the other 6 have yet to post anything and I’m starting to wonder if they ever will. Sigh.

In other news, on Monday I did a phone interview for Matt Richtel who writes for THE NEW YORK TIMES! He’s doing an article on iPhone apps so naturally he called up yours truly. I’ll be posting a link as soon as it’s published!

Michael

iPhone App Index, my new pet project

Michael (Admin) | Dec 19, 2008 Website Stuff

User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Before posting my reviews of WordsWorth and Bugz I was kind of MIA for a couple of days. Sorry! I was busy putting up my new iPhone website, iPhone App Index.com (.net works too).

So many review requests come through this site that getting to all of them is basically impossible, so I’m giving developers the opportunity to post their own junk! I’ll be watching it like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t turn into a toilet full of spam, but I think developers are smart enough to recognize that it’s a rare opportunity to get some free publicity and link juice so hopefully spam won’t be too much of an issue.

There are a bunch of developer posts already and, although iPhone App Reviews dwarfs it in content volume right now, I’m expecting that to change in a hurry. Please go check it out and bookmark it so you can revisit when it really gets rolling. If everything goes as planned, it will be a great place to discover new apps and stay updated on the apps you already have and the development companies you like.

I'm quite proud of my fake iTunes App Store icon

WordsWorth

Michael (Admin) | Dec 19, 2008 Games

User rating: (29 votes, average: 3.10 out of 5)

 Loading ...

If you’re new to this site, I’m gonna fill you in on a little tidbit that my longtime readers have already heard a thousand times: I have the IQ of a doorknob. It’s 100% true, and I don’t mind saying this publicly and repeatedly because it gets me off the hook for being so incredibly bad at games like WordsWorth!

WordsWorth is a difficult but really fun connect-the-tiles game where you have to find the hidden words in a grid or, in this case, a big honeycomb-looking setup. It’s similar to Wordabble in many respects, but the gameplay has several twists thrown in that make this a very different game.

You play in stages where you earn points for each word found and, when you’ve accumulated enough points, you move on to the next level. Words can be formed by either tapping the letters one-by-one or by running your finger over them in succession which is way faster. Throughout the game you’ll find special tiles that do things like help boost your score, act as wild cards that can be used as any letter (awesome), and force you to use a certain tile before a timer runs out or it’s Game Over.

99Games also built in a limited number of chances to shuffle the puzzle board in case you get stuck (and trust me, you will), but shuffling comes at a cost - you get stuck with another “timed” tile each time you do it - and if you’re able to spell out the “buzzword” at the bottom of the screen you’ll get some nice bonus points.

Fans of word games will love WordsWorth and massive Scrabble nerds will Super Love it because it lets you choose between three different word dictionaries including TWL and SOWPODS. The one thing WordsWorth seems to be missing is a global scoreboard, something I believe nearly all games should have. Never underestimate the power of competition to build up game loyalty and career-threatening addiction!

Except for the timed tiles that pop up here and there, WordsWorth is a very low-pressure game… you can take all day on the same level if you’re really that stupid… and being able to take it easy cool, but in a future update I think a lot of players would appreciate a beat-the-clock game mode. Personally, I’m way too fragile and can’t handle that kind of pressure, but something tells me there are lots of masochists out there who thrive on it.

For $.99 WordsWorth is a total steal. The game is being advertised on this site as an “introductory offer” so if you want the game for a buck, now is the time to get it! I really don’t know if 99Games plans to up the price later on, but you’d feel pretty stupid if you waited and had to pay more so if you’re a true Word Nerd you might as well pony up now.

Click to check out WordsWorth in iTunes

Tags: $.99, puzzle

Bugz

Michael (Admin) | Dec 19, 2008 Games

User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Bugz from Didev Studios is hilariously simple. In fact, it may even be the only game in the iTunes App Store that you don’t even need hands to play! You only need to tap the screen once per round, so you could use whatever body part you want… your toe, your elbow, your nipple, or some other appendage :mrgreen: …it’s really a refreshing change from the tap-til-your-finger-falls-off genre of mobile touch gaming.

In each level you have a goal, and you get one shot at tapping the screen at the right time to achieve that goal. When you tap, a bubble grows and then shrinks away, and any “bugz” that touch the bubble will pop and form their own bubble, and bugz that touch those bubbles will pop, and so on, and so on.

That’s pretty much all there is to it! Difficulty increases by requiring you to pop more and more bugz, popping specific bugz, and adding obstacles such as floating flowers that slow down bugz they collide with.

The first 17 levels are all pretty easy except for levels 15-17 where you need to pop all or nearly all of the bugz on the screen. Same goes for levels 18-34. After that, timing suddenly becomes something you have to really think about on a regular basis, and things only get harder from there.

Bugz is extremely cute and nicely done, and you can listen to iPod music during the game if you go to the iPhone settings screen to turn off the sound. It comes equipped with a global high score board and multiple players can create new “profiles” for storing scores and game progress.

I think it’s definitely worth a dollar, and like most new-ish games in the App Store it’s being offered at an “introductory price” although the non-intro price isn’t stated. If you’re looking for the casual-est of the casual games, Bugz is worth trying.

Tags: $.99, good for kids, simple