iPhone App Reviews

Growing up I was a big fan of point and click action games. This was due to that fact that my step-father worked at sierra entertainment, and we got all the games for free. I have been waiting for these types of games to surface in the app store.

When I came across Laura Jones and the Gates of Good and Evil the first thing that popped into my head was Laura Bow and the Dagger of Amon Ra (a sierra game). I was excited, so I loaded up the game and waited and waited and waited while the game was chopping through the intro sequence. Then I tried entering my name to start a new game and had to shut it off because my 3G couldn’t process the game fast enough. I then loaded up the iPad with the game and wala it worked. Mind you this problem has been fixed and is currently playable on the 3G. So we know Astar-Nevosoft was aware of the problem and got it fixed a.s.a.p.

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I’m rather fond of cheesy little ’shout a catchphrase’ apps, and there is no better way to end a Tuesday than to give out a bunch of free codes for the amusing Holy Robinator! by Little Bird Applictions.

Holy Robinator! comes with 60 wildly amusing “Holy” statements, all of them soundbites of classic Batman and Robin episodes. Ranging from “Holy contributing to the delinquency of minors!” (a personal favorite) to “Holy rats in a trap!” to “Holy schizophrenia!”, this app is chock full of giggle-out-loud sound bytes. Enjoy your Tuesday (Holy chocolate eclair!)

iTunes Link – Holy Robinator!

LilRacerz , an inaugural app by developers Blast One, is by definition an arcade ‘micro racer’ style game. However, so much energy, polish and life is infused into this game that it transcends its genre, making you forgot you’re playing a top-down 2D racer that only cost two dollars.

The game play revolves around nine different tournament cups for you to win, each consisting of several unique races. At the end of each race you receive gold coins to spruce up your ride and at the conclusion of each cup (if you scored first or second cumulatively) you unlock a brand new car for the new tourney. It’s a simple and effective no-frills formula that kept me hooked right from the start.

Racing itself is made very easy by efficient and simple controls. You have your acceleration and brake pedals, two steering buttons for maneuvering left and right, and the ubiquitous ‘nitro’ key to give a little jolt to the engine. Controls were generally responsive, and I appreciated how the dev ingeniously placed the nitro right above the acceleration pedal, allowing you to activate it without taking your thumb off the acceleration. All the races consists of two to three laps with four AI opponents, usually making for a frenzied jockeying for position that makes this game a whole lot of pulse-pounding entertainment.

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Rogue Planet is on sale for free – normally $4.99

Edit: Looks like Rogue Planet’s sale is over We’ll be on the lookout for the next sale when it pops up over the next few days.

As a continuation of Gameloft’s 10th Anniversary Happy Hour, their fun, polished and turn-based gem of a strategy game is on sale for the awesome price of free. This is a whole lot of gameplay offered at an unbelievable value, so it would probably be wise to take Gameloft up on this nice Thursday pick-me-up we’ve been offered.

iTunes Link – Rogue Planet

Dos Hombres introduces a relatively unique concept to the iPhone with the release of their app named Pen Pals. Like the name suggests, Pen Pals hooks you up with a complete stranger from another part of the world (more than likely you’ll be paired up with someone from the USA) so you can converse awkwardly about life in your part of the world. I say awkwardly because the majority of the messages I recieved were from guys looking to score and underage girls who were incapable of holding an intelligent conversation. A few messages I got read: “a/s/l” and “hi…!!!!!!11!!”.  A massive turn off if you’re the kind of person who wants to meet an interesting person and hold a decent conversation with said interesting person. I don’t blame the app though; just the people who use this app for stupid reasons.

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If you are responsible for supervising either one person or a team and have to evaluate their performance annually or semiannually, then you know the challenges that can come with that.

Over the course of six months or a year, unless you are someone who manages to keep detailed and consistent notes on your staff as they occur, you will find yourself struggling to remember either the things your staff members did well or the things they need work to improve on come evaluation time.

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If you’re old enough to have loved (and possibly still love) Space Invaders and Galaxian, then Invaders World Tour should bring back some nice, greasy, zit-faced memories!

MeYuMe’s old-school arcade revival combines elements from two of gaming history’s most classic titles… bug-eyed aliens line up across the sky in nicely organized formations, and some of the aliens will occasionally fly down to try and kick your ass. Your little spaceship guy at the bottom of the screen is accelerometer-controlled, meaning that you have to tilt left and right to keep it from getting blown up, and just like in Space Invaders you get three shield barriers to hide behind when things get too hot to handle. Shooting the aliens down is as easy as tapping anywhere on the screen. The “World Tour” part of the game comes in the form of different backdrops for each stage that represent various locales like USA, Canada, France, and England. If you fail to clear a stage, the place you’re defending gets blown to bits by those naughty aliens.

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As far as working effectively goes, I am a black belt in procrastinating. In fact, I’m procrastinating at the moment from writing a research paper in order to review this app, which, ironically, is supposed to help end my procrastination. But at least it’s an incremental step.

(10+2)x5 Procrastination Hack  by EBratton revolves around the idea that if you commit 10 minutes to working on a task and then take a 2 minute break afterward, you will be able to ‘hack your procrastination to oblivion’ if you rinse and repeat the cycle 5 times. The app is essentially a single screen with a set of buttons and a timer that clocks how long you’ve been working, and when you deserve your scheduled 2 minute break ration.

For such a simplistic and bare-bones app, it gets the concept across pretty nicely. I find it much easier to work on a project when there is timer tracking my progress and keeping me motivated. While I found the app successful, these kinds of unique productivity apps will obviously have wildly different success rates from person to person.

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A few months ago a friend of mine sent me the you tube promo video for the Novation Launchpad for Abelton Live. The device is a controller for making beats and loops. I fell in love instantly and even though I’m not in the music scene I totally wanted one.

Now thanks to mifki and their app SoundGrid I don’t have to spend more than five dollars to have my own beat maker only iPhone. It’s no Novation but this thing is AMAZING. This app is by far the best music app I have played with. It’s easy enough to pick up right away and hammer out some beats, and the mixing options are there to get complex with your beats.

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The iPod Touch and iPhone music players, although adequate and stable, haven’t really seen a revolutionary change since it debuted in the very first iPod.  That’s not to say that it’s a bad player, because it isn’t.  It still sets the standard for the majority of players out there.  But it is a little…how do you say…boring?  Bland?

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.  Even the briefest of perusals of the AppStore will find any number of music players designed to do everything the stock i-device player does while adding a splash of color and attitude.

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You’ll pretty much suck no matter what.

The Bible says that on the seventh day God rested. Well I like to believe that on the eighth day he created The Impossible Game and then to fool everyone he jumped forward through time to present day and published it in the app store under the name Flukedude. But don’t let the title of this game fool you! This game is not impossible; just insanely difficult. It’s honestly more like The Insanely Difficult Game of Trial and Error. Trial and error with an awesome soundtrack. With that said, If you’re the type of gamer that is easily frustrated and discouraged by games then this is not the game for you. However, if you are the type of gamer that takes pleasure in the otherworldly challenges offered by difficult games, then this is the game for you.

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I’m always on the lookout for affordable (read FREE) and feature-rich Bible applications for my iPod Touch and over the past several months, I’ve tried at least a handful of them.  Many are simply adequate, allowing me to access the verses I need to find when I need to find them.  Some are entirely dependent on a wireless connection, while others can access it both on and offline.  I may even have the choice of downloading a translation or two that I can use to compare verses.  None has truly contained everything I’ve really needed, however.

The Wave Study Bible is a visually appealing app that appears to have some very good potential.  It’s colorful, provides you with four free translations (Greek New Testament, King James, New English, and God’s Word) that can be stacked side by side for easy comparison.  Additional translations are available for a fee that seems a bit pricey to me: $14.99, but even if you opt not to purchase any, you’ve still got a pretty solid foundation of translations to work with. 

It’s a  fairly intuitive app, having been designed not for the Biblical scholar but the average, everyday Christian.  Verses can be shared through email, words in the Greek translation can be quickly defined, there are four distinct ways in which verses can be located, and there are a number of short tutorial articles covering everything from the application itself to how to read the Bible.  You’ve got nothing to lose with this app, so give it a gander when you’ve got some time.

Multiple translations side by side in landscape mode

iTunes Link – Wave Study Bible

Version 1.0.1

Tested on an iPod Touch 3.1.3