Balloon Animals
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 15, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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I just got done spending time blowing up cop cars, and brooding with fellow undead, so the logical next move was to play with balloon animals. I’m glad you’re following me here. In all seriousness, I have a wonderful three-year old daughter. While I’m a little reticent about letting her play with the phone, I do enjoy finding apps I can play with her.
For the sake of comparison, while evaluating Balloon Animals from UFO Interactive Games, I also checked the free version of Balloonimals from IDEO Toy Lab. In short, I thought Balloon Animals was a much nicer app all around.
Tags: $0.99, Games, kids, T. J. Brumfield
High Speed Chase 2.0
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 15, 2009 Games
User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I kept playing this game all day long. I didn’t keep playing it because it was addictive. I kept playing it because I was convinced there was more here to see. I really wanted to like this game. I assumed perhaps that under various layers of onion there was something else besides another layer of onion. What I discovered is that I was playing a 99 cent app. This game isn’t terrible. Far from it. I just felt like somewhere there was a five dollar app hiding in here. I see massive potential. Instead there is a very simple, very repetitive game.
The first time I fired it up, I selected a mission and began to play. Or I attempted to play. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to do because the game made no effort to tell me. As I ran over orange power-ups, they said to swipe cars. So I did. I ran into cars, quickly died and started over. I did this a few times until I realized that swipe didn’t not mean swipe with my car. I can swipe the other car with my finger and move it out of the way when I get one of those power-ups. They are the only power-up in the game.
Tags: $0.99, Games, racing, T. J. Brumfield
iYamato
Swain Valasek | Jul 11, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5) Loading ...
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Sometimes a buck on the app store can surprise you and iYamato from Geppetto Inc is solid proof. This gem of a game couldn’t be simpler to play yet has that elusive ‘one more try’ quality coursing through its veins. The premise is that you’re in charge of defending battleship Yamato, the infamous ‘unsinkable’ WW2 warship which was the largest and heaviest ever constructed. The gameplay consists of a landscape screen orientation with the nameship at the bottom and various ‘enemy’ planes swooping in from all directions in an attempt to send you to the bottom of the cold, deep sea. I say ‘enemy’ only because even though the developer was very careful to not label anything as Japanese or American, we all know what flag Yamato flew and who was trying to sink her! That’s all I’ll say about that as this game is definitely not about stirring up old prejudices; to me it’s really just a fun game about shooting down planes with big-ass guns. Furthering that notion, the developer has plans to add DLC in the form of new battleships, weapons, enemies and items which should add lots of variety.
Tags: $0.99, arcade, casual, Swain Valasek
Clipboard Manager and History
Swain Valasek | Jul 4, 2009 Productivity
User rating: (1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...
Anyone who’s used a clipboard manager on their computer knows it’s incredibly useful…well thank you OS3 for allowing this goodness to hit the iPhone, in this case with Clipboard Manager and History from Alessandro Pappalardo. The premise is simple, a piece of software running in the background that remembers everything you ever copied to the clipboard for instant recall. Wait you say, Apple doesn’t allow background processing…and you’re quite correct…so that feature is not present here (nor in any other 3rd party app). Let’s just see what we have left after taking away that important function and what enhancements might have been added to try and make up for it.
Tags: $0.99, clipboard manager, Swain Valasek
July 4th – Independence Day
Chrisa | Jul 1, 2009 Entertainment, Reference
User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...
This coming Sunday, we will celebrate the third anniversary of my 39th birthday – please, no gifts, unless they come in small blue boxes tied with white ribbon. But more importantly to most, on Saturday we will celebrate the 233rd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In honor of this occasion, the gang at Core Coders Ltd. have created July 4th – Independence Day, a patriotic little application that entertains and informs us on this most American of holidays.
Tags: $0.99, Entertainment, Reference
Bionic Surfer
Swain Valasek | Jun 26, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
2D platformers have been around almost as long as videogames themselves so it’s often hard to get excited when a new one comes out. Fortunately this is where Bionic Surfer from Robert Casperson comes in, proving there’s always a way to innovate no matter how old the genre.
The backstory is that for the last 6 months aliens from the parallel dimension known as ‘kaon space’ have been invading Earth and several other ‘offworld’ human colonies, apparently locking onto the free energy signatures of kaon crystals we’ve been using (for what purpose you don’t yet know). You take the role of Bionic Surfer, who wakes up with a bad case of who/what/where and a mysterious figure known only as ‘The General’ inhabiting his subconscious and directing him to save humanity.
Tags: $0.99, platformer, Swain Valasek
Pub Trivia
Chrisa | Jun 23, 2009 Entertainment, Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5) Loading ...
I’m back! D’ya miss me? I missed you! No, really – I did, I’m not just saying it.
I would have been back sooner if it wasn’t for the completely mindless waste of time that I’ve been sucked in to – yeah, ok, Mafia Wars (shout out to my amazing and ever-expanding crew) – but also, Pub Trivia by GeoTeam Games.
My mind is a vast wasteland of useless trivia, thanks to my 11th grade history teacher, who started each day with a trivia question. It stuck with me, and I have been a fan of random bits of information ever since. For example, did you know that Nepal is the only country in the world whose flag is NOT rectangular? Why do I need to know that?
Pub Trivia is an outlet for the flotsam and jetsam running around in my brain. It works just like Buzztime, the bar trivia game you may have played at your local drinking establishment. Log in with a user name and location and join in the fun, answering trivia questions. Each question has four possible answers and, as times ticks by, possible answers are eliminated. But so are points. Score 150 if you get the answer right before an option is eliminated, 100 if one possible is eliminated, 50 if two, and zero if three. Of course, if you guess wrong, you lose points.
Pub Trivia will even assign you to a team, based on your geographical location, to compete against other trivia buffs online at the same time. Teams, obviously, fare better than individuals in overall scoring domination. Once a game of 10 trivia questions is concluded, the app shows you the score board, where you place as an individual player, where your team places, and where you placed as a team contributor.
Overall, a fun little app for a tiny little price. Plunk down your cash and watch your time get sucked into a vortex. Enjoy!
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- Oh, I'm ready. Bring it.
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- Doy. After all, Grease IS the word.
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- Ummm...not my best subject...
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- Yes, I DO rock.
Tags: $0.99, Entertainment, trivia
Stoneloops! of Jurassica
Swain Valasek | Jun 11, 2009 Games
User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.80 out of 5)
(5 votes, average: 3.80 out of 5) Loading ...
Quite frankly, you don’t even need to read through my review of Stoneloops! of Jurassica from PlayCreek LLC…just buy it, download, start playing and thank me later when you finally tear yourself away from it. The concept of a must-have game for the iDevice is always arguable but straight away when you start playing Stoneloops things just start to click in your mind until you reach that AHH moment and realize that this is what defines a must-have game. If you’ve never heard of SoJ, it’s a ‘marble pop’ game and if you’ve never heard of that, it’s related to ‘match 3′ games and if you’ve never heard of that well, you need to get busy. The gist of marble pop games is a stream of colored marbles makes its way around a closed path and you have a stationary launcher that you can rotate around and launch colored marbles at the stream. Make a match of at least 3 of the same color and they ‘pop’, potentially creating more matches for combos, you rack up points and so on until you clear the level and advance. Most folks credit Zuma as the first big marble pop game on the iDevice then Blackbeard’s Assault probably a close second. Well, SoJ bests them both and absolutely sets the gold standard for this category in the app store. If I have this right, SoJ is originally credited to Codeminion who actually contracted out the majority of the game creation to 3rd party developers Farm51 and the iDevice version was made by yet a 3rd (3rd 3rd?) party we know as PlayCreek.
Tags: $0.99, marble pop, match 3, Swain Valasek
Box of Sox
Mike Lightman | May 24, 2009 Games
User rating: (38 votes, average: 3.11 out of 5)
(38 votes, average: 3.11 out of 5) Loading ...
Sure my iPhone makes calls, but I use it more like technological Ritalin – able to distract this toddler with a new shiny object the moment life gets the slightest bit tedious. Stopped at a red light? Check email! Waiting for the subway? I’ll put a mustache on a picture of my wife! Prarie doggin it? Instapaper to the rescue!
The one thing I’m not really into are big platform games that’ve been shrunken down to fit my phone. I’m not looking for an iXBox i360 in my iPocket, I want a shiny ball to chase until I can regain my composure. Which is why I LOVE Box of Sox. With perfect graphics & a simple, simple, simple premise, Box of Sox is a perfect casual game that erases all moments of tedium.
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Tags: $0.99
Darkroom Premium
Swain Valasek | May 9, 2009 Photo & Video
User rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I like Darkroom from Stepcase Ltd; been a long-time user of the free version. If memory serves, it was the first app to offer image stabilization using the accelerometer and for that I’ll always be grateful (even though the feature can now be found on other apps). Up for review today however is the Premium version so let’s dig right in. First and foremost, Darkroom strives to be a replacement for the Apple Camera app, an endeavor in which I feel it has succeeded save 1 minor caveat which I’ll get to in a moment. What does Darkroom Premium give you over the default camera app for your dollar?
Tags: $0.99, camera, free, Swain Valasek
Robot Wars 3d
Chris J. | Apr 21, 2009 Games
User rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
There are many things I could say about Robot Wars, but what struck me most was how detailed the 3d environment was. Perhaps my expectations have been set low by many of the 3d games I’ve seen so far, but Robot wars looked so much more realistic than any other 3d app I’ve come across. Barrels had rust and warning labels, the arena was stained and even damaged in one section, and the vans actually looked like real vans. Even with all the detail, I never noticed the framerate drop even when the action was heavy.
Seeing how much effort was put into the design of the app, I really wanted it to work as well as it looks. Unfortunately this is not always true. The controls can be difficult to master and at times even a little frustrating. I frequently found my robot to be going in the opposite direction I intended. Although I could usually recover and gain control after a few seconds, the first few moments were usually anyone’s guess. My wife (who graciously volunteered to help test the app) is a much less experienced gamer than I and had even more difficulty with the controls. She gave up trying to move the robot at all and just concentrated on aiming. One last word of warning, don’t expect to be sniping in this game. The aiming is much to jerky for anything but face-to-face confrontations.
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StuntCopter
Swain Valasek | Apr 20, 2009 Games
User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5) Loading ...
StuntCopter from nerdgames is basically a direct port of a classic Mac game from 1987 by Duane Blehm (who passed away some years ago). The gameplay consists of flying a copter around with a stuntman hanging from the skids. Your job is to drop him at the right moment so he lands on a passing horse-drawn hay wagon. Contact with anything other than hay means a life lost (you can earn more as you progress). Clouds that roll by serve to slow his fall. Copter control is via accelerometer and a touch to the screen sends him earthward. The game is incredibly basic so if you’re up for a dirt-simple pickup game or just nostalgic for the original you might find it worth a buck. Personally I feel the game would be better off free but I can understand the desire to at least make a little something for the effort. Check the comments area for a couple promo codes!
version reviewed – 1.1
reviewed on – iPhone 3G 8GB 2.2.1
iTunes music support – surprisingly, no
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- Remember those old Mac greyscale graphics?
Tags: $0.99, retro, stuntcopter, Swain Valasek
