iPhone App Reviews

Wheel of Fortune

Michael (Admin) | Mar 25, 2009 Games

User rating: (10 votes, average: 3.80 out of 5)

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I’m a Wheel Watcher! Practically everyone in America has seen Wheel of Fortune on TV at some point, and I’m slightly more than an occasional viewer. I remember when contestants used to spend their winnings during the show on toasters and furniture sets, I have two episodes on the DVR at this very moment, and I even have a Spin ID! I’m not proud of that last one. Suffice it to say that I know my Wheel.

Sony Pictures Television did the smart thing and made this iPhone app what it should be: a very faithful reproduction of the TV show’s elements with all the gloss you’d expect of an “officially licensed” app. Apparently Pat Sajak and Vanna White couldn’t be bothered… or paid enough?… to make an iPhone appearance, but nearly everything else is there.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: $4.99, classic, game show

Sentinel

Chris J. | Mar 5, 2009 Games

User rating: (9 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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It’s always a pleasure reviewing an app that has the time and money invested to make it a truly quality game. Sentinel is a tower defense game that rises to the top with spectacular graphics, great sound, and intuitive controls. Origin8 Technologies Limited has put a lot into developing this app, and it shows.

If you’re not familiar with the tower defense game genre, here’s a short primer. You are guarding your base from the hordes of enemy who will follow a convoluted path of attack. Place towers to fire on the enemy and hopefully stop them from reaching your base.

The controls are simple and easily learned. Drag and drop to create towers, and tap existing towers to either upgrade or sell.  Use two fingers and spread apart to zoom in for a better look at any area then scroll around the battlefield with one finger.

There are three different maps of increasing difficulty. Beating a map unlocks the next map. One interesting feature on the maps in Sentinel was multiple entry points for enemies. The second and third maps both had more than one path enemies could take to get to the base, making the defense more challenging.

Included on the maps are barriers. These are blockades on the path which enemies must destroy to pass. If kept intact, the barriers will add to your score and possibly make defense of your base a little easier.

For the most part Sentinel is a lot like most other traditional tower defense games out there, which is its main weakness. The tower choices are your basic weak and fast attack tower, cannon-type tower, slow enemies tower, strong and slow attack tower, and sniper tower. Enemies also fall into the usual types: slow walkers, fast swarmers, flying, and boss.

One addition is the ability to have up to three repair robots. These robots will repair damages to the base or barriers. When not repairing, they will mine resources to add to your money.

I admit that I am not the best at tower defense games, but I had hoped to make it all the way through on Easy mode. On the third map I was destroyed just I made it to Wave 100 (out of 120). It is a little frustrating to make it that far then have to start over from the beginning. It would also be nice to have a checkpoint or two along the way considering how long it takes to get that far.

At $4.99 this is one of the higher-priced games out there. Looking at the app, it is easy to see the reason for the price tag. Development of a quality app costs money, and Sentinel is definitely a high-quality app. If you enjoy tower defense games, Sentinel will certainly not leave you disappointed.

Tags: $4.99, Chris J., strategy

Take A Note and Docs

Lee | Feb 18, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (31 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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I like productivity applications that do what they say they are going to do. I also am really impressed when the developer takes the extra steps to add appealing design elements. That being noted, here are two related apps by the same developer you may want to consider.

Take A Note

Take a Note by Readdle is a very handsome application. The design is attractive from the moment you load it. The opening splash screen shows you a nice leather front cover that digitally represents a notebook. This sets a very positive and motivating stage for note taking.

Take a Note allows you to capture four types of notes: text, audio, photo and drawings. For each note type, you get a multi-tabbed page. One tab for where the actual note resides. A second tab for your comments regarding that note. A third tab to categorize (or tag) your note. Each note is date and time stamped in the upper right corner and you are limited to one tag per category.

I have to make some special comments about the photo note. Photo notes have a wonderful, scrapbook appeal where there is a place holder piece of paper “taped” into the notepage with masking tape on the edges. Once you snap your photo or take a photo from your photo album it is put into this placeholder page. It fits so nicely, the photo looks like it was truly “taped” onto the page. Clicking on the photo brings it full screen where you can see all the details of the photo. This is a great example of the design element I mentioned at the beginning of this review; very thoughtful.

You have full control over your folder structure. You can be as minimalist as you like or as numerous, however, at this time, there is no embedded folder structure. The developers state they are working on this for a future release. Another nice touch, especially when you start to develop a large amount of notes, is the search feature. It will allow you to search for keywords that either reside in the title of the note or within the content of the note. This is really nice, very powerful, and another thoughtful touch.

Some additional controls:

- Font size: as small as 14 or as big as 48

- Five available fonts: Helvetica, Times New Roman, Courier, Marker Felt and Zapfino

- Alphabetical note sorting

- Volume boosting, and

- Optional password locking (side note: this is a universal password lock. It would be nice if you could control this feature setting for individual notes)

The icing on the cake for this application is the Wifi syncing capability with your lap or desktop computer. This feature allows you to take your notes back and forth. It comes in two flavors, a shared disk mounted on your mac (or PC) or via a WebDAV client called Cyberduck. I tried both. They each worked without a hitch. I think I will stick with the Cyberduck client as it has fewer needed steps and a few more capabilities.

I’ve tried a few note applications in the past. This is by far the most attractive I’ve seen from the standpoint of looks alone. It’s handsome and makes you feel good to keep your notes in it. If you like physical notebooks, this is a strong digital equivalent. Functionally, Take A Note it is also very capable. The ability to capture text, photo, audio and drawing notes makes it useable and practical in many settings.

I can be very hard on productivity applications. I need them to be quickly responsive, intuitive, helpful, almost invisible. If I have to think to use it, it’s in the way. Take A Note by Readdle passed all of my requirements. It actually earned a spot on my Productivity page on my iPhone. I am impressed. I think you will be too.

Readdle Docs

Readdle Docs is a nice tool for keeping documents accessible either on your iPhone or via access to the cloud. I have a MobileMe account, so I was able to quickly and easily access my iDisk and the files I have stored there. Sweet! I also took the time to sign up for Readdle’s free storage space (512MB) under the AppStore plan (They have pay-to-use plans too for larger storage needs). This too was quick and easy. There is a companion application that you can download to your laptop or desktop (called Readdle Up). It is free. It allows you to load files directly from your desk into the storage by drag-and-drop. No fuss, no complications. Nice! I haven’t jumped on the Box.net service, but Readdle does support it, as well as any other WebDAV access service.

All of the standard Microsoft Office, PDF, TXT, RTF etc. are supported. I could not load up and access iWork files (I particulary tried to load a Numbers document). I also, for grins, loaded up a mindmapping file (NovaMind), it could not read this, though I really didn’t think that it would. They were, however, accessible when I converted them to PDF documents. In fairness to the developers, every file type they listed as accessible was indeed accessible. It would be nice if they could include iWork file types, though.

You can access the web via the internal browser (this includes portrait and landscape orientation). I had been meaning to thumb through a forty-one page PDF document on the web, so I took the opportunity to open it through the browser. After looking around, I was then able to just download the document to my iPhone; portable goodness. Inside the settings page on the app, there is a nice “device storage info” bar that keeps track of how much storage you have remaining. Good! No worries about guessing if I’m bumping up against the limit. Docs automatically picked up all my photos that I am carrying on my iPhone. I didn’t particularly want this and was able to easily turn that feature off. Also, you can email files to your accounts or share them with friends/co-workers. Another nice touch.

This is a useful tool. The layout is intuitive and functional. I am hopeful that someday it will allow iWork files to be loaded and ultimately they will eventually allow on-board editing capabilities (Aren’t we so demanding regarding our applications (smile)). At the end of the day, I like Readdle Docs. It works for me.

Tags: $4.99, $9.99, File Sharing, notes, Productivity

Chess Quest

Chris J. | Feb 18, 2009 Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Hearken to me fellow chess nerds! I call all those who find entertainment in a good chess puzzle. While not a master in any way, shape, or form; I enjoy a chess puzzle and Crazy Zebra LLC has provided me a simple way to do so.

Put simply, Chess Quest is a collection of chess puzzles arranged by difficulty level. For those who don’t already know, chess puzzles are a pre-arranged chess board with an identified solution. The idea of a chess puzzle is to improve the endgame, helping a player to find checkmate more easily.

There are  six levels of difficulty for players of differing ability levels. Novices will want to start with the “basic” level puzzles before moving on to more challenging puzzles. More advanced players may start on an advanced level or jump from level to level to get more variety.

If you get stuck there is a “hint” button which will prompt you with the next step. I personally would like to see a hint that would tell you what you are looking to do (such as checking the opponent) before telling you the piece to move.

Unlike many of the chess puzzles I have previously tried my hand at, with Chess Quest the objective varies with puzzles. Most of the time you will be seeking Checkmate, but sometimes you will be trying for a draw (important when you’re in a tight spot), or simply a winning position.

A helpful feature in Chess Quest is the variation tree. The app will of course respond with the best move in any situation, but there are other possibilities. After you have solved the puzzle you can go back and see other possibilities and find your way to the solution through each variation. This allows you to find out how your moves trap the opponent to an inevitable finish.

In my experience, I have learned as much about chess from my failures as my successes. All those who still remember the humiliation of a fool’s mate know to never let it happen again. Therefore, it bothers me somewhat that there was no opportunity to truly fail in Chess Quest. If you select the wrong piece the square flashes red and you cannot move it; likewise if you try to move the correct piece to the wrong square. I would like to see the catastrophic results of a bad move, so that I can learn why I should never make that move again.

For the beginning to advanced chess player this is a great source of puzzles that will keep you thinking for some time. However, beginning chess players will need additional help in understanding the game. This app won’t help with opening strategies, special moves like “en passant”, or learning chess terms.

If you want to try out the “Lite” version for free, there are 120 puzzles available, as opposed to the full version which contains 1200.

Tags: $4.99, Chris J.

Smiles

Swain Valasek | Feb 17, 2009 Games

User rating: (24 votes, average: 2.75 out of 5)

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Upping the ante for cute and adorable is Smiles from Mike Kasprzak of Sykhronics Entertainment.  To my delight, this developer has found a way to pump fresh adrenaline into the crowded sub-genre of ‘match 3′ games.  How so?  Glad you asked.

The key play mechanic that sets it apart is how you form matches.  Instead of the typical method of swapping only adjacent tiles, Smiles works by having you effectively pick up a tile and place it anywhere on the board, as long as doing so makes a match of 3 or more on the horizontal or vertical.  Whatever tile you’re replacing then becomes the tile ‘in hand’ to place and so on.  This opens up the potential of a lot more matches, gobs of combos and quite frankly, big fun.  The tiles themselves are smiling (and often blinking) little bug-eyed widgets in what has to be a first for the genre…an impressive 3 unique themes to choose from (vegetables, seasonal and classic boardgame-like tiles) so visually there’s something to please everyone.  Falling tiles have a sort of ‘squish’ to them when they come to rest and this, along with an excellent animation sequence, make combo chains a real joy to behold and provide a legitimate ‘hook’ to the game.  As you play you can accomplish 140+ ‘challenges’ (more commonly known as achievements) and I’ve mentioned before I just love this feature in games.  As expected, there’s a ‘trophy room’ where you can gloat over all you’ve gathered.  The game features rotation support so you can change gravity as you play.  Normally I’m not a fan of this but because of the ’tile in hand’ approach here it’s actually intuitive and truly enhances gameplay.  Your game always saves on exit and when a call comes in so all good there.  Unfortunately you can only have 1 game ongoing at any given time.  You can mute the sound at any time and the pause menu displays not only how much time you’ve spent playing but the actual time (very handy).  There’s no music included but iTunes music is supported (encouraged really).

This app bills itself as 2 games in 1 and I found that to be an accurate claim.  The game actually offers 3 modes but 2 are similar enough to be lumped together:

• Zen – in this mode the object, through traditional match 3, is to light up all tiles.  Tiles only light up when matched and you have only the tiles you start with; matches don’t clear tiles.  This makes it a puzzle game in the classic brainteaser sense as you just know there’s a solution but you’ll be breaking matches left and right to form new ones and you’ll need to think ahead.  Excellent game mode, lots of fun and ‘game 1′ of the aforementioned claim.
• Drop – in this mode, as you clear the board with match 3 play, new tiles may be encased in ice or simply be rocks.  Iced tiles can only be matched but never swapped and rocks can’t be matched or swapped.  Iced tiles can be shattered (turning them into normal tiles) and rocks crushed by dropping them 3 or more squares, depending on difficulty level.  This is the most fleshed out mode as there’s a silly amount of variations; reminds me of the old Atari 2600 where you hit the toggle switch for biplanes, triplanes, single shot, multishot etc.  Same concept here but it’s how far ice/rocks have to fall to break or how many unique tiles are present (up to 6).  This then is ‘game 2′.
• Avalanche – in this variation on Drop mode all new tiles are encased in ice so it’s really just a question of how long you can hold out before being overcome by the advancing wave of ice.  Nice diversion and though you’ll be spending all your time in Zen and Drop, you’ll dip in here once in awhile.

Not too many gripes with this game as it’s solid as a tree trunk but as always, I can find something.  First, the ‘back’ button can become non-responsive when the phone is in a rotated position (namely upside down).  Rotating the phone back to the normal orientation immediately resolved it.  Second, rocks are pointless and only annoy the player.  Third, conspicuously missing are any form of powerups.  In one of my marvelous segues, I really wish the rocks, when broken, released a random powerup like dynamite (or something more pacifist like a water balloon), instant ‘de-icing’ or even just bonus points.  Fourth, you can ‘level up’ in Drop mode but I can’t make any sense of it; nothing changes, you just keep playing like nothing ever happened (beyond a little ‘level up’ indicator flashing).  Also, as with any game really, a global scoreboard would be awesome so hopefully that’ll be added in an update.

One might complain that the price is a bit higher than the competition but when you consider there truly are 2 standalone games included here, it’s justifiable and I would say worth it.  Definitely try the lite version first if you’re on the fence; I think you’ll be impressed as well.  In the end, Smiles is an awesome game that will thrill any fan of the match 3 genre and easily make converts of everyone else.  Recommended without reservation!

Version reviewed – 1.1
Global scoreboard – no, local only
iTunes music supported – yes
Lite version available – yes

Tags: $4.99, Games, match 3, smiles, Swain Valasek

Tweetion

Chrisa | Feb 4, 2009 Social Networking

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

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Hi, my name is Chrisa, and I’m a twitter-er.  It’s pretty much an obsession, and I should be in a 12-step program for it, but I can’t help it.  I lovemicro blogging, and I don’t care who knows it!  I’ve used another iPhone Twitter app for some time now, but it was a free app (you’ll have to search for it yourself), and while it works fine and does what I need, I figured there must be a more full-featured Twitter app out there, even if I have to pay for it.

Along came Tweetion, from Joggame.  I guess you pronounce it “twee-shun”.   And it does seemingly have more features than the freebie I had been using.  You can have it automatically set your location based on where you are when you Twitter, automatically update your Facebook status from Twitter (although, Twitter itself can do this, without having to set it here), retrieve past tweets, update your service delivery (IM, SMS), and even edit your Twitter bio information.   Don’t know about you, but I usually set that and forget it on the Twitter website, so I don’t know how often you’d use the setup, after your first time entering your login info.

Then, of course, you can read tweets from those to which you subscribe, add a tweet, add a twitpic, reply to a tweet, search for trends, etc.  All the things you’d expect. 

But, there are some downfalls.  In the settings, you use standard iPhone “dials” to pick how far back you’d like to pull tweets, but it doesn’t work as a dial.  In fact, it’s infuriating as all hell to figure out how a dial ISN’T a dial (see below).  In fact, the entire setup menu is either a little blurry, or I need a prescription change on my glasses.  Recent Tweets are in HUGE boxes, which I found hysterical, since the avatar/bio pic for each tweet was so small, I could barely make out what it was.  Oh – and if you want to view your profile, all you get is your tiny bio pick – can’t even read your own bio to be sure it was edited correctly in settings. 

Then there’s adding a tweet.  It takes no less than 4 clicks – minus what you type – to add an entry.  Why?  Seems like there are 2-3 clicks to many and when you’re an addict, you need to get delivery of your fix fast.  4 clicks wasn’t fast enough for me.

I tried to give Tweetion a fare shake – I used it to Twitter for five straight days, and in the end, I went back to my free Twitter app.  Maybe I’m just used to the free one, but I get more tweets on a page, bigger bio pics, faster tweets, and easier searching on the free one.  Seems that Tweetion slaps in a lot of stuff you don’t really need to justify charging $4.99.  My advice – slim it down, make the bio picks bigger, and charge $1.99.  You’ll probably end up making more dough in the end.

Tags: $4.99, social networking

WordJong Daily Challenge

Lindeisha | Jan 26, 2009 Games

User rating: (6 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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What do you get when you mix Mahjong, Scrabble and Kung Fu Panda? WordJong! Word Gamers like me will love this creation from Gameblend Studios, especially if you understand the Mahjong strategy of carefully eliminating tiles in layers so that there are none overlapping or unusable at the end. It has a cutesy feel to it with cartoon animals, flowers on the calendar where you’ve won, and even an Awards page with butterfly “trophies” to show your various word mastery accomplishments.

When you open the game, you are greeted with a serene Asian illustrated landscape and music that includes nature sounds (birds and a gentle waterfall.  However, this music is on a very short loop, and has an obvious skip before it begins the loop again For me this is more like “Chinese water torture” and I like to adjust the music setting down before playing.

As a word game, WordJong is challenging enough. The characters in the game (Dragon, Rabbit, Stork, Fox, Panda, Boor and Monkey) challenge you to beat their daily score. When you begin play, you see the current month’s calendar with today’s date highlighted. On the side is a “WordJong master” challenging you to beat their high score. For example, the wise old dragon says, “My score is perfect.” His score tends to be the highest. You can keep playing the current day’s game, but cannot play the next day’s game. You can, however, scroll back on the calendar and try the previous days’ challenges.

The puzzle itself shows wooden-like letter tiles piled in a symmetrical arrangement. At the bottom is a letter rack. The first 4 spaces are clear. As you touch each letter you hear a chime and the letters go into the rack. If you make a word with 5 letters, you win a bomb. The bomb is saved for later and can be used to eliminate regular letter tiles to free the letter beneath it or to get rid of that pesky tile left over at the end. If you make words that are 6 to 9 letters long, you win a gold coin for each additional letter. Coins 6 through 8 earn 5 extra points each. The 9^th coin earns 10 extra points. Plus (as in Scrabble) some letters have more value than others. Some tiles are “wild” and some are “ice” that break when you submit a word. Fortunately, it is very easy to undo your letters and start over for each turn – one letter at a time or by clearing the rack.

On my first try, I was able to use all the letters on the board and win a flower on the calendar. Each game, though, wasn’t so easy. If you have any leftover letters and no bombs to get rid of them, you have to use your Zen-like patience to start all over again.

For such a cutesy looking game, it provides a real challenge because you have to rely both on your ability to draw on a wide vocabulary of words that are more than 4 letters long (fake words are not accepted) and a sense of strategy to use the available letters in each layer until every single letter is used to make a word (unless you have that handy bomb).

They say the brain is your biggest muscle. And what better way to practice your kung-fu skills than to exercise a combination of word-mastery, strategy and patience. Good luck, young grasshopper.

Tags: $4.99, Games, MahJong, puzzle, Word

Archibald’s Adventures

Swain Valasek | Jan 24, 2009 Games

User rating: (6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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Making its way to the stage now (watch that last step) is our next contestant, Archibald’s Adventures from indie developer Rake In Grass.  How about a 1 sentence review?  This game is freaking good.  If that’s not enough for ya, read on as I wax syntactic over this superb retro-licious 2D platformer.  First the backstory:  Our young protagonist Archie is dared by his pals to skate a radical ramp in a dump behind the creepy Dr Klumpfus’ mansion.  Oh ya, coincidentally the same dump where the mysterious DrK happens to have been effusing waste from his crazy experiments.  Archie ollies right into a secret underground entrance to Klumpfus’ cellar and in a fluke of coincidence one of the Doc’s gonzo genetic experiments goes awry at the same time, locking down the whole place and trapping them both.  Now it’s up to Archie, with help from the good Dr and his experiments and gadgets, to unravel the situation and free them both!  The game is divvied into 8 chapters consisting of 16 levels each.  By my crude math that’s 128 levels but the game lit advertises 114 so perhaps the first 14 are just so easy (and they are) they don’t count ‘em.  The levels are presented as bite-size logic puzzles in a 2D game world that you solve through a mix of interaction with the environment, arcade dexterity, trial and error and using yer noggin’.  At strategic points on each level are time warps that serve as save points and I found them all thoughtfully placed to keep the game flowing.  The game’s format happens to be perfect for the iPhone as you can play a few levels for a gaming fix and easily put it down feeling refreshed and not overwhelmed.  The graphics are crisply drawn with superb detail in a whimsical cartoon style that is reminiscent of something you might see on Adult Swim.  The sound fx are on the money and the music score is fab (more on that later).  There is no time limit or penalty for dying so you’re encouraged to explore the solution to each level for as long as your heart desires.  There is plenty of content here to keep you entertained so don’t worry about finishing it in one 1 evening.

Where AA really sets itself apart from the crowd of other platformers is in the playable vehicles/objects:

• Special intelligent remotely controlled plastic matter! (a purple bubble to us plebs, this is your most enduring ally throughout the game)
• Maintenance pod (like a giant hamster ball)
• Jet-powered armchair (piloted by DrK!)

Each of these elements introduce entirely new play mechanics which keep things dynamic and interesting as you progress.  This is a must by the way for that ‘dangling carrot’ quality that keeps you wanting to play ‘just 1 more level’ to see what new stuff is waiting around the corner.  For example the bubble can be guided just about anywhere on the level but it has momentum and bounce which makes it challenging to manipulate in tight spaces.  Then there’s the maintenance pod that can grapple to and scale metal surfaces and crush certain objects.  The game gets just hard enough to challenge without being so impossible you put it down in frustration and never finish (so don’t worry).

Neat features:

• You can play with the iPhone status bar present and keep track of time, your cell signal, battery charge,  etc.   This is a really thoughtful feature and I applaud its inclusion.
• Portrait or landscape orientation
• Russian and Czech localizations (I have no idea how to interpret these but I applaud the effort)

Problems encountered:

• The music (infrequently) drops out and the only way to get it back is to quit all the way back to the main menu and restart the level.  This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the music wasn’t so good.
• The D-pad control can be fairly temperamental.   I often experienced control ‘sticking’.  For example I would press the down arrow once, let go and Archie would start jumping repeatedly as if I was continually holding the up arrow.  The bubble was especially frustrating as I could recreate a situation where if I veered slightly out of the ‘hot zone’ of the D-pad, instead of just going idle the bubble would inexplicably go west (life is peaceful there) as if I was holding the left arrow.  In still other situations the D-pad would become completely unresponsive for a short time.  Even though these issues led to some frustrating moments, it’s not enough (not even close really) to tip the balance away from the overall excellence of everything else.

Suggestions:

• Allow us to play landscape mode in either orientation aka headphone jack at the bottom left or (preferred) top right.  The only game I can recall that lets you do this is Rick Rocketson (another most excellent plaformer) and it’s a great feature as some headphones can really get in the way.

The bouncy soundtrack by Vojta Nedvěd can be downloaded from the RIG website but every time I tried the file was corrupt.   I notified the game’s producer and he graciously provided an alternate download link if you’re interested (but having the same problem on the main site).  I cannot stop listening to track ‘aa3′; it’s completely stuck in my brain!

I wholeheartedly recommend this game at its initial asking price of 7.99.  However, over the last few days of putting this review together, the price is now reduced AND there’s a free demo available (a ‘lite’  version in Apple-speak).  Put this into perspective people!  We can’t get every app for 99 cents and expect the kind of sweat and polish that obviously went into the development of this game.  Personally I’m growing weary of dollar apps that you play with for an hour then delete, never to be seen or cared about again.  The PC version of this game is $15 so you’re getting every nibble and byte of the full product here now for less than half price, plus throw in gratis geek cred for having one of the coolest games in existence for the iPhone!  Word.  /slams mic down Chris Rock-style

• Version reviewed – 1.1
• Lite (demo) version available – yes
• iTunes music supported – no but who cares the music is great!

Tags: $4.99, archibald's adventures, Games, platformer, Swain Valasek

7 Cities TD

Michael (Admin) | Jan 14, 2009 Games

User rating: (9 votes, average: 4.22 out of 5)

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I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a boner for Tower Defense games… that’s what the “TD” is for in 7 Cities TD. In the Tower Defense format your sole objective is to stop the enemy from moving across your turf. They don’t try to kill you, you just kill them before they reach their destination. A while back I had some fun with another “TD” game called Galactic Invasion, and 7 Cities TD is right up there even though it’s waaaaay different in both looks and gameplay.

7 Cities has seven different maps, hence the name, and they all seem to involve winding rivers where you can strategically place your towers of death as critters and pirate ships parade by. Neptune Entertainment not only lets you upgrade your weapons (as do all pretty much all TD games) but you can also earn other powerups and weapon abilities that make this a pretty fun time waster.

I could go into a whole thing about Blue Gems and Red Gems and the Skill Unlocker, but (a) I’m drinking right now and I’d probably explain it wrong because beer makes me stupid, and (b) all you really need to know is that there’s more to this game than just upgrading your firepower.

One thing that strikes me as a little weird in this game is that each map is treated as an individual game, so the high scores are also tallied as such. In other words, if you conquer the first map, you’ll be asked to put your name on the high score board before advancing to the next map. Now that I’m thinking about it I guess it isn’t that strange, but part of me was expecting each map to be treated as a level, and my high score wouldn’t be tallied until after getting a thorough ass-whipping by those damn pirates. Eh, whatever. At least Neptune put up a global 7 Cities scoreboard so you can flaunt your gaudy scores in front of the world. Good move! I hate when developers forget to do that, but I do wish I could put in a longer name (ie: iphoneappreviews).

As complaints go, I don’t have much. The graphics are high quality, but visually it’s all pretty blah because the towers you’re placing on the map kind of blend in with the scenery. Outside of that small detail it’s a very solid game that’s easy to learn and apparently hard to master since I haven’t gotten past the third map yet on Normal difficulty.

It looks like a lot of effort went into 7 Cities TD and there’s lots of playing time to be had, so I don’t think $4.99 is asking too much. It’s a quality game and if you, too, have a boner for Tower Defense it should provide plenty of entertainment.

Tags: $4.99, strategy

Sho Chiku Bai

Splash Jackson | Jan 4, 2009 Games

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

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Well, it’s been quite a wait, but finally a realistic pachinko machine has hit the app store! Sure, there are games in the app store that “simulate” pachinko-like features or ones that add trivia to the mix, but what Mission One delivers is an authentic recreation of Japanese culture that you can’t find anywhere stateside. Now you don’t have to book that ticket to Japan to hit the parlors while risking the chance for lung disease three times over.

So, what is pachinko? Simply, it’s Japan’s version of the slot machine. Basically, what happens is you take a load of metal balls and launch them into a gameboard scattered with pegs, hoping they will land in the “start pocket,” which then starts the slot-machine spinning. Ultimately, the goal is to hit “jackpot” (or “o-atari”) by getting three like numbers together so you can earn more metal balls. However, unlike normal slot machines that give the payout right away, the pachinko machine then demands you shoot more balls into a “jackpot door” that awards bonus balls for each ball you get in. In pachinko parlors, these balls are basically a form of “money” that is used to exchange for goods like cigarettes, electronics, or whatever crazy things these parlors may offer. In Sho Chiku Bai, you are looking to earn more boards, characters, and artwork pieces.

The physics in this game are well implemented and realistic. Gameplay basically consists of controlling a velocity lever to manage the power at which the balls are launched. You also have a start/stop button for the balls, but really there’s no reason to ever stop the flow of shots; it’s not like you’re losing any real money here. Essentially, you want to find a sort of “sweet spot” where the balls fall into the “start pocket” more consistently. Once you do that, you pray for o-atari to hit so you can get the big balls … er, uhm… big amount of balls. What’s exciting about any pachinko machine versus a normal slot machine is that most pachinko games involve some sort of story that you are helping to solve. Sho Chiku Bai has said story and hitting o-atari gets the story to its dramatic conclusion. Sho Chiku Bai also includes a “how to play” section that explains everything you need to know in order to enjoy playing this game. I didn’t list everything that makes up this game, so I highly recommend you read the “how to play” section and the backstory. This section is here because Sho Chiku Bai is mainly targeted at the Japanese market, not the US market.

So that begs the question: is this game a worthy choice at $4.99? It is very much worth it if you are a pachinko enthusiast who has been waiting for a game like this to come along or if you at least know what you are getting into. If you have no clue what pachinko is all about, I suggest you research a little about the game and its history. Don’t expect to win all the prizes in a half hour sitting. A game like this is for people that are really hard core about this form of gambling, which means this game offers high replay value. There’s not much strategy or effort involved, however it is more involving than the basic slot machine. Most of winning in this game is all up to lady luck!

Regardless of your expertise in the area of pachinko, Sho Chiku Bai is a praise-worthy choice for the veteran or an excellent alternative for someone looking for something new and exciting.

Oh, I almost forgot to note that Sho Chiku Bai features, “an original J-Pop single composed by Norihiko Hibino, famed composer from the Metal Gear Solid series!” SWEET!

Tags: $4.99, metal gear solid, pachinko, parlor

Pocket Cocktails

Michael (Admin) | Oct 24, 2008 Lifestyle

User rating: (6 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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If you’re tired of getting hammered on boring drinks like vodka tonic and Jack & Coke, Pocket Cocktails just might become your new best friend. It’s a pretty cool drink-mixing guide that includes nice big photos of every drink plus each drink’s ingredient list and recipe for putting the cocktails together.

Robert Maran and Deidra Jones, awesome boozers in their own right I’m sure, have organized Pocket Cocktails into eight categories:

• Martinis
• Summer
• Creamy
• Warmers
• Classics
• Tropical
• Shooters
• Mocktails

As you can see, there’s something for everyone from sorority girls to secret agents to fat, smelly winos.

If you’re at the bar (or behind it) and are feeling lucky, there’s a random drink function that will serve up a surprise drink – and a surprise sound clip – with a shake of the iPhone. The sound clip might be a shaker sound effect or, more likely, some chick saying things like “shake it don’t break it” or “wait ’til you taste this!”. Some will undoubtedly disagree with me here, but I’d love it if the girl could say something more interesting like “let’s go make out in the bathroom” or “you’re so charming and witty when you’re shitfaced!”. Robert and Deidra… how about it?? :cool:

I think Pocket Cocktails’ best feature, though, is Search. You can put in a name or an ingredient and your results are instant. You might be in the mood for gin but you’re sick of tonic, or maybe you remember wanting to try a certain drink with Kahlua in it but can’t remember the name. The ingredient search is key here, so I’m very glad the developers made it possible.

Chances are you’ll look for certain drinks that aren’t in Pocket Cocktails (yet), but it includes a lot of drinks you know and a ton that you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a very complete app, and if there’s one thing I’d add… aside from more drinks… it would be an in-app taxi search. The About screen asks you to “drink responsibly”, but if this app is actually going to be used in a bar it would seem logical and socially responsible to build in a taxi-finder.

If you’re a bartender you should definitely get this app, and it might even earn you some nice tips from drunk girls who can’t decide what kind of umbrella drink they’re in the mood for. If you’re a frequent pubcrawler… or you throw a lot of parties… or you’re just a guy looking for an excuse to talk to those drunk girls… you won’t miss $4.99, at least not after a few cocktails.

Bonus whether you buy Pocket Cocktails or not: Robert and Deidra have made a free online bartender’s guide available on their website. It’s like a 40-page bartender class in PDF format.

Tags: $4.99, mature

Pathways

Michael (Admin) | Oct 22, 2008 Games

User rating: (42 votes, average: 3.19 out of 5)

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There are tons of iPhone puzzle games out there and they’re all different in some way, but the one thing they seem to have in common is a total lack of personality. Tap the cubes, match the patterns, find the words… they’re fun, but they don’t have a face or a story or a villain who’s got the munchies.

Pathways introduces you to two faces as you play out the story of Tommy and Eddie, the young BFFs who get separated when Eddie sees a strange hole in the ground and insists on diving into it head first. Personally I’m in the habit of staying the hell away from mysterious holes (insert dirty joke here) but that doesn’t help little Eddie who, thanks to his poor judgment, now desperately needs Tommy’s help.

Your mission is to guide Tommy through a long series of confusing “pathways” as he forges ahead in his journey to save Eddie from the clutches of an evil villain who looks something like The Grim Reaper and has a taste for Orange Chicken. The pathways contain tiles that disappear as Tommy moves across them, so you have to be careful of how you navigate the mazes.

Some tiles need to be crossed several times before they disappear, and there are also sliding tiles, natural obstacles, and more holes along the way that complicate things. I played through 25 levels of Pathways and it’s a pretty fun game… the first 10 levels aren’t all that hard, but after that I started having to repeat levels… some of them several times… before figuring them out.

As you navigate through the pathways you’ll catch glimpses of Eddie and his evil captor, and there’s even some campy dialogue thrown in to drive the “story” that you’re playing out.

I only played through 25 levels but thanks to a secret cheat code I can tell you that there are at least 76 levels in this game which means that $4.99 will buy you a lot of game. Oh you want the cheat code huh? Haha, I have it and you don’t (loser!)… and that’s how it’ll stay. Conniption Entertainment has sworn me to secrecy, but the game gets a little buggy in cheat mode and it would only ruin the game for you anyway.

Pathways is entertaining and it’s a different kind of iPhone puzzle game, so if you’re looking for a new challenge and some intermittent goofiness then go ahead and give it a try. $4.99 may seem a little pricey but there’s a lot of gameplay sprinkled with an unusual dose of comedy and camp, and the mazes are very solvable if you put some thought into them.

Click to check out Pathways in the iTunes App Store

Tags: $4.99, puzzle