iPhone App Reviews

Giant Leap

Jacob Jones | Apr 15, 2010 Games

User rating: (54 votes, average: 2.69 out of 5)

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UPDATE: This App has dropped from  $5.99 to $1.99!

In the game Giant Leap, you take the role of  Hero, a lone marine with a convenient case of amnesia.  With all his marine and scientist buddies killed in a freak alien attack, Hero is forced to wander the bloody halls of his ships fighting off hordes of Xoranid killers while reclaiming his lost memories. What happened on the ship? Are there any survivors? How did he lose his memories? If you can fight through the mountains of cliches, you’ll find that the basic game play in Giant Leap is quite enjoyable in the retro sense.

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Tags: $5.99, arcade, Games, Jacob Jones

iBet Football Pro

Michael (Admin) | Oct 12, 2009 Sports

User rating: (10 votes, average: 3.70 out of 5)

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Pssst… I got a hot tip on tonight’s Monday Night Football game… it’s gonna be an UPSET! Miami’s gonna win!

Well on second thought, this is a pretty bad example since the NY Jets are only favored by 1 point which basically makes this game a tossup. Even iBetFootball PRO will tell you “DO NOT BET!!!” this game because it’s just too close to predict. What it does recommend, however, is that you take the Over which is 36 because iBetFootball is predicting the final score to total 39. Still pretty close, but hey it’s called gambling for a reason, right?

iBetFootball makes its predictions based on past game data, so in theory it should become more accurate as the football season goes on. How accurate was it this past weekend, you ask? Well, let’s see…

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Tags: $5.99, american football, casino, NFL

B-Day Giveaway: Myst

Michael (Admin) | Jul 30, 2009 Games

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

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If you’ve never heard of Myst chances are your parents hadn’t gotten busy yet… or maybe you were still wearing diapers… in the 1990s when this game totally ruled the PC game world!

Chris J. had fun revisiting this old classic when he reviewed it in May and, if Myst was before your time, now is a good time to get acquainted with this iconic 3D iPhone port.

iTunes Link – Myst
Cyan Worlds website

The load screen gives a good overview of the island of Myst, only one of the worlds you can travel to.

* Today is iPhone App Reviews.net’s birthday *

Tags: $5.99, 3D, classic

App Sale: F.A.S.T.

Chris J. | Jun 19, 2009 App Sale Alert

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

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How awesome is this? One of the best games out there is now on sale for 40% off the regular price. If you love flight simulator games this is one to get.

You can find the review right below this, or click here.

Tags: $5.99, Chris J.

Myst

Chris J. | May 6, 2009 Games

User rating: (7 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)

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For many people out there Myst should need no introduction. With over 6 million sales Myst held the throne as the top-selling PC game of all time for close to a decade (toppled by The Sims in 2002). If you have never heard of Myst, then feel free to read up on the Wikipedia page here.

In my opinion, reviewing the game itself would be presumptuous. Many people both better educated and better paid than myself have spent a lot of time examining Myst from all angles. The questions I want to answer are: Is Myst for iPhone/iPod Touch a good port of the game and does it stand the test of time?

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Tags: $5.99, Chris J.

Air Mouse Pro

Chris J. | Apr 6, 2009 Utilities

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)

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Air Mouse Pro is an impressive app that turns your iPhone into a mouse or touchpad. So far I have found it useful enough that I sometimes find myself using the Air Mouse rather than my computer mouse even when sitting at my desk. I would not go so far as to throw out my mouse and only use my iPod Touch to control my computer, but it is definitely very useful.

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Tags: $5.99, Chris J.

FCTasks by FranklinCovey

Lee | Mar 2, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (23 votes, average: 2.52 out of 5)

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FranklinCovey is a giant in the organization/personal productivity arena. Do you remember the famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? Before digital PDAs, I carried around the hardcopy Franklin binder system, following the A-B-C priority philosophy espoused by this book. Boy, have we come a long way from pencil and paper to floating electrons. I can remember writing and re-writing whole to-do lists from page to page, day after day, to keep abreast of a busy schedule. Now, swipe-of-finger and touch interface rule the day. When I saw FranklinCovey had produced an iPhone app, FCTasks, it was a no-brainer to want to get it, use it and review it. 

I’ll have to be frank up front, FCTasks is a mixed bag in my opinion… a disappointment actually.

Functionally, you can get things done with this app. At it’s core you simply list your to-dos or reminders. However, If you are new to the FranklinCovey way of personal workflow, this app may not be for you. It does not come with any on-board help features, nor are they laid out on the website. It assumes you already understand the methodology (i.e. A-B-C, 1-2-3 priority system, delegate/forward/completed/in-process etc.).  This should be no problem for followers, but if you’re not one, then you will have to either get it intuitively or be willing to expend the energy learning it via the book.

Some odd things:

- “Attachments” is a funny name for pictures. Normally, we think of attachments as documents attached to the task,
- The “Forward” button is inactive. Perhaps this is a feature for a future update?
- The “Sort” button performs the edit function; a different way of saying this from most other iPhone/Touch apps, 
- “Master List” seems weirdly titled as it only holds actions that are not time specific. Wouldn’t it make more sense to call it “Undated Actions?”

Aesthetically, the app is attractive. The color schemes are beautiful and coordinated. The design encourages you to work in the app and feel comfortable, undistracted. But, there’s really something missing, a feeling of incompleteness, unfinished business. I took a look at the FranklinCovey website. Pictures of other operating systems, of other software offerings for other mobiles boast of features like team, tasks, schedule, blogposts and goal tracking. Those phones and PDAs are able to synchronize to a desktop or laptop computer and/or the web. Yep! that’s it, that’s what’s missing in this app for the iPhone/Touch. There’s no comparable desktop and/or web-based application to synchronize with. Most of the major productivity apps today synchronize somewhere, extending your capabilities; especially when there’s large amounts of data that cry for a desk or laptop interface. 

Another questionable area for me is pricing. I hate to complain about AppStore pricing. I am personally willing (and have in the past) to pay more money for applications that are worthwhile, but this app seems overpriced at $5.99 in light of it’s competitors (In fact, a quick look at some of the comments in the App store express regrets for paying so much for so little). Perhaps this first attempt should have been priced as free, 99 cents or, at most, $1.99 as an introduction. Maybe this should be called FCTasks Lite. It really seems as if more is planned and more is needed for this application.

At the end of the day, personal productivity apps or organizers are decidedly a personal choice… like a good pair of jeans. Everyone has their own opinion about a good fit. I cannot commend this app for a hard core get-it-done person. I even hesitate if you are actively looking for an application because you don’t currently have one or are not happy with your existing system. The $5.99 price tag makes trying this on for size too expensive. I will give this application an above average for potential but a below average for usability. I have just come to expect more from personal productivity apps, especially from a noted name as FranklinCovey. Maybe this will change with an update.

UPDATE 3/2/09: As I was posting this review, I checked the website one more time to ensure the accuracy of my information. I cannot find FCTasks on the FranklinCovey website, nor any reference to the iPhone/Touch. It’s still for sale in the AppStore though. Curious!

Tags: $5.99, Productivity

GL Golf

Swain Valasek | Feb 17, 2009 Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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I’m not a golfer..but I play one on TV.  Something like that but the point is finally we have some viable golf action for the iPhone in the form of GL Golf from Nuclear Nova Software.  It’s not a sim but rather a casual golf action game that makes it easy to hit the links from your armchair.  The core gameplay is the same in all versions so the difference is you get 4 courses and ads with Lite, 6 courses with standard (reviewed here) and a whopping 23 courses with deluxe, booya.  There’s a detailed array of options to customize your game, allowing you to select how many players (up to 4 for hot-seat),  front/back 9 or all 18 holes, difficulty level, time of day, ball color and season.  I found it too much of an eyestrain to play in anything but daytime but challenge-seekers might appreciate the dusk and dawn settings.  The game is rendered in full 3D and the GL stands for OpenGL in case anyone was wondering.  There’s no music but you can play your own and the sound fx are sparse but what’s there is realistic and effective.  By divine grace the developer opted for a simple touch interface so you don’t have to swing your phone around like a loon.  Incoming calls are handled gracefully as the game saves automatically.

Once the game proper begins, you get a flyby of the hole to get your bearings then with a tap of the screen it’s go time.  The first thing you’ll probably notice is there’s no onscreen avatar representing the player, just a disembodied club floating in space.  To your left you have your basic stats and info plus shot options (you can also redeem 1 Mulligan per game) which are back spin, draw/fade (hook/slice by any other name) and loft/punch (basically high/low).  You can view 3 perspective shots of the hole for further strategizing (4 including the flyby) and check an instant replay of your last shot.  There’s also buttons to save your game and view the leaderboard.  The right side of the screen is a bird’s eye view overlay of the entire hole including landmarks.  The center is the 3D display and your window to the course.  Swipe horizontal to aim, vertical to switch clubs then tap the swing button to build up power and again to swing.  So simple you don’t need instructions; gotta like that (there are instructions though just in case).  Once you’re on the green you can putt (actually you can use the putter anytime if you want to be silly).  Once the putter is selected, gridlines appear indicating break to help you aim.

All good so far but I do have some gripes.  First, I’d like to see an onscreen avatar, the disembodied club thing is just a little weird.  Nothing fancy needed just a basic onscreen guy/gal, decently animated.  Second, the game is screaming for a freecam mode with zoom and scroll.  Basically the game needs the flyby mode to be interactive.  Third, the graphics just aren’t so good, basically ranging from serviceable to downright pixelicious.  Unfortunately this goes beyond just griping about eye candy as landmarks in the game, such as the flagstick and putting grid, can get lost in the lo-res soup.  I mean retro is cool on the iPhone but I don’t want to be zapped all the way back to Intellivision.  Ok INTV was 2D but you get the point.  Also the bird’s eye overlay is really tiny so maybe that could be enlarged just a little…or enlarged a lot and give us the option to toggle it off to see more real estate.  In fact, extend that thought to the left-side menu as well since technically you don’t need it that often; I’d like to see an option to make the entire screen be the 3D course display.

All said, this is a really damn good golf game for the iPhone and if you’re on the fence about it, check the lite version…and be sure to replace all your divots you duffer.

Version reviewed – 1.04
Global scoreboard – yes
iTunes music supported – yes
Lite version available – yes, deluxe too

Tags: $5.99, Games, gl golf, golf, Swain Valasek

Jumble!

Michael (Admin) | Dec 9, 2008 Games

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

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You know you’re playing a great puzzle game when you’d rather risk peeing in your pants than put down the iPhone to take care of business. I wish I were kidding here but I came dangerously close to wetting myself, my couch, and my dog because I couldn’t beat one of Jumble!’s levels. I know… “TMI”!

Jumble! is NOT that lame word puzzle you’re inexplicably drawn to when you’re done reading the newspaper’s comics. It’s a mixture of balance, problem-solving, and frustration. It’s Jenga in reverse.

Your goal is to either stack household items above a certain level or stack enough of them to fill a certain area, and it’s way harder than it sounds. If anything falls onto the floor you’re screwed and have to start over! You’ve got eggs, toast, slippers, wooden spoons, fruit, plungers, brooms, bags of flour… all kinds of things that are prone to the iPhone’s sense of gravity… and you’re supposed to somehow arrange these items as they come until your goal is met, and just to make you mad there’s a time limit, too! Items can be rotated which is key, and luckily Guy Moss was nice enough to provide an option for turning off “tilt control” just in case you’re a huge wuss or if you’re playing while on the train or bus.

The iTunes App Store description says there are over 40 levels but I was only able to get past a few thanks to Miller High Life and my impatient bladder. At $5.99 it’s a little pricey but Jumble! is fun, unique, difficult, and addicting, so if you’re a hardcore puzzler the current price isn’t really that much of a stretch.

Tags: $5.99, puzzle

2 Across

Michael (Admin) | Jul 31, 2008 Games

User rating: (8 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)

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When I first opened 2 Across I thought for a second that I had to subscribe to the New York Times premium service, too! I was pretty pissed. But then I tapped around a bit and found that not only are there plenty of free puzzles from a lot of different sources including The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, and The Onion (of all places), but you can grab puzzles from yesterday, last week, last month, even going as far back as ten years in some cases! Impressive. To get all these puzzles, just go to Saved Puzzles and tap on the + at the bottom of the screen, then choose whose puzzle(s) you want to download. Once downloaded you can play them offline without any kind of network connection.

You’d think that doing crosswords on such a small format would be tough, but Eliza Block has done a nice job of making it fairly painless. Of course you can zoom the board in and out by pinching, but the key to 2 Across’s usability is in the three viewing modes.

Grid: Shows only the board. Tap on a square to highlight the row or column, and the clue is shown as well.
Clues: Shows only the list of clues.
Split: My favorite view, which shows both grid and clues. Tapping on a row/column immediately displays the right clue, and tapping on a clue will highlight the right row/column. Tap the pencil icon at top right to start typing in your answer.

Eliza also included a nice bonus for me and the rest of the world’s dumbasses: cheating! If cheating is turned on (which it is by default) you will see a checkmark next to the pencil icon. Tapping the checkmark gives you a bunch of choices:

Check Letter: Find out if the highlighted letter is correct (a red X appears over it if it’s wrong)
Check Word: Find out if the highlighted word is correct
Check Grid: Checks all of your answers so far to see which are correct

Reveal Letter: Reveals the letter for the highlighted space
Reveal Word: Reveals the word for the highlighted row/column
Reveal Grid: Solves the rest of the puzzle for you

Of course hardcore crossword nerds will eschew cheating in all of its forms (at least that’s what they’ll tell you) but the cheating feature just makes this game that much more playable. And if you suck at crosswords but don’t want to cheat, you can always turn to the slightly easier crossword sources such as The Onion, Sydney Morning Herald Quick, and Thinks.com.

As negatives go, my only real complaint is that I’ve been kicked back to the iPhone main screen a couple of times, but it’s certainly not enough to raise any red flags. And a slightly better variety of puzzles would be nice, and by “variety” I’m really talking about more Puzzles for Idiots. You know that crossword in the back of People magazine, where all the clues are celebrity-related? Idiots like me just love those. Other than that, I really don’t know what more 2 Across could do better.

$5.99 seems like a very fair price for a game that could literally keep you occupied for the rest of your life. I can’t compare it to Stand Alone Inc.’s “Crosswords” because I’ve never played that version, but $5.99 vs. $9.99 already makes 2 Across a winner.

Tags: $5.99, game, puzzle