iPhone App Reviews

Music Catch

Tony Mei | Jan 28, 2010 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Edit: It would seem Music Catch is on sale for free. Better get it quick, if you’re interested.

The Good: Music Catch is a fantastic, zen-like game made by Reflexive Entertainment. The game was an absolute favorite of mine on the computer (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=WebGamePlay&WGID=94), and I was super excited stumble upon it on the app store.  Game play is wonderfully calming: just move your fingers to collect shapes while beautiful ambient music plays in the background. Things like bonus multipliers and point-collecting vacuum cleaners add a bit of spice to the game play.  Frankly, enough apps are made about slashing enemies or shooting others, and it’s nice to wind down a hard day of violent gaming with a bit of Music Catch.

The Bad: Those seeking a more active game will get bored easily by the zen-like feel. I was hoping for some sort of online leaderboard or stat tracking – OpenFeint and the like. The replay value is inherently low (the game has four songs that each take a few minutes), but I did find myself drifting back to the game, even after I thought I was sick of it. After the first few rounds, Music Catch will only end up catching your attention for a few minutes before drifting away.

The Ugly: To be honest, I couldn’t find any glaring negative qualities about Music Catch. Again, this game would benefit from more development. Things like online integration, leader boards and more songs would make this already good app pretty darn great.

Tags: casual, free, game, Music, relax, sale

Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey

Sara | Jan 1, 2010 Games

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

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Imagine a game with pictures straight out of your favorite childhood picture finding book. Now combine that with the technology of an iPhone and the great game play from Ludia. Add some cute music, bundle it all together and you get  Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey.

This app is a Where’s Waldo book with some extras. The game is set up as an adventure game where you follow Waldo, Whitebeard the Wizard, Wendy, and other characters through a journey to collect the 12 mystical scrolls. When you collect all 12 scrolls, Whitebeard the Wizard will reveal to Waldo an important secret that Waldo has been searching for. At the start you can choose normal game play or kids. The kids version is noticeably easier as it will make sure the item/person you are looking for is always in the area it brings you (in other words, you don’t have to move the screen view around).

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Tags: $2.99, fun, game, good for kids, sale

Mini Golf Ace

Don Wilson | Apr 29, 2009 Games

User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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There are two types of golf games out there. One, namely Tiger Woods PGA Tour, relies heavily on high quality graphics, settings for everything, and an experienced player. The other is easy to play, able to start a game quickly, and doesn’t distract you with needless extra features. Mini Golf Ace falls into the latter category.

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Tags: $1.99, game, golf, mini golf ace

Cookie Bonus Solitaire

Michael (Admin) | Aug 2, 2008 Games

User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Amplified Games, Inc. tried to take every loner’s favorite card game and spice it up with… cookies? Uh, ok.

As an iPhone solitaire game it’s really pretty good… it only plays the traditional Klondike version of solitaire but it’s free (thanks to some mildly intrusive sponsors) and the gameplay is exactly what you’d expect. Use your fingertips to flip through the deck and drag cards around, and if you’re lucky enough to move a bonus card to a completed pile you get some cookie bonus points! What do you do with these magical points? I have no clue, but the game makes a neat sound when it happens and that’s all you really need to know.

Another nice feature is Cheats. If you’ve ever played solitaire… and if you’re as hopelessly stupid as I am… you know that 9 times out of 10 you’re gonna lose. The four cheats allow you to peek at all of your down cards, take any up-card and put it in an empty slot, shuffle the deck, and move all aces to the finished piles (this one is huge!). However, there’s one catch: in Cookie Bonus Solitaire’s continuous-play system (finish one deck and your points carry over to the next) you only get one set of cheats. In other words, if you burn through all of your cheats on your first deck, you won’t have them available on the next deck. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, otherwise there won’t be a second deck, right?

This free version of the game will occasionally present you with an ad that asks you to take a survey or get fashion tips or something. Yeah, I totally want fashion tips from my solitaire game! Anyway, what you’ll see is a small ad, and if you tap anywhere on the screen you’ll be given the option to view the sponsor’s wares or skip it and go straight to the game. Like I said, it’s just mildly intrusive… in the games I’ve played so far, I’ve never been interrupted mid-game. The ads only seem to appear between games, kind of like a commercial break on TV, so it’s no big deal and if that’s what it takes to keep this version of the game free then so be it.

There is one more facet to the game that I tried to experience but couldn’t because of a server error. Cookie Bonus Solitaire is part of the Fat-Free Games family which means you can chat with other players and participate in some kind of online community while you’re playing. I tried twice to register as a new Fat-Free user but couldn’t. Oh well… at least I can still play all by my lonesome. Isn’t that the point of solitaire anyway?

Overall I’d say this is a really well-done solitaire game and it’s worth installing if you want solitaire and you want it for free. The graphics are nice, the cookie theme definitely qualifies as “cute”, and the gameplay is right on. There is a paid version of Cookie Bonus ($2.99) which I’m guessing is exactly the same but without the ads. I really don’t know because I’m too damn cheap to buy it, but I’m content with the free version and I think I’ll be keeping it on the iPhone for the foreseeable future.

Tags: free, game, solitaire

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

Bubble Bash

Michael (Admin) | Jul 30, 2008 Games

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

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I love this game! So far Bubble Bash is the only non-free app that I’ve downloaded and if you’re into puzzle games this one is definitely worth the $7.99 price tag. It’s basically a re-tooling of Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust a Move) but it incorporates some new gameplay elements and a unique tropical theme.

Starting with the title screen you can tell right away that Gameloft put a lot of effort into the graphics and sound. Everything about this game looks very polished - even the game menus are fancy with how they hang from the top of the screen and swing back and forth as you move your iPhone. Check the screenshots and video at the end of this review to see what I’m talking about. This developer doesn’t screw around when it comes to production values.

The new gameplay elements I mentioned before are significant enough that they make Bubble Bash a unique game in its own right, but the main object of the game (popping bubbles with like-colored bubbles) remains mostly the same for hardcore Puzzle Bobble fans. In the screenshots you’ll see the characters Kale and Malia standing on a giant skateboard that moves back and forth as you tilt your iPhone. Cool! It’s a very handy feature when you’re trying to squeeze a bubble into a tight spot. You can also turn the “Gravity” option off so your characters stay in the middle if that works better for you.

Game mode options include “Arcade Mode” which has Kale and Malia playing different types of challenges, defeating bosses, and collecting pieces of some kind of map, or you can play “Crab Fever” which is a straight-up survival challenge to see how long you can last before the bubbles completely take over the screen. Also unique to Bubble Bash are all kinds of special bubbles that carry certain properties that will either help or hurt (but mostly help) your chances of successfully clearing a level.

This game is packed with a ton of bells & whistles that I’m too lazy to explain so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that this game kicks ass. It even includes tutorials for the truly clueless!

On the negative side there are only a couple of very small things that annoy me:

1. I keep getting kicked back to my iPhone’s main screen every time I try to access the “More Games” menu selection. I’m guessing this is just a tool for plugging Gameloft’s other titles so I’m not too broken up about it.

2. Every time I tap “Main Menu” when navigating through the game’s rather large feature set, it asks me “are you sure?” Kind of unnecessary.

3. Bubble Bash’s icon changed from the stoner crab you see at the top of this review to a very generic pink ball. Bring back the crab!

That’s all I got. If addictive puzzle games aren’t your thing then this game probably won’t do much for you. Everyone else: buy it, play it, and come back here to tell me what you think ok?

Tags: $7.99, game