Rise of Atlantis
Swain Valasek | Jul 25, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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I am completely burned out on match 3 games…at least I thought I was until I started playing Rise of Atlantis from SkyZone (originally developed by Terminal Studio; iPhone port by Gamelion Studios). Despite some criticisms which I will level at this game shortly, it captures that addictive quality all developers pray for with a combination of slick presentation and casual gameplay. I’m going to assume you know the basic mechanics of match 3 games; if you don’t check one of the many other reviews on this site in that category. In RoA you ‘Journey’ through 7 classic civilizations in the Mediterranean, gathering an artifact from each one to place in an ancient relic on the Altar of Poseidon with the ultimate goal of raising the lost city of Atlantis from the depths. RoA features some excellent graphics and visual effects; you will not be disappointed with that aspect. Generous amounts of animation keep the playfield lively, active and most importantly, interesting. The BGM is well done and keeps to the theme of the game. Gameplay starts very easy in Phoenicia but by the time you reach the last civ Troy the levels are much more challenging. You play up to 12 levels per civ (77 total) in classic match 3 style and timed (though don’t worry as in most cases there’s more than enough) but littered around the playfield are a number of possible items: artifact pieces (always present), powerups, locked/double-locked tiles, frozen/double-frozen tiles and rocks (as of Journey 2). There could possibly be more stuff too but I’ve not played to Journey 3 yet.
Tags: $2.99, match 3, Swain Valasek
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
Sentinel 2: Earth Defense
Swain Valasek | Jul 5, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5) Loading ...
Sentinel 2: Earth Defense from Origin8 is the sequel to the much-acclaimed Sentinel, now called now called Sentinel: Mars Defense and originally reviewed by Chris J here (let’s just call them S1 and S2 hereafter). The story goes that despite your valiant efforts defending the Mars mining colony you ultimately failed, the base was completely overrun, everyone died and now the aliens have their belligerent eyes fixed on another target…Earth. Pushing aside your prior job performance, top brass has again entrusted you with the job of defending a planet…just this time it’s your own (no pressure). You’ve got a little something extra to bring to the party this time though in the form of 4 orbital attacks from the spaceship Sentinel, 2 new barrier types and 1 new drone (more on this later). Add 4 maps, sprinkle in a new boss alien plus a new mission mode and you have yourself a sequel.
Tags: $2.99, Swain Valasek, td, tower defense
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
iPhone 3GS oleophobic = fantastic
Swain Valasek | Jun 29, 2009 News & Editorials
User rating: (6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
(6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5) Loading ...What seemed a total gimmic when first announced has proven itself to be the real deal. After putting the 3GS through its paces for about a week now and the 3G still fresh in my mind, there’s no doubt Apple’s new ‘oil-fearing’ coating on the 3GS is a marvel. I had to always carry around a quality microfiber cloth to truly get my 3G screen clean (which I had a screen protector on) as anything else really didn’t do much but move the smudges around to other parts of the screen. In contrast, the 3GS (with no screen protector) not only just stays cleaner longer in general but a wipe on the shirt or pants actually does clean it up nicely…impressive!
Tags: iPhone news, Swain Valasek
Archon
Swain Valasek | Jun 27, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
Archon from React Games is a faithful remake of the absolutely iconic 1983 8-bit classic from that bygone era when Atari and Commodore computers were bonafide ’high end’ gaming machines. I played Archon and Archon II obsessively on my beloved Commodore 64 and the reward today is vivid memories of solidly trouncing my friends that’s simply priceless…truly the Golden Age of game design back in the old 80′s. Archon’s foundation is the ancient game of Chess but really it takes the concept into some wild space far beyond. In fact, Archon is so cool, another of its influences was the scene from Star Wars where R2-D2 and Chewie are playing a holographic chess-like battle game on the Falcon and what kid didn’t just love that scene back in ’77???
Tags: $3.99, remake, retro, Swain Valasek
Bionic Surfer
Swain Valasek | Jun 26, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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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
iPhone 3G S is now ’3GS’
Swain Valasek | Jun 24, 2009 News & Editorials
User rating: (No Ratings Yet)
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Trivial? You bet! However, everything’s done for a reason in Apple-land. Not officially stated on their site but you’ll notice everything has been quietly changed to reflect the new naming scheme, for example the 3GS product page. Makes sense to me really, never did see any logic in the 3G<space>S gimmic. Of course, people will continue be confused by the ’3G’ tag anyway, wondering if it means ’3rd generation’ or ’3G cellular technology’ (it’s the latter).
Tags: iPhone news, Swain Valasek
iPhone 3G S First Impressions
Swain Valasek | Jun 22, 2009 News & Editorials
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Fedex delivered a nice little box of awesome today in the form of a 16GB iPhone 3G S (yes the S really does officially stand for speed). There’s gobs of articles and videos out there comparing the speed of the 3G S to the Pre and original 3G and unfortunately I just don’t have the lab & time to repeat stuff like that so what I’m doing here is just rambling a bit about the OBE or ‘out of box experience’ which is a sort of intangible quality associated with any and every piece of high tech gear a man ever buys (women may not understand what I just said but all the guys are like ‘dude man, word’). At the risk of alienating the fairer gender, I trudge onward.
Tags: iPhone 3G S, iPhone news, Swain Valasek
Sweetwater Defense
Swain Valasek | Jun 19, 2009 Games
User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.80 out of 5)
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Proving that you simply can’t have too much of a good thing, here comes Sweetwater Defense from Werebear Games. This is a TD or tower defense game of the fixed path variety but there’s enough cool stuff here to allow this game to stand out and stake its own claim in the not-so-wild-anymore frontier of this category in the app store. There’s no backstory to bother with; just know that there are pirate fleets (ARRRRR) and monsters threatening your coast and you have to build up defenses in an attempt to send ‘em all down to Davy Jones’ locker. When you start the game you’re presented with a large, scrollable map showing all the locations you can play, divided into easy, med and hard levels and there’s about 25 unique maps in all. Your defenses consist of 7 towers and you face 6 different enemy ships and 5 unique bosses. The sound and music in this game are very well done; the BGM in particular is extremely hip and though contemporary enough to actually be out of place for the game’s setting, I found it to be quite awesome and moody. The fully 3D graphics are definitely some of the nicest you’ll see on the iPhone. Lots of environmental detail, stunning water effects, rain even…good stuff. The enemy ships and bosses were given a particularly high level of attention as for example, each ship has 2 unique sinking animations plus a special one for what I can only describe as the ‘penultimate death blow’ where a ship will notably shake and wobble when it’s just about to be sunk; really nice touch. Each tower changes graphically with each upgrade which is always a point of contention with TD fans. A rare feature but one that I think will catch on is that you can manually specify a target per tower if the auto-targeting just isn’t quite meshing with your strategy.
Tags: $3.99, Swain Valasek, tower defense
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
Magnetic Joe 2
Swain Valasek | Jun 8, 2009 Games
User rating: (1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...
If you’re looking for an arcade puzzler that’s truly off the beaten path, check out Magnetic Joe 2 from HD Publishing. Quick note, the original MJ is also available for a buck. This is an extremely easy to get into, 1-finger game based on ‘magnetizing’ Joe (a cute but fragile orb with eyes) when he’s near directional magnets to propel him towards the goal of the level. This goal varies by game type of which there are 3 (well 4 sorta):
- Tutorial – get the basics down (10 levels)
- Classic – get to the exit as fast as possible (30 levels)
- Collect – collect all the little Joe’s while getting to the exit as fast as possible (30 levels)
- Enemy – avoid all sorts of monsters like evil spiked balls, laser-shooting robots and fireballs…oh and yes while getting to the exit as fast as possible (30 levels)
Tags: $1.99, arcade puzzler, Swain Valasek
