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| Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:21 |
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148apps
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Developer: ezone.com Price: $.99 Version Reviewed: 1.0 Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Gameplay Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars User Interface Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Overall Rating: 4.05 out of 5 stars There are a large quantity of “tap-to-shoot” games on the App Store, and they all have something in common: they’re mindless, dull affairs. But Galactic Gunner does something extraordinary; it’s challenging, story-based, and most of all, fun. The game places you in the role of a futuristic gunner for the human forces. After a few training exercises, you are forced into the middle of an epic war between the humans and an alien race known as the Trepidoids. Your captain will do all the steering, so your only role is to take out enemy fighters, turrets, and shields. Luckily, you are rather good at aiming, so whenever you touch the screen your lasers fire in that precise place. Unfortunately for you, it’s not that easy. Your captain will have perform numerous flying stunts to avoid the Trepidoids, so your view is constantly changing. In addition, your wingman (which are supposedly there to help you but more often simply get in the way) constantly block your view and you have to avoid gunning them down. There are also targets that require more than one hit, making fast fingers a must. Unfortunately, Galactic Gunner only contains six levels, the first two of which are training exercises (but still fun nonetheless). However, these levels are all fairly long. Failing a level (taking too much damage) is fairly hard to do, but to unlock the next level, you need to achieve a certain score, which is based on both targets destroyed and accuracy (making screen mashing impossible). For the later levels, the score benchmarks are fairly high, so you will probably have to play through most levels more than once. By achieving a certain score on the last level, you can unlock survival mode. However, survival mode simply doesn’t hold the magic of the other levels, and I would rather replay those instead. There are also fifteen medals or ranks to achieve that are based on your lifetime score. An online scoreboard would be a welcome addition and would perhaps add more replayability, but it i by no means a glaring omission. Galactic Gunner truly shines in the graphics and sounds department. Spectacularly cinematic levels are truly immersive, and one short cut scene at the end of the last level was so intense that I found myself on the edge of my seat. The background music perfectly suits the game, and sound effects are nice. The game is rather dependent on... |
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| Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:11 |
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148apps
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Developer: RJ Softwares Price: $1.99 (Sale price; regular $3.99) Version Reviewed: 1.2 Graphics / Sound Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Gameplay Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars iPhone Integration Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars User Interface Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Finally, the day has arrived! Lexulous is in the App Store. Lexulous is an online reincarnation of Scrabble playable on both a dedicated site and through Facebook; it was originally called “Scrabulous,” but lawyers took issue with that and a name-change was mandated. Surprisingly, the Lexulous Facebook app trumps the official Scrabble app in terms of both finesse and popularity, with over 500,000 daily users and, in my opinion at least, a far better interface than the official Facebook version of Scrabble. Until recently, however, you couldn’t take your Lexulous games with you on the go, which is the iPhone Scrabble app’s killer feature. [ Read my review of EA's Scrabble app here .] As a longtime Lexulous fan, I was immensely excited to see its appearance in the App Store. Unfortunately, for me, the initial release back in May was a huge letdown, lacking basic features like friend-to-friend challenges. Is it better now? Definitely. Is it up to par with the official Scrabble app? Unfortunately, the answer for the moment is still “no,” but it’s still a good app in its own right, especially if you’re tied to the online version of Lexulous. As with the Scrabble app, if you manage multiple games on Lexulous, you’ll have access to all of them at the touch of a finger thanks to Facebook Connect. Before I continue, here’s a quick overview of how the app works. For newcomers, it’s important to note that Lexulous is a different game than Scrabble, despite the obvious resemblance. You play with hands of 8 tiles, bingoes can be made with either 7 or 8 tiles, it’s a 15 |
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| Tuesday, 23 June 2009 19:56 |
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148apps
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Westbang, by Rake in Grass was, well, a bit boring for my taste. The game is basically like a day in the life of Wyatt Earp, but not nearly as cool. Westbang will really only appeal to you if you have fantasies of living in 1860’s Texas and love playing Wac-A-Mole, because that’s what this game is. A normal game goes like this….you are in front of 3 doors, and you shoot the bandits and not the customers. BAM that’s the game. No really that’s it. It’s really as simple as it sounds. Yes, there some showdowns with some big bandits (no they are not boss battles), but otherwise it’s Wac a Mole in Texas. There isn’t much more to say about the in-game play Westbang. The graphics are all 2D cell shaded western, the drawings are not bad, nor is the music and sound. The time based attack (i.e. don’t shoot one of the bandits until he draws on you) is interesting, but nothing spectacular. The game has 3 “modes” but they are really three levels of difficulty. There is money in the game, but there is no real way to use it. Apparently one can buy lives, but I have yet to find a “store” to buy more lives. Here’s my major gripe about the gameplay… there is no save or continue in anything but the beginner’s mode. So if you die, that’s it. It becomes a real chore just to get back to a certain level, and considering the fact that the scenery doesn’t change too often, the game becomes rather stale. There is really only so much Wac-a-mole a guy can stand before he goes crazy. Controls, well it’s a tap game. If the tapping doesn’t work, it might be your iPhone. The one saving grace of the game, in my opinion, has to be the narrated cutscenes. Stylistically, these cutscenes are unmatched by just about any other game out there. Their mix of great sound, nice, cell-shaded graphics, and a slight bit of comedy make for cutscene gold. Because of the cutscenes, I really wanted to love Westbang, but the repetition of playing western wac-a-mole just made me die inside. Overall, I would not suggest buying this game unless you REALLY enjoy the game wac-a-mole. Good news for those of you on the fence, there’s a lite version available. |
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| Tuesday, 23 June 2009 03:17 |
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148apps
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I’ll say it now - I’m an iPhone addict. Every week, I have to go to a 12 step program designed to wean me off my addiction.* But, you know what? It’s not working. You see, to be cured of an addiction you have to want to be cured. I love my iPhone. It’s a part of my life. It’s never far from my grasp, and I use it many, many times throughout my day. I don’t want to be cured. Paul Pelosi (look at his hands) is also an iPhone addict. When I first got my iPhone, I was amazed - due to the superb implementation of the web, that I could actually use it to buy my wife’s Christmas presents… from the sofa… while she sat next to me. I would ask her what she wanted, she’d have a little think, then tell me, then I’d buy it, without her even realising her wishes were coming true within seconds of her uttering the words. She might as well have been saying abracadabra. It was magical, and exciting in a way only another iPhone-phile can understand. This is how my iPhone and I spend the day. Wake Up Call Even before I awake, my iPhone is there for me, dragging me from my slumber with the sound of Marimba. Clock has become my Alarm Clock. I’ve even taught it not to wake me at all at the weekend - at those times my iPhone allows me to dream on (although my daughter does not respect the covenant me and the iPhone have made). With a swipe of my finger Marimba is quieted for another 24 hours. Settings is my second iPhone destination, where I turn off the Airplane mode that has so expertly shielded my from all those late night messages and calls. When I go to sleep - oddly enough - I want to sleep. After doing those most morning-ish of activities (curse, wash, dress, etc.), I unplug my now fully charged iPhone and trudge downstairs, where I flick the switch that pours lovely wireless Internet into my home. A few seconds later, I fire up the next app of the day. It’s another iPhone native: Mail . My Mail is synced up to my personal Gmail account (which is set-up to receive all the mail from any other e-mail addresses I might have acquired over the years). It’s incredibly convenient to receive my e-mail via my iPhone rather than on my Mac. It was not quite so easy to respond, however, but the situation was resolved when landscape mode was enabled for Mail in 3.0. Destination: Next App is Facebook / Tweetdeck . I put this down as a twofer because, generally, if I check Facebook I also check Tweetdeck. Facebook is good for on the move voyeurism into your friend’s lives, but lacks some of the features of its big browser brother. I&#... |
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