Posted 05/18/2012 at 7:25am | by AJ Dellinger It's becoming increasingly tough to squeeze into the tightly-packed puzzle genre in the App Store. With tons of tile-matching, piece-sliding, and color-swapping titles available in abundance -- albeit with challenge and mental stimulation often lacking -- sometimes the only puzzling thing is what is qualified as a puzzle. Enter Cubis Creatures, a game developed by the aptly named FreshGames, which has come to push staleness out of the genre and replace it with smart and satisfying gameplay. Cubis Creatures tasks players with correcting the mistake of a wizard's poorly-performed magic trick, which has sent all of his friends into a deep slumber. To wake them from this state, players must match blocks in each creature's mouth -- which is still nicer than how most college kids are awoken by their friends after a night of partying. You'll be given four creatures to raise from slumber -- done over the course of 20 stages -- but additional ones can be added on. Add in daily tournaments and there's never a shortage of challenges. The puzzles that keep these critters asleep take place on a checkered board, which is populated by colored blocks. To eliminate these blocks, you'll launch others into the playing field from the front or right side. Solids stop them, other blocks will slide one square, and contact with two or more that share its color will clear all touching matching pieces. Throw in things like lasers that can eliminate any piece, bombs that shake up the board, and two-toned blocks will require matching both colors before they'll be cleared, and you've got a puzzle game that requires real strategy. Because the board doesn't rotate, there are occasions where blocks aren't visible; but it's luckily never debilitating. The bottom line. Cubis Creatures Read More
Posted 05/16/2012 at 10:15am | by Andrew Hayward Showing a bit more ambition than its predecessors, N.O.V.A. 3 aims to be slightly more than a shameless clone of Microsoft's Halo, adding in mechs and jetpacks to the sci-fi shooter along with a bit more personality and environmental variety. It's also quite the looker, with the universal app's gloss shining through brightly, especially on the new iPad. But like most of Gameloft's shooters, it hasn't quite nailed the solo experience. While visually impressive and certainly lengthy for an App Store adventure, the campaign frequently drags thanks to repetitive objectives and enemy encounters, plus missions that stretch on and on. Curiously, the levels also feature irritating bugs, such as botched aiming, faulty grenade buttons, and enemies stuck in walls. It looks nice, but the campaign just isn't much fun, and the bugs don't help matters. Luckily, as with last year's Modern Combat 3, Gameloft's latest comes alive online, as the 12-player battles capture the essence of a console or PC shooter on a much smaller screen. Whether on-foot, in a mech, or manning a jeep with teammates in tow, N.O.V.A. 3's tense deathmatches and objective-based battles overcome the clumsy controls and occasional spots of lag. Multiplayer combat easily outclasses the campaign, and for $7, you'll get a whole lot of action for very little. The bottom line. N.O.V.A. 3's campaign is a buggy bore, but excellent online multiplayer saves this slick shooter. 1 of 10 With guns, mechs, and jeeps, the online battlefields prove plenty busier than in past versions. The game packs a visual punch, especially during the campaign's cut-scenes. Stomping around in a mech? You'll probably have an advantage over your on-foot nemeses. Detailed settings filled with anxious foes -- it's a common sight throughout the campaign. Customization requires ample play Read More
Posted 05/15/2012 at 7:29am | by Andrew Hayward Baseball is the ultimate sport for stat junkies, and Topps Pennant is designed to feed into that obsessive curiosity, serving up 60 years worth of Major League Baseball game and team stats and breaking down box scores into a wickedly attractive little tool. Previously released for the iPad sans the Topps branding, Pennant is back in a brand new universal release that shines no matter which iOS device(s) you rely upon. Topps Pennant takes the complicated history of six decades' worth of professional hardball and compresses it all down into a slick, intuitive app. Starting up, you'll choose a team -- with separate listings for rebranded squads like the Angels (California, Anaheim, and Los Angeles) -- which then unveils individual seasons, followed by single games and finally a customizable look into each and every play and out from that matchup. It's impressive how much info is packed into such a simple, clean layout, and you can even press play to cycle through the innings' happenings automatically. On the iPad, the layout is largely similar to what was seen in the now-discontinued original version, with circular representations of games that let you swipe through the plays, as well as a beautiful animated chart that gives each team in the league and division a ball that changes in size depending on win/loss record. The iPhone side of this universal app shakes things up a bit with a portrait-oriented layout and a smaller set of viewing options, but it's just as easy to get to the info you want in a breeze. Pennant does require an Internet connection, which can be a drag on an iPad or iPod touch, especially if you're sitting at the ballpark without Wi-Fi. Also, it's a shame that the original iPad Read More
Posted 05/14/2012 at 9:25am | by Michael Simon We're not sure the world needs another offshoot of Pinterest and Facebook, but the new Springpad is just that: the once-private personal aggregator has gone public, revamping its iOS app and encouraging its users to share discoveries with their social circles. At its core, Springpad is something of a cross between a secretary and assistant. As you go about your day, Springpad collects everything you throw at it -- including bookmarks, article clippings, notes, and photos -- grabbing and sorting your digital paraphernalia via a complementary web clipper. Snapshots of websites are saved (or rather Springed, since every social network needs its own verb) quickly and smoothly. Inside Springpad, any number of customizable notebooks can be filled with all sorts of things. Web clippings wind up here, of course, and photos and notes can be added, too; plus, a speedy search bar trawls the web for books, movies, TV shows, recipes, and Amazon listings that can be saved for future reference. It's not the most polished interface, but Springpad does an admirable job organizing your digital life. The social aspects, however, aren't quite as well-thought-out. The general idea is to simply open up your notebooks for public consumption, but that also involves a shift in approach; Springpad is something of a personal experience, so creating a public notebook requires a conscious effort. And the most popular shared notebooks I found were fairly generic lists of things like recipes and movies. Springpad might be on to something, but I'm happy to keep my sliders set to private. Bugs are fairly prevalent in the current build, and while most aren't too hindering, a couple were very bothersome. The buttons sorting my content were extremely slow to respond (to the point where it was quicker to Read More
Posted 05/11/2012 at 7:28am | by Will Herring Of the couple hundred apps to cycle through my iPhone’s home screen over the last few years, it’s the "visual showpiece" titles that I’ve had the most trouble deleting. And that’s not because I’m a bona fide Infinity Blade fanatic, nor am I a Rage HD die-hard. The truth of the matter is much simpler, and much… well, shallower: I treat many of those games like the app equivalents of fancy, hardcover coffee table books. They’re incredibly attractive talking points, but I too rarely revisit them on my own time. After clearing Sunside Games' Crow in a little over an hour, I felt like I’d just skimmed through a slick (if not particularly thick) coffee table book. An admittedly gorgeous game, Crow's lavishly detailed environments and haunting audio design earn it plenty of points in the presentation department, but it suffers from stale gameplay that never really gets off the ground. Propelled by a muddled “there are Ancients among us” plot, the titular Crow is urged across barren, breathtaking environments by a malevolent voice. The actual gameplay is split into two too-similar segments—exploration and combat—that both see your crow flying across restrictive playing fields. The exploration overworlds have you soaring and surveying until you come across your next objective, where the combat portions are “on-rails tapping” missions, meaning you steer your feathered hero into collectibles and occasionally attack baddies with gesture-based Crow Magicks. But the exploration is too limited to feel compelling, and the combat too repetitive to be fun. There are under-explained “moral choices” after each of the game’s four boss battles, but their impacts are largely insignificant. Now, if you’re looking for a showpiece app to impress friends and family with the visual power packed into your smartphone, Crow could very Read More
Posted 05/10/2012 at 3:27pm | by J.R. Bookwalter If you’ve been avoiding Harry Potter books until you could beam them onto your Kindle, Amazon has some good news for you -- assuming you’re paying $79 per year for their Prime service, that is. Today’s update is chock full of Potter Kindle news, Proview settlement rumors, iOS 5.1 jailbreak progress and much more, so let’s dive right into this Thursday, May 10, 2012 edition. The Next Web is reporting that Apple and Proview are in “serious negotiations” to resolve the issue of the iPad trademark in China, with Cupertino apparently jotting a figure of $16 million on a piece of paper and sliding it across the table, only to have it rejected by the nearly bankrupt Proview. So how much does Proview want? $20 million? $50 million? If you guessed $400 million, you win the non-existent prize -- that’s the reported amount it would take to appease the company’s creditors, including eight Chinese banks. That amount is still a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 billion lawsuit they filed in the U.S. earlier this year, which was recently dismissed by the court. Certainly sounds like Apple and Proview are on opposite ends of the financial spectrum for now... Amazon today announced that all seven Harry Potter e-books will be coming to the Kindle on June 19, where they will be exclusively offered to Amazon Prime members through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, rather than being sold directly to the public. PaidContent reports that the exclusive license from Pottermore likely cost Amazon a pretty penny, but the publisher dismisses concerns that the deal may cannibalize their existing sales. “The way the deal is structured means that any lost sales are more than made up for,” explains Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne. “Yes, Read More
Posted 05/10/2012 at 7:27am | by Brian Albert Cuban refugee Tony Montana emigrated to the United States in 1980. He soon dealt, murdered, and swindled his way to the top of Miami's booming cocaine industry. Before an infamous last stand alongside his little friend, Montana's reckless determination earned him all the pleasures of a king. It's a shame, then, that Scarface for iOS rejects the spirit of Brian De Palma's classic film, road-blocking anyone looking to dedicate time and hard work in pursuit of the virtual dream. The home-building mechanic here is standard fare for the free-to-play realm. Your empire begins as a small, bare plot of land. As you earn cash and move “product,” you can populate your home with businesses that generate income over time. Unfortunately, some of the more profitable stores take days of real time to refill, grinding your play time to a halt. Upgrading structures to become more efficient is a slow process as well, but cocaine can be applied to speed up the construction, naturally. For extra drugs and dough, Tony can perform various missions at several nicely rendered locations around Miami. Actions consist of tapping a target, waiting a few seconds, and collecting the bits of cash and experience that pop out. Each completed task will prompt a low-fidelity signature Tony Montana line from the film, but they’re recycled and quickly become an annoyance. The rewards for these crimes are meager, making the already inert missions even less compelling; and you’ll soon find yourself with nothing left to do but wait for two days, or otherwise head to the in-game store to score virtual cocaine in exchange for real cash. "The world is yours," it seems, but only if you pay to take shortcuts. The bottom line. Economic balance issues aside, the barely-there gameplay Read More
Posted 05/10/2012 at 6:47am | by J.R. Bookwalter There are plenty of GPS apps in the App Store for turn-by-turn navigation, but few are dedicated to route planning or exploration. If the built-in Maps app isn’t getting the job done for you, the folks at CoPilot may have just the thing -- and it’s free and universal. CoPilot has announced the release of CoPilot GPS, a free, universal app now available on the App Store as well as the Google Play Store for Android devices. Unlike the company’s other apps focused on turn-by-turn navigation with 3D maps, CoPilot GPS is more about planning and discovery -- but users have the option to upgrade to the full monty as an in-app purchase, should they so desire. “CoPilot GPS is our all-new offline route planning and local exploring app that gets you everywhere you need to go without relying on your mobile data connection,” the company explains on its blog. “Detailed maps of an entire country or region are stored on your smartphone or tablet, so you’ll be able to calculate routes and get driving or walking instructions even when there’s no mobile coverage. “Millions of Points of Interest (POIs) are built into the app, making it easy to locate nearby restaurants, shops, hotels and more,” the blog post continues. “You can also search for local businesses and attractions using Bing™ and Wikipedia. And did we mention the best part: Mapping and planning is FREE!!!” For users who require a more comprehensive navigation app, CoPilot GPS offers a number of additional features via in-app purchase, including unlimited use of full turn-by-turn navigation for only $19.99, with access to dynamic 3D maps, speed limit warnings, clear spoken directions with street names and realistic ClearTurn display with lane indicator arrows and exit sign information. Other Read More
Posted 05/10/2012 at 6:03am | by J.R. Bookwalter There are few apps users couldn’t live without, but one of them might very well be Instapaper, Marco Arment’s frequently praised “read later” app for iOS. The developer released an update on Wednesday night that dramatically improves the speed of page turns and adds a number of other welcome features. Marco Arment has released Instapaper 4.2, a slick update to the $4.99 “read later” app that allows users to save articles from any website -- and a long list of companion apps -- for later reading in a clean, uncluttered UI. While competition has been heating up in the “read later” space with the release of Readability and the rebranding of Read It Later to Pocket, Instapaper continues to add new features and improvements. The big story with Instapaper 4.2 is an all-new Fast Pagination mode, which significantly improves the accuracy and speed of page turns thanks to a complete rewrite of the pagination code. The result is near immediate page turning, but that’s not all. Users now have the option to choose an optional iBooks-style page turning animation, complete with gestures. The update also allows the “Twilight Sepia” color tint to be selected at any time, along with subtle but welcome changes such as a new draggable dot bar, which replaces the scroll bar while in pagination mode. Users can now swipe with two fingers to close an article, and full-screen mode adds an Auto mode, which kicks in after a few seconds. The 4.2 release notes also close with a personal message from the developer, who recently added a new member to his family. “On a personal note, my wife and I just had a baby,” Arment writes. “You, my awesome customers, let me work at home and spend as much Read More
