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Luxor

Susie Ochs — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:17:17 -0600

Some of the App Store’s 12,000-plus games are new ideas conceived expressly for this new platform, while others are retreads of more familiar fare. Overnostalgic for the Neon ’90s, we were excited to play two recent remakes of classic puzzle games.

Combining elements from Zuma and Breakout, Luxor has you firing your own colored balls at advancing chains of other colored balls. You’re trying to remove balls from the chain by matching three or more of the same color. The chains move along tracks that twist and turn and double over each other, so you can’t always get a clear shot. And if you don’t clear them fast enough, they reach the end of the track--and you lose.

Luxor's marble-matching gameplay is set against an Egyptian background.

Luxor for the iPhone plays well, with 88 levels and sharp graphics and music. You can catch falling coins and power-up tokens that slow down or reverse the chains or give you more powerful ammunition. And Luxor supports the Plus+ gaming network, letting you challenge your friends on Twitter and Facebook.

See also: Bust-a-Move, another recent remake of a classic puzzle game.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert iPhone

Zack Stern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:04 -0600

You can hide the clutter on the right, but you'll often need to use those commands.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert translates a great Mac and PC game into an adequate iPhone title. Instead of designing the action around the portable device, this version feels like developers crammed in as much of the full computer game as possible. We wanted a nimble, portable, action-strategy blitz, but got a clumsy game that frustrates as much as it entertains.

Red Alert casts you as commander of either a U.S.-European alliance or Russian threat in an alternate-history battle for the world. Fanciful sci-fi units, including attack bears, zeppelin bombers, and electrified turrets create most of the excitement.

You'll occasionally need to construct buildings before battle.

The strategy unfolds from those units' specific abilities. Bombers go unchallenged unless you have fighter planes or surface-to-air guns available; and tanks roll over rocket-launcher infantry in close range but are in danger if the soldiers are perched in buildings. This depth is the best part of Red Alert, although if you just amass enough powerful tanks, for example, you can often muscle past strategic attacks.

Red Alert downplays its building construction. You'll still want to strategically place defensive turrets to keep foes out of your base, but in the story mode, most everything is built for you already. And in those situations, you'll almost never run out of money, so you don't have to create buildings that mine resources for money. The cost per unit feels irrelevant; just keep buying more to slowly chip at the enemy.

Select missions cast you as an army of one, tossing strategy aside.

While sufficient, the game controls left us wanting a mouse and keyboard. You'll tap single units to make selections, and tap an enemy to attack. Double-tap a unit, and the game will select all of the same type. A mode lets you draw a box around units, select everything on the screen, and even toggle between three collections of your own choice. But we needed more precision, getting frustrated by trying to tap a vulnerable engineer out of a cluster of tanks. And a big palette of building commands often gets in the way of on-screen action.

The game felt buggy and slow on an iPhone 3G. Especially after creating a big army, audio effects stuttered, and we had to make multiple scroll and zoom gestures to see results. Red Alert took about 35 seconds to first load, and often 30 seconds to begin a level. It crashed occasionally, too.

Braid

Susie Ochs — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:56:05 -0500

A triumph of game design, Braid mixes 2D platforming gameplay, ingeniously crafted puzzles, time manipulation, and a melancholy story open to multiple interpretations, beautifully packaged in stunning hand-painted artwork. It’s not an incredibly long game, it doesn’t have a multiplayer mode or online play, but what’s here is more than enough to suck you in, keep you engrossed, and make you really use your brain.

Designed by Jonathan Blow with artwork by David Hellman, Braid took Xbox Live by storm in 2008, winning numerous awards from gaming magazines. It was later ported to Windows, and Hothead Games brought it to the Mac. The puzzles and story are the same, and the Mac’s keyboard controls couldn’t be simpler: arrow keys to move, the space bar to jump, and the Shift key to rewind time.

Just because you're progressing in the game doesn't mean you'll know what's really going on.

That rewinding-time mechanism is the game’s foundation. Each world starts by introducing a time-manipulation ability that you use in the world’s levels to collect inconveniently located puzzle pieces. The puzzle pieces are hard to get to, and figuring out how to access them can keep you confused for hours. Luckily, you don’t have to restart a level if you die or just screw it up somehow--thanks to the time-manipulation tricks, just rewind to a point before disaster and try again. The soothing music and the sense of satisfaction you get when a particularly tricky problem finally presents its solution kept our blood pressure low enough to keep playing--for the most part, anyway.

You can continue on to the next level without collecting every puzzle piece, and return later on to a level that’s got you stuck. But you do have to find all 60 puzzle pieces in Worlds 2 through 6 to unlock the final level, World 1. Why are they out of order? That has to do with the game’s enigmatic story line, which deals with love and loss, forgiveness and redemption, and possibly the creation of the atom bomb (seriously). We don’t want to give anything away--and the plot can be interpreted a few different ways--but after you’ve finished the game, Google “Braid ending” to read some eyebrow-raising theories. It’s mature for its headiness, but not necessarily inappropriate for kids, who might skip the story entirely and just play the levels. We’d feel comfortable letting a 10-year-old play.

Bust-a-Move

Susie Ochs — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:56:54 -0500

Some of the App Store’s 12,000-plus games are new ideas conceived expressly for this new platform, while others are retreads of more familiar fare. Overnostalgic for the Neon ’90s, we were excited to play two recent remakes of classic puzzle games.

Taito’s Bust-a-Move, also known in Japan as Puzzle Bobble, resembles the 1996 Mac puzzle game Snood. You fire colored balls at a puzzle of colored balls, trying to match three and make them disappear. The balls gradually move down the screen, and if they reach the bottom before you clear the board, you lose.

Bust 'em before they move.

Bust-a-Move has a totally forgettable story, plus bright graphics and two ways to fire the ball: with a simple tap or using a slingshot technique. We had a hard time aiming, but if you fail a level and retry it, the game inserts a dotted line to help you line up your shots better. Special pieces include cannonballs that wipe out everything in their path and exploding balls that take out an entire color at once. Plus, you can bank shots off the sides and even the top of the screen. Bluetooth connectivity lets two players battle in Versus mode (not supported by the first-gen iPod touch), and Challenge mode is a never-stopping barrage of puzzles.

See also: Luxor, another recent remake of a classic puzzle game.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Nic Vargus — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:20:12 -0500

The sixth Potter book's excitement is magically transformed into a linear collection of minigames.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince places you in Harry’s robes as he progresses through his sixth year at the famous wizardry school, Hogwarts. At its core, Half-Blood Prince is basically a well-polished minigame collection with flashy franchise backing. The graphics aren’t terrible, especially when bumped up to the highest resolution, though they may seem a tad dated. The terrific music is pulled straight from the film.

The game consists of three main parts: dueling, potion-making, and Quidditch. Each section is enjoyable at best and bearable at worst, but none are fantastic, and the best part of the experience is exploring the beautiful Hogwarts backdrop.

Players can join clubs to practice their skills and earn badges for outstanding performances. Of the clubs, Dueling is the most fun and arguably the simplest. You get five spells to choose from that either stun or injure your opponent. The combination of stun-and-charge attacks works almost too well, and seasoned gamers will quickly dispatch their foes.

Harry's duels are far less bloody than, say, Zorro's. Today's kids are so coddled.

Quidditch is nearly as simple: You steer Harry through obnoxiously large, glowing stars as he nears the golden snitch. But Harry’s broom is gliding along a preprogrammed track--you need only wiggle the mouse toward the stars and let the game do the rest of the work. Hitting pumpkins or flying directly through the stars awards you with more time.

Potion-making is more complex. Players will feverishly shake potions to bubbling and drop crunchy green worms and rats into boiling cauldrons before the allotted time reaches zero. The most difficult potions come with a laundry list of ingredients and a merciless timer.

Though Electronic Arts opted for an open-world approach, Harry is shuffled from one quest to the next in a decidedly linear fashion, each mission unlocking the perpetual “next area” for exploration. Nearly Headless Nick ensures you can never get too lost, walking you straight to your next objective with the press of a button.

The game is short--expect to spend a breezy 8 hours beating the main story, while collecting everything Hogwarts offers could double that playtime. For many wizard wannabes, the game will satisfy and remain enchanting, despite its shortcomings.

Pipe Mania

Susie Ochs — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:02:00 -0500

Pipe Mania doesn’t refer to a new kind of drug epidemic or burgeoning fad that has hipsters accessorizing with corncob pipes. It’s a classic puzzle game, first developed 20 years ago for the Amiga, and recently released for the Mac and iPhone by Virtual Programming. But even now, it’s got druglike addictiveness plus retro cool.

In each of Pipe Mania’s 70-odd boards, you lay pipe pieces on a grid to complete a pipe from the start point to the end point. After a head start, a bright liquid called Flooze emerges from the start point and flows along your pipe, so it better all be in place or the Flooze will leak and you’ll lose the level. Special pipe pieces, obstacles on the grids, tunnels, and even “hand of god” attacks make things more difficult as you progress. For such a seemingly simple game, Pipe Mania is hard. It starts being a major challenge about 7 or 8 levels in and never lets up.

Pipe Mania's addictive puzzles are way more fun than real-life plumbing.

Completing a level awards you points for how many pipe pieces you used versus how many you wasted, plus bonuses. Then you get a medal based on your score. And that’s it--but it was enough to compel us to replay almost every level looking for the elusive gold medal. You have to unlock the levels as you go, but you can skip around a little bit, thankfully, if one level is giving you major frustrations.

The old-school graphics look good on any Mac, with cartoony 2D pieces on brightly colored backgrounds. The sing-songy music can get a little irritating, but when it changed urgency before disaster struck, we really felt the tension.

Co-op and versus modes let another player get in on the action, one person on the mouse and another on the keyboard. There are also treasures to unlock, detailed game statistics, and bonus single-player modes after you’ve beaten the World mode. It’s enough to keep anyone playing for days.

iPhone Helper Apps for Insanely Specific Scenarios

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:06:00 -0500

Every day, life presents any number of problems that need solving—from settling bets to knowing which fish are OK to eat to remembering where the soupspoon goes in a formal table setting. Your iPhone or iPod touch can act as a digital Swiss Army knife, offering up the right tool to get you through almost any dilemma. We review and rate a collection of handy helper apps and ass-saving accessories that are sure to boost your rep as the consummate boy scout, always prepared for anything.

For Anyone Who's Ever Asked, "How?"

Howcast.com's free iPhone app puts the site's eclectic collection of how-to videos in your pocket

Think of all the things you’ve always wanted to know how to do: fold origami, set a formal dinner table, pick a lock…or maybe have sex in a car? Amazingly enough, you can learn how to do all of these things—and many more—with Howcast’s free iPhone app. This excellent freebie puts an iPhone “wrapper” on the mind-blowing array of how-to video content available on Howcast.com.

Click here to read a full review of this app

Search for topics in the search bar or tap on Most Recent or Featured to see a list of how-to videos on Howcast.

Howcast How-To Videos
Howcast Media
www.howcast.com
Free

Six More Ways to Skin a Cat (Not Literally, OK?)

These apps offer more practical solutions to real-life problems

Heads, You Win; Tails, You Win

Need to settle a bet but don’t have a coin to toss? If you spend a buck on My CoinFlip, you’ll never be without a way to force your friends to choose between two options. The app features 11 different types of coins, including a variety of euro coins.

The Vatican euro offers a nice option for your Catholic friends.

My CoinFlip 1.2.3
Sandro Stricker
www.software.sandrostricker.de
$0.99

Wait, How Many Spider Rolls Did We Order?

Ordering sushi for large parties can be an exercise in chaos—especially after a few sake rounds. Sushi Boat! presents a list of common sushi offerings—nigiri, sashimi, and maki—so you can you pass your phone around to capture a digital account of your order. When everyone’s weighed in, tap My Order to see the tally, which can then be read to the server by whoever’s most coherent.

Handy translations ensure you won't order hamachi (yellowtail) when you want maguro (tuna).

Sushi Boat! 1.0
Impresario Digital
www.impresariodigital.com
$0.99

Automatic Name That Tune

Can’t put a name to the tune that’s playing over a public speaker system or at a party? Shazam can ID the song, artist, and album—then let you buy it directly from the iTunes Store. Just tap Tag Now and hold up your iPhone so it can “hear” the music.

Shazam effortlessly recognized Len's "Steal My Sunshine," after only hearing the first couple seconds of the song, which is a bunch of talking.

Shazam 1.5
Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
www.shazam.com
Free

Wash and Wear

LaundryPal is exactly what college kids whose moms coddled them and newly divorced bachelors need: It deciphers the often mystifying care symbols found on clothes labels, ensuring that you don’t machine-wash a hand-wash or dry-clean-only item. Even better, it includes a laundry how-to, as well as tips in each symbol section (Wash, Tumble Dry, Iron, and Bleach, Dry Clean, and Dry). If only it could fold your laundry too!

The Do Not Dry symbol is presumably interchangeable with the symbol for Do Not Tumble Dry. Otherwise there will be a lot of laundry noobs walking around wearing wet—albeit clean—clothes!

LaundryPal 1.2
Hip Fire
www.hipfire.com
$0.99

You Go Green, Girl!

We debated including this, worried that the manly men out there would balk at the app’s title. This iPhone version of Sophie Uliano’s best-seller Gorgeously Green provides you with the core info from the eco-conscious lifestyle guide. What tipped the scale in the app’s favor was ultrahandy lists and tips, such as which types of fish are OK to eat, how to decode the numbers on plastic bottles, which produce you should always buy organic, and more.

Which produce should you always buy organic? The GG Survival Guide's got your back.

Gorgeously Green Survival Guide 1.2
Optima Drama
www.gorgeouslygreen.com
$0.99

Unlike Mace, It Doesn't Require a Permit

Panic Alarm is a personal alarm that can’t immobilize an attacker the way mace or pepper spray can, but could very well be all you need to scare off a would-be perp. The app consists of a large Alarm button that appears on launch, which, when tapped (or if you shake your device), sets off a very loud alarm. You can also set the app to call an emergency contact after the alarm sounds for a certain period before it’s turned off.

In the settings, designate a contact to call if the alarm goes off for a specified period without being turned off.

Panic Alarm 1.0
Adduce Studios
www.adduce.se
$0.99

Madden NFL 10

Zack Stern — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:46:00 -0500

Without Favre, Green Bay has no chance.

How do you distill the most complicated, true-to-life videogame sports series into an iPhone game? Instead of clearly aiming for either the casual football gamer or simulation nut, Madden NFL 10 tries to reach both players. It's fun overall, but each side of that audience will find faults.

Football fans still get a lot in the iPhone game. All of the teams, stadiums, and players are represented, with EA promising paid, downloadable updates to rosters as the real season continues. You can dive into a single game, or play through a full season of this year's schedule; including trades to craft an only-in-the-game super team. Dozens of plays are available, letting you call the right moves on offense and defense.

You can't audible, but you can re-draw pass routes just before the snap.

Casual players will appreciate smaller touches. Instead of calling offensive audible, you can re-route receivers by drawing a new path with your finger. You'll tap an open player to throw passes. While the game clock counts down with NFL rules, there's no play clock or penalties, letting you pick up and put down an in-progress game at anytime.

But all players will be let down by the controls, pushing an on-screen joystick and tapping superimposed buttons. Ball carriers feel sloppy, unable to nimbly change direction. There's no tutorial mode to teach with passing, kicking, and tackling drills either.

That mess of buttons changes in context, but you'll mostly scramble for the stopwatch icon.

Plays unfold too quickly to feel like you're in command; you'll constantly poke for the stopwatch button to slow down time and execute fake-out movements, interception attempts, and other precise actions. The time manipulation only barely works; we wanted the whole game to feel more responsive versus slowing it down when needed.

Ads!? Are you kidding? You'll have to look up that phone number yourself. At least you can't dial from the app.

The graphics and animation look good at first, but grow disappointing. You can clearly see what's happening, but the ball rarely looks like it's caught or handled; it teleports from flight into possession. Players rarely tackle, and instead just run into each other and fall down.