Voice morphing is becoming increasingly popular on the iPhone and iPod touch. With the built in microphone of the iPhone, IPhone 3G and 3GS, and now the iPod touch supporting mic input, developers are realizing there’s actually a market for mic-based applications. Yesterday, iPhone development studio Taptivate showed their hand with Voices. It wasn’t the normal app launch though, no, no. Far from it. The studio had partnered with both TapTapTap as their publisher, and MacHeist. Through something coined as a ‘tweet blast,’ Taptivate managed to create a huge buzz around Voices, and it’s currently sitting at number 14 in the iTunes Top Paid Apps chart after just 24 hours.

Following on from their award-winning conversion app, Convert .. TapTapTap add another string to their bow. This time though, it has nothing to do with mathematics. Ever wanted to morph your voice into different characters of varying hilarity? Voices takes your ordinary every-day voice and “tranforms” it into weird and wonderful one. Out of the box, the app comes bundled with 17 different voices for you to choose from. These include: Cyborg, Chipmunk, Exorcism, Dark Side, Vocoder, Cave, Guitar, Fun House, Vinyl, Helium, Reverse, Vintage, Megaphone, Canyon, Fan, Witness and Turtle. The app works just like a recorder, so you won’t find ‘Auto-Tuning’ technology here (I Am T-Pain for example), although one part of me kinda wished it did auto-tune.

Opening the app and you’ll be presented with that trademark sleek user interface we’ve all come accustomed to, from the likes of TapTapTap. Set out to a backdrop of a stage and red curtain, each of the voices included are displayed, with 9 on the first screen, and a further 9 on the next. To reach the other 9 voices you just swipe left to right – and visa-versa. To activate a voice just tap it. You’ll then see the stage is overcome by this old-type looking mic, ready for voice input. The only thing I didn’t like here was that recording starts immediately. As soon as the mic is extended to it’s fullest, the recording starts. I’d rather them of given an optional ’start on tap’ setting. Moving on ..

Once you’ve recorded your voice clip, and after conversion, Voices will play your clip back to you using this ‘tape-esque’ UI (it’s so nice!) so you can hear it in all its glory .. or in my case, not. From here you’ll have the option to play, rewind and fast forward the recording, as well save or delete your creation. Saving your recording will place it in .. your recordings panel. To open this panel, from the main voices screen, tap the little ‘tape’ icon labeled ‘Recordings’. Here’s were it gets interesting though. You can also share your clips with the world, either via Twitter, Facebook or Mail. To do this just tap ‘Share’ beside the recording you wish to share, and enter the required info. In the case of a tweet, the app will allow you to customize the tweet to your liking, before publishing – which I found crazy-great! Sometimes with these type of apps which allow tweets, they have these pre-defined non-editable tweets, and having the ability to edit these, really was welcomed.

Here’s a few recordings I made, and tweeted earlier:
http://voicesapp.com/1mxhyo / http://voicesapp.com/9qjfee

Summing up, as Voices is both gorgeously designed and offers a wide variety of voices, not to mention it’s very low introduction price of $0.99, it does seem to have struck a chord with the App Store crowd. Recording quality isn’t the best it could be, but considering the iPhone isn’t that good at recording anyway, it’s satisfactory. But it’s probably not the audio quality which will keep you coming back for more, if anything, it’s going to be Voices’ very beautiful and thought-out-to-the-last-detail UI.

A few days ago, I wrote about the first official Harry Potter app’s appearance in the App Store. Instead of trying to make an epic game, the folks at Warner Bros. decided to go for something sweet and simple: real-time, multiplayer dueling. The resulting app, Harry Potter: Spells, focuses solely on these duels, and while it isn’t perfect, it’s still fun. Whether it’s worth the price tag or not will probably be determined by your love of all things Potter.

Open the app for the first time, and you’ll see a letter inviting you to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. You soon arrive at Hogwarts, where the Sorting Hat awaits in all of its animated glory. The Hat will quickly determine which house you belong in, though you can dispute its choice until you’re satisfied. After that, you’re whisked off to Olivander’s wand shop, where you have to tap a few wands until one responds to your touch. This introductory bit feels slightly rushed, but soon you’re casting spells and it doesn’t really matter.

To cast a spell, you hold your iPhone horizontally in front of you, parallel to the floor. You then tap and hold your thumb to the screen and move your iPod in the pattern shown in the app. For example, Lumos requires moving your iPhone up and down in two motions, while Protego requires drawing a “V” in the air. I wish that the tutorial had included a video, but I figured it out eventually. The app does a good job of detecting your movements, and once you master a few spells, the rest comes easily. This is probably as close to realistic magic-casting as you’re going to get! The phone-waving is less of a gimmick than a natural decision, and it feels almost like waving a wand, even if it’s a bit slower than the dramatic motions seen in the movies.

Spells must be mastered before you can use them in a duel. This is accomplished through the “Lessons” menu. In each lesson, you’re shown a diagram of how to cast the spell, and then you have to cast it properly at least three times out of six in order to master it. I heard a lot of dry, British-accented intonations of “Incorrect” and “You failed” before I figured out that you’re not supposed to move the iPhone towards you and away from you, but up and down. The spells include novelty ones like Lumos and Alohomora as well as offense favorites like Stupefy. My favorite by far? Oppugno, which summons a flock of birds to attack your opponent!

But, of course, you guys want to hear about dueling. Connecting to a friend’s iPod or iPhone is easy—when I was testing it out, my friend and I used Bluetooth, but WiFi is also an option for folks without iPhone firmware 3.0. (Just make sure that you turn Bluetooth on.) From there, you use whatever spells you want—but without any guides, so you’ll need to memorize a few spells if you want to play strategically! There’s more than just being first to cast, too; a water spell can counter Incendio; Episkey will heal you; Petrificus Totalis will temporarily render your opponent motionless. Choose carefully! When you use a spell, it’s sent straight to the other player’s screen. Dueling my friend was surprisingly fun, and even if we raised some eyebrows for waving our iPods around, it was worth it!

There are a few other features as well: posting scores to Facebook, House and global leaderboards, the ability to record yourself shouting the incantations. These are all nice and well done, and add a sense of completeness to an app that’s so narrowly focused. The graphics and sound effects are exactly what you’d expect from a branded Harry Potter app—that is to say, they’re excellent. Performance on my second-gen iPod Touch was good, despite the occasional bit of lag.

You won’t get much satisfaction out of Harry Potter: Spells unless you’re a strong Harry Potter fan, and you need a friend who’s also willing to get the app in order to really enjoy it. Even then, the fun doesn’t last forever; this app is a one-trick pony. Still, it’s Harry Potter, and even if there isn’t much content, the stuff that’s there is good. This is no piece of shovelware, and if you like the idea of live duels with your friends, you should be satisfied with Harry Potter: Spells.

Developed by BlueByte and published by Gameloft under exclusive license from Ubisoft, The Settlers sees the critically acclaimed real time strategy PC-based classic come to life, on the iPhone! Set in a time of Romans, Vikings and Mayans, the game involves you in building a thriving and efficient community. Working together to complete a wide range of tasks, your aim is to create and build up a sustainable settlement village.

Goals and task range from finding territory, constructing buildings and structures all the while trying to ensure the constant supply of the basic and necessary raw materials. Moving in-game, the game consists of 4 campaign modes. These include: Roman, Viking, Mayan and Dark Tribe, and within each of these campaign modes you’ll find a further 6 levels in which for you to complete. Entering a level will display a short introduction explaining who has sent you to this land, and your goals for that particular level. Once the level loads you won’t be alone. The game takes you through a quite lengthy tutorial to get you used to both the landscape, and your user controls.

The controls within the game are pretty straightforward, and in my opinion have been implemented well. In the bottom right you’ll find your ‘Buildings’ button. Tapping this will bring up ‘Build Menu’ and from here you can choose a type of structure you would like to build. Once you’ve chosen your building, it appears on the land as a movable object, and once you’re happy and want to place it down so your Settlers can start to build it for you, simply tap the ‘tick’ button in the bottom left. If the patch of land is not available to build on for whatever reason, the game will tell you by displaying a red cross in the placement area. Now you can sit back and watch them build it for you. If the process is gets a little too boring, you can speed up the action by hitting the ‘fast forward’ button, top right. Tapping a building once you’ve built it gives you further options, including the option to demolish. I found these options to be locked by default, and are only unlocked when needed.

At any time in the game you can pause gameplay by hitting the pause button, top left. Doing so will also give you options to view your level objectives again, save the current level you’re on along with your progress, or load a previous level. Need to zoom in on the action? Due to the ‘pinch’ gesture being taken by another in-game feature which we’ll get into a little later, zooming is performed by the ‘zoom slider’ located on center of the screen to the right hand side. Running from + to – you just slide your finger to magnify zoom. Zoom isn’t brilliant, but it does the job. Now, while I found the graphics on this title to be – fantastic, I did find that zooming in fully did seem to dramatically reduced the quality of them. In some areas the graphics became both pixelated and blotchy. It doesn’t spoil the game, but it’s something I reckon could (and should) be fixed.

Some tasks and goals within the game can’t be performed by your normal working settlers though, sometimes some jobs require specialists. That’s why you’ll find the ‘Specialist’ menu, bottom right. From here you can ‘order’ your specialist – a geologist, for example. Having many settlers on screen can get a little confusing, though. Despite the on-screen prompts, you’ll be needing another way to organise them. Remember that pinch gesture I was talking about? Using two fingers you can select a group of your settlers, and move them to a certain point on the land. To do this, simply select them with a pinch selection box, and tap where you’d like them to go. Once done, tap the ’stop hand’ button, bottom left, and you can carry on working with your other settlers. During the game you’ll find various raw materials. When you’ve done some research with your geologists, you can start building mines for each of these materials, and once complete these raw materials will periodically replenish.

The game is both immersive and addicting, involving you as the player and requiring you to keep an eye on a virtual land, it’s efficiency and survival. With great in-game graphics and audio, The Settlers is highly recommended for people who digg the likes of Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, or RTS genre. If I have one want for this game it’s I’d like Gameloft to consider adding a ‘freeplay’ mode. Currently the game revolves solely around ‘Campaign modes,’ and I think it could benefit it’s replay value to allow the user to just play around with the settlers, building whatever they like. Overall I like The Settlers. It’s one of those Sunday-afternoon games, which doesn’t need much effort, but is a pleasure to play.

You don’t have to be good at DDR to love it! Konami ported the fantastic music game to the iPhone a while back, and their recent sale prompted me to see how well it translated to the portable platform. While fancy footwork and dance mats aren’t included in DanceDanceRevolution S, the game works great with tap-based controls. The songs are fun and it’s the same awesome game as ever, but a limited track list combined with some truly awful integration decisions keeps it from being an instant-buy.

If you’re familiar with DDR, playing this version will be a no-brainer. Arrows fly out from the bottom of the screen; the targets (”Step Zones”) are at the top. Your dance mat is replaced with a set of outlined arrows near the bottom. Tap on the “mat” when the arrows reach the Step Zone. The controls work surprisingly well—my fingers don’t obscure too much of the screen, and everything is responsive.

The song list and characters will also be familiar, though the content was clearly trimmed to keep the app running on the mobile platform. There are supposedly twenty songs in all, though many must be unlocked. I really wish that there were more; twenty songs just feels weak in comparison to DDR on other platforms. Even with the shorter song list, there’s no doubt about it: this is DDR. The transition to the iPhone was handled wonderfully, and the game is just as fun as ever; the songs are the upbeat tunes that fans are accustomed to.

For the record: I definitely appreciate the fact that one of the starting female characters is named Bonnie. I’m famous!

This edition of DDR comes with Standard mode (i.e., one track at a time), Course Mode, Practice Mode, and Shake Mode. Course Mode should be familiar; you’re given a list of tracks to complete, and you can’t fail. Practice Mode is for, well, practicing. Shake Mode, though…Shake Mode is baffling. It only has one song, which is more demo than anything else (it’s labeled as a lesson!). And yet, it’s been a while since the app was released…where’s the rest of the content, Konami?

Now for my biggest gripe: iPhone integration. DDR is stable, but it has some major problems. Hit the “home” button by accident mid-song? Sorry, but you’re back at the title screen when you relaunch the app. Get a push notification? Back to the title screen. Hit the power button and lock the screen? Hey, look, it’s the title screen again! Not including a pause feature on a mobile platform is incredibly shortsighted. There isn’t even a manual pause button while you’re playing a song. It’s incredibly annoying to be stopped mid-song by a power level warning, and if you pick a song by accident, you have to play through it; there’s no going back!

Other iPhone game mainstays are also missing. There’s no multiplayer, no online leaderboards, no challenging other iPhone users. Really, Konami, throw us a bone! Sadly, if the app’s history is any indicator, we won’t be seeing frequent updates on this one.

And yet…and yet…

And yet, it’s easy to forgive these missing features, because it’s DDR. Even though the tracklist could use some expansion, the music has the same catchy quality, and the game is addicting and fun. I’d even venture to say that DanceDanceRevolution S is better than the current king of iPhone music games, Tap Tap Revenge—I get sucked in more easily, and somehow I just have more fun with DDR.

If you think that you can put up with the lack of pause or auto-save, and you can bear the price, DanceDanceRevolution S is a must-have for DDR fans and rhythm/music game fans in general. Grab it while the 99-cent sale lasts!

These days I barely know what it means to have a spoken conversation on the phone. Seriously. My friends, family, coworkers and clients all use some form of instant messaging. It enables me to multitask in conversation, something I just can’t do on a phone (even though switching between and merging calls on iPhone are fun, it’s still limited). It’s important to be able to do this if I’m juggling a hefty social life, client base, or participating in some serious office drama. And all without straining my vocal chords! Typically I manage all this from my desktop, but BeejiveIM puts it into the palm of my hand – now there’s no escape!

First up, here are the protocols BeejiveIM supports: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN/Windows Live, Myspace IM, and Yahoo! Messenger. As an OS X server administrator that sets up Jabber/iChat server for clients, I was particularly impressed with the Jabber integration in BeejiveIM. If you use just two of these messaging services, the convenience factor of BeejiveIM jumps up considerably.

Until Apple gets their iPhone push notification services running, BeejiveIM has come up with a really acceptable workaround for remaining logged into your AIM accounts when the app isn’t running: When the app closes, you can have BeejiveIM forward your incoming instant messages to a push email account. You’ll receive an email letting you know who is contacting you, and there will be a button you can touch to jump you right back into BeejiveIM from Mail. You can leave this forwarding active for up to 24 hours. Sweet!

I’d like to talk about the interface of the app now, which really is my favorite part about BeejiveIM. Everything aspect of the app can run in landscape mode – Yes!! Widescreen chatting!! The app has lots of beautiful transitions for doing things such as deleting a chat, or when you shake the phone to tab over to the next chat. If you touch the name of a buddy in the chat window, a sheet drops down that gives you the ability to record and send a voice note, upload or take a picture, delete the chat, or email the chat transcript. You can also scroll through your active chats on this screen. There’s a slew of UI preferences in the Settings app on iPhone, you can do things like change the colors of the chat bubbles, alter the IM sounds, set a chat background, change the name display order, etc. BeejiveIM really shines when it comes to customization and attention to detail, traits that I believe really add value to the app. Not only that, it’s just plain fun to tweak out your chat client, and the more options, the better!

BeejiveIM actually started out as a free web based chat client. In my opinion, it has always been the best, and this holds true through the app’s transition to running natively on the iPhone. If you want to get a taste of how cool BeejiveIM is, pull up Safari on iPhone and browse to http://iphone.beejive.com but remember there are tons of features on the native app that aren’t available in the web client.

I have very few criticisms of BeejiveIM. I’ve been using it exclusively for chatting on iPhone since MacWorld 09 and have noticed a few areas where there could stand to be some improvement. First, BeejiveIM seems to take up a hefty amount of resources on iPhone; if I get over 4 simultaneous chats running while listening to music, the audio playback will skip quite a bit. I often get signon on timeouts for my Gtalk account. Sometimes pressing the button in Mail to launch BeejiveIM, BeejiveIM will crash as it opens. These few quirks in the face of all that BeejiveIM offers make them totally excusable in my opinion. Plus, their support team is really friendly and responsive. The app is a bit on the pricey side at $15.99 – there are other free and less expensive IM clients for iPhone on the App Store, but none of them seem to match the polish and quality of BeejiveIM. I was a bit apprehensive at spending the money, but ultimately I realized it was well worth it after just a few moments of playtime. I suggest Beejive Inc. drop the price to a flat $15 so that the smallest denomination of iTunes gift card could buy the app, that might make it seem a little more accessible to potential buyers.

If you need hardcore IM on iPhone, BeejiveIM is simply the best out there.

If you know me well, or you happen to follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably know that I’m more of your night person, rather than your get up at the crack-of-dawn kinda person. Okay I admit it, sometimes I even find it hard to get out of bed at all. Naturally, anyone who has this “condition” needs to be physically woken up by something. Whether it be by way of a person screaming down their ears, a certain someone banging the hell out of metal based objects above their head, or simply – an alarm clock.

We all know that the alarm clock which comes out of box with the iPhone is far from perfect. In fact, in my previous use of the thing, I don’t think I can safely say it’s woken me up successfully – once yet. When I came to download Alarm Clock Pro earlier this week, my thoughts were the usual; Okay it’s an app which is in the Top 10 iTunes Chart, I reckon it’s going to be well-marketed, but with no real substance. – How wrong I was. It’s an app which is specifically designed to be used in conjunction with the iPhone dock, although if you’re just looking to leave it lying around, it also supports landscape mode.

So, What features separates this from the built in alarm clock? Well, opening the app you’ll be greeted with a clean looking digital digit display. Here you’ll see the current time shown in 24-hour format, along with a flashing ’seconds’ display and the current day of the week. Just stopping here for a second, this clean modern-looking UI is really Alarm Clock Pro’s selling point. It’s not unique. It’s been done before, but somehow the implementation and feature set sets it apart. Although the main purpose of Alarm Clock Pro to be an alarm clock, naturally I found the app also doubled for a great looking desk clock while docked, too.

Moving away from the app’s UI though, what you probably really want to know from me is; How it’s going to wake me up, with what sound(s), and how well, right? Well, there are a couple of different options and settings for the app which will likely further enhance your ‘getting up’ experience – if there actually is such a thing. To enter Alarm Clock Pro settings panel simply tap the ‘i’ info button in the bottom right. Doing so will result in the whole UI flipping over to reveal further alarm tweaks. Starting at the top the first section is all about the ‘alarm’ and it’s frequency. Tapping add alarm will bring up the ‘Add Alarm’ panel. From here you can enable the alarm, set an exact time you’d wish for it to go off, choose the day(s) you wish to include (or exclude), name your alarm, choose your alarm’s sound and choose if you want he app to offer a ‘Snooze’ option. As you get to choosing a sound for your alarm, you have a few choices. Firstly, the app comes with 7 presets. These include: Classic, Cuckoo, Digital, Electronic, High Tone, Old Clock and School Bell. but as well as this you’ll also see a ‘Music’ option. Yep, Alarm Clock Pro also supports waking-up to your own iPod music. In fact, you can choose multiple songs from your library and create a wake-up playlist! – This was a feature I really found great, but it gets better. When your alarm sounds, two buttons flip down over your clock. One from the top, the second from the bottom. Press the top for ‘Stop Alarm’ and the bottom to ‘Snooze’ the alarm. Snooze is used for when you want 10 more minutes in bed. As you’ve probably guessed, I tend to use the Snooze feature, a lot.

The second section of the settings panel focuses on the app’s gestures. Alarm Clock Pro uses two gesture based actions to preform additional functionality. These include a two finger slide to adjusting your clocks screen brightness, and shaking your device to reveal a hidden ‘flashlight’. See .. flashlights by themselves are useless. They’re the demise of the App Store. But, put them in an ‘Alarm Clock’ app, and they actually .. (kinda admittedly), do become useful.

The last section of the settings panel sees various miscellaneous options for the clocks display. With options to change the colour of the clock’s display to either Cyan, Green, Orange, Pink or Red, show the seconds counter, show the weekday, turn 24-hour time format on or off, and lastly and probably most importantly choose the interval in which your device will ‘Auto-Lock’ and return to the iPhone ‘Lock Screen’. Alarm Clock Pro in fact supports the alarm sounding when when your device is on the lock screen, as long as the application was open when the device auto-locked itself. That’s the caveat with this app. It needs to be open. That said, you’d expect it to have to be, to conform with the iPhone SDK rules and regulations.

Summing up, Alarm Clock Pro is a great addition if you can’t seem to drag yourself out of bed like me. With it’s inviting UI, full feature-set and gesture based controls (not to mention the added addition of a free flashlight!), you won’t go too far wrong with this app. My only caveat really is as I said above, the app actually needs to be open at all times, in order for the alarm to sound. Not ideal, but something which can’t be helped unfortunately. That said, it didn’t drain the battery that much, having the screen brightness setting set to half. For it’s current price, I say to definitely give it a go and see if it’s for you ..

If there’s one thing we like to have on our phones, it’s the ability to point and tag a track. It’s this ability which proved very popular among most and saw the launch of start-ups like that of Midomi.

In August, music tagging network Shazam, popular for their worldwide premium mobile-based tagging service, launched Shazam for iPhone. A free, bare-bones application which listened to a 30 second clip of any track you wished to play to it, sent it to Shazam for tagging, and then came back to you letting you what song it was that you were currently listening to, which artist it was by and other track-related information.

It started off a good respectable app, after all the app was free compared to the company’s £1.50 per minute phone-based ‘2580‘ service, we were getting unlimited tagging of songs, and best of all it was completely ad-free. Gradually though, with each sequential update to the app, it was clear Shazam had other plans. Plans which would eventually involve the introduction of a premium service, directed solely at the iPhone and iPod touch (with mic input). The first tell-tale sign came as the company (without announcement) added Google adverts to the app. Sure, people were a tad taken back by it at first, but in time we said – it’s Free, and the developers need a return – that was fine. The stab in the back came with the introduction of a second update to the app which took away unlimited tagging and instead limited tagging to just 5 songs .. a month.

Cue, Shazam Encore. Launched just last week, the app is a premium version of the original music tagging service and although it offers a few other additions for your $4.99, it also has a dirty secret. Would you believe it, but – it still has ads. Yep, even though Shazam willingly took my £2.99, they still want to leach off my innocent tapping mistakes (well, I wouldn’t click on an ad on purpose, would I?). I’m so livid about this, I like many others want my money back. I don’t expect to pay to see ads. Am I the only one in thinking this?

It’s not all bad though. Shazam Encore’s saving grace comes in a new feature to the software which allows tagging while your on the road. Coined ‘Drive and Tag’, now when you dock your device in your car kit Shazam will enter ‘Car Mode’. The idea being you can tag what song(s) are playing on your car stereo, hands free. You’ll also find that the app will (just like Genius) give you recommendations based on your previous tags. As well as this, you’ll probably be glad to know the ability to share your tags with the world either via both tweet or facebook status updates also made it into the premium version. The last feature I was a little curious on, and after trying it I have to admit it worked pretty much flawlessly, and this is the ability to ‘Map’ your tags. In Shazam Encore, your tags history is now recorded on a Map, meaning you can see where and when you tagged that song or track. Something I found pretty nifty!

Overall, I’m highly disappointed in this new version. Yes it has some new quirky features, but the fact this is a premium application, and it still has ads is (in my opinion) unacceptable and cannot be overlooked. Imagine if every developer decided to take Shazam’s way of thinking forward? It’s like they said to themselves; “Because we’re not asking for a monthly subscription, ads are ok” – Well, er .. they’re not. Sort this out Shazam. Seriously. Or I might just find myself moving to Midomi .. for good.

SearchIt is dead simple, and that’s the way its developers intended it to be. In some ways, it replicates pre-existing iPhone functionality: it searches the web, the news, images, and Wikipedia, and that’s it. But what makes it worth looking at is its speed and simplicity—sometimes, you really do need something faster than Mobile Safari, and SearchIt is just the app for the job. Unfortunately, SearchIt isn’t perfect, and Safari is good enough that many don’t need a dedicated search app, but SearchIt is useful on occasion. Better yet: it’s free!

Open the app, and there’s a shiny red search box waiting to be used. After entering your query, you can select from the Web, News, Wikipedia, and Images tabs. Information is displayed in a more iPhone-friendly format than on other mobile sites, but other than that, nothing is noticeably different other than speed.

The speed is what makes SearchIt worthwhile, though; take it from a girl who’s using barely-working WiFi at school. Where Google sometimes timed out, SearchIt worked. Nice! Even with a solid connection, SearchIt loads results noticeably faster.

The app isn’t perfect, even if it is speedy. Images are only displayed eight thumbnails at a time, and there’s no way to adjust the default (though you can always tap “display more”). I also encountered a few Wikipedia pages that, for some reason or other, refused to load. The in-app browser doesn’t always render properly, and it’s easy to get pushed back to the search results if you accidentally tap a button. However, there’s an “Open in Safari” option that should do the trick as soon as you find what you’re looking for.

There’s not much more to say about SearchIt. It serves a niche of people who want a no-frills approach to search, and who want quick results. If that’s what you need—congratulations, SearchIt is free and it should suit your needs. If not, then that’s fine, too, but you’d be surprised at how often a simple search doesn’t require Safari. There’s a reason people download Google’s search app, and personally, I think that SearchIt beats that one by a mile.

When I first saw the screenshots for Cash Cow, I was fervently hoping that this wasn’t another match-3. To my delight, Cash Cow isn’t remotely similar to Bejeweled—it’s a money-counting game that manages to be both addicting and wholly unique. Any puzzle fan willing to do a bit of mental math should love Chillingo’s high-quality port of the PC puzzle.

You play the role of Buck the Cow, who must collect pocket change in order to save his farm. Each level consists of a 6×7 grid, much like Bejeweled, but with random coins instead of gems and (thank God!) no match-3 mechanic. To earn money, you connect sequences of coins—five pennies make a nickel, two nickels make a dime, and so on, until you manage to form a dollar. Up to ten coins can be linked in one “chain,” and they must combine to form either a nickel, dime, quarter, or dollar. The coins then merge to form a new coin, or, in the case of a dollar, they simply disappear. More money rains from the sky to refill the board until you amass enough cash to meet your goal.

It’s simple on the surface, but powerups and obstacles like counterfeit coins are steadily introduced to keep things challenging. Penny rolls can be tapped to remove all pennies on a board, for example, and ladybugs flit from coin to coin, obstructing your moves. Just like any good puzzle game, strategy isn’t necessary in Cash Cow…but if you want to excel, you’ll need it.

There’s a wide array of gameplay options available; you can play the normal Arcade mode, which is divided into levels, but Endless, Relaxed, and Practice modes are also available. In Arcade mode, physics-based bonus minigames are interspersed with the main game; you also access the Bonus mode from the main menu.

I love the main game in Cash Cow, but all’s not perfect on this farm. For one, if you exit the app, you’ll lose your progress for the level. The load times between levels are annoying, and I wish that you could save your progress in Endless mode, because I’d rather play uninterrupted. While the inability to save during Endless mode is my biggest gripe, at least you get multiple save slots for Arcade!

As far as graphics and audio go: graphics are great; audio, not so much. The cliche ringing of cowbells and cheesy farm music grows old relatively quickly, but at least you can play your own music or turn off the in-game soundtrack without disabling special effects.

Despite these minor flaws, Cash Cow is an excellent puzzle game. It’s challenging, it’s fun, it’s charming and it keeps you on your toes. What else could you ask for? I never thought that money-counting could actually be just as addicting as puzzle classics like Bejeweled, but Cash Cow manages to captivate. This one’s a no-brainer: if you like puzzles, you’ll like Cash Cow.

Harbor Havoc 3D is the latest title from Backflip Studios, the makers of the excellent Ragdoll Blaster and Paper Toss: World Tour games.  This is their entry into the crowded line-drawing genre, borrowing elements from games like Flight Control, Harbor Master, and the lesser-known Sea Captain.  What sets Harbor Havoc apart, however, is the move to 3D.  Besides being a visual treat, the extra dimension brings with it a multi-layered approach that will ask you to juggle helicopters, boats and submarines, all at the same time.  This spin on the classic formula makes you stop and think about which vehicles can safely pass over each other, and is enough of a mental curveball to make the game stand out from the crowd.

Harbor Havoc 3D comes with a total of 4 maps, each of which is nicely rendered and backed with suitably themed music. Far East is the first level, and it serves as a good introduction to the mechanics of the game since you only have to deal with ships.  In order to direct a ship that floats onto the screen, you simply select it and draw its course.  The icons used to indicate an arriving ship are not color-coded as in most games of this genre, but will tell you the type of vessel that is approaching.  When you select one, its destination port is highlighted to assist you in recognizing the goal, and the vehicles themselves have very slight color indications.  This can be confusing at first and not quite as intuitive as other games in the genre, but you can quickly memorize the different ship types and know where they are supposed to be going.  There is no unloading of cargo as in Harbor Master, as you just need to bring the ships home, and the ships can land at any section of the port, allowing for multiple arrivals at the same time.  A nice feature of Harbor Havoc 3D is that you can also anchor a vessel at any time by tapping it.  This will stop any vehicle in its tracks, and you can resume its motion by tapping it again.  You will have to draw the route again, however, otherwise the ship will just proceed forward in a straight line.  This offers some interesting strategies and caveats for the player to deal with.

Atlantis is the next map, and it starts to up the ante by including two vehicle types.  The level is actually located underwater, and incorporates sea-floor rovers as well as floating subs.  There is also an added element of obstructions for the rovers, as rocks on the sea-floor cause blockages at certain points of the map.  This level introduces you to the new mentality required to juggle vehicles on two different planes, as you soon have to get over the instinctual fear of drawing two routes that would normally cause a collision but are just fine if it just means crossing a sub with a rover.  You will be forced to think differently, and this really is the case when you hit the third and best map called Arctic.  This third map is the culmination of the game, and has you managing helicopters, ships, and submarines.  You will need to guide them to the appropriate docks, including a central rig with helipad.  The action is really ramped up to a crescendo on this map, where you can have all three vehicle types crossing over each other in a line-drawing symphony.  This map has an all-around intensity to it, which is even reflected by the dramatic level music.  Big scores are ready to be had on this level, as the vessels come fast and furious, and you will really have to bird-dog the edges of the screens as more arrive.

Lighthouse is the fourth and final map, and can be unlocked after a certain amount of traffic has been routed on the other levels.  This map brings things back to just ships, but takes place at night where the only light you have is a slowly rotating lighthouse lamp.  To complicate things further, only certain ships have faint, on-board lights.  Besides unlocking this map, there are also various trophies that can be earned throughout the course of the game as Harbor Havoc 3D supports the Plus+ network.  There are leaderboards for all the maps, and you can challenge your friends on the network via push notification.  The highscores themselves have not spiraled to ridiculous degrees so far, implying a nice balance to the game.  Besides the ability to challenge your friends via Plus+, Harbor Havoc 3D also provides the option to post a fat score to your Twitter or Facebook pages.

A couple of things that are noticeably absent from the game are a fast forward button and in-game save, both of which are really helpful for games of this genre.  Luckily, Backflip has announced that an update has already been submitted that will address these omissions.  Both Flight Control and Harbor Master eventually added more maps and multiplayer functionality as well, so hopefully Harbor Havoc 3D will follow suit, because the core game is definitely a winner.

It’s not easy these days for a new line-drawing game to stand out in the app store.  It is definitely a fatigued genre, but Harbor Havoc 3D manages to shine through because of its high level of quality and its vertical nature.  It is a solid and attractive game, and worthy of being considered amongst the best of its kind.

Everyone loves Ice Age, and over the last few weeks I’ve had a chance to play around with an upcoming title from the million-dollar movie franchise. Developed by Fox Mobile Entertainment, Two Tribes, and published by Chillingo, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a adventure platformer and an extension to the recent box office smash hit Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The game sees you take on the role of some of your more favourite Ice Age movie characters to battle through the icy, barren (and sometimes dangerous) landscape, but let it be known, this isn’t your usual movie tie-in.

Over the weekend Apple finally approved the title, and now I can let you know how I really feel about this game, its game-play, and of course it’s replay value. Now, I don’t know about you but whenever anyone mentions games which tie-in with movies to me, I usually think one thing – rushed, unthoughtful, shaky tools for making a truck load more dosh – and I have to be honest and say, that’s exactly what I was thinking when I fired up this. However, to my surprise Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was anything but, and in fact was the complete opposite; becoming fun, enjoyable and fully immersive in minutes.

The game consisted of 4 levels, each with 9 chapters. You play as Scrat, the nut-crazy, squirrel-like creature who is adamant and damn right determined to collect all his scattered nuts – and just as portrayed in the movie he’ll go to amazingly lengths to ensure he gets them. If you haven’t already guessed, the aim for each level is to guide Scrat around the maze like structures, climbing, floating and falling, until all nuts I’ve been collected. But the game isn’t that rigid – far from it. Being from Two Tribes, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs seems to take on the same form as one of the studio’s previous award-winning titles – Toki Tori, bringing with it that puzzle and maze focused gameplay I think we all fell in love with the first time around.

As with Toki Tori, basic character movement in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is controlled by tapping. Simply tap on an area of the map you wish for Scrat to move, and he’ll scurry along to that spot (providing it’s accessible to him). The game involves reality physics. But Arron, What do you mean by that? Essentially what I mean by that is Scrat is no super-squirrel and therefore if a usual real-life squirrel couldn’t reach the place or spot you wish Scrat to move to, Scrat won’t be able to reach it either – without help from you that is. In-game, available areas light up green, and unavailable areas in red. There are four main controls you need to get to grips with during the game. Moving, which we covered is performed by using one finger and tapping on the desired area. The next is grab which allows Scrat to grab or hold onto obstructive blocks and push them out of his way. Again, one finger. Stomp which we’ll get into a little later, and looking around. If you want to look at the level map at any time, just use two fingers to pan. Although I liked this feature, you can’t view the entire map, it’s limited to the section Scrat is currently standing in, and the ‘camera’ has invisible borders (if you get what i mean).

As well as figuring out which direction you should move in first, to avoid getting stuck at a later point, throughout the game you’ll also meet various ice age predators you’ll have to sneak past, in order to reach (and collect) those all important nuts – but you won’t be alone, as you’ll have the landscape to help you. During the game you’ll notice that just like in the movie, everyday objects become tools for Scrat. For example, just 3 or 4 levels in you’ll notice that levels become ‘un-walkable’ .. instead you’ll have to use ‘tar pits’ to encase Scrat in a bubble, and float to higher platforms. This method of travel won’t last for long though, with each bubble you create having a timer attached. Once it runs out, if you’re not only solid ground, you are going for mighty drop my friend! Other tools include embedded ceiling stone icicles. Taping Scrat while he’s near a cluster of these stones icicles will make him stomp, causing them to fall. A handy tool for getting rid of pesky predators – just make sure Scrat is out of the way of them, before stomping, or it could end nasty.

Graphically Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is stunning, with realistic textures and smooth animation to boot. I think you’ll really be able to relate to and immerse yourself in this game. Not to mention the soundtrack. It’s so up-beat, and ‘happy’ sounding, this title is perfect for both young and old, although if I were to guess, I’d say the target audience Two Tribes was aiming for with this was 8-12. From the moment you start a level, to the moment it ends, it’s just a joy to play, and honestly this title has really opened by eyes to the prospect that if enough time and effort is spent on these movie tie-in titles, they could really make for great gaming experiences.

Summing up, I really can’t fault Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs for iPhone. It’s fun and inviting gameplay makes for a great pass time!

It’s very apparent to me that the Call of Duty team has a thing for zombies. The Zombie levels in the console version of the game are quite fantastic, with each of them chasing after you with 28 Days Late-like vigor. Because the mini game is so popular on the console, I guess that it just seems obvious to put it on the iPhone. iD Software, along with a few others, have made it very apparent that the FPS genre works on the system, so all it really would take is some solid implementation.

The whole goal of CoD: Zombies is, as with every zombie thriller, to survive. Unfortunately for you, you can’t, as the whole goal is to last as long as you can. There is only one level, called Nacht der Untoten, that calls for you to kill wave after wave of zombies until you die. The concept is quite simple, but is fairly fun. You start off in a room that is being attacked by zombies, and eventually work your way around the house, killing all the zombies before they kill you first. Some of the zombies are fast, and some are slow, but they all want you quite dead. Throughout the level you buy random guns that are sold through chalk outlines on the wall while boarding up the windows to keep the zombies from getting through. Everything you do, level-wise (opening doors, buying guns, boarding up windows) costs money that is collected by shooting zombies, so use your money wisely.

The main fear of spending money on an iPhone FPS, especially one that costs $9.99, is having unplayable controls. Ever since Duke Nukem, I’ve been a bit weary of the whole genre… who knows when you’ll spend $10 and have movement “pills” all over the screen. Fortunately, CoD: Zombies is an entirely playable game, although there are a few flaws. The base control method, which to me is the obvious best, works with a hybrid two joystick layout. The left joystick is the standard ‘look around’ joystick, while the “right joystick” is is wherever you put your thumb. Having an invisible right joystick lets you put your finger wherever you want, which is fantastic for intense battles where you really can’t afford to miss a ‘real’ joystick with your thumb. The problem with these sticks is the lack of space that they provide. The left stick, although traditional, is too small, and makes you hit almost directly on it to make you do anything. The right ‘joystick’, although useable anywhere on the screen, is definitely most comfortable in the lower right, where your hand traditionally lies. Unfortunately for me, my thumb lays right where the ’shoot’ and ‘aim’ buttons are, making me use the ‘right stick’ much further down on the screen than I would like. Make the left stick larger and make the right buttons a bit higher and I’d absolutely love the controls. Hopefully an update will fix this, as it really wouldn’t be too hard to do… I don’t think.

The graphics and sound in CoD: Zombies is top notch, which is to be expected for an app by a company such as Activision. The zombies move fluidly and the gunfire shoots appropriately, without any clipping or lag on my iPhone 3G. I’m sure that a 3GS would be a bit faster, but the game is entirely playable on a 3G. If you are a sound guy/girl, be sure to play the game with some good headphones on. Every once in a while you’ll get a zombie that sneaks behind you, and it will scare you.

With only one level in the game, replay value is a concern. A single player game could last you quite a long time, but you really just do the same stuff over and over again. Run, shoot zombies, run some more. Once you realize that you’ve unlocked the whole house, there really isn’t all that much to do anymore. Word on the street is that Activision will be adding more levels soon, but as of now, your only replay option is multiplayer, and the multiplayer is quite cool, but doesn’t always work (at least it didn’t on my device). You have the option of playing with a local network, but the fun is all in the online option. Online pairs you with 4 people in a quest to, you guessed it, defend the house from zombies. In three tries I got a game running (one may not count, my phone locked itself, killing the game), and it went fairly well. With some tweaks, and some more levels, I could see the online multiplayer work quite well.

All in all, CoD: Zombies is an extremely well put together, although short experience. The controls are on the cusp of being perfect for the genre, the graphics and sound are top notch, and the online gameplay is definitely a glimpse into what iPhone FPS multiplayer will be like. It’s not perfect though, and once again, it is extremely short, particularly for a game at its current $10 price point. I’d personally wait until the price comes down a bit before I pick this one up, but if you either love zombies or Call of Duty, you won’t be too disappointed.

So you wanna go fast? Gameloft’s latest iteration of its arcade racing franchise, Asphalt 5, lets you do just that in spades. It is the type of racing game where you often forget about the brake pedal, and can pinball around the track at ridiculous speeds with very little consequence. That is, unless you careen into oncoming traffic and meet a car head-on in a blaze of glory! Asphalt 5 is an unabashed arcade racer that is good-looking, sometimes silly, and almost always fun.

The first thing you will notice is the graphics, and they get a very nice overhaul from the previous version. You start out with two vehicles, a Mini Cooper S and a Nissan 370Z, but can unlock a total of 33 cars and motorcycles including Ferraris, BMWs, and Ducatis, to name a few. There is also a total of 12 tracks to unlock that are very detailed and offer various challenges. There is a nice variety of weather and road conditions across the course locations, including elaborate shortcuts and jumps that can often make the difference between sweet victory and crushing defeat. I did experience the occasional drop in framerate while playing on an iPhone 3G, but not enough to impact the overall experience.

Asphalt 5 offers a single race mode, where you can jump into a quick race, but won’t earn any cash or experience. The career mode is where you will spend the bulk of your time, and can unlock all the available cars and venues in the process. You will encounter 8 different race modes as you progress through your career, including Normal, Time Trail, Last Man Standing, Cop Chase, Escape, Cash Attack, Drift, and Duel. These modes offer some nice changes of pace, although the Cop Chase mode, where you are asked to act like the police that often harass you and eliminate a certain amount of your peers during the race, can be very frustrating. It doesn’t work as well as the other modes, especially early in the game when your cars don’t accelerate as capably, and you will eventually meet a point where you will have to complete these races to advance.

All of the available race modes have you collecting power-ups throughout, such as nitro and cash. You are also rewarded monetarily for aggressive driving maneuvers, and you can then turn that money into better rides and upgrades. Tuning your car is actually a pretty easy experience, as you can upgrade across three different categories: engine, handling and boost. Each category has some options that can be improved by just purchasing the next, better-performing part in a sequence. Each upgrade serves to increase either your acceleration, braking, handling, top speed, boost capacity, or boost speed. You can also change the look of your car at no cost by painting it or affixing decals. Asphalt 5 also offers a menu option called “Girl”, where you can choose between different lovely ladies that you earn at certain levels of your career. These girls can provide certain stat boosts such as helping you earn a percentage more money or boost. Although this is an established part of the series, and a very minor one at that, it feels a bit unnecessary and somewhat tacky. A game this good doesn’t have to try this hard to be cool.

As far as gameplay goes, Asphalt 5 gives you the option of three different control schemes. The default is accelerometer control with auto-accelerate, and it feels the most natural. You can adjust the sensitivity of the tilt, and can also choose to enable a manual accelerator pedal. There is also tap control, where you tap the left or right sides of the screen to head in the corresponding direction, or a steering wheel control, both of which use auto-acceleration. As far as cameras go, you can choose between close, far or the visceral bumper cam. Regardless of which control/camera combination you choose, you should be zipping along the track as recklessly as possible after relatively little time to acclimate.

For those looking for some multiplayer action, Asphalt 5 offers a variety of local and online solutions. Local multiplayer is both bluetooth and WiFi capable. Online mode lets you host or join a race fairly easily with up to 6 players when you log into Gameloft Live!. There are also online leaderboards, trophies, and Asphalt Academy, which lets players race on a specific track with a specific vehicle to see who can post the fastest time for the week. The multiplayer modes will often let you compete using any vehicle and track, regardless of whether you’ve unlocked them in career mode.

At the end of the day, Asphalt 5 does not presume to be anything else than what it is, and that’s a flat-out arcade racer. It succeeds in its mission, and does so without taking itself too seriously, making it both charming and fun.

We first saw Implode! back in October. Now that the demolition game from IUGO, creators of the excellent Toy Bot Diaries series, has hit the App Store, I can say that it’s truly a blast. A combination of physics and dynamite? Count me in.

Implode! is all about making buildings crumble. Touch and drag controls combined with a magnifying glass allow you to precisely place your sticks of dynamite with the “chalk-drawn” structure of a building. (Dear IUGO: I love you for including a lefty option for the magnifying glass!) As the game progresses, you’ll eventually have two types of bombs—traditional and “blast” bombs—in your arsenal. Your goal is to cause the structure to explode (implode?) in such a way that the bits and pieces fall as far below the dotted line as possible. At the end of each level, you’re given both a letter grade and a monetary “payout.”

The premise is simple, but as with any good physics puzzler, developing a winning strategy takes time and patience. I’ve slowly worked my way from D and C averages to C’s and B’s, and I’ve snagged one A, but an A+ remains elusive for me. Thankfully, there are three difficulty levels: Causal, Veteran, and Expert. I’m battling through Veteran right now, and I’ve tried the other two; your bombs’ effectiveness, among other functions, varies between difficulty levels. So, for example, a clumsy solution that sufficed in Casual mode will fail miserably in Veteran mode.

Implode! has an adequate number of levels: 60, to be exact, divided into six zones. (A set number of levels must be completed before the next zone unlocks, allowing you to bypass particularly difficult levels, to a point.) You can blow through those in a few days if you’re devoted (and talented) but there’s more than enough replay value to keep you occupied. The building structures also pack a good amount of variety, and new elements—like indestructible beams or nearby buildings that can’t be affected—force you to shift your strategies.

There’s also a “sandbox” cheat mode, in which you’re given an unlimited number of bombs, but high scores are disabled. That’s all fine and dandy, but you’ll need to register with IUGO and successfully refer a friend to the game in order to unlock it. It’s a pity, because using tons of bombs and watching the planks go flying is one of the best parts of the game, but you can certainly live without the feature.

The graphical style of Implode! is a nice touch, too. I’m always a fan of sketch-and-chalkboard themes, even if they are a bit cliche, and IUGO has executed this one nicely. (The little doodles hanging out in the background are favorites of mine.) The physics engine is solid, and the tumbling blocks look great. Sadly, the sound effects are lackluster and far from awe-inspiring, but at least you have the option to turn them off and use your iPod instead.

My biggest gripe is the lack of auto-save; that is, if you exit to the home screen, you’ll lose your carefully-placed bombs. At least you won’t lose much, but couldn’t the game at least remember what level you were on? It’s no deal-breaker, but I’d like to see this function in an update. (Really, this should be a standard…)

That being said, Implode! is a satisfying game. There’s nothing earth-shatteringly new about it, but it’s a solid, light-hearted physics puzzler that should elicit a grin from your destructive side. If dynamite and strategy sound like a good combination to you, IUGO’s latest offering should suit your tastes.

After months of hype and a Canada-exclusive open beta, ngmoco’s Touch Pets Dogs has finally arrived in the worldwide App Store, nipping on the heels of Eliminate. It’s a virtual pet sim with surprising depth, as well as the Plus+ community features you’d expect from the company that created the Plus+ iPhone gaming network. The pups are cute and the game is fun, but the need for an internet connection and the quick depletion of food will have some would-be pet owners grumbling.

In almost every pet sim, your first stop is the adoption center, and Touch Pets is no exception. Here, you can pick from seven breeds, including a robo-dog. Once you’ve adopted your pooch, you head to your “house,” and the tutorial begins. Touch Pets quickly covers the basics of petting, feeding, cleaning, and playing with your puppy. There’s plenty else to do: you can toss a frisbee around, dress up your pet, teach it tricks, have a playdate with another pup, or embark on a career.

Your puppy has five stats that control its happiness: Energy, Water, Petting, Let Out, and Cleanness. The last four are all straightforward (give it water, take it outside, etc) but energy is the one that will annoy many players.

Energy is constantly drained, though some activities are more tiring than others for your poor puppy. To replenish your pup’s energy, you have to feed it…and here’s the sticker. You only get a certain amount of food per day; after that, your dog goes to sleep. (Thankfully, unlike iPuppy World, you don’t have to sit there and watch the dog sleep; it uses the iPhone clock.) Extra food can be bought via separate apps (in-app purchases are coming with the next update) but be warned: those little costs add up, fast, because food disappears quickly. Your “starving” pet won’t die, but really, ngmoco? A real dog doesn’t digest food in five minutes.

But while your puppy is awake, there are plenty of tasks to do. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you like petting/watering/playing with your virtual puppy; personally, after a few days, I was tired of taking care of my pet’s needs every time I opened the app. But you can also do things like teach your puppy tricks (alas, this isn’t Nintendogs, and tricks are gesture-based rather than voice-based) and invite others over, either by picking a random puppy from the global news stream or by finding one of your Plus+ friends. Puppies can play with each other and become friends or, if they’re of opposite genders, fall in love. In-game puppy bucks, which are earned when your pet is happy, can be spent on tons of different clothes, toys, or treats.

ngmoco clearly anticipated that players would need goals beyond the basic love-your-puppy, and the careers are their solution. There are a number of careers available (Celebrity, Scientist, Rescuer, etc.) but each is essentially the same. You’ll need to improve a skill, buy an item, or some other combination of relatively simple requirements before you can send your dog on its mission; it then dashes off the screen and goes to do its “job.”

There’s a lot to do in Touch Pets: Dogs, but the game’s strongest point, I think, is the puppies themselves. The animations are smooth and the puppy’s movements and actions seem realistic, and any puppy-loving kid should be delighted to see them prance about the screen.

Not all is perfect, of course. For one, you can’t play the game without an internet connection—period. If you’re an iPod Touch user or an iPhone user with a tiny data plan, you may want to give this one a pass. The constant need for food also means that you can’t play for more than ten or fifteen minutes before your puppy collapses into a coma…unless you’re willing to pay real cash for food. I played the free version for a few days before redeeming a code for extra food, and the playtime limit makes this one of the tougher “freemium” apps to play. A tweak to the energy consumption rate would be much appreciated.

That being said, Touch Pets: Dogs is hands-down the best pet sim the App Store has yet seen, and it adds one more quality title to ngmoco’s impressive catalog. Whether or not you’re willing to invest the time and money in a virtual pet is another matter entirely.

Gravity Sling is the first game to be released from the iPhone Game Jam event held at this year’s 360iDev developers conference in late September. Participating developers were given one night to quickly brainstorm and produce a working game prototype. Gravity Sling was the brainchild of the guys at Riptide Studios, and the result, after a bit of post-event polishing, is a simple and pretty space-themed game that is compelling despite its sometimes shallow and buggy trappings.

In each level of Gravity sling, you need to propel your floating astronaut towards an awaiting space shuttle. This is done by simply picking a destination where you want to aim the astronaut to. A large arrow is shown and adjusts to the changing position of your finger, which represents the desired direction and speed. Letting go sends the astronaut on his fateful journey. Strewn across the various levels, however, are planets of varying sizes that will cause the astronaut to alter course and ricochet around in artistic spirograph patterns. If you gauge the gravitational pulls correctly, your astronaut eventually succeeds in reaching home. Your score is basically the distance travelled, and the longer you can send the astronaut into various orbits before successfully returning, the better. Each successful trip’s distance is logged onto OpenFeint leaderboards, and there are various easily-obtained achievements as well.

All of this works well in Gravity Sling, but sometimes feels like an exercise in trial and error as you can just crash your astronaut quickly and repeatedly in order to find what is often the one sweet spot or zone. Touching the precise area for a massive score is elusive, and there is a stated goal distance for each level, but this seems a bit arbitrary as you are not penalized in any way for finishing a level below the goal. You can quickly burn through the levels if want to simply complete them.

Although getting a super long shot can be satisfying, it can also be a bit dull at times. Gravity Sling’s gameplay is basically fire-and-forget, with no interaction once the astronaut is on his course. A very successful score can have you just looking at the screen for 2-3 minutes, waiting for the astronaut to reach his destination. There’s no way to influence his trajectory or fast forward. Touching the screen at any time starts him on a new trajectory from scratch. The worst is waiting for a long time for what appears to be a good score, only to have the astronaut get pulled into a planet for a crash and burn, Sputnik 1 style. Speaking of crashes, Gravity Sling itself does crash occasionally, the menus can be a little sluggish at times as well, and I have seen the occasional garbled continue screen.

It should be noted that Gravity Sling is one of the first games to use downloadable content as its sole source of revenue. The base game, with 15 levels, is available for free. At this price, everyone should download and try it for themselves. The levels can be completed quickly, and may just hook you into its just-one-more-time core gameplay. An additional 30 level pack is available for 99 cents, which basically offers more of the same. The developer has talked about releasing more levels, as well as a level editor, and has even hinted at some new gameplay elements such as moving planets. The prices have not been revealed, but these additions would definitely expand on what is already a solid app.

Gravity Sling is ultimately a fairly straightforward game that does very well for itself considering its humble Game Jam beginnings. Sir Isaac Newton’s head proved that gravity can be compelling, and this app does a good job in stating its case as well. There is a lot of potential to it that a bit of fine-tuning and enhancing can help reach.

Alice in Bomberland is…strange.

If you’ve read the original story, this should come as no surprise; Lewis Carroll’s world is bizarre enough, and a good game should never try to make a tale mundane. Alice in Bomberland tells the same story as the classic book, but with a twist: instead of Wonderland, Alice is in Bomberland—a place where, for some reason, everyone is trying to blow you up. The result is a unique action game where you’re constantly scrambling for cover, dodging bombs, and jumping over rockets while trying to snag the powerups necessary to survive. It’s hurt by mediocre controls and a lack of depth, but Alice in Bomberland is a quirky, entertaining diversion regardless.

Each level begins with a short clip of the story, including gorgeous illustrations. The story takes a backseat, however, as the characters you encounter quickly begin assaulting you with explosives. Some levels—such as when you’re falling down the rabbit hole—are entirely vertical affairs, where you float through the air and dodge projectiles. Others place you on solid ground, where jumping is all but a necessity.

The controls used for both scenarios are similar: a set of left/right arrows in the bottom left, and either an up arrow or a pair of up/down arrows in the bottom right, depending on the stage. While the controls work, they’re not the best, and I never quite got accustomed to them. Later in the game, “level-switch” powerups appear, which will suddenly jerk you out of a ground-based level and place you in a falling one, or vice-versa; thus, the controls for the two modes did have to be similar. But couldn’t we have bigger buttons, at least? It’s the controls that are the main sticking point for me. I just can’t hold my iPod like that forever.

While running around like the White Rabbit is fun, your goal for each level is to amass enough points to pass. Simple enough, right? Floating objects (powerups, “lost pages” of Alice’s story, etc) get you points, while being struck by a missile will cost you. (In addition to points, you also lose health.) This means that you can be playing for ten minutes and still be nowhere near finished if you don’t bother to grab the powerups, or if you keep getting hit. The powerups in Alice in Bomberland are as fantastic as they are ridiculous; along with the “Eat me!” cake, there’s a psychedelic potion that makes Alice’s world go trippy—think bright flashing colors, blurred vision, the works.

The idea behind Alice in Bomberland is fun, and the presentation is great; the the artwork is superb. But the controls quickly become frustrating, especially if you’ve got larger fingers, and there’s just not enough variety. Sure, you can unlock an endless mode and a developer commentary after beating the plethora of levels, but I’d expect to see endless mode long before beating the 48 included levels. The vast majority of the game plays in an identical fashion, and replay value just isn’t there.

That being said, Alice in Bomberland manages to be both cute and mildly disturbing, and it’s a refreshing break from your typical App Store game. Alice in Bomberland is a good diversion…just don’t expect it to be quite as epically enduring as Lewis Carroll’s original story, and remember to rest your poor thumbs from time to time.

I don’t know when the last time I listened to a radio was. A week? A month? It’s kind of hard to find good stations where I live. That’s why I like CD’s for the car. But my interest was sparked by the description of Pocket Tunes Radio. Sure, there are other streaming radio apps—but this one looked good. Maybe I’d finally find a station I liked.

Pocket Tunes has surpassed most of my expectations. The interface is slick, and it sports an impressive array of features: a Safari work-around that allows background streaming, song recording, a built-in web browser, and more. The library of available stations is broad enough to appeal to most listeners; it even includes support for Sirius and XM radio! The bottom line: this app works, and it works beautifully.

Selecting a station is the first order of business. Groups (genres, essentially) include your basic Country/Rock/Indie/Pop/Classical and so on, but there are also groups for featured stations, “top stations,” college stations, and Hi Speed Network stations, among others. You can also find stations based on your location. Opening a group allows you to see the stations contained inside it; while there are many easily recognizable names, others are just an anonymous serving of alphabet soup. In any case, with 16,000 streams, you should be able to find something you like. Navigating to a station from the web is also possible.

The best part about the station listing, though: you can hide groups entirely, which helps declutter your list. Considering the massive number of stations and genres available, this feature is a godsend, and just one of many examples of the attention to detail in Pocket Tunes Radio.

Song playback works flawlessly over WiFi, and while I couldn’t test it over a network (I have an iPod Touch), others have reported decent quality on 3G, with occasional problems over EDGE. Some radio stations offer multiple quality levels, and Pocket Tunes then chooses one based on your connection, though you can switch to a different stream manually. Sound quality is solid, though obviously compressed, but it works for everyday listening if you’re not an audiophile.

While a song is playing, you can add the station to your favorites, search for the song on iTunes, or…best of all…you can record it by tapping the red button at the bottom of the screen. Nice! The recording feature works great, though it’s completely manual; if you come into a song five seconds late, for example, you’ve missed that part for good. Recorded songs are stored in the app, so unfortunately there’s no way to grab them.

You can also browse the web while a song is playing. This is used both to open web-based radio stations and to allow you to continue semi-normal activities whilst listening to music, since Apple still won’t allow background processes. Better still: if you want to do something other than browsing the web (like, say, playing a game or checking your mail), Pocket Tunes uses what amounts to a Safari hack that allows the music to play in the background. The background-process restriction doesn’t apply to Safari, so the app opens a Quicktime stream. Long story short: Pocket Tunes does it for you and then you close Safari and go about your business. This 3.0-exclusive workaround isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure if it works for all stations, but it’s a nice feature.

I could go on and on about the minutiae of Pocket Tunes Radio, but let it be enough that it’s a slick, speedy radio app with a massive selection of stations and some great features like recording and background playback. Yes, there are other offerings on the store, and I haven’t tried them all, but Pocket Tunes leaves you wanting little, and best of all, it just works. For $6.99, this app is worth it.

We’ve all played a little thing called Habbo Hotel, and if you’re not admitting to having done so, we’ll take it as it’s probably been your guilty pleasure, at one time or another. It’s a concept first introduced by Finland-based Sulake, who consequentially now dominate the market.

The basic idea behind Habbo Hotel was simple. Create a virtual online world where anyone in the world can create an account and meet new people, while doing other reality-like based actions in the form of their virtual selves – and it proved popular. In fact, Habbo today has several million accounts registered, and has even managed to gain the attention of real-life well established bands and brands, making Habbo not only a place to meet online, but a virtual goldmine for advertisers.

Bobba Bar is a little different though. Firstly, we look at the name – Bobba Bar. This isn’t a full virtual world like Habbo is, but instead it’s a selection of virtual bars. Still boasting that Sulake style in-game play we all love, Bobba Bar is basically an online chat room, with visuals. In order to get going you’ll need to create a Bobba.com account. Once that’s sorted you’ll create the virtual you. From the app’s ‘Avatar Creator’ you can change and customize everything down from your shoes, to skin colour. Tapping a certain region of the charters body will allow you to change that item. Changing an item is as simple as swiping left or right. Below this is a colour scale, allowing you to change the appearance of your clothes, or currently selected item(s).

After creating the virtual version of you that you want to use, and logging into your account you’ll be thrown into Bobba Bar itself. From the main screen there are four tabs along the bottom, including: Places, People, Inbox and Me. The first is Places, which we’ll revisit a little later. For now, the ‘People’ tab lists all the people you’ve friended either by yourself, or on your travels around Bobba Bar. In the left right you’ll find you’ll find two options. The first is ‘Invite Friends’. There are currently only two ways to invite firends to bobba Bar. Mail, and Twitter. Choosing the tweet method sees you having to surrender your account login in-app (which I’ve never liked anyway), but Sulake say they won’t ’store’ the password. The second option is to view your followers. Just like Twitter, followers in Bobba Bar are people who are currently following you, but you’ve yet to add or follow them back in your own friends list. To add a friend to your list from this section, just tap tham, and tap ‘Add Friend’.

The next tab, ‘Inbox’ is pretty straight forward. This is a storage area for ‘private messages’ sent to you while online. Now although I like that you can look at messages sent to you, the app doesn’t yet let you see the messages back as a conversation. Each message sent is displayed as sort of an individual text message. Open the ‘Me’ tab and you’ll have the option to edit your avatar – Oh, I forgot to mention that you can edit your avatar at any time, anywhere. The system will just switch out the old you, with the new you, in real-time.

‘Places’ is where you want to be though, and that’s where all the fun really starts to begin. Bobba Bar is currently a closed community of preset virtual bars, and these bars are split up into different genres. These include: Flamingo Discos, Tech Bars, Romance Bars, Terrace Cafes, Sports Bars, Beach Bars, Office Bars, Gamer Cafes, Summer Festivals and Block Parties – Some of which are in a different language, so make sure you check that. Quick note to the Apple fans out there; the Tech Bars have iMacs! Tapping any of these places sees that specific virtual room constructed in front of your eyes. Once fully loaded, you’re free to take a look around!

Controls are very simple. Each room is tiled, and to move to a certain tile you just tap and your character starts moving. Throughout your time in these rooms, conversation is flying everywhere, between other citizens of Bobba Bar. These short messages are shown in chat bubbles located at the top of the screen. Each message is displayed for about 5 seconds, and then moves up and off-screen. This is one of my caveats with Bobba Bar; Messages move off-screen too qucikly! .. What makes this even worse is there’s currently no way to go back and view previous messages in this on-going open conversation. Don’t blink, will you? ..

If there’s one thing I like about Bobba Bar though, it’s that it’s free to play – and when they say FREE, they really do mean FREE. Although there’s not a lot you can do in Bobba Bar except chat with others, get a drink and start mingling, all this is free. Need a drink? Just move to a bar, type what you fancy aloud, and the bartender will take care of you. If they don’t serve it, they’ll tell you.

However, it’s not the free drinks which will keep you coming back to Bobba (okay, maybe .. a little), if anything it’s probably going to be its stunning ‘Habbo-like’ visuals. They’re just vibrant and inviting. From the virtual characters, to green grass and moving seas, the bobba bars are definitely a relaxing place to spend several minutes. I say minutes because there just isn’t anything you can do – Yet. Apparently, according to floating rumor, Sulake is working on bringing ‘custom room building’ to the Bobba Bar experience. I think this is what it’s missing really. Just something to justify it’s replay value. Something of substance. Essentially if and when the app gets this functionality, it will be Habbo. Well, ish.

There are a few other additions I’d like to see though. Besides being able create custom rooms, with custom objects (at which option I think we might see in-app purchasing introduced), I’d also like to see some form of trophies or rewards to completing certain tasks within certain bars. Another possible idea I like is the sound of being able to tap of a piece of furniture, and leave a note – Maybe even with location data?

Summing up, Bobba Bar definitely seems to excel graphically, but it’s not there yet. The lack of features means replay value is almost non-existent, and from a company like Sulake, with Habbo under their belt, I honestly expected more. Regardless, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m razorianfly.

If there’s one thing the iPhone needs, it’s video editing. With the introduction of the iPhone 3GS we saw Apple, in my opinion, make a half-thought attempt to bring this functionality to the iPhone.

As we all know, the new 3.0 software, combined with the 3GS’s video camera now allows us to do the ‘basics’ of video editing. When I say the basics, I mean it. All the 3GS can do out of the box in regards to editing video, is .. trimming. Trimming is basically the process of choosing which piece you’d like to keep, and the rest is ditched. But, for the power user or professional videographer, just being able to trim a clip on the move isn’t going to cut it, especially with a device as potentially powerful as the iPhone.

We need something, more ..

Ever since Apple introduced this feature, I’ve been longing for a developer to come up with the ‘premium’ version. The next level up. Right now, I feel there are hundreds, maybe thousands of applications which allow us to take and manipulate the perfect photo on the move, but what about video? That area seems to get neglected, especially in the editing department – and although Nexvio’s Reel Director is good, it’s certainly not the finished solution to video editing on the iPhone.

So, let’s get straight into the app itself. What does it offer? Is it really iMovie on the move? Well, no, not yet, but it could be with a little more work! Currently Reel Director does offer iMovie-esque transitions and effects, as well as taking slight elements of iMovie’s interface, but there are a few things which stop me from calling this a renamed version of iMovie for iPhone.

Opening the app for the first time, you’ll be shown a list of current saved and on-going projects you’ve been working on. To start compiling a new movie, simply tap ‘New’ in the top right. Doing so will then bring up your movie’s preferences. The first section controls the opening titles, offering settings like: Opening On/Off, Movie Title, Credits and the Style. To go into a bit more depth amount a few of these, the credits setting is fairly straight forward, offering a blank input box for you to input names of the people who made the movie possible. Just like iMovie for Mac, the ‘Style’ option allows you to choose the position is which your opening titles appear. Options for this include: top left, top center, top right, middle left, middle center, middle right, bottom left, bottom center and bottom right. Moving down the ‘New project’ settings screen, and the same three option settings as in the ‘Opening’ section, are repeated, allowing you to choose both the credits, and style of your ‘Closing’ – or if you prefer, have no credits at all.

One of the options that did catch my eye was ‘Transition’. This setting basically controls the method in which your individual video slides will appear during your movie. All in all Reel Director offers 5 transition effects, in a total 27 different variations, and have to say, the effects are of really high quality. The final option on the ‘New Project’ settings screen sees a toggle switch in which you can either activate or de-activate ‘High Quality Mode’.

So, now that we’ve created our project, How do we add clips to it? Well, it’s pretty simple – just tap ‘Done’ on the settings screen. Now at this point, you might be expecting me to say you take your project’s video from within the app, but that’s not what this app is about. It’s an editor, and so your video footage must be shot beforehand. Adding clips is as simple as tapping ‘Add’. From here you can select any video from your iPhone’s camera roll. It’s worth noting that before you add the clip to your project, iPhone OS will always give you the option to trim it.

Once you’ve added clips to Reel Director you’ll see it come into its own. You get this kind of clip organizer interface that’s really nice. Describing the interface, at the top of the screen is the actual clip organizer, followed by a preview of your video footage laid out right underneath. From here you can play, delete and add transitions to any of your video clips. To scan through a clips content, just tap, hold and slide. Need to move a clip to another position in the timeline? Just tap and drag to re-organize clips. Once you’re done, just tap ‘Done’. From the ‘Movie Info’ screen you’ll then have the option to save, delete, play and share your new creation.

Although Reel Director does allow you to create a semi-professional video on the move, its feature set for it’s price is shockingly limited. With no ability to trim your video clips in app, no option in sight to add music to any of your projects, and a plain (almost dull) interface, Reel Director’s $7.99 price tag does seem slightly unjustified to me.

That said, this is only version 1.0, and to my knowledge the app is the first of its kind, offering an easy and user intuitive way to create videos with effects, and animation on the move.

Top down action games are nothing new on the iPhone, and neither are dungeon romps, but for whatever reason, we really haven’t seen a combination of the two. Garters and Ghouls sort of fits into this gap with what seems to be a lovechild of iDracula and Underworlds.

The game starts with you as the “newly-dead Marie Dupois” set forth on a quest to battle the Thrum. Each level has you going deeper and deeper into the battle, clearing all sorts of various stages of their vile presence. The story is fairly well done, but without an epic setting that would rival Diablo (I mean, how cool is it to go to hell to fight demons!), I didn’t really get too wrapped up in it. All the levels really boil down to is repetitively destroying Thrum portals so no more bad guys can appear.

My big issue with this game is that I’m just not entirely sure of what the intended genre of the game was. As a reviewer, it’s tough to me to figure this one out, because its almost like an RPG, and almost like a shooter, but not quite as good as a full blown version of either. My gut instinct is that the game wants to be an RPG, but there are no truly unique weapons player classes, and there are no character stats (strength, magic, constitution) that you can upgrade. Sure, you can walk into a shop and upgrade your speed, but you are spending randomly dropped money to buy stats instead of using EXP. On the other hand, the game could’ve completely been designed as an action shooter. I do really liked the fact that the controls were well done (I would say well thought out, but the two joystick thing is almost industry standard at this point). The aiming could be a bit easier (you will definitely miss things at point blank range), but it doesn’t detract from the game too much. My problem would be that if the game really was meant to be an action shooter, the game kind of falls short on action and the weapon variety within the levels is fairly weak. Typically, you get two weapons in each level, but there is really no consequence to running out of ammo or worry that you will do so because your base weapon is pretty devastating. With this fear gone, all you have to worry about is firing and running, but the enemies in this one are so slow and dumb that you never really feel like you are in danger.

Aside from the gameplay and the identity crisis, the graphics and sound are not too bad. I’m testing the game on a 3G, and the animation all works well but is a bit choppy at times. I’m not sure if the choppiness is by design or not though, because once I upgraded my speed, things tended to pick up and seem normal. The sound is your typical rock opera style zombie shooting music, but if that’s not your cup of tea, just put on your own music from your itunes.app.

The game has some flaws, most of which to me are by concept design, but its a fairly fun action romp. If you really liked Alive 4-Ever or Underworlds, or hopefully both, you will probably get a kick out of this one. You’ll certainly wish that there was more action or RPG elements, depending on your genre of choice, but you wont find too many dull moments, which is the sign, to me, that a sub $5 game is worth it. If you want to kill some bad guys, you won’t be too disappointed.

At its heart, Star Paint is a simple untangle-it game. It’s a solid title and bundled in a nice theme, and OpenFeint integration is always a plus. However, it does lack a few important functions (like a resume feature), the instructions aren’t clear, and there’s not much variety to spice things up. Star Paint is a good game nevertheless, but I’d like to see some updates.

As you may have guessed by the title, Star Paint is star-themed; each stage consists of a number of stars connected by a tangled mess of lines, constellation-style. Your job is to untangle them by dragging the stars around the screen. It starts out simply, but by the time you’re playing hard mode you’ll have to sink quite a bit of time into each puzzle. Puzzles are randomly generated, so you never “run out,” per se, but I did think that they got repetitive—once you develop a strategy, it can be applied to pretty much every puzzle. Once you complete a puzzle, you’re taken to the next one. While there are three modes (Normal, Medium, and Hard), all are essentially Endless modes with varying levels of complexity. Supposedly there’s a time limit, but I moved quickly enough that it wasn’t an issue.

There’s also a Constellation mode, which, as far as I can tell, just lets you play with the stars and, if you know how, rearrange them into the shapes of famous constellations like Aries. I didn’t really see a point to Constellation mode, but I might have missed something. The instructions don’t cover that mode at all, and are rather sparse for the main game as well.

One more thing about Star Paint: OpenFeint integration! StarPaint alerts you to in-game achievements as you play, and Medium and Hard modes are unlocked by completing two basic achievements.

The game itself works, but integration is lacking. There’s no “resume” function, and closing the app means that you lose all of your progress. This might have something to do with the randomly generated maps, but users will doubtlessly be irked to see their high scores cut off mid-game just because they went to check their mail and the developers didn’t feel like including an auto-save function. The presentation could also use some work; the music annoyed me and the graphics, while adequate, aren’t stellar either.

Star Paint is a decent game. Unfortunately, it’s not much more than a simple distraction built on a simple premise, and without any new twists to make it interesting, there are countless clones that offer similar gameplay. Don’t get me wrong: if you like untangle-games, this is a good implementation of a classic, though auto-save really needs to be present. But more importantly, the novelty soon wore off and I was stuck with randomly-generated maps that still managed to feel repetitive.

Scrabble is bloated and slow-loading. Lexulous, my previous online Scrabble application of choice, has recently been plagued by bugs. Enter Words With Friends: a shiny, nimble Scrabble clone complete with Push notifications (hallelujah!) and blazing-fast speeds. Compared to its competition, Words With Friends offers fewer features; however, the speed of the app and the eager player pool are enough to have me hooked.

One of the most notable features absent from Words With Friends: ranking systems. You’re matched with a random opponent, unless—as the title suggests—you have a specific friend you want to play with. You do have to register, which is annoying; I wish that the game used Facebook Connect, OpenFeint, or Plus+, though that could impact the speed. Either way, once registered, it’s easy to find your friends; I’ve already played games with Jeff and Chris!

Once you start playing, you’ll quickly notice differences from standard Scrabble, which are presumably there to prevent lawsuits. You’ve still got seven letters, but the board layout is different, with eight triple-word spaces instead of four and a different scattering of bonus tiles in general. The dictionary also appears to be different, but I can’t be sure: an in-game dictionary is yet another absent feature. Other absent features include a moves history, a Facebook counerpart, and a preview of what your score will be. Let me restate that: you’re not told your score until after you move. So, yes, you’ll need mental math skills if you want to nitpick over points. Not such a bad thing, in my opinion; God knows I need the practice.

But Words With Friends still shines, in part because of its simplicity. The streamlined app loads quickly, and everything is easily accessible. The user interface is extremely well designed, with clever details that show a high level of polish; animations are smooth and snappy. “Last moved” timers are updated almost in real-time, so you can be immediately appraised of when it’s your turn if you leave the app open. If you’re occupied elsewhere, Push notifications prompt you to move, though these are often delayed by a few minutes and Apple’s system for missed Push notifications is less than optimal. At least there are badge alerts on the app’s icon!

I think it’s the Push notifications that contribute to the active nature of the app’s user base. You’re compelled to move quickly, though there’s no formal time limit. On average, it took me about a day to finish a game. Compared to my other online Scrabble games, which often last a week or more, that’s great, and it’s the main reason why I love Words With Friends. The Push notifications and quick plays make it addicting, and more sedate user pools can’t beat it.

The one exception to the app’s well-thought-out execution is the Pass ‘n’ Play feature, which lets two players play on one device. My questions: why can’t I play with three or four people? Why can’t I name the other player? Why isn’t there some sort of pause screen, as in Scrabble? (As it is, as soon as you move you can see your opponent’s tiles.) The Pass ‘n’ Play mode is tacked on as an afterthought, a notable exception to the consistent quality of the rest.

The game does have its quirks. But it’s clear that the developers intended for it be a simple, speedy application that didn’t waste time with superfluous features. The game is there, the player base is engaged and everything just works. (Well, the online mode, at least.) If you’re a Scrabble fan, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be playing Words With Friends. If you fancy a challenge, try me: my name’s bonniee in the game. I’ll be waiting! (Be warned, she’ll crush you! -Chris)

In my years of being a consumer, I’ve found that messing with genre boundaries is a messy thing. For every ‘Walk This Way‘ you get 5 ‘N 2Gether Now’s, forcing most people (developers in this case) so stick to genre norms. With the iPhone being a perfect platform for the ‘Tower Defense’ genre, it seems so simple to just stick with what works. As Aerosmith and Run D.M.C would tell you though, stepping outside of the norm can be just what the doctor ordered.

Zombie Attack! Second Wave (ZA2) is a ‘Tower Defense’ game in its truest sense, but has some unconventional tweaks that make the game unique. The goal of ZA2 is simple, defend your home from the wave of oncoming zombies. To do this, you use your 6 upgradeable weapons (towers), most of which are standard fare, some of which aren’t, to create the closest thing you can to an impenetrable wall. Instead of traditionally acting as the god of the screen, you use your character (the last survivor) to move around the map and build the towers wherever you please. You can also attack zombies with your character, but once you get to the later levels it doesn’t work out so well (inerestingly, you can get your “last survivor” killed as much as you want, he comes back after a timed re-spawn… does that make you a zombie?).

At first glance, the game seems quite entertaining, with bright graphics, good sound, and an entertaining premise, but I quickly found a few critical flaws. Problem #1 stems from the different game modes, or lack thereof, that the game presents you. In a standard game, any kind of game, there is a goal that you are aiming to achieve. In Mario, you are looking to kill Bowser, in Zelda, you kill Gannon, in Fieldrunners, you get to level 100. ZA2 gives you nothing… nothing to play for, no levels to unlock, no weapons to gain, only an online high score that you can attempt to beat and four different levels. There are two game modes, ‘Survivor’ and ‘Challenge’, but both just have you fighting endless waves of zombies until you die. ‘Challenge is slightly more entertaining because it changes up the gameplay a bit (limit weapon choices, make your house weaker), but neither give you anything to really strive for. You just play because it’s something to do, and most of the time I could be doing something somewhat fulfilling to do with my time.

Problem #2 is the way weapon upgrades work. Let’s say you have 4 towers, and you really like your flamethrower the best. You go on to neglect your other towers because you want to upgrade to the best flamethrower possible, costing a bunch of money. After you get your flamethrower to the max upgrade, you find out that upgrading your other towers costs more money now than it did when you started. I don’t know what metric they use for the pricing scale, but the fact that I have to think about it leads me to some odd budgeting struggles, which leads me to the next problem.

Problem #3. Because upgrading towers after a while becomes exponentially more expensive, you can choose one of two strategies. On one hand, you could build a bunch of towers and keep them at low level upgrades, or you can build a few and make them really strong. Either way, the later level zombies will take forever to kill, and because of their slow movement (they are zombies after all), the game is slowed down considerably. There were so many instances where I would set up my towers and then leave to grab some food, coming back to the exact situation that I was in when I left. I really just want to try to build up a super defense with my little guy, trying to weave in and out of the zombies to build more towers. Having a way to win would be pretty awesome too… but I already discussed that in problem #1.

Being a fairly slow, hard to manage, winner-less game, ZA2 has quite a bit of charm. I’ve come back to it many more times than I thought I would after my first go around, but I really just can’t see this one as staying on my iDevice for too much longer. I really like to win, and without a solid way to do that, I have a hard time moving on. I’m really hoping that a future update will provide me with some kind of finish line. For the current price of $3.99, I’d only really recommend this one if you have already mastered the giants of the tower defense genre (geoDefense Swarm, Fieldrunners, Sentinel 2) and are just looking for something to hold you over until the next big thing.

The very first game console I ever owned was an Atari. I spent countless hours with classics such like Astroblast, Combat, Pacman and yes even Pitfall. Hook’s art style is a throw back to the old pixelated days of terrible graphics where gameplay separated the good from the bad. Hook Champ art style draws heavily from games of that era, and adds in simple humour that works really well here.

Hook Champ has a very simple gameplay design. Move left to right using a hook shot (hence the name) in a very linear style map where a giant creature is chasing you. There are alternate paths with the more difficult ones filled with more treasure then the easier ones. The basic gameplay sounds simple and boring, but this is definitely not the case. The controls of jumping, running, swinging and shooting your hook shot make the gameplay tight and rewarding. The dev’s have added some additional touches to the experience that really expand on the game that really take it to the next level for me. With all your collected treasure you need a place to spend it, and that comes in the form of the ever so accurately named “Shop”. There you can pimp out your character with sweet hats that include the beener, a miner cap and the top hot. You can also upgrade your running speed, hook, rope, buy a shotgun to help protect you from the ghost and give you a boost. There are also a few other items in there that will help you along in your retro adventure.

At first I had a hard time getting used to the controls, but as soon as I upgraded my rope and hook the game felt much smoother. Once I got used to the controls the game opened up considerably. There is a definite easy to learn, difficult to master aspect to this game. Many maps, I made constant mistakes, missed the good treasures because I was terrible but it definitely felt that if I kept playing I could nail those tricky shots.

The game starts out with giving you access to just one set of maps. As you collect the coins in the maps, you can then purchase maps to get access to the other animal themed idols with an increasing difficulty. You’ll definitely need to upgrade at some points to give you that extra boost to get through the trickier levels. Each map has a local and global leaderboard that tracks a combination of time and treasure collection. In total you get 5 sets of levels with a difficult curve suggested by the Devs of Wimpy -> Monkey -> Bat -> Frog -> Bull.

This game is exactly what I love about the iPhone. A small time developer has a great simple idea, executes it extremely well and can put it out for me to consume and enjoy. I can’t recommend this retro style platformer enough, especially at the price of $2.99. It’s the first game I’ve reviewed here that I think is a must buy. It’s too bad this game isn’t in the top 100 of games sold on the appstore, because it definitely should be. The game currently has a 4.5 star rating average on the appstore, and it’s definitely well deserved.