Developer: Violet Rhino
Price: $1.99
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
iPhone Integration Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Scrabble and Words with Friends have both been huge phenomena in recent times. Scrabble has taken Facebook by storm while Words with Friends has done the same with iOS devices. It’s not surprising, really. It’s such a ridiculously simple game to play, plus you have the added satisfaction of feeling intelligent amongst your friends. If, however, you’re struggling to hold your own in every game, there is a solution: Words Winner.
It feels rather morally dubious cheating against friends but if you feel like doing so then Words Winner is pretty useful. It helps you pick the best words to use. It’s not necessarily the quickest of apps to use as you have to enter the data from each game yourself due to app constraints, making it much easier to use with Scrabble on Facebook as you don’t have to keep switching between apps. However, once set up, it does work well.
You can enter what rack tiles you have available and it comes up with every single variant that can possibly be used as well as the score you can achieve in each case. Words Winner also keeps track of what letters must be left to come up further on in the game which is rather useful if you’re a player who likes to plan many moves ahead. You can even adjust the scoring between Scrabble or Words With Friends as they both offer subtle changes that can make all the difference. It’s all very handy really even if it does feel morally dubious.
Words Winner is a pretty unbeatable way of winning at Words With Friends or Scrabble. It offers everything you could possibly need to convincingly win against your opponent. If you’re that way inclined and don’t mind cheating, this is an ideal app. Personally though, my conscience can’t allow me to use it. Unless of course I discover that my friend is using it!
The Kindle is getting a lot more than just that as Sudoku, Texas Hold’em Poker, Panda Poet, and Next. Next is a matching puzzle game from Mobigloo.
Most of these games are available for $2.99 to $3.99, but full-color ones are a lot cheaper on the iPhone/iPad. For a monochromatic gaming platform, that might be too much.
Amazingly enough, we’ve got a sequel to talk about today, the Samsung Solstice II. Is it better than the original? Or does it follow the law of movie sequels and end up worse than the original? Let’s take a look!
The Samsung Solstice II is a candy bar style cell phone that offers conference call capability, speakerphone, voice recorder, Bluetooth connectivity, GPS, a phone book with sufficient storage capacity for two thousand entries (and another two hundred fifty in the SIM card), a variety of email services, a variety of AT&T specific apps like AT&T Radio, mobile web, text messaging, support for the three primary messaging services (AOL IM, Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger), downloadable games, a two megapixel camera, AT&T Navigator (helps with that GPS, I’d assume), alarm clock, calendar, and a battery that yields six hours of talk time on a single charge.
It’s strange that a phone with so many music apps wouldn’t come with a headphone jack. Check that, it’s not strange, it’s downright worrisome. Who in their right mind would make a phone that played music in several different ways but not offer a dedicated headphone jack?
And though the Solstice II has an excellent touchscreen–very quick and responsive!–the rest of the phone feels downright flimsy.
All things considered, though, the Solstice II isn’t a bad phone, it’s just a phone that doesn’t pack enough improvement on the original. For being a new version of an older model, it really should be better than its predecessor. This one just isn’t.
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.35 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.28 out of 5 stars
Is it a tower defense game or an action platformer? Well, it’s a tower defense game, that’s slightly anticlimactic. What Monster Feed does different than the rest of the genre is add some needed tempo, forcing you to stay alert rather than doze off between waves 14 and 25.
First though, I have to mention that the basic premise of Monster Feed is much like any other tower defense game out there. There is a fixed path, a set number of enemy waves, and a bunch of towers that can be upgraded twice. If you’ve ever played The Creeps you’ll know what to expect from these kind of basics. The real challenge in the game comes from the spell tree, which speeds the game up quite a bit. As you play, the enemies that you kill drop money for towers and mana to cast spells. These spells can be upgraded along with the towers, but can range from instant use fireballs and evil arrows to short term units such as fixed space arrow shooting blobs and roaming critters, reminiscent of The Langoliers.
The real trick to the game is that it doesn’t give you enough money to beat the levels with towers alone, so you actively have to be pumping out spells to win. Unlike other tower defense games, if you sit back and do nothing for a minute or two you are toast. The spells play such a central role in the game that there is a whole game mode available that basically forces you to win with only spells, giving you enough money throughout to maybe build a tower or two.
Monster Feed is certainly different than other tower defense games, and the change of pace isn’t a bad thing at all. If you love the genre as it is but need a bit of spark in your life, be sure to pick up Monster Feed today. You won’t regret it.
In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition here at 148Apps, we have scoured the web to bring you all the latest and greatest info on Black Friday app sales that are going to be popping up starting this week. Here’s the list of our favorite deals and discounts we have seen so far, and we’ll keep updating this post with new info as it becomes available. Hide your wallet, because here comes a whole lot of digital goodness at ridiculously low prices.
We’ve split the list up into Games, Apps, and Navigation apps. There’s lots of money to be saved here and we’ll be adding to it throughout the weekend. We can’t put every single sale app on the list. If you want to see every single app as it goes on sale, head on over to our App Price Drops page. There’s a filterable list there that you can see the hundreds of apps that go on sale every day. You can even search just for the app that are now free.
Update 11/23, 1:30pm – Believe it or not we already have an update. Lots of titles from EA and Gameloft added. Also Quickoffice apps and a few others.
It feels rather morally dubious cheating against friends but if you feel like doing so then Words Winner is pretty useful. It helps you pick the best words to use. It’s not necessarily the quickest of apps to use as you have to enter the data from each game yourself due to app constraints, making it much easier to use with Scrabble on Facebook as you don’t have to keep switching between apps. However, once set up, it does work well. 
Amazingly enough, we’ve got a sequel to talk about today, the 
First though, I have to mention that the basic premise of Monster Feed is much like any other tower defense game out there. There is a fixed path, a set number of enemy waves, and a bunch of towers that can be upgraded twice. If you’ve ever played The Creeps you’ll know what to expect from these kind of basics. The real challenge in the game comes from the spell tree, which speeds the game up quite a bit. As you play, the enemies that you kill drop money for towers and mana to cast spells. These spells can be upgraded along with the towers, but can range from instant use fireballs and evil arrows to short term units such as fixed space arrow shooting blobs and roaming critters, reminiscent of The Langoliers.
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