New Zealanders have been enjoying Epic Games’ visual stunner for a few hours now, as per usual, but the past has caught up with the present, so to speak. Infinity Blade is now available on the US iTunes store for both the iPad and the iPhone. Drop the gun, give the mutants a rest, and pick up the sword — cost of entry is $5.99 and the file size is a whopping 318.3MB. What are you waiting for?
Developer: Press OK Entertainment
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.88 out of 5 stars
Feed Al offers physics based puzzles – a genre about which I’m sure you’re thinking, “oh great, another one.” The true selling point here is twofold, though. First of all, it’s from the guys who made Finger Physics, which has to be good news. Second of all, it offers a rather funky location-based high score system which goes on to help you within the game.
The actual game is pretty good fun. It’s down to you to get a small globe from one side of the screen to the other while collecting stars along the way. You can make the globe bounce off structures through the use of moveable objects which can then divert the globe into the path of the collectible stars. Collect stars, earn points. Simple stuff but fun. Some levels add a further twist by locking the end of the level, forcing you to ensure you hit the key along the way. Other oddities are abound too such as some platforms instantly wiping you out, some platforms can be destroyed and others affecting the way you bounce. Rather than work on a level by level basis, everything is seamless which makes a pleasant change.
It’s all good, solid physics based fun and that fact alone makes for a satisfying experience. Throw in the location based high score system, PlacePlay, and things become that bit more interesting. PlacePlay homes in on your location and allows you to have local leaderboards. Placing high on your local leaderboard offers you points which can then be used to buy boosts to help you in the rest of the game. These boosts aid you by providing things like a wall to stop you falling to the side, lock removal tools and more. They’re not essential for success but they help you a treat. The idea of competing with people locally is great, although I suspect due to where I live, I won’t have much competition. In big cities though, it’ll be immensely satisfying to top the leaderboard.
Feed Al is really good fun. It offers a quirky appearance with a great leaderboard concept within PlacePlay, as well as satisfying puzzles to complete. It’s really worth a look. It’s almost certainly going to hook you.
I have longed for World of Goo for the iPhone and then the iPad for literally years now. Hard to believe it’s been that long. The model of the game has just seemed perfect for a touch interface. Having played through the game three times on three different platforms (Wii, PC, Mac), I just wanted more. My PC is packed up. It’s loaded down with so much anti-virus software it can hardly be used anymore. My Wii has, like most Wii consoles, an inch of dust on top of it. And my Mac, well when I sit down at my Mac I see I have 1,000 unanswered emails. Makes me feel too guilty to play World of Goo anymore. I want it on my new cool device of choice, the iPad!
Well that day has finally come. 2DBoy were kind enough to send us a final build of the World of Goo for the iPad. And I’m in heaven. I had to stop playing long enough to finish this preview, but after this is done, I’m right back to it.
World of Goo for the iPad is the full game that you know and love. But what about if you’ve been living under a rock. What is the game about? Well, it’s a physics based puzzle game. One where you build structures out of these interconnected goo balls.
You start out not really knowing what the story is. You are just presented with a silhouetted world, the World of Goo. On the first level of Chapter 1 you are presented with a simple structure and a few goo balls roaming around. Your task is to help these goo balls escape via a vacuum tube at the top of the screen. To do this, you need to build a structure by dragging these balls, making connecting points, and thereby building structures that the free roaming goo balls can travel on.
Sounds harder to understand than it really is. It’s pretty easy to get a handle on once you have played a couple levels. Take a look at the following video and it will all make sense.
Seems simple enough, right? The difficulty does ramp up considerably. And alone the multiple chapters and levels you’ll encounter new types of goo balls. Some float, some are rubbery. All produce new challenges.
For a little background on the game, take a look at this promo video produced by the filmmakers behind Indie Game: The Movie, an in production movie about indie game developers.
World of Goo has something so many games are missing, personality, finish. It’s a great game, and it’s great to finally have it on the iPad. World of Goo in all it’s gooey glory releases on December 16th for the iPad at $9.99.
If you’ve paid attention you pretty much any tech blog you’ll know that leaks of the PlayStation Phone have been circulating quite a bit. This Android powered device from Sony Ericsson features a slide-out gamepad with a form factor quite similar to the PSP Go. However, seeing how these are leaks Sony Ericsson has yet to come forth to confirm the device leaving us to question when exactly they will do so.
Well, more rumors have surfaced today that say Sony Ericsson will officially unveil the phone come February of next year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. However, these rumors also say that Sony Ericsson won’t actually release the phone until March of the same year.
The validity of these rumors remains to be seen but it’s going to be very interesting to see how the PlayStation Phone fares when it inevitably gets released.
If you happen to be curious which recently released iPhone apps and games earned top marks from critics then look no further than this month’s breakdown of top rated games from Quality Index. Taking aggregate review scores from well-known outlets such as TiPb, Slide to Play and 148Apps (that’s us, yo), QI has ranked the top ten apps and games in two handy-dandy charts. Here’s the breakdown of the titles and their overall scores.
1. MobileMonet – 9.7
2. Mario Batali Cooks! – 9.6
3. Disneyland Paris – 9.6
4. Tapatalk Forum App – 9.5
5. Calvetica Calendar – 9.5
6. Instagram – 9.4
7. ColorBlast! – 9.4
8. John Henry – 9.2
9. Stats for Halo Reach – 9.1
10. Audiogalaxy Mobile – 9.1
Given your own knowledge of the market and particular tastes how closely do your top ten lists from the past month match up with that of the professionals? Do we get to keep our jobs for another month or is it time to throw the bums out and let some folks who actually know what they’re talking about?
Looking down the list I don’t see any apps which I personally downloaded this past month, but looking at the scores now I’m definitely interested in Sentinel 3 and Stick Golf. I’m also not surprised to see LEGO Harry Potter did so well considering the fact that the LEGO game franchise is generally well-received by critics on top of being utterly adorable.
We’ll be back with another batch of numbers when the December results go live, but in the meantime feel free to argue and debate these scores and generally carry on loud and angry conversations. This is the Internet after all; that’s what it was made for. Well, one of the main things, anyway.
The actual game is pretty good fun. It’s down to you to get a small globe from one side of the screen to the other while collecting stars along the way. You can make the globe bounce off structures through the use of moveable objects which can then divert the globe into the path of the collectible stars. Collect stars, earn points. Simple stuff but fun. Some levels add a further twist by locking the end of the level, forcing you to ensure you hit the key along the way. Other oddities are abound too such as some platforms instantly wiping you out, some platforms can be destroyed and others affecting the way you bounce. Rather than work on a level by level basis, everything is seamless which makes a pleasant change.
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