Android – Iphone – Applications

The most infuriating kind of game is one that clearly has great ideas at its core, but falls flat because of its execution. Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is a novel idea, blending together tower defense gameplay in a hack ‘n slash model, complete with 4-player online multiplayer. All these elements should come together like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but in this game, the combination is more akin to peanut butter and poison.

Dungeon Defenders’ setup is that you are trying to protect a crystal in the dungeon you’re in from being destroyed. You can build defenses to damage and/or deter enemies, like walls and magic turrets, using mana. The rub is that you’re doing all this as a character from one of four classes, the knight, warrior, mage and elf classes that all have different defense types and attacks. You build your defenses by actually running around the map and building them, and can run around and attack enemies with your weapons and spells, like in a hack ‘n slash game. But otherwise, this works much like a standard tower defense game – you need to keep your crystal from being destroyed by enemies, you just now have more say over how you get this done.

Developer Trendy Entertainment has created a vibrant and colorful game. In a world where fantasy games consist largely of many shades of brown, Dungeon Defenders isn’t afraid to use the entire color palette. The game runs on the Unreal Engine, and runs quite impressively – the game isn’t quite as good-looking as Infinity Blade is, but this game does have a lot more going on, especially with all the action on-screen and all the graphical effects in play. The game also supports 4-player online co-op through Game Center, allowing you to quickly jump into any available games, or add your friends to try and conquer some dungeons.

Dungeon Defenders’ downfall is that it is too busy. Tower defense games work because your goal is to focus on erecting and managing your defenses, and having that omniscient view to see what’s going on all across the map. Hack ‘n slash games work because you get to run around and kill things wantonly, your goal being survival. Dungeon Defenders just mixes the two games without compensating for anything on either end. You’re playing a hack ‘n slash game and a tower defense game simultaneously, and it gets frustrating and overwhelming very, very quickly. The build phase of the game is also bogged down by the fact that instead of having that omniscient view of the playing field, you have to physically run around and do everything. And the hack ‘n slash elements are negated by the fact that you’re constantly running around, building and repairing defenses.

Things ease up a bit with the online play, but the problem is that tower defense games are all about planning and strategy – having 4 strangers run around and put up defenses all willy-nilly defeats the purpose of strategy entirely. Also, continuing the theme of disconcerting busyness, the GUI is absolutely horrid. The game throws an overwhelming amount of information at you that takes up so much of the screen on the iPad that I can’t even imagine playing this game on a smaller device. This isn’t even factoring in the times when hints and tutorials pop up and take up half of the screen, making your viewable area that much smaller. The menus are horrible as well – healing yourself is 3 menus deep, and mind you, this is a hack ‘n slash game at its heart. You just cannot be fiddling around with menus when all hell is breaking loose around you.

Dungeon Defenders just reeks of an idea that wasn’t fully thought through. It is as if someone got the idea to make a hack ‘n slash and tower defense hybrid, but never considered if it would actually work. If not for the fact that it was the second game released with the Unreal Engine on iOS, this game might not be notable at all. While the game’s idea is certainly more inspired than many games, it takes a proper execution of those ideas, and that is what Dungeon Defenders lacks.

[ Dungeon Defenders: First Wave Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by hubah \\ tags: dungeon-defenders, fact, first wave, Game, online, peanut-butter, price, rating, unreal-engine, weapons

Momento is a diary and journaling app for the iPhone. With Momento, you can write about and capture moments easily ‘on the go.’ But that’s not all, Momento does a wonderful job of collecting your internet activity and recording it on a day-by-day basis.

What makes Momento great is not only its functionality as a killer journal, but its elegant and responsive interface. Journaling and viewing past moments has never been easier on the iPhone.

Besides allowing you to enter journal entries, Momento collects feeds from your various social accounts on the internet. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Foursquare, Gowalla, Digg, Youtube, Vimeo and RSS/Atom feeds are currently supported in Momento. That means that most of your online life can be tracked and documented in a beautiful interface… Read More

written by Debra \\ tags: app store, app store apps, collects-feeds, Download, facebook, internet, Iphone, iphone news, journal, journaling-app, momento, online, phone-download, various-social

When you think of gaming perhaps you think poker, maybe you think of the Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360 or hell, maybe you even think hunting. However, thanks to the popularity of Facebook and its partners, gaming is quickly beginning to be associated with online games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, no matter how bad we don’t want it to be.

Regardless of our dislike associated with this movement, there is no denying the fact that FarmVille, Mafia Wars and their creators Zynga are immensely successful. Those of you who have hopped on both the Zygna and Android bandwagon will be happy to hear that the company has recently announced their intentioned to bring Mafia Wars to the Android platform sometime this month.

The game has already been available in app form on the iOS platform for quite some time but now it seems like it’s Android’s turn to receive some love from the Mafia (Wars, that is).

via thenextweb

written by iieevvn \\ tags: Apple, california, cell phones, mafia wars, mobilewhack-com, online, permanent-link, phone-released, street, tablet, zynga

Google is really making quite an impact today with things like Android 2.3, 3.0, Chrome OS and even their Chrome web browser. While they came to the game quite late with their Chrome web browser, they have seen an immense amount of growth with many users making the switch from more popular browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox.

One of the biggest advantages the Chrome browser features is the fact that it’s quite fast when compared to the others (depending how you look at it).

Now, Chrome has another advantage in the form of the recently launched Chrome Web Store. This virtual store will allow Chrome users to download and install a plethora of applications ranging from TweetDeck to Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online. Right now, the offerings are a bit slim but if you search around a bit you’re sure to find something that applies to you.

Has anyone checked out the Chrome Web Store? If so, what are your favorite applications?

Read (Chrome Web Store)

written by Robertm \\ tags: advantage, Application, apps, chrome, chrome-event, internet, online, permanent-link, tiger-woods, web, windows-phone