Android – Iphone – Applications

If you ever played battleship as a kid, then no doubt you can appreciate Battleship by Pen. Created by RedMadRobot, Battleship by Pen gets bonus points from me for originality in design. An app that appears to have been drawn entirely by hand on graph paper with a blue Bic pen, Battleship by Pen is the same concept as the original board game, but with some original features of it’s own.

Players choose where to place their battleships, which are really just groups of squares outlined in pen with Xs inside, and deploy their fleet onto the graph paper grid to begin.

In Battleship By Pen you can touch  and drag the ships to position them and tap them to change orientation. When it’s your turn to try to find and destroy your opponent’s battleships, you simply select and tap a square on the screen. If it is a hit, an X will mark the square and if it’s a miss, a small dot serves as a marker. The first player to destroy their opponent’s entire fleet wins.

As I said, I give points for complete originality in the design of Battleship by Pen. Everything right down to the instructions and navigation buttons have the same hand-drawn appearance. It’s obvious the designer was going for casual and the pen and paper graphics combined with the recorded voice sound effects achieves a result somewhere between aloof casual and unintended comedy. The sound effects can’t even be explained in words, except to tell you to ask a ten-year-old what it sounds like when something is blown up by a missile.

Humorous as it is, the sound effects in Battleship by Pen actually got on my nerves after awhile, but not as much as overall stability of the app. While I enjoyed the game immensely despite the eventually nerve-grating sound effects, the single-player mode crashed every time I played. I tried to remedy this with a restart and tested it out on both iPhone with 3.0 OS and iPod touch with 2.2.1 – both yielding the same result. As for the multi-player mode, I didn’t care all that much for it, but the implementation of a wi-fi mode is a great expectation and should prove to be a positive improvement.

Battleship by Pen is a highly creative rendition of a classic game and the developers definitely bring their own unique flair into the mix. It certainly has huge potential, but unless the stability of single player mode is improved and the wi-fi game mode brought to fruition, Battleship by Pen may die a slow, silent death as it sinks into the unknown murky waters of the App Store.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 7/10
• app_name: Battleship by Pen

written by \\ tags: App, Apple, Game, Iphone, ITunes, OS

I smartly downloaded Music iQ before embarking on a four-hour car ride.  Perfect timing!  I entertained myself, the car trip went more quickly, and I discovered I am terrible at remembering the names of songs, even when I recognize a tune.

Music iQ from Phase2 Media is like an iPhone version of “Name That Tune.”  Music iQ plays random songs one-at-a-time from your iPhone’s or iPod touch’s library, and the quicker you guess the songs, the more points you get. The good news is that Music iQ is a multiple choice quiz game, so you are given five options to choose from to help jog your memory.

The music library on my iPhone is small; I keep most of my music solely on my iPod so I don’t use up all my iPhone’s memory.  If you do the same, you might find that Music iQ might be better used with your iPod touch than your iPhone.  The larger your music library is, the more challenging it will be to play Music iQ.

A nice side effect of Music iQ is that it keeps you in touch with all of your music, not just with the artists or albums that you listen to the most.  Along that same line, you can also ban individual songs, albums or artists from showing up when you play Music iQ, for example, an artist whose music you are not in the mood for or a friend’s homemade album whose song names you have listed in your iPhone as “Track 1,” “Track 2,” and so on.

Music iQ functions as described with no problems or quirks.  It is easy to play, and you can pick it up whether you have a few minutes or an hour at your disposal.  Whether you play to pass the time or to test your knowledge, Music iQ is a great app for music lovers.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 8/10
• app_name: Music iQ

written by \\ tags: App, Apple, Download, Game, Iphone, ITunes, OS

Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party was originally launched in the US in 1987 and since then has come out in 60 versions for nearly every game platform. Hudson Soft, the developer, says that it has sold more than 10 million copies.

Bomberman Touch 2-Volcano Party for the iPhone and iPod touch is nearly identical to the earlier versions and the object is the same as it ever was:  Strategically place bombs to blow up boulders and grab power ups or other goodies.

This is the second Bomberman Hudson Soft has released into the App Store. The first, Bomberman Touch-The Legend of Mystic Bomb, has been fairly well received although many shoppers have said they were disappointed the game’s quality did not justify the $7.99 asking price (the main issues were the amount of playing time and the weak controls). On a personal level, I thought the controls were fine.

Hudson Soft must have been paying attention, however, because Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party is $2.99, yet, has all the features of Bomberman Touch-The Legend of Mystic Bomb. Some of the same complaints about controls are still there as well, unfortunately. I thought the finger-swipe controls worked fine, although I much prefer a virtual keypad.

What makes the two games especially different is the latest iteration features multiplayer controls either against the CPU or against another player via Bluetooth.

Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party  features a new Battle Mode for up to four players (including two CPU players), and a Challenge Mode that includes two-player action. In Challenge Mode, the user and other characters cooperate to avoid oozing molten lava and make their way to a labyrinth to defeat the boss waiting inside.

Bomberman Touch 2: Volcano Party will run on iPhone and iPod Touch (second-generation or later) installed with the new OS 3.0.

Bomberman Touch 2-Volcano Party is just okay, in my book. The problem is that I’ve been spoiled by playing the game on other platforms. I agree that it’s hard to move around because your finger blocks your view. The playing field — although graphically well rendered  — is too small to be practical. It’s hard to see what you’re up against, in my opinion. Not every game, even a classic, transfers well to the iPhone’s small screen and this is one that doesn’t make the cut for all but the most ardent fans. The $2.99 price is not bad, though.

• app_name: Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party
• price: $2.99
• rating: 7/10

written by \\ tags: App, Apple, Bluetooth, Game, Iphone, ITunes, OS