iPhone Integration Rating: 3 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: 3.33 out of 5 stars
Fast food restaurants do one thing, and they do it well; that is provide quick, easy, and convenient meals to a nation of people constantly running around. How do you even keep track of all the calories in a Venti Café Mocha from Starbucks? Or know how long it will take to burn off the calories from a Honey Bourbon Chicken sandwich from Quiznos? Fast Food Genius is looking to shed some light on just this question.
Fast Food Genius is like a phonebook of food information for some of the most popular fast food joints that are scattered about this nation. Upon launching the app, you are greeted with a list of restaurants broken down alphabetically; a nice touch is the company logos included next to the names. Tapping on a restaurant will bring you into that restaurant’s menu of consumables. Just tap on the food item you are questioning and you will be greeted with calorie, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and carb information in an easy to read breakdown.
To aid in finding food quickly, you may perform two different searches. The first happens right inside the chosen restaurant. Here you can search through the categories and products for a particular food item. There is also a global search, thus allowing you to search all items in every restaurant contained in the app. This global search is useful if you are looking to grab a chicken sandwich, but you want to eliminate your choices down to a few of the healthiest options.
One last feature is a calorie-burning calculator. You may choose between two to eight predefined activities from a list. Once you have these activities chosen, when you are evaluating the nutritional info of that burger from Burger King, tilt the phone on its side to get an estimate of how long it will take you to burn off the calories in that burger from one of your chosen activities. While this is not always a perfect depiction of calorie burning, it does a good job of establishing a baseline for the amount of impending exercise you will be doing later.
The developer does ask for feedback — if you want a particular restaurant included, email them and they will try to add that restaurant. Hopefully they stand behind this, as the list of restaurants, while decent, is still lacking. The ability to modify the activity list, or even add your own local restaurants would go a long way to make this a must own app for any calorie conscious person.
Fast Food Genius provides a decent start to count calories for fast food items, but there isn’t enough here to get it down the road to a complete know it all app. The big restaurants like Starbucks, McDonalds, and Checkers make a cameo, but it is not a complete, or even extensive, list of restaurants. If you stick to the bigger chains there might be some value here, the rest of you calorie counters may want to wait for this to drop in price before you invest.
Developer: Hungry Game
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: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.81 out of 5 stars
Sir Lovalot is a quirky little game reminiscient of the arcade classic, Nebulus. It’s an ideal game to play in short bursts even if it is clear that the Princess is doomed to never be rescued.
You play Sir Lovalot, a lovestruck knight, who must reach the top of the Tower in order to save the precious Princess. To do so, you have to jump higher and higher. This is done through tilting the iOS device – a control method that admittedly I’m not a huge fan of. This isn’t solely Sir Lovalot’s fault, it’s just that I play a lot of iPhone games while lying in bed before I go to sleep. Once I got used to the fact that I had to keep the iPhone steady though, I learnt that Sir Lovalot’s control system does suit the game really well. My dislike of tilt controls was quickly brushed away. It also makes it an ideal game to drop in on for short bursts as it’s so easy to get to grips with.
It’s a tumultuous path upwards for young Lovalot. Not all the platforms are as easy to leap on as you would think. Some break away as you climb on them, others are spring loaded. Even worse, some have spikes on which cause the poor Knight to lose a heart. Lose three hearts and it’s game over.
At times it’s not always clear as to where you need to go next, but this is a common flaw with the genre of vertical climbing. There’s a timer which also encourages you to keep on leaping, but it’s not too obtrusive. The entire manner of Sir Lovalot makes it so that you want to keep moving as fast as you can. The Open Feint leaderboards go a step further in encouraging you.
Sir Lovalot is far from a complicated game, but that is its charm. It’s purely a game that you jump (pun intended) into for 5-10 minutes just to see if you can boost your high score a tad further. It’s cheap, it’s cheerful, it’s worth a play.
Developer: Freeverse
Price: $1.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
The freemium model for iPhone/iPad games continues to spread, luring in many developers with the notion of making extra revenue off the whims of consumers. Sometimes this is an ok approach. I mean, it’s pretty much understood when you start playing a game like We City, We Rule or We Farm, but the freemium approach has begun showing up in unlikely places, and the latest iteration of Skee-Ball is just one of them.
If you haven’t played the original Skee-Ball for the iPhone, you certainly should. It’s a top-notch game; simple gameplay and dead-on physics make it one of the most delightful diversions you can spend $.99 on in the app store. So my curiosity was certainly piqued when I saw that developer Freeverse had released an “HD” version of Skee-Ball for the iPad. Outside of larger screen real estate, what could be added to the game? As it turns out, not much at all.
Skee-Ball HD is just a bigger version of the original Skee-Ball for the iPhone. There are a few different prizes, but outside of that, the games are the same. To be fair, it is easier to play on a larger screen, but if you already own one version on the iPhone, what’s the incentive to purchase it again (for double the price) on the iPad? This is one game that is begging to be released as a universal app, but it doesn’t seem as though that is going to happen.
Which brings us back to the freemium stuff once again. How can a game have freemium content when it is not a free game? Good question! In the case of Skee-Ball HD, once you use your tickets to purchase all of the items provided in-game you can then purchase “Ticket Packs” for .99 each that expand your available prizes. It will be interesting to see how well this goes over; it all depends, I suppose, on how rabid Skee-Ball fans are for new prizes. As for me, I’ll probably stop way before I win everything in the core game. Or maybe I’ll just keep playing the original on the iPhone. It’s cheaper, and just as good.
Developer: X-Vision
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
iPhone Integration Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.58 out of 5 stars
While not a burden for some, there are many iPhone users out there that are stuck using the minimum 200MB data plan. Keeping track of your data usage is a bit of a hassle, but like everything else in life, there’s an app for that.
DataMan uses the built in data usage meter to easily tell you how much data you are using, whether it be with 3G or WiFi. Because it runs in the background, it can also inform you of when you get to certain data use thresholds (i.e. 50% data used, etc.). All you have to do to get the app working is to set up what day of the month your data usage starts and let it run.
The last feature, which is probably the neatest feature of all, is also the one that will irk many users. As you are using data, the app geotags your location so that you can see the places that you are online the most. Seeing your data use on a map is quite neat (although not all that useful), but it requires your location services to always be on. If you don’t like the feature, you’re out of luck because the geotagging isn’t an option that you can just turn off. Talk about a serious battery drain. On a device that already isn’t known for wonderful battery life, having something like a data tracker killing X% just by existing is a major bummer.
For a user who is perilously close to running out of data every month, an app like DataMan is an invaluable resource. With the inability to turn off location services though, you’ll have to be willing to sacrifice a bunch of battery life for the service to work.
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.15 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.99 out of 5 stars
UFO On Tape firmly roots itself into the “this would only work on an iPhone” genre, and while it only provides short spurts of gameplay, it is one of the more memorable iOS experiences.
Instead of bogging people down with stories and characters, UFO On Tape puts players directly in the fray. In the game, you are a passenger in a car filming a UFO with a digital video camera. Instead of giving you on-screen controls, all you have to do is follow the UFO as you would if you were recording the UFO on your iPhone. If the UFO leaves the screen for a period of time, your girlfriend (who I’m presuming is the driver) will say something like, “Oh, look higher!” or in her poutiest voice, “Don’t just sit there, move your camera, come on!” If it leaves the screen for too long, though, it’s game over.
An average game of UFO On Tape only lasts for a short period of time (my personal best is a shade under 2 minutes), but the game is all about the experience, not what actually happens. All of the in-game graphics look photo realistic (although the developer claims that there is no pre-recorded video), making the game seem more like a lifelike experience than any other game in the app store.
As much as I enjoyed playing UFO On Tape, I couldn’t help but feel that there just wasn’t enough. I would love for the UFO to do something other than just fly around. Maybe it could abduct some people or blow up some houses, I don’t know. For a dollar though, it’s not hard to recommend what may be the most unique app experience out there.
Fast food restaurants do one thing, and they do it well; that is provide quick, easy, and convenient meals to a nation of people constantly running around. How do you even keep track of all the calories in a Venti Café Mocha from Starbucks? Or know how long it will take to burn off the calories from a Honey Bourbon Chicken sandwich from Quiznos? Fast Food Genius is looking to shed some light on just this question.
One last feature is a calorie-burning calculator. You may choose between two to eight predefined activities from a list. Once you have these activities chosen, when you are evaluating the nutritional info of that burger from Burger King, tilt the phone on its side to get an estimate of how long it will take you to burn off the calories in that burger from one of your chosen activities. While this is not always a perfect depiction of calorie burning, it does a good job of establishing a baseline for the amount of impending exercise you will be doing later.
The freemium model for iPhone/iPad games continues to spread, luring in many developers with the notion of making extra revenue off the whims of consumers. Sometimes this is an ok approach. I mean, it’s pretty much understood when you start playing a game like We City, We Rule or We Farm, but the freemium approach has begun showing up in unlikely places, and the latest iteration of Skee-Ball is just one of them.
Skee-Ball HD is just a bigger version of the original Skee-Ball for the iPhone. There are a few different prizes, but outside of that, the games are the same. To be fair, it is easier to play on a larger screen, but if you already own one version on the iPhone, what’s the incentive to purchase it again (for double the price) on the iPad? This is one game that is begging to be released as a universal app, but it doesn’t seem as though that is going to happen. 
DataMan uses the built in data usage meter to easily tell you how much data you are using, whether it be with 3G or WiFi. Because it runs in the background, it can also inform you of when you get to certain data use thresholds (i.e. 50% data used, etc.). All you have to do to get the app working is to set up what day of the month your data usage starts and let it run.
Instead of bogging people down with stories and characters, UFO On Tape puts players directly in the fray. In the game, you are a passenger in a car filming a UFO with a digital video camera. Instead of giving you on-screen controls, all you have to do is follow the UFO as you would if you were recording the UFO on your iPhone. If the UFO leaves the screen for a period of time, your girlfriend (who I’m presuming is the driver) will say something like, “Oh, look higher!” or in her poutiest voice, “Don’t just sit there, move your camera, come on!” If it leaves the screen for too long, though, it’s game over.
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