Android – Iphone – Applications

Chillingo seems to have found their next Angry Birds – take a game with a simple yet unique concept, layer complexity on top of it, add some colorful graphics and charming characters, and watch it shoot to the top of the charts. Cut the Rope follows this formula to a T, and it works brilliantly.

Cut the Rope has you trying to get the piece of candy in the level from its starting point into the mouth of Om Nom, the adorable green creature in each level, while trying to collect stars scattered throughout the level to unlock more levels. Your main tool to accomplish this is via cutting the ropes that the candy is suspended from to navigate it through the level. The later levels introduce new tools like bubbles, air gushers, adjustable length rope, and more. Of course, to keep things saucy, you have hazards like spikes, electric fields, and spiders that climb the ropes to keep getting the candy into Om Nom’s mouth more than just a simple goal.

Cut the Rope is just simple bliss to play. The way that you have to solve some of the puzzles require planning and/or quick reaction times, and getting all 3 stars on the more challenging levels is extremely satisfying. Succeeding at this game just makes you feel ingenious for having solved something that seems impossible at first glance. It’s all a great formula for an addictive game. The graphics and animations are great – the game is very colorful, and Om Nom is very fluidly animated, cutely changing expression whenever the candy gets near. While the game ships with 100 levels, the developer promises more levels coming soon.

The main problem with Cut the Rope is that you often have tight spacing or timing windows, and it can be easy to accidentally slash something you didn’t mean to, or to accidentally slash a rope when you wanted to rotate a lever to raise your rope. Although you can easily restart a level, it is still frustrating when you have a plan and can’t execute it because something else was slashed when you didn’t mean to do it. Also, the game occasionally features large levels that scroll, without any way for you to scroll around and view the rest of the level before you get there besides the view at the beginning of the level.

Cut the Rope is ingenious, following a similar formula to Angry Birds – charming graphics, simple gameplay that gets complexity steadily layered on top of it in a way that feels natural, almost without even feeling like it’s getting more difficult. That is just brilliant game design, and with more levels promised, Cut the Rope has an exciting future, but is still great with even just the core game content.

Note: While this game was reviewed on the iPad, the iPhone version has the same gameplay and levels, and is available in the App Store as well.

$0.99

Cut the Rope

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-05 :: Category: Games / Family

[ Cut the Rope HD Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: $1.99, Application, charts, cut the rope, cutely-changing, device-reviewed, family, ipad, ipad app, ipad apps and games, Iphone, overall-rating, review, ropes

CineXPlayer is a major step forward in iPad video playback. Apple’s video codec support is heavily limited in its playback capabilities, rendering .avi files useless without conversion. With CineXPlayer, no conversion or transcoding is necessary.

Getting started is a simplistic, painless process – everything is done through iTunes. Add in the media that you want through the “Applications” tab in iTunes, sync and play. Presently, the application plays files with the Xvid codec, a highly popular codec found on most .avi files. Unfortunately, file formats like .mkv (used for HD content) and AC3 (Dolby Digital) are not yet supported, although the latter is coming soon. Through VLC’s application we know that it is possible to implement these file formats, meaning an update to CineXPlayer to provide more playback capability is not an out-of-this-world possibility.

CineXPlayer’s interface is clean and uncluttered. Two menu bars provide instructions on how to hide a new movie and seek help (top), as well the ability to clear all resume points on videos and mute the volume (bottom). Most of the screen is taken up by a library of your added movies in list format with their name provided. To delete movies, Apple’s standard swipe-to-right feature has been implemented. I feel that the interface could be improved, particularly with the implementation of watched/unwatched markers and a different library viewing style. For example, VLC has implemented a bookshelf style approach that works well, providing a screenshot preview of the content at hand. Nonetheless, the clean theme works well in this application.

When watching video, the interface is equally minimalist. A menu bar along the top provides a time-scroll bar coupled with dual upward / downward time counters, allowing you to navigate to any particular second in the movie with no guessing involved. Furthermore, additional tools allow you to view the content full screen with no dead space (usually at the cost of removing some sides of the video), play / pause and move video back to the start. There is only a temporarilyy visible watermark on the video that disappears after a few seconds of inactivity, meaning you can enjoy all of your content without any distractions elsewhere on the screen.

Through testing in iOS 4.2, I discovered that CineXPlayer already has AirPlay support integrated, the tool developed by Apple that allows you to stream audio to another source. AirPlay will become available to general public with the release of iOS 4.2 in November.

Overall, I am surprised that Apple allowed CineXPlayer into the App Store, given its strict video playback rules. For those who wish to enjoy any Xvid media on their iPad, CineXPlayer suits nicely and is a welcome addition to any iPad. There’s even an iPhone version to go with it. Subtitles are due to come in a future release of CineXPlayer, with a preview available below:

[ CineXPlayer Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by zulu \\ tags: $3.99, Application, digital, interface, ipad apps and games, Iphone, media, movie, overall-rating, video, xvid

The iPad makes for a great digital picture frame, yet the included Photo app leaves a bit to be desired when it comes for creating interesting, fun, and unique ways of showing off your photos. Corel has taken note of this issue and designed an app for those looking to spruce up that photo displaying experience. Does Corel succeed with making an app worthy of kicking the default Photos app to the curb?

Corel Paint it! Show is a simple photo slide show app that is looking to do one thing, improve your photo slideshow viewing experience. Getting your photos happens in two ways, you pull them off your photo library on the iPad, or you can connect to Facebook and pull all those late night blurry pics you have posted to your Facebook account. Hopefully we can see a few more options creep up in future updates to allow us to connect to Picasa, Flickr, and other online sites beside Facebook.

Once you have the photos picked out and residing in your slideshow, the magic begins. You can choose from five different painting styles, or just let the app randomly choose a style for you. Your photos will display in the original form first, and then the app will proceed to “paint” it for you. Unbelievably, the paintings are actually rather enjoyable to see in their finalized form. There is even an included save and share feature that will allow you to email, save to the iPad, and update your Facebook wall with that painted work of art.

While the app has yet to crash on me, a few issues end up taking the overall experience down a notch. The biggest downer is the speed, or lack of it, of this app. Just navigating from the slideshow into the albums can take ten to fifteen seconds. Adding photos into the slideshow will yield a few seconds of a delay from the time you click on the photo to the time it is in the app. Another gripe is that you can save those works of art, but only at their currently rendered state. For example, I had a sunset picture being hand painted, and I very much enjoyed the results I was seeing. I went to save this result only to find it did not save the final processed image, but rather the image as it was when I clicked save.

So does Corel have a winning app on its hands with Paint it! Show? Yes they do! Aside from the speed and saving issues, this app creates an enjoyable, fun, and creative way to watch your photos turn into masterful pieces of art that will stream across that sexy iPad screen.

[ iPad Review: Corel Paint it! Show is a post from 148Apps ]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: corel, flickr, ipad, online, overall-rating, paint it! show, photos, time

Bullet hell shooters on the iDevice certainly require a certain kind of manic personality. Being an old fashioned guy (but not old!), I am more accustomed to the bullet hell shooter that gives you a glimmer of hope. I like to upgrade my weapons, get power-ups, and fight bosses — you know, the normal stuff that you do in video games. This new crop of bullet hell shooters don’t aspire to be beaten though, they just want to be cool.

As a “cool” bullet hell shooter, Techno Trancer does a good job of sucking you in with bright flashes, crazy glowing objects, and a techno beat to keep you moving forward. The screen stimulation overdose has your little ship shooting at masses of enemies flying in patterns shooting red blobs that seem to follow you. When the enemies die, more blobs fly out of them, as well as little gold things (apparently called energy bits) which give you more score and a boost to your “energy bar. Between all the glowing blobs following you, flashing gold things falling, and enemy flight patterns (and their subsequent explosions), you really have no idea what’s going on. The only break you ever get in the game is if you shake the screen, shooting all the red blobs away from you. I have no idea how often you can use it, but I found myself shaking the screen quite often.

With no clue as to what is happening, your best bet is to avoid the red blobs that equal immediate death. Avoiding them is no easy task due to their sheer numbers, but hovering as best you can around the middle of the screen seems to be the key. Once you blow up enough and collect their energy bits, you get a shield of some kind that lasts for what seems to be an arbitrary period of time. There’s just too much going on to really tell.

By the end of a few plays, instead of feeling like a champ I just sat there and wondered what happened. Did I really just play a game or did I download a techno infused light show? I don’t think that there is an ending to the game, and there doesn’t seem to be any bosses, so what’s the point?

The point is that Techno Trancer is the bullet hell version of an endless runner. The whole goal is to play for as long as you possibly can until you die. Maybe this works for some, but the reason the endless runner genre works so well is that you can learn from your mistakes, something that is pretty much out of the question in Techno Trancer. I like the overall style of the game, but the sheer amount of punishment will repel most sensible gamers. It takes a certain type of individual to enjoy a game that offers you no hope.

But man is it cool.

[ Techno Trancer Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by iieevvn \\ tags: Application, bullet, bullet hell, Game, giga-rensya, Iphone, overall-rating, price, rating, screen, techno trancer, weapons, well-as-little

Stoneship comes from the makers of Myst, which makes it all the surprising just how lightweight the game is. Fortunately this is hugely to its benefit as it makes for an entertaining turn based strategy game that’s simple to drop in and out of as you please.

You play ship-based adventurers who must explore each level while vanquishing all the pirates and monsters. To achieve this you must explore the map by tapping on each available square. Along the way you can find harbors that can increase the number of crew members as well as weaponry and treasure to boost your score and firepower.

It’s a simple little game to get the hang of. The key to success is clearly to acquire as many crew members as possible before the time limit runs out and the pirate ship appears for you to defeat. Once a battle does occur, gameplay switches to somewhat of a rhythm game, whereby tapping the respective fire buttons quickly is the name of the game.

It’s not an overly deep game: providing you memorize the pattern to each level, you can always return to earlier stages in order to acquire better high scores and medals. You can also unlock ‘first mates,’ which provide additional bonuses — these come in handy at later stages. Its visuals are very charming and cartoon-like which further enhance the casual nature of the game.

Stoneship makes a wonderfully light distraction. It’s the kind of game you plan to play for five minutes then realise an hour has passed already. The promise of future updates offering new levels and first mates just makes it all the more appetizing a product.

[ Stoneship Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by tmunzke \\ tags: cyan worlds, device-reviewed, overall-rating, price, rating, respective, time, turn based strategy