I don’t know any other languages besides English. It’s slightly embarrassing really. While I used to know some German, it all left my head somewhere over the years and now I’m stuck with just the one language. I’d love to learn another language but it’s finding the time and a form of studying that works for me. Spanish Touch Trainer helps hugely with this and it teaches you the correct manner of forming sentences.

It’s an app that, most of all, teaches you verb conjugation. Anyone who’s tried learning a language will know that verb conjugation is a huge problem when you’re just starting out. Spanish Touch Trainer teaches you how to figure this out via the context of real sentences. There’s no sign of silly phrases like ‘my monkey has a hat’ which you’ll never actually use. Instead there are useful phrases like ‘my name is…’ and ‘where do you live?’ The advanced side of the app offers more complex sentences such as ‘although they were very excited, they did not know how to get there,’ which can then be used to formulate your own complex sentences.

Once you’ve completed figuring out what Spanish word matches which English word, you can then listen to a recording of the sentence from a Spanish speaker. This is then handy for you to learn how to say things correctly. Besides the ‘game’ part of the app, there’s also a conjugation section which acts as a very handy reference tool while you’re learning.

Spanish Touch Trainer is a handy learning tool indeed. While it won’t teach you everything you need to know, it helps you out hugely with those pesky verb conjugations and even better, you can do it anywhere you like thanks to the portable nature of the iOS devices. Much more fun than being stuck slaving in front of textbooks.

[ Spanish Touch Trainer Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Supposedly I have quite a high IQ. I say supposedly as it was a while ago that I took the test and I’m convinced my laziness gets in the way of any actual intelligence. Still, I like taking tests like the ones offered by Mensa which makes Mensa Brain Test an ideal app to give a whirl.

Mensa Brain Test offers two modes – a training mode and the actual test. Training mode offers you five multiple choice questions to answer so as to get your brain in the right mood for answering the full tests. The full tests are true mind benders. You can choose to complete a short, medium or long test. The long tests are indeed rather long with 60 questions to answer across 60 minutes. Even the short test can take up to 20 minutes to complete. Mensa Brain Test is clearly a title that demands some time spent on it. The questions also require you to fully concentrate because as you’d expect, they’re challenging to say the least.

The questions are all genuine Mensa questions that are used in various test papers so if you gain a good score here, you’re clearly rather bright. Questions range from mathematical in nature to logical. Some are visual with you having to determine which is the odd one out from a set of images which is frequently much harder than it sounds. Others require you to answer analogies, e.g., something along the lines of ‘River is to Bank as Sea is to…’ All the questions are multiple choice, but this rarely makes it feel any easier.

A results screen enables you to compare and contrast your scores, checking to see whether you’re improving or not with time. There’s also Game Center support meaning you can compare yourself to others. Perhaps fortunately, you can choose whether to upload your scores to the global leaderboard or not – potentially saving yourself any embarrassment.

Mensa Brain Test is a rather satisfying quiz game to play through, although annoyingly it’s not long before questions are repeated. In the case of some, though, that doesn’t strictly mean you’ll remember the right answer though!

It’s not relaxing by any means and it’ll certainly tax your brain more so than any other quiz that I’ve played before. I did find with practice that I started to adjust my thinking appropriately and subsequently started to improve my scores. It’s more of a time commitment than most App Store titles, but Mensa Brain Test is definitely worth a look if you fancy something more cerebral than average quiz offerings.

[ Mensa Brain Test Review is a post from 148Apps ]

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe is an award winning photo-blog (Webby Award, People’s Voice for Best Use of Photography), that presents the latest news in pictorial form. New entries are posted three days a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – and there’s now a new way to see these entries. The Big Picture has finally arrived, officially, to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad in an all-in-one universal application. For this review, I’ve used the most appropriate device: the iPad.

When opening The Big Picture, the most recent photo set is featured, along with its name, number of photos and date of publication. Below that, you’ll find the thirteen most recent photograph sets in much smaller format, spanning three pages. All contain the same information as the featured photo set.

To get started, tap on a photo set. Before you’re taken to the photos themselves, a little information is provided, in order to get you acquainted with the background behind the photos. In this case, our featured photo set is of the wildfires in Israel that began earlier this month. After some optional reading of (disheartening) facts, tapping “View Entry” will take you to what this application is all about: photos.

The Big Picture works in both portrait and landscape mode, though all photos are designed to be viewed in the latter format. Perhaps most importantly, the photos are of high quality: there’s no scaled down, bandwidth-saving feature, meaning you’ll be viewing high quality photos all the time. A small summary is attached to each photo, providing specific information about what you’re viewing, as well as a counter to let you know how many photos are left in the set. Tapping on the screen once will remove all of this additional information, providing full focus on the photo at hand.

Of course, this being the social world, The Big Picture has integrated a number of Sharing options for each photo: mail, facebook and twitter, the latter two of which are integrated into the application itself. Oddly, the application doesn’t feature in-built mail, it switches to Mail.app – odd given the fact that, of the three sharing options, this is the only one that Apple provide a system for. Options to save the photo to your library, as well as view the photo in Safari, are also present.

However, there are a few problems and drawbacks, the most significant of which is the lack of photo pre-loading. Every photo, even whenever you’re in a set, loads individually whenever you move to that specific page. On 3G, I found that it took in and around two seconds per photo to load, which might not sound like much, but after 35 photos worth that’s a lot of dead seconds. In addition, with the exception of sharing, there’s very little integration to the iPhone or iPad, making it feel somewhat unofficial and ported rather than developed straight for the iPad. In comparison to Wide Angle Review, which I reviewed earlier this year, the navigation for photos seems dry and boring. An option to show all photos on a page (in smaller format with the ability to tap to full screen) certainly wouldn’t go a-miss. Lastly, not all photo sets are actually available, only the most recent ones. This very much limits what the overall application has to offer.

Overall, I’m mixed towards The Big Picture. On the one hand, the service that it offers is invaluable, but on the other I can’t help but feel that the application isn’t near its full potential. The former is a personal comment, the latter a reviewing comment. Ultimately, it’s the reviewing comments that determine the rating.

[ The Big Picture Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Sometimes I really wish I could have been alive during the Dark Ages. Sure, there was sort of a plague thing going around and the average life expectancy was something like 12, but if the world was anything like what’s depicted in Braveheart then you got to spend all day twirling in a circle swinging a mace at anyone who got within 10 feet of you. I don’t know about you, but that’s a life I can get behind. Though the game is the farthest thing in the world from mentally taxing, Braveheart can still be an entertaining lesson in rampant skull bashing.

Gameplay in Braveheart is simplicity personified, with players making circular motions to send their hero spinning like a top as he wipes out baddies. Moving around the field is as simple as tapping where you want to go, and there are even a few multitouch commands for things like firing off a volley of arrows. This is definitely one of those games just about anyone can pick up and play instantly.

The trouble with such a simple scheme is that it also erodes any lasting appeal the game may have. Braveheart tries to keep players interested with a weapon and skill upgrade system as well as mid-level perks that grant temporary status boosts, but these are little more than distractions which try and make you forget that what you’re actually doing isn’t all that fun. The only objective in each stage is to kill all the enemies who come running toward you, so there’s very little call for skill or strategy. Simplicity can be refreshing, but overly-simplistic games just aren’t that much fun.

Though the gameplay’s nothing to write home about, Braveheart’s presentation manages to be top-notch, with crisp visuals and nicely detailed environments. Though the frame rate may chug every once in a while, overall the app does a nice job of keeping up with all the onscreen action, as mass murder is always a bit more palatable when it looks this nice.

Braveheart manages to entertain for a short while but then it quickly starts to wear thin. Though there are a number of nice bells and whistles, the core mechanics just don’t quite hold up over the long haul. Feel free to check out the lite version and get a taste, but there’s a good chance that a taste is all you will need.

[ Braveheart Review is a post from 148Apps ]

I’m sitting in a house surrounded by snow, ice and freezing cold temperatures. So it makes perfect sense to be reviewing Ray Marching, a game that’s all about controlling the rays of the sun.

Your job is to save flowers by directing the sun photons at the targets and, presumably, saving plantkind. To do this is simple, at least at first it is. Using your finger, you position the trajectory of the rays towards the targets. The problem is you can only do this in a straight line. The addition of arrows and other items makes for an easier task but the strategy lies in figuring out how to get to the target. While the game starts out very simply, you’ll quickly be stumped.

Points are scored for succeeding but also accuracy. The best scores come from hitting the bullseye of each target but sometimes this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Slightly oversensitive controls also contribute to this making it a little fiddly to be pinpoint accurate. Although at least this doesn’t affect the general enjoyment that Ray Marching brings.

It’s a formula that’s been used to similar effect many times before but Ray Marching is good fun. There’s 60 stages in all as well as achievements to gain, although sadly they’re not achievements linked to GameCenter or OpenFeint.

Ray Marching won’t set the world alight with its originality. It’s all business as usual really but it is an enjoyable experience and it’s very cute and charming. The opening levels provide an ideal introductory sequence so that you’re gradually guided through what can be done. Many later puzzles are challenging though and are bound to stump you for a while, providing plenty of longevity at a low price.

[ Ray Marching Review is a post from 148Apps ]