Android – Iphone – Applications

I want blood, blah! It’s a little late in the year for a vampire themed game, but FunOnYourCell has created a arcade platformer that will probably please the masses of pasty skinned, sun deprived gamers.

Why blood runner is a vampire game and not a turkey based game (for Thanksgiving) or a Santa based game (for Christmas) is lost on me, because the game really doesn’t need to have a theme at all. You play as a little vampire critter who must jump (and double jump/wall jump) around the screen to get to his coffin before the time runs out. With a thirst for blood, the only thing that keeps him going/extends the clock is blood droplets that you find all over the map (think coins in Mario). To make your journey home difficult, each map consists of a large area filled with spikes, water, and various other traps and obstacles that progressively get tougher to pass as the game goes on.

As far as platform gaming goes, BloodRunner offers some thrills, but doesn’t have any of those magical levels that put it over the top. Once you get the hang of the jump mechanics, each level just becomes a slightly more difficult version of the one before it. Each of the 30 levels are well designed and look quite nice, but there isn’t anything in the game that will really wow you. I liken Blood Runner to an above average game that you would find on Kongregate or Armor Games – good, but not outstanding.

In a nutshell, if you love platform gaming and can’t get enough of trying to beat the world in high score challenges, BloodRunner is probably the game for you. I really don’t understand why they haven’t done Christmas overlay for the Holiday season (there’s still time!), but I am only an app reviewer, not a consultant.

[ BloodRunner Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by me \\ tags: before-the-time, blood-runner, christmas, Game, Games, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, platform-gaming, platformer, price, rating, replay-value, review, runner-review

Cookbookie is one of those apps that SHOULD be a home run straight outta the park. It’s a good, original idea with a pleasant looking interface, and above all it’s practical. This is one of those apps that I really, really want to recommend, but I just can’t right now. In cooking terms, it just ain’t done enough yet.

The premise and purpose of Cookbookie is insanely simple: enter the titles of your print cookbooks and Cookbookie will index them and make their recipes searchable by keyword, ingredient or title. Search for, say, green beans, and you’ll get a list of ALL of the recipes that contain green beans in ALL of your cookbooks. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory.

In actuality, a search for green beans returns results for both “green” and “bean.” In the case of one of my cookbooks, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, I got over 300 “hits” because of the number of recipes containing the word “bean.” Not exactly helpful or useful. And, it should be noted, you don’t actually see the recipes, since I assume that would violate copyright law. What you get instead is a list of the recipes and their page numbers; useful enough, if the rest of the app works as it should.

The other major problem with Cookbookie is that it just doesn’t contain that many cookbooks in its database. I found Bittman’s book, which was a surprise, and, of course, The Joy of Cooking, but there were some oddities in the mix as well. One of Ina Garten’s cookbooks was in the database, but not another. The same was true for Giada DeLarentis. I could perhaps understand this if these were small press cookbooks or niche-market chefs, but these are some of the big guns. I expect a developer to include at least those before they put their product on the marketplace.

The look and feel of Cookbookie is strong, with only a few technical issues getting in the way. The app distinguishes itself in its use of color and for its clever use of food and food implements as icons throughout. It also features links to several cooking-oriented blogs and sites, which is a nice inclusion, but I’d prefer more time spent on the core purpose of the app.

Cookbookie just needs more development time. For $4.99, I expect more polish from an app. I’m really, really hoping the developers will pour some more time into this one. I’ll happily amend my review. That’s how much I want an original concept like this to succeed.

[ Cookbookie Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by Duy Phong \\ tags: books, cooking, database, developers, device-reviewed, outta-the-park, price, rating, robots and pencils

They say that the average person knows 5,000 to 6,000 words, though the number of words in an abridged dictionary averages at around 50,000. However, there’s always time to learn a few new words or brush up on those you forgot you knew in the first place, and Wordstr is a fun way to do just that. The straightforward game is quite addictive, but if you don’t already have a rather robust word roster you may not find it all that entertaining.

The game itself is as simple as it gets. Every round you have three minutes to deduce a random four or five-letter word. Every time you enter a guess the game tracks how many letters you managed to get right and lights them up on the keyboard. Thus, stages become a race to eliminate all the incorrect letters while unscrambling where the correct characters go. It’s a bit of a mix of Hangman and TextTwist, but without the frills and thrills. While there are bonus rounds where you can try and decipher anagrams of the round’s secret word and the ability to challenge your friends’ high scores via OpenFeint, that’s really all there is to it.

The lack of any visual panache also hurts the app, as the absence of any interesting backgrounds or entertaining themes leave a rather bland palette. Maybe some catchy music would make Wordstr more entertaining, but you’re better off listening to your own iTunes collection than the game’s included soundtrack. Ultimately, the whole presentation package is a bit of a letdown.

The gameplay of Wordstr makes it quite addictive if you enjoy this type of game, and once you’ve developed a strategy for weeding out letters and figuring out the secret words it’s very satisfying to run through multiple rounds and rack up incredible scores. This is a title clearly aimed at a more cerebral audience though, as the lack of any sort of hints or tips system means it won’t coddle folks who don’t happen to be gifted wordsmiths. This is an app meant to appeal to the Scrabble crowd, but then why would that group need this game? Wordstr can indeed be quite fun, but the niche genre it’s meant to appeal to might already have all their vocabulary-testing needs fulfilled elsewhere.

[ Wordstr Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by Debra \\ tags: device-reviewed, Game, Games, overall-rating, price, puzzle, quite-addictive, rating, replay-value, review, texttwist, words-or-brush, wordstr, wordstr-review

We have reported on a lot of iPad cases before. Some of them are pretty inexpensive, and some, like the one from Louis Vuitton and the one made with a 3D printer, are a little more pricey.

This is an iPad case designed by David August, and it is made of pure alligator skin. It also costs a lot: about $6,900. That’s like ten times the price of an iPad, right?

The entire collection is about $37,800. Oh man, are there still people who are this rich?

Source

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written by ahmed \\ tags: alligator skin ipad case, Apple, article, fiction, louis-vuitton, permanent-link, price, search, solid-gold, sony, tagging, terms-tagging

Heroes Lore 3 is about as big as it gets for mobile gaming – in Korea. In the land of many RPGs and Starcraft celebrities, the Heroes Lore series has been absolutely dominating the mobile gaming market. Ever since EA’s announcement that they would be porting the game to the American market, the question has been whether or not the title would translate well to our fast paced 3D market.

If you’ve ever seen a screenshot of Heroes Lore 3, you’ll know right off the bat that you are looking at an RPG that belongs on the Super Nintendo. The graphics are all cutesy and static, the sound is decidedly retro, and the little dialogue bits just reek of 1993. Many gamers loved that classic era of gaming though, so it’s not a stretch to understand the popularity of the series.

Like any epic-RPG, the story in Heroes Lore has rival factions, sinister villains, plot twists, conflicting internal dialogue, and a strong female character. The game also has a decidedly political stance against guns, war, and the like, but it’s all wrapped so nicely into the game that folks on either side of the debate won’t notice. Missing in the game though are huge lapses in knowing what to do, overly confusing upgrade systems, and impossible level bosses. Thankfully, the creators of Heroes Lore tidied up the package and created a simple menu system and a world that is easily navigable, but still large enough to seem, well, large.

There are some gripes that detract from the experience a bit, most of which involve an annoying movement system. The on screen action is controlled with a virtual D-Pad and virtual buttons. In theory, everything works quite well (the buttons are a bit small, but that’s only a little gripe), but the character movement is annoyingly sticky. In tight spaces, you tend to stick to walls, unable to progress until you figure out exactly where the game wants you to walk. After some plugging away you’ll always get to where you need to go, but these sticky walls really need to be fixed in an update. Also annoying is the all-to-often combat that occurs at the beginning of the maps. Once you enter a map in Heroes Lore, the only way you want to go is forward, as side to side movement will often take you to the previous map, and an enemy hit or a combo that makes you back up a bit will do the same.

Aside from the few nagging issues, Heroes Lore is an incredibly deep RPG experience (over 30 hours of gameplay) that will surely satisfy anyone who appreciates a good, old school RPG. It doesn’t have isometric views or Unreal Engine graphics, but it does have a solid story (only slightly hokey), great RPG elements, and a ton of game to play. While it probably won’t catch on quite like it did in Korea, I’ll bet that there will be a solid following that will eagerly be anticipating a Heroes Lore 4 (and maybe parts 1 and 2).

[ Heroes Lore 3 Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by margs \\ tags: Game, heroes lore, heroes lore 3, Iphone, iphone apps and games, maps, mobile, overall-rating, package, price, rpg