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 ]

Wispin is the sort of game that tries to trick you with its cutey-pie graphics and doe-eyed main character into thinking it’s some sort of simple children’s game. Once you fire it up though you realize you’re in for a challenging, fast-paced affair that will tax both your brain and your reflexes. The game delivers some quick-hitting fun, and only the overly loose controls keep it from being an absolute classic.

In order to succeed in Wispin you must take out colorful blob enemies by smashing into them with the main character. The trick is the blobs come in three different colors; hit them when your Wispin matches the color of the blob and you’ll dispatch it, but run into it when you’re a different hue and you’ll take damage. The ability to change Wispin’s color on the fly means that you’ll be constantly shifting colors to clean up stages, so be ready to work those thumbs. Furthermore, players are rewarded for taking out multiple baddies of the same color in a row, so you may want to weave past some foes in order to snag that last blue or red enemy to keep your streak intact.

The game manages to up the ante by adding in varying enemy types and power-ups as you go. The enemies are especially fun to watch as each sort of forms himself up out of nothing using some cool animations. This is one of those games where it’s easy to lose your focus because you’re so busy admiring the surprisingly sharp and crisp visuals.

The only notable flaw in Wispin is the floaty controls that never seem to match up with the amount of precision needed. The game can be controlled either via tilt or onscreen joystiq, but neither is all that reliable. The major problem is that the enemies exist in a 3D space on a 2D plane, so positioning Wispin in just the right spot can be pretty tough. Furthermore, our hero moves around fairly quickly in the stage, so if you miss a foe it’s easy to drift off course and either miss again coming back around or accidentally hit another enemy. Those expecting precision from the game are going to be sorely disappointed.

Aside from that complaint, Wispin is a fun, beautiful game that offers a good amount of entertainment. It’s not a mind-blowing experience, but it is entertaining and very well-made. Just keep in mind that the blobs are only cute until they try and kill you with fire; then things start getting real.

[ Wispin 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 ]

MobileMonet manages to be both useful and fun to mess around with. Not bad at all for an inexpensive photography app. Unlike other photography apps, MobileMonet doesn’t try to do everything – it focuses on just one thing and does it extremely well.

Load a photo into the app by either picking it out from your photo album or taking a snap directly, and get to work. MobileMonet generates a black and white sketch of your image thus allowing you to restore color whether you wish. This can make for some fantastic effects as you can see in the screenshots. You can bring color to the focus of the photo such as your child or pet for example, or bring out the red of a car and leave the rest of the photo black and white. It really does look good, and it’s very easy to do.

It’s a simple matter of moving your finger across where you want the color to appear, just like a brush. The more you brush an area, the more depth is added to that area and its coloring. You can adjust how vibrant and bright the color is as well as the line intensity and how grey and black you want the image to look. If you change your mind about something, an undo button is always on hand making things easier to experiment with.

Facebook, email and SMS support is included so you can directly send your photos from within the app. It would have been nice if Twitter integration had been included also though.

MobileMonet is a very simple app but one that produces fantastic results for very little effort. I was truly impressed by some of the results I garnered and I’ve got a real urge to put the 500 or so photos in my album through the system, just to see how it looks. Give this app a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

[ MobileMonet Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Train Conductor 2: USA is by the developer The Voxel Agents. I saw this game sitting in one of the App Store’s many lists and looking at the 4 star ratings made me do one of those impulse buys that I’m sure you all can relate to.

The game begins with a short tutorial and within a minute or so I figured out what I had to do. The objective is very simple, you must guide oncoming trains to their assigned track without crashing into one another…  Read More