Daily Archives: September 3, 2010

Top iPad Game Apps: Medieval HD, Puzzle Agent Debut as Big Sellers

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Top iPad Game Apps: Medieval HD, Puzzle Agent Debut as Big Sellers is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Every week, FingerGaming rounds up the most popular paid and free iPad applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top paid titles are:

  1. Angry Birds HD ($4.99)
  2. Medieval HD ($2.99)
  3. Pinball HD ($0.99)
  4. Zombie Infection HD ($0.99)
  5. Sudoku 2 HD Pro ($2.99)
  6. Fruit Ninja HD ($4.99)
  7. Scrabble for iPad ($9.99)
  8. Puzzle Agent HD ($6.99)
  9. The Settlers HD ($9.99)
  10. Words With Friends HD ($2.99)

Brisk Mobile’s strategy title Medieval HD finishes as the App Store’s second best-selling iPad game in its first week of release, trailing behind longtime chart champ Angry Birds HD. Gameprom’s Pinball HD returns to the charts following a drop in price to 99 cents, while Gameloft’s discounted Zombie Infection HD follows at fourth place.

Finger Arts’ Sudoku 2 HD Pro beats Fruit Ninja HD for fifth place, as newcomers Puzzle Agent HD and The Settlers HD chart among the week’s most popular iPad titles in their first week of release.

Here are this week’s top free iPad applications:

  1. Medieval HD Lite
  2. Mad O Ball 3D
  3. Fly Control HD
  4. Zentromino HD
  5. Pac-Man Lite for iPad
  6. Real Solitaire Free for iPad
  7. Rollercoaster Extreme HD
  8. Ogs
  9. WordSearch Unlimited HD Free
  10. CastleCraft

A demo version of Brisk Mobile’s Medieval HD leads today’s free iPad game charts, leading to a boost in popularity for the paid edition. Tommaso Lintrami’s ball-rolling game Mad O Ball 3D takes second place during a day-long free download promotion, as Invictus’s Fly Control HD claims third in its premiere week.

Other notable free downloads for this week include Namco’s Pac-Man Lite, Outer Court’s strategic action game Ogs, and Freeverse’s multiplayer kingdom-building sim CastleCraft.


Cave Releases Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite

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Cave Releases Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Cave has launched a free Lite demo version of its acclaimed bullet-hell shooter Dodonpachi Resurrection. If you haven’t yet purchased the full version, you need to play this, badly.

Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite includes the first level of the game, playable in both Arcade and iPhone modes. The demo also offers a taste of the new SM scoring system, which includes two weapons exclusive to the iPhone version of Dodonpachi Resurrection.

Be aware that both the full and Lite versions of the game are only playable on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the iPad, and third-generation iPod Touch devices. Earlier hardware generations are not supported.


AutoCAD Triumphantly Returns to Mac and iOS Devices

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AutoCAD Triumphantly Returns to Mac and iOS Devices is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

It is hard to even imagine what computer-aided design would be like without an application like AutoCAD.  It has redefined the way that an entire generation of engineers look at problems and been a big proponent for PCs in the industrial design sector.

You would have to go back eighteen years to remember the last time that AutoCAD made an appearance on a Mac platform of any sort.  At the time, one Steve Jobs had been shown the door and the company was floundering rather severely.  In response to an indefinite future for the fledgling company, Autodesk decided to close up shop on their Mac OS based development team and focus on the more lucrative PC market.

The plan seemed to pay of for them at the time, but left Mac users out in the cold, forcing them to use emulation tools in order to get the same functionality on their platform of choice.  Fortunately for all involved, that is now a thing of the past as it was recently announced by Autodesk that the AutoCAD franchise will be making a return to the once abandoned Mac universe.

But what would a return of Apple support be without iOS applications as well?  Coined AutoCAD WS, AutoDesk will be releasing an iPad, iPhone and iTouch application that will allow users to both view and edit designs on the fly.  As the sweet icing on the cake, the app will be completely free!  This is kind of a big deal when you consider that a stand alone license of the application could set a user back as much as nearly $4,500.

I just find it staggering how far technology has come in the last twenty years.  Even a decade ago it would be lunacy to consider what we can design on our computers, and now you can do the same thing on a device that you can fit in your pocket.  It will be interesting to see what limitations are placed on the WS versions of AutoCAD, but we will never be ones to look a gift horse in the mouth.

You can look forward to this giant step forward in design and engineering to hit the App Store sometime this fall.

[ via InfoWorld.com ]

[ AutoCAD Triumphantly Returns to Mac and iOS Devices is a post from 148Apps ]


Three Freebies Worth Playing

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Three Freebies Worth Playing is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Terry Touch™ – From the mind of a 16 year old working under the tutelage of ustwo™, the company that will trademark anything they get their hands on, comes Terry Touch™.

If you happen to download Terry Touch™, treat it more as a morning coffee replacement than a game. There are four minigames included, all of which have you doing something on your iPhone screen ridiculously fast. I’ve been playing the “Slide” game for the last 5 minutes and I think that I may have broken a sweat. I’m determined to crack the top 10 though… it’s only a matter of time.

Jack McLean, the creator of Terry Touch™, says, “It was the best three weeks I have had! Working alongside fantastic developers and designers was like a dream. I learnt more from creating Terry Touch than I would have learnt from 3 months in a computing lesson, and it was fun! It’s so exciting to be involved with an inspiring company and work with them throughout the creation and release of an iPhone application.”

FREE!

TERRY TOUCH™

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-27 :: Category: Games / Arcade

Lyric Legend - It’s not often that I play a music game on the iPhone that I have trouble with. Games like Tap Tap Revenge, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band are all quite forgiving by design, and in turn lose what makes the genre so great on the console. Sadly, I’m getting bored with tapping on the little dots that are flying down my beautiful touch screen.

Instead of using the instruments as the rhythm mechanism, Lyric Legend throws lyric bubbles at you, making you hit them in the order that they are sung in the song. Who knew that tapping on lyrics would be such a challenge? Even with songs that I know quite well I find myself scrambling to pick out the correct next word in the song.

Lyric Legend gives you 3 free songs, with the rest being 99 cents a pop. Maybe it’s a bit steep, but at least you can try the first three for free.

FREE!

Lyric Legend

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-31 :: Category: Games / Music

Aractroid – Aractroid is a hard game to pin down. If I were being paid to describe it (well, I guess I am!), I would say that it is an color matching game hidden in an action title set on a spider web in space. There you go. The developer may put it a bit better, “Playing as an Aractroid, a cunning and powerful warrior species of spider, you defend your web from the onslaught of the invading electronic spiders that want to wipe out the Aractroid race.”

Basically, you are a robot spider on a web that wants to protect its nest. There are little color changing circles around your web that change your color, and you have to match colors with the enemy to kill it. As you kill more and more enemies, you get an assortment of special abilities and movement options, such as charging and jumping between web junctions.

Being a “color matching game hidden in an action title set on a spider web in space,” it’s hard to describe how the gameplay works, but it is fast. Give it a shot, as Aractroid is free for the month of September.

FREE!
$0.99

Aractroid

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-12-05 :: Category: Games / Action

[ Three Freebies Worth Playing is a post from 148Apps ]


Official Twitter App Updated for iPad Compatibility

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Official Twitter App Updated for iPad Compatibility is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

When Twitter acquired Loren Brichter’s acclaimed Tweetie app and made it the official Twitter app on iPhone, it came with the promise that Twitter for iPad was in the works as well. Twitter has just updated Twitter for iPhone to version 3.1, bringing iPad support to the now universal app.

The first thing you notice about Twitter for iPad is that it feels very smooth and intuitive, much like how Loren Brichter’s other apps have felt. The app is far more complex than Twitter for iPhone, though. Swiping across a tweet no longer calls up the reply and favorite options, for example – it’s now used for moving tabs in and out of view, so you can hide or return to a specific user or tweet view that you called up. You can add multiple accounts, and can upload pictures and video, view your lists, and all the other features that have become standard to most Twitter apps, including Twitter for iPhone.

Links are opened in an ingenious way – when you click on a tweet with a link, it opens up a smaller web view of the link, so that you can view it without it taking up the whole screen, but you can expand it to the whole screen if you wish. If you want a quick view of a conversation between people, you can use 2 fingers to drag down from the tweet to open up a view of the last few tweets. Sadly, image hosting services do not open up in-line previews of the images in your stream, you have to click on the links to view the images. Profiles now show a list of 5 users who are considered ’similar’ to that user for you to also follow. Also, links to tweets do not open as a native view in the app, they open up the tweet in the mobile Twitter site.

Twitlonger support is implemented for standard tweets, but not for DMs. The miniature DM reply view also doesn’t show character count, and only lets you edit the DM by calling up the draft, by hitting the new tweet button. It’s very unintuitive, and something that needs to be fixed. There’s a lot of little tweaks that the app needs, as this is clearly a 1.0 release focused on the bigger picture than on minutiae, and there is a lot of complexity to this app that makes little things easy to miss. But, given the state of Twitter apps on the iPad, a Loren Brichter-developed app with a lot of intriguing and new interface features for free (can you say multiple account support?) is welcome. The app is sure to receive future updates as well, making it worth keeping an eye on for iPad-owning Twitter users.

FREE!

Twitter

+ Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad

Our Rating: ★★★★★ :: STUNNING (BUT ..)
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2009-10-09 :: Category: Social Networking

[ Official Twitter App Updated for iPad Compatibility is a post from 148Apps ]


iMindMap Mobile HD Review

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iMindMap Mobile HD Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: Think Buzan
Price: $32.99
Version: 1.0

Design Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Features Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Value Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.94 out of 5 stars

One of the many appealing aspects of the iPad is that it isn’t just limited to excelling in one area – like games or entertainment – but in many areas like news, utilities and productivity, thanks to the hard work and determination of developers around the globe. ThinkBuzan, a long-time established developer of mind-mapping tools, brings its latest creation to the App Store in an attempt to show just how powerful yet easy the iPad is when it comes to productivity and thought-gathering.

The first thing that struck me about iMindMap Mobile HD was just how similar the directory design looks in comparison to Apple’s iWork for iPad suite. The result is that the integration to the iPad appears strong. The application looks like it was built especially for the iPad, making use of its exclusive features and designs.

iMindMap does things a little differently than its rivals. Rather than generic text to begin the mind map, you set a central image in which the title of your mind map is enclosed. There are three categories to choose from – Objects, Abstract and General – providing a total of 42 images. As a minimalist I would have preferred a text-only option, which is lacking, but a number of the images are non-intrusive and work well.

A mind map is created with the help and co-ordination of two colours. A red circle signifies that you can draw a new branch, and once that branch is built a blue circle then appears, which allows you to amend and adjust the settings of that particular branch. Such settings include: editing the text of a branch, adjusting whether the branch is collapsed, and adding an icon / URL / note to the branch. The collapsable branch feature is particularly useful, allowing you to focus attention on particular branches. The menu bar along the top provides a quick way to edit the title of a branch, add a picture and to change its colour (40 different types, if you’re wondering). Disappointingly, given the image integration, you can’t add your own pictures from the iPad’s photo library. There’s also a button to automatically sort and organize your mind map, so that everything is aligned correctly and smoothly, which adds significantly to the overall feel of your creation.

Once you’ve watched the getting started video (also available below), iMindMap is very easy to use. There’s not much to learn and what is to be learned can be picked up quickly. A focus has been placed on actual usage of the mind map rather than how pretty it looks, meaning precedence is given to your work. Mind maps can also shared, through exporting as an image or PDF, sent by e-mail. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support DropBox or exporting in other formats like a number of its alternatives do. A mind map can also be presented through a specially designed Presentation Mode, visible in the video below, that works through a VGA connection to the iPad.

The application is certainly more expensive than its rivals. This is certainly the only mind mapping application that I’m aware of that features a presentation mode, which perhaps justifies its cost to some users. For others, a cheaper alternative may be all that’s needed.

[ iMindMap Mobile HD Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Facebook Places, meet InCrowd

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Facebook Places, meet InCrowd is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Earlier this month, Facebook announced their much-anticipated Places feature, integrating social networking with geo-locations to create a more personal and unique social experience. Today, Booyah Inc. announced an application that allows you to tell your friends where you are and what you’re doing at that moment, all through Facebook’s Places feature. Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (though not universal), the free application allows you to send out your own location as well as “check in” to see who is near you. Booyah are also the developers of MyTown, which hosts some 3.2 million active users to date.

InCrowd is placed in the Entertainment section of the App Store because of its popularity contest feature and existence of customizable characters known as avatars. Booyah urges you to “strive for the highest popularity” by announcing your location and interacting with others around you, all through your own customizable character. For example, by posting about a venue nearby you’ll gain a number of points which can be used to upgrade and personalize your avatar.

“InCrowd gives players a completely new way to socialize real-time at the places they love,” said Keith Lee, CEO, Booyah. “We’re compressing the barriers between digital social networks and the real world in a way that lets people find their friends or make new ones in a completely unique manner.”

You can download the application for free by clicking on the link below. A Facebook account, also free, is of course necessary to reap the benefits of InCrowd.

FREE!

InCrowd

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-31 :: Category: Entertainment

[ Facebook Places, meet InCrowd is a post from 148Apps ]


Mirror’s Edge Review

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Mirror’s Edge Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: EA Mobile
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 3G

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.81 out of 5 stars

Better late than never. Mirror’s Edge has been a long time coming for the iPhone, having finally been released almost 4 months after the iPad version was released. Mirror’s Edge is an adaptation of the eponymous console game, which has you playing as Faith, a ‘Runner’ who deftly navigates urban landscapes trying to get to her goal. There’s a storyline similar to the console version, but it is largely irrelevant here, as the only hints of it are in the scrolling text sections between levels. All the levels largely only differ in setting, as the goal in each level is the same – get to the end without dying from falling, bullets, or high-temperature steam. Of course, getting to the end of each level means performing acrobatic maneuvers to get over or under obstacles, stringing together wall runs, trying to discover the hidden messenger bags spread throughout the levels, all while trying to complete the levels as quickly as possible.

Mirror’s Edge’s platforming is fantastic. This was the strongest element of the console version, but now that the game is a 2D sidescroller, you can now enjoy the experience of the game without the nausea of the first person view, which makes this game feel far more like the pure parkour platformer that it can be. The striking visual aesthetic is also perfectly represented, with the city scenes all looking amazing. The game also runs very well, even on the iPhone 3G on iOS 4.0, with only minimal slowdown. The controls also are based on swiping gestures, not tapping virtual buttons, and while the running is often frustrating if you’re trying to stop to stand still, it makes chaining together long runs very intuitive.

Mirror’s Edge’s crucial flaw? It is very short. How short is it? My iPhone 3G’s battery wasn’t even halfway drained when I finished playing in a straight through session. There are only 12 short levels, with the only replay value coming from completing the levels for speed runs. As well, while combat is a lesser focus than it was in the console games, it’s still incredibly annoying, as it largely only breaks up the pace of the game. Also? The game ends on an incredibly anticlimactic note, similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction. Look, I know that you’re bound to what the console game’s storyline does, but that is no excuse for such an abrupt and unsatisfying endpoint to any game.

Mirror’s Edge may be short, and not fully rid of the horrid combat that has brought its other incarnations down, but it still is a fantastic agile urban platformer that shines more than it ever did on the consoles. It needs more content and more tweaking, but as far as it stands, Mirror’s Edge is a fun albeit brief platformer for the iPhone. Even it did take a while to finally hit the smaller devices.

[ Mirror’s Edge Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Free Copies of Osmos on Facebook

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Free Copies of Osmos on Facebook is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website


Free Copies of Osmos on Facebook

Osmos Free Copies of Osmos on FacebookHemisphere Games is giving away free promo codes for their great iPhone game, Osmos. To get your hands on a code, join the Osmos Facebook page, then wait until next week when they start posting batches of codes to the page every few hours. With batches of codes being posted every few hours each day, there should be plenty of codes to go around.

Unfortunately for international readers, the codes are only for US users. Check out this guide on how to redeem codes on the iTunes store if you are unfamiliar with the process.

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