Daily Archives: September 8, 2010

Top-Grossing Game Apps: Spider-Man and Slice It! Climb iPhone Charts

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Top-Grossing Game Apps: Spider-Man and Slice It! Climb iPhone Charts is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

In this weekly feature, FingerGaming rounds up the top-grossing iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top iPhone titles are:

  1. Angry Birds ($0.99)
  2. Ultimate Spider-Man: Total Mayhem ($6.99)
  3. Slice It! ($0.99)
  4. Words With Friends ($2.99)
  5. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz ($2.99)
  6. Monopoly ($2.99)
  7. Madden NFL 11 ($7.99)
  8. Tetris ($2.99)
  9. Fruit Ninja ($0.99)
  10. Pac-Man ($4.99)

Gameloft’s Ultimate Spider-Man: Total Mayhem moves up to second place in App Store game sales after debuting at third last week, as Angry Birds perches at the top of the list. Com2uS enters the charts at third place with its dividing puzzler Slice It!, while a returning Words With Friends takes fourth.

Madden NFL 11 continues a steady slide down the charts, and ends up behind Bejeweled 2 and Monopoly at seventh place in today’s results. Tetris remains a popular seller at eighth, as Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja outsells Namco’s Pac-Man for ninth place.

Here are this week’s top-grossing iPad applications:

  1. Angry Birds HD ($4.99)
  2. Madden NFL 11 for iPad ($12.99)
  3. The Settlers HD ($9.99)
  4. Scrabble for iPad ($9.99)
  5. Zombie Farm (Free)
  6. Plants vs. Zombies HD ($9.99)
  7. Fruit Ninja HD ($4.99)
  8. Real Racing HD ($9.99)
  9. Puzzle Agent HD ($6.99)
  10. Medieval HD ($2.99)

Though Madden NFL 11 falters in iPhone sales, the enhanced iPad version remains extremely popular, and challenges Angry Birds HD for today’s top chart spot. Gameloft’s The Settlers claims third place in its premiere week, as Scrabble for iPad follows close behind at fourth.

Telltale’s Puzzle Agent HD also sees a successful first week of release, rivaling Firemint’s Real Racing HD at ninth place. Zombie Farm, Plants vs. Zombies HD, and Fruit Ninja HD continue to rank among the platform’s biggest sellers, while Medieval HD drops to tenth place after a promising second-place debut last week.


Firemint’s Flight Control Sells 3 Million Units

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Firemint’s Flight Control Sells 3 Million Units is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Firemint’s hit air traffic management title Flight Control has surpassed another major sales milestone. The company reports that Flight Control has achieved global App Store sales in excess of three million units.

Flight Control, originally released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in March of 2009, has since seen a number of free content-expanding updates and the release of an HD version designed specifically for Apple’s iPad. The most recent version of Flight Control introduced Retina Display support for the iPhone 4 and the upcoming fourth-generation iPod Touch.

Firemint notes that the next version of Flight Control will add support for Apple’s Game Center social network, which launched earlier today.

Ports for smartphones and for Nintendo’s DSiWare service followed in the wake of Flight Control’s App Store success. Next month will bring the release of an enhanced PlayStation Network version, which will include four-person multiplayer, stereoscopic 3D, and support for the PlayStation Move motion controller. A WiiWare edition is slated for release later this year.


Harbor Master HD Updated With Clever New In-App Purchase

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Harbor Master HD Updated With Clever New In-App Purchase is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website


Imangi Studios' Harbor Master HD has seen a number of additions since its original iPad launch in April. The base game includes a single map and can be downloaded for free, but they've since added four new maps for $0.99 each as in-app purchases. The map above is called the Bermuda Triangle and includes pirates, monsters and cyclones to make your line-drawing life a bit more difficult.

But with the latest updates, they've also added a clever rewind feature that lets you restart the game right before that last fatal mistake:

We've also added a really cool feature – rewinds. With rewinds, after you crash, you can choose to rewind (or undo) the crash, and continue playing where you left off. You can only use ONE rewind in a game, and you get a limited number of rewinds total. When we launched the update, we gave people 5 rewinds, and then they could earn 1 rewind for each 1000 pieces of cargo they ship. So they more you play, the more rewinds you earn, and therefore you can use a rewind more often.

You start off with 5 rewinds and can use one in any particular game. Rewinds are then earned for longer play time or can be purchased via in-app purchase ($0.99 for $2.99 for 20, $4.99 for 40).

Balancing in-app purchases is always a challenging problem for a developer. On the one hand, in app purchases need to offer a legitimate value in a consumable product. But that product can't be one that gamers feel is a necessary component of the game. I feel like the rewinds fill this sort of niche well, and I'd expect we'll see it more often in the future. As an added bonus, I've always thought the compelling feature of these chaos management games is the "oh no!" last second regret when death comes suddenly. Now you get a second chance.

App Store Link: Harbor Master HD, Free (iPad Only)


A steak timer for the true steak enthusiast

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A steak timer for the true steak enthusiast is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

I still remember all you can eat steak night at the local Ponderosa. My cousin and I would chomp down four or five steaks each before we were both ready to burst at the seams. What we were eating was just a shadow of what steak is supposed to be, however.

Early in 2010 I took a vacation to Chicago. During my stay I visited a high end steak house, the Grill Room. This was my first interaction with how great “real” steak was. Our waiter (are they called waiters at steak houses?) brought out a huge plate of meat to display to us, explaining what each piece of meat was, how it was prepared, and the methods of cooking. It was at this visit that I learned “real” steak places won’t prepare steak past medium.

Steak Grilling Timer & Recipes is a grill timer for steak that provides much of the information I learned at a “real” steak house. Multiple steaks can be added, with each being allowed unique cuts, thickness, and cooking levels. Each steak timer can be started separately, to ensure that all of the steaks get done at the same time. Setting up each steak for cooking is the easiest process I think I’ve experienced in an app on the iPhone. The app even takes into consideration preparation on a gas grill, a charcoal grill, or inside.

Steak Timer is much more than a timer, however. Each cut of steak has a laundry list of facts, including how it was cut, cooking techniques, and the various forms that particular cut comes in. Recipe information can be searched through for individual cuts as well, ensuring multiple preparation techniques for each cut. Did I mention all of the above is available without an internet connection?

For those with an active internet connection, additional features are available. A Steak-Enthusiast blog is available directly inside the app, and Kansas City Steak Company runs a monthly drawing for a $75.00 gift card that can also be accessed directly inside the app.

If you’re a steak lover, you owe it to yourself to check out this free steak timer and database from Kansas City Steak Company. It doesn’t provide endless amounts of information, but provides the most important information that any steak lover would need, each time steak is for dinner. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return to my daydreaming about the masterpiece of a dinner I had at the Grill Room in Chicago again.

[ A steak timer for the true steak enthusiast is a post from 148Apps ]


Rimelands: Hammer of Thor Review

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Rimelands: Hammer of Thor Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: Crescent Moon Games
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars

When I play Rimelands: Hammer of Thor, I think to myself, “I would’ve been happy playing this on my PC back in the good ol’ days of PC gaming. I’ve read some reviews of Rimelands on iTunes, and I think that some people miss the point of the genre. There should be some kind of label on the iTunes page stating that this is not a dungeon crawler. If you go in expecting Diablo, you will be disappointed. The combat system is turn based, dice are the backbone of the combat, and you have to stick to your character class. If you go in thinking you’ll be a brawler and then decide you want to be an assassin, you’re out of luck.

Think of Rimelands as less Diablo, and more of Fallout 1+2. In fact, much of the storyline reminds me of Fallout, even though this steampunk game is based more upon D&D than Mad Max. The story goes like this: the humans in the 19th century pollute the Earth and cause an ice age. To survive, they go into caves (vaults?) to survive. Years later they come out to a world that is inhabited by magical creatures, faeries and the like. They end up fighting over whose world it is, and then there is you stuck somewhere in the middle. Like the poor vault dweller from Fallout, it becomes up to you to save the world. Along the way there are tons of NPC’s to talk to, enemy unit types to fight, and weapons to collect… all things that you would expect from a good RPG.

The real winner in Rimelands is the combat system combined with the excellent upgrade tree. At the beginning of the game, right around when you first level up, you decide what type of player you will be. Will you be a brawler, an assassin, or a mage? I always like plucking off people with ranged weapons, so I chose the assassin. As the assassin, each of my level ups enhance my long range/assassin abilities. Some levels will give me extra damage for ranged attacks, while others will let me add to my ability tree, which is full of skills that you can use during combat.

The combat system is probably the most unique thing about the game — after a long search, I think I’ve found a game with a D-Pad that works well. Regular movement works with the D-Pad, letting you only move four directions. Once you reach a combat point, you’ll see a red halo go around your image in the top left. Instead of shooting you to a silly combat scene, the game instantly has you in combat. Once in combat, you can do anything you want in your turn (there are no combat points), and it is over once you attack or move a space. Special moves take magic points, of which you have a set amount, and that’s it.

Once you attack, you get a certain amount of dice rolls depending on how powerful you are and the computer gets a certain amount of defensive rolls, and vise-versa when you are being attacked. The dice aren’t typical 6-sided die, they are a combination of skulls (damage), shields (defense), and X’s. It all makes sense once you get into the game, trust me.

All in all, Rimelands is the first turn based RPG that I didn’t feel constrained by the controls or game speed. On top of that, there is a good story, there are good characters, good combat, good level designs, and good graphics. If you are at all interested in turn based RPG’s, pick up Rimelands, you won’t regret it.

[ Rimelands: Hammer of Thor Review is a post from 148Apps ]