Best Iphone Apps Review

Real Tennis HD Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Gameloft’s Real Tennis HD for the iPad proves the adage that good looks aren’t enough to make a game a satisfying experience. Presenting itself as an arcade style tennis game, Real Tennis HD looks and sounds great and has plenty of options and game modes, but fails miserably when it comes to gameplay.

If you’ve ever played a tennis game on a console system (other than the unique experience of the Wii, of course), you’ll see many familiar elements in Real Tennis HD. The game looks similar to Sega’s Virtua Tennis or Microsoft’s Top Spin, though not nearly as refined or polished. All of the modes are nearly identical to its console kin: exhibition, instant play, championship, tournament and even online multiplayer. From a features standpoint, there’s no arguing that Real Tennis is competitive with much more expensive games.

Where the game fails, however, is in its controls – the one feature that a tennis game really needs to nail. After all, even tennis games on graphically crude systems like the Atari 2600 could thrive because of decent controls. While I’ve often railed that the virtual control pad many developers use on iPad and iPhone games is a poor design choice, here it is purely disastrous. Serving is no issue – merely move your player using the virtual control pad, then tap the serve button once to toss the ball in the air, and once to serve it. Everything after the serve, however, is an exercise in futility.

When your opponent returns your serve, you are given a small “x” on the court to denote where the ball will hit, but moving your player to the exact spot where he/she can effectively return the ball is next to impossible. Thus, you will spend most of your time while playing Real Tennis HD screaming at the screen as your inept virtual tennis player stumbles madly around the court, vainly attempting to return serves or even hit the ball at all.

It’s the reliance on console-style controls that ultimately proves the undoing of games such as this. Since the iPad features an amazingly responsive touch screen, why not simply touch the location on the court where you want your player to return a serve or lob a ball? A little multi-touch could go a long way here.

Real Tennis HD does have a low price of $4.99, but even that doesn’t excuse its poor execution. Gameloft can release much better games than this.

[ Real Tennis HD Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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‘Aqua Moto Racing 2′ Review – An Already Great Game Gets an Even Better Sequel is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

When the original Aqua Moto Racing [$1.99 / Free] came out in March of last year, we thought Resolution Interactive was really on to something in our review. The original is a really great racing game with graphics that we described as "unbelievable" at the time. Going back and looking at the original review, even as incredibly positive as it was, I can confidently say that Aqua Moto Racing 2 [$4.99 / Free] is even better than its predecessor.

As mentioned in our recent hands-on preview, the most immediate change you will notice is the implementation of a fantastic dynamic water system. Aqua Moto provided for some great arcade style wave-runner action, but all of the water you were racing on was woefully calm. In the sequel, there are waves to deal with everywhere, swells of water that will either make or break a huge jump, and inconvenient bumps that come from out of nowhere as you're trying to make it around a tight corner. This new wave system adds so much to the game that going back and forth from Aqua Moto and Aqua Moto 2 feels like more than a difference of just a simple sequel, and instead seems like a leap between generations of game consoles.

The cornerstone of the single player game is definitely championship mode, where you will find yourself racing through all of the different courses included in the game through difficulties ranging from beginner to pro. Along the way you'll earn money which is used to buy new wave-runners, each providing a significant performance boost over the last. The individual race tracks take place in three different aquatic environments, but the tracks themselves are made out buoys that racers need to either pass on the right of left and a healthy assortment of ramps to get tons of air off of. Each of the tracks feel unique enough that you never feel like you're really racing the same races over and over, and it's surprising how much variation the developers have managed to put in to a game that really only has three settings that everything takes place in.

As you unlock tracks in championship mode, you're able to race them in quick race mode, as well as compete in OpenFeint powered online leaderboards and challenges with other places. In the OpenFeint department there's also a load of achievements that range from racing precisely or aggressively, pulling awesome stunts, winning races, and other categories. Tracks are also eventually able to be raced in mirror mode, providing even more replay value.

Several control options are included. By default, you steer with a virtual steering wheel in the bottom left corner and accelerate using a button on the right. Alternatively, you can let the game handle acceleration by itself which replaces the accelerator with a brake pedal and if you prefer, you can control the game by tilting as well. Oddly enough, there's no option for both manual acceleration and braking.

Aqua Moto 2 has a stunt system which can be activated in air by flicking your device, or automatically if you're boosting over a jump. With stunt mode engaged the game slows down and you can perform stunts by pressing buttons which frame the screen. The camera then pans out, and you watch your dude do his trick (and hopefully land it). Both the automatic stunt mode and stunt camera can be disabled in the options, and it didn't take me long before unchecking both boxes because stunting can cause considerable problems, especially in close races and tight tracks.

In every mention of both Aqua Moto Racing and Aqua Moto Racing 2 we've made comparisons to Wave Race 64, and this sequel is getting even closer to Wave Race perfection. I highly recommend at least downloading the lite version of the game to check out the cool new dynamic water system, and from there, I doubt it will be much of a leap for most people to download the full version.

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myPhoneDesktop Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

I’ve seen remote-desktop apps before—take VNC, for example—that allow you to control your computer from your iPhone / iPad / etc. This is the first time, however, that I’ve seen it done in the reverse. myPhoneDesktop is an app / desktop program combo that uses your computer to send data to your iPhone. (You don’t control your iPhone, mind.) While its uses are limited, it’s still a highly functional program.

myPhoneDesktop requires two things. First, you need the app on your iPhone. Then, you must use either the web interface or the desktop program (a free, simple program available for Mac, PC, and Linux). Now you can send data to your iPhone.

myPhoneDesktop allows you to transmit four types of data: Phone, URL, Text, and Image. In the Phone screen, you can either dial a number or enter a SMS. With URL, you can copy-and-paste a web URL, which myPhoneDesktop can open in Safari, display in the app, or copy to the clipboard. Text can also be added to the iPhone clipboard, or simply shown on-screen. Finally, Image allows you to show, copy, or save an image from your computer’s hard drive to your iPhone’s Camera Roll.

So, to recap: do something on your computer, and your iPhone will follow instructions. Once the data appears in-app, you can also do things like assigning pictures to a Contact, emailing it, or finding an address with Google Maps.

Everything works wonderfully; transfer of information from computer to iPhone occurs quickly and painlessly. However, myPhoneDesktop isn’t an app most would use every day. As an iPod Touch + PC user, sure, I find it useful to be able to add images to my photo library (finally!) without using iTunes’ awful photo-sync process. (You can still only transfer one photo at a time.) But what about the rest? Why would you need to copy large chunks of text to your iPhone, if you have your computer on-hand? If you need myPhoneDesktop, it just proves that Apple has failed in some aspect.

Still, myPhoneDesktop does what it sets out to do. If this sounds like something you need—myPhoneDesktop works. It’s just not for everyone.

[ myPhoneDesktop Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Byline Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Byline is a third party Google Reader application, allowing you to read the latest news via RSS feeds in Google Reader. RSS, or really simple syndication, is a web feed that allows you to pull content from a website automatically (148Apps has multiple, see here). Google Reader allows you to add multiple RSS feeds into one, easy to view list of headlines. If you’ve got a Google account already, you’re good to go.

The design of Byline is slick and polished. It has folders integration, something that a number of rivals lack, allowing you to view a specific set of feeds that can be customized and organized online. The front page provides a list of folders, where a single tap will reveal its contents. Unread items are numbered according to each category as well as a general “unread” number at the top. Content can be viewed through each specific feed, by unread only and by oldest first.

The article directory is similar to Apple’s Mail application, with a blue circle at the left signifying unread content. The circular “>” chevron button to the right will forward you to the original article through Byline’s built-in browser. You can view a text-based summary of the article without having to load anything by tapping on an article. It is a limitation of RSS providers, rather than Google or Byline, with regards to not being able to view an entire article without going to the source directly.

Articles can be starred as favourites and notes can be added – both update on Google instantly. Byline provides Twitter, Instapaper and ReadItLater integration, allowing you to share articles to others or save them for future reading elsewhere. Additionally, articles can by sent by e-mail.

Orientation lock is provided for those whose iDevices were not compatible with the recent iOS4 update. Byline caches its articles and respective web pages whenever opening the application, meaning even if you have no data you’ll still have full access to your read. It didn’t cache all articles on our test, but those that were cached worked fine without any data connection.

Disappointingly, there is no search and, like other clients, you can’t add or remove feeds through the application. Other than this, the only problem I encountered was that the setting “Reformat [web pages] for Mobile” didn’t work on any of my feeds – a superficial problem that is bypassed by the original page loading.

Byline offer a free version of their application that is worth trying out first, as there are no limitations between it and the premium version. The only difference is the existence of ads. Overall, Byline is crisp and clean, providing you with an instant way to know what’s happening and where.

[ Byline Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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‘Babylonian Twins’ 75% Off, Marking Amiga’s 25th Anniversary is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

As someone who's been a gamer for 30 years now, I must say things have come a long way from those distant, humble beginnings.

A few crude black and white blocks turned into somewhat less crude color blocks, which became much nicer looking high-palette pixel art and — flash forward 20 years — we've got expansive 3D worlds rendered sharper than a high-definition feature film. Technology marches ever on and, along the way, has brought gamers a vast array of computers and consoles, each a step forward from the one that came before. And the largest single step forward along these lines that ever took place was unquestionably the arrival of the Amiga from Commodore.

At half the price of the Macintosh and a quarter the price of IBM's meatiest desktop, the Amiga, which PC World called the seventh greatest computer of all time, delivered vastly more capable hardware than either, along with a fully preemptive multitasking UNIX-like operating system. Nothing of the likes of its graphics and audio capabilities had ever been seen before. It excelled in gaming and this new sort of thing called "multimedia" that, at the time, people really didn't know what to make of. It really was 10 years before its time.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Amiga and a number of tech sites are taking the opportunity to pay tribute to this infulential platform with retrospectives and historical pieces. And, we're happy to report that Amiga and iPhone developer Rabah Shihab is honoring the occasion by dropping the price of Babylonian Twins for the iPhone [App Store] by 75% this weekend.

We took a close look at this reimagining of his 17-year old Amiga title back in April and found it to be one of the very best iPhone games out there (we gave it 4.5 stars). An iPad version is also available [App Store].

Babylonian Twins is s a puzzle-platformer with two-character tag-team type play. You control brothers Nasir and Blasir in order to solve each levels. Each character has some special abilities, but only one can be active at once. Switching between the two is as simple as tapping on a button — leaving the unplayed character as a statue. You'll find you need to tag team to make your way past puzzles and obstacles, and even use the other character as a springboard to jump higher. Blasir can jump higher, and dash into walls, while Nasir spin to break through weakened floors. The game is a collaborative effort between the two characters.

The game has been entirely revamped since the original Amiga version and includes all new graphics and audio.

And, while Babylonian Twins is a truly excellent title, it's not the only quality Amiga conversion in the App store. Not by a long shot. And, thanks to Manomio, among others, we're in for a lot more Amiga game goodness in the App Store later this year.

Related Amiga links:

• Amiga: 25 Years Later
• Shadow of the 16-bit Beast: an Amiga gaming retrospective
• Ars Technica's A History of the Amiga (parts 1 – 6)
• Amiga.org community

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Animated Knots by Grog Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

So I was at Ikea the other day helping a friend pack his new couch into his car. Unfortunately, there are very few cars on this Earth that can fit a 7 ft Ikea box in them, although his Subaru Impreza Hatchback did quite nice, but there was still about a foot hanging out of the car.

Instead of opting to pay the $50 Ikea shipping fee, we decided to tie the door shut with twine. We wrapped the door shut just fine, but when we got to the knot part, we stared at each other in fear. Ikea’s policy is to never facilitate knot tying for fear of their knots not working, so it was up to us. I ended up tying some bizarre knot, which held up just fine, but we were all very scared of losing the couch on the freeway.

Looking back, having an app like Animated Knots by Grof (AK Grog) would have been a lifesaver. Instead of some lame-o knot that I invented on the fly, I could’ve used one of the seemingly infinite number of knots that the app can show you.

AK Grog is organized by event (Fishing, Scouting, Boating… sorry, no Ikea packing) to provide easy reference to knot types. There is also a knot list that shows all of the knots together, but the list is quite daunting for a knot novice like me. Once you get into a specific knot, the app shows an animated, step-by-step program that will guide you through the process. With an extra tap you can even see what the knot is for, quickly turning you into a pro on the uses for the “Klemheist” or the “Prusik Knot”.

If you are ever in a bind and need to know how to make a specific knot, be sure to pick up AK Grog, as it is the best resource on knots that I’ve ever known. Just don’t hurt yourself with a loaded rope or a fishing line… the warning in the app says to wear protection at all times.

[ Animated Knots by Grog Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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