Category Archives: $7.99

Agendus Review

Posted on by

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

Developer: IAMBIC
Price: $7.99
Version Reviewed: 2.3
Device Reviewed On: iPhone

iPhone Integration Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Shall we all take a brief moment to remember the glory days of Palm Pilots and Palm OS? Those days may be gone, but there are still apps and developers looking to translate their Palm successes to the iPhone. One of the most recent translations is also one of the biggest from the good old days of Palm: Agendus.

Agendus attempts to pull together all of the disparate elements of the classic PIM into a tidy iPhone package. The app contains a multi-functional calendar with full Google Calendar sync, a task or to-do list creator/editor, and a contact manager. On top of that, Agendus’ home screen also provides a quote of the day, a “This Day in History” factoid and the current weather forecast for your location. The ability to edit and create events and have them sync with your Google Calendars is certainly helpful, but I was most immediately taken with the “extended view” for contacts, which allows you to view your list of contacts with their photos, email addresses and phone numbers present as well. This way, it’s easy to look up a contact and with one click connect to him/her via any of the email addresses or phone numbers you have stored for that person. Shouldn’t this already be possible in the iPhone’s existing contacts app? Agendus certainly has the right idea with this.

Google Calendar sync is quick and seamless – probably one of the fastest syncs I’ve seen yet – and I like how you can view a full year’s calendar on one screen. Small black dots are under any date that has an event scheduled, so it’s easy to see where you’ve already committed yourself and where you have open space on your calendar.

The task list is not particularly impressive, in that it isn’t very different from a hundred other task list apps I’ve seen over the years. However, I give Agendus credit for including a decent and functional one that works with the other parts of this suite.

At first glance, I was very impressed with Agendus. But upon extended use, I discovered several dismaying aspects of the app that simply need to be remedied as quickly as possible. For instance, when I tried to use the visual calendar editor to extend the time of an upcoming meeting, the app created another event concurrent with the one already present. Then, when I tried to delete this new event, it created ANOTHER event. I think I ended up with about four or five events happening at roughly the same time, and I still don’t know how to delete them. Then, I began worrying that those new events had been synced to my Google Calendars, so it really created quite a little dilemma.

Likewise, when I tried to edit an event’s details using the typing function, the keyboard came up but obscured some of the necessary commands and functions I needed. I could never figure out how to reach those commands, so I just gave up. While I understand that this is still a work in progress, and that there are bugs to work out in almost every app, there are two points to consider. One: Agendus is a productivity app. Any app that makes this claim, then hinders productivity by its very design flaws, is difficult to trust. And two: Agendus is expensive (by app store standards, at least). At $7.99, it ought to do what it claims to do with only minor reports of trouble. This, alas, is not the case.

My final concern is with the general look of the app. It certainly does many different things, but it doesn’t look or feel as sophisticated as I think it should. The colors are very muted (dull blues and greens) and the entire presentation feels extremely utilitarian. I understand that a productivity app is all about getting things done, but can’t those same things get done with a little more style. Apple inherently knows this. Agendus still has the look and feel of an earlier Palm app and it’s definitely in need of a look and feel overhaul.

I really wanted to like Agendus. I really did. I’m a teacher when I’m not blogging, and I keep all of my daily classroom events on separate Google Calendars. I want and need a way to have perfect access to this information whenever I am away from my computer. Agendus is not the solution I’ve been looking for. In its present state, I can’t see making it my default client for all of my productivity needs. It has great potential, no doubt, but this is one app that should still be in the developer’s workshop.


[ Agendus Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Times for iPad Review

Posted on by

Times for iPad Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: ACRYLIC APPS
Price: $7.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad

iPad Integration Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.58 out of 5 stars

I’m at a crossroads. I genuinely am. I want to like, if not love, Acrylic Software’s new Times for iPad app. It’s gorgeous. It’s sleek. And it’s just the sort of app that will make your non-iPad owning friends drool with envy. At first glance Times for iPad appears to be the second coming of RSS readers – a reader for the rest of us, formatted in slick newspaper style that’s hard not to like.

There’s just one problem. It doesn’t do some things I expect any RSS reader to do.

Once you get beyond the very palatable aesthetics (and they are a powerful sales inducer, no doubt), you discover that the core reader functionality just doesn’t measure up to other, similarly easy to use readers. Want to save an article to Instapaper or Read It Now? Nope. Want to import and sync your by-now-highly-curated Google Reader feeds? No can do. In today’s app store economy, these are as close to deal breakers as you can get. Without these kinds of features, Times for iPad is just another pretty but limited RSS reader. The developer told us that a direct sync with Google Reader isn’t in the works due to the very different way Times and Reader handle RSS feeds.

I should, of course, balance this review by stating what this first version of Times for iPad CAN do. It can organize by categories across the top of the screen, making it easy to transition from one area of your virtual newspaper to another. It can also save articles to a shelf for later reading if time is tight. This isn’t Instapaper, but I can see where it could be a solid replacement eventually (and you wouldn’t have to quit one app and open another just to read a story). Times for iPad also has a built-in web page viewer so you can view the article in its original format, and you can share any article you access via email, Twitter and Facebook. These last features are pretty much standard in every app these days, even quite a few games, so they don’t exactly make Times for iPad stand out from the crowd.

What DOES make Times stand out is its look and feel. There is no denying that this is a pretty app, and I’ve actually found myself wondering about moving all of my Google Reader feeds to Times, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s ready yet.

Those who already own Times for Mac OSX, however, might find this a welcome purchase, as you can sync your feeds between your desktop and iPad with seeming ease (once Acrylic releases version 2.0). The Mac app currently will import from other RSS apps and OPML files, so a Google Reader import is at worst a few steps away. This would make Times for iPad a better value, especially with the desktop sync feature.

For the moment, if you’re looking for a similarly-styled RSS reader as Times, I suggest you look at Early Edition, which WILL sync with Google. As for me, for the moment, I’m sticking with Reeder.

[ Times for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]


‘Madden NFL 11′ Review – GameFlow, Where Have You Been All My Life?

Posted on by

‘Madden NFL 11′ Review – GameFlow, Where Have You Been All My Life? is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

The Madden series hardly needs an introduction, as football player turned coach turned commentator John Madden has had his name on football games for the better part of 20 years now. On home consoles, it has become tradition for EA to release a new Madden game each year with updated rosters, a few new features, and other various tweaks. As of tonight, the second yearly installment of the Madden series has arrived for the iPhone.

Last year we took a close look at Madden NFL 10 and thought it was a really great football game for the iPhone. Madden '10 came loaded with all the licensed players, stadiums, logos, and everything else you'd expect of a Madden game along with game modes ranging from single exhibition games to full seasons. The two hip new features of Madden NFL 10 for the iPhone were hot routes allowing players to draw on the screen to control players, and "action control time" which switched the game to slow motion mode allowing for precise maneuvers with the virtual controls.

There wasn't much to complain about with last year's Madden, which really left me wondering what EA was going to include in this year's release to up the ante. The preview we got revealed substantial graphical upgrades including Retina Display support, but it wasn't until I got to spend more time with the game today that I realized just how much more fun the other new features made playing Madden NFL 11.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a sports person by any means. I don't remember the last time I watched anything more than the Super Bowl on TV, and the only sporting events I've attended have been the result of friends with extra tickets. I play sports games, but generally gravitate towards arcade style sports games like Homerun Battle 3D [$4.99 / Free], or sports games that have RPG elements such as Baseball Superstars 2010 [$4.99 / Free].

I mention this because I generally never really got into a Madden game, or really any full football game. The weak link for me always came in choosing from an endless array of both offensive and defensive plays, with each yearly iteration of football game boasting even more plays to choose from. I don't know enough about the strategy of football plays to have ever felt like I was making a wise decision, and when it got down to it, play selection just always seemed like a needless interruption every few seconds while playing the game.

GameFlow changes all of this, and I really can't overstate how awesome a feature it actually is. Using some new AI algorithm likely designed by a team of people who know way more about football than I ever care to, Madden 11's GameFlow will intelligently chooses plays for you. It is absolutely insane how much this changes both the feel and the pace of the game. Using GameFlow, endless submenus of plays are a thing of the past. Instead, you just play football. The plays it selects work fairly well too, or at least, much better than my typical choice of plays which usually alternate between the hail mary and the fake field goal kick– both favorites of mine.

What's also shocking is how much this actually speeds up playing the game. You can tap the screen to skip through the extra animations, victory dances, and other junk and play through a whole football game in what barely seems like any time at all. Of course, if you are the kind of person who knows exactly what every play does, all you have to do is flip GameFlow to off and you have complete control of each and every play.

The hot routes functionality from last year has been expanded, and at any point during the game you can pause the action and draw paths for your players. If you're playing offense and do this, you can save those routes as an audible, or if you're playing defense you can just send your players wherever you want. The whole system works very well, and by drawing lines you can send dispatch players to man to man duty, follow the ball, or really anything else. This really makes defense a lot more fun because you can now actually sensibly direct your team around instead of just tabbing in between players and chasing after whoever has the ball. Check out my top secret LOL offense:

As mentioned already, the graphics of Madden NFL 11 look fantastic. The stadium crowd has actual depth now, and they even wave around signs for the home team. The included weather effects look good, and overall it seems like all the player models and animations are more detailed. Every texture in game also seems to have been substantially improved, making going back and forth between 10 and 11 seem fairly drastic.

Madden 11 also is host to some other noticeable tweaks over last year's as well such as controls that feel a little better and a spruced up interface. There's an in-game store which currently is home to a free roster update, but seems like it might be used for future DLC . Finally, Madden NFL 11 behaves beautifully as an iPhone game, gracefully saving your game and resuming quickly when you load it again.

Like last year, the inevitable comparison between Gameloft's NFL 11 [$6.99] and Madden NFL 11 will likely take place in our forums for months to come, but in my opinion, Madden wins by a landslide. Gameloft's offering seems to run at a higher frame rate, but Madden looks better overall– rspecially when it comes to how the crowd and stadiums are rendered. Madden NFL 11 has local bluetooth multiplayer while NFL 11 is single player only, and the commentary in Madden seems less repetitive than Gameloft's. Where Madden really wins though is in the extra features. With how much I've fallen in love with GameFlow I can hardly bring myself to deal with NFL 11's play selection, and Madden's total defensive control makes playing defense in NFL 11 flat out boring in comparison.

At the end of the day, people who like Madden games likely don't need this review, or anything more than the iTunes link to download the game for that matter. Who I really expect to sway into checking out Madden NFL 11 are the casual sports fans, or people like me, who are vaguely interested in sports games but found the various technicalities of football games to generally be annoying. GameFlow fixes all this, and I can hardly believe that I spent the majority of my day today playing Madden 11 on my iPhone– not because I was trying to power through it to write a review, but because I was actually really enjoying a football game for the first time since Mutant League Football on the Sega Genesis.

The iPad and iPhone versions are essentially the same aside from the price difference and UI tweaks to make the controls more comfortable for playing on the iPad. The iPhone version is workable with pixel doubling, and the only thing you're really going to be missing out on is the upcoming "Vintage Voltage Football" mode which is basically just Super Shock Football [$1.99 / Free] with Madden graphics.

International App Store Link: Madden NFL 11


iFontMaker for iPad Review

Posted on by

iFontMaker for iPad Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: The 2TTF\
Price: $7.99
Version: 1.1

iPad Integration Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

I dabble in graphics design and webcomics, so when I got the opportunity to play with 2TTF.com’s do-it-yourself iFontMaker app, I leapt at the opportunity. The promise of crafting my own handwriting fonts directly on the iPad was too juicy an opportunity for me to pass up. Fortunately, iFontMaker delivers on its promise. Anyone will be able create a Mac and PC compatible handwriting font with iFontMaker; and who among us hasn’t wanted to do that?

Making Your Font

iFontmaker has a single, straightforward interface with a few adjustable options. It’s very clean, very simple to figure out, and, as it turns out, very black. This threw me off for a second, as most of us are used to looking at a font most often as black text on white background. I’m not sure why they chose to do it this way; it may be a graphic design thing. It doesn’t hinder the functionality of the app.

Making a font from your own writing is pretty straightforward. Each letter has to be written individually, in large size (the entry field takes up most of the iPad screen). The screen provides guides for you so that you can provide a consistency of size and baseline; if you don’t want the guides, they can be turned off. You can also control the pen tip to achieve rounded, squared, or chiseled tip; and line width for bolder or finer fonts. This isn’t a lot of variety, but it allows you to find a line that looks good in your handwriting. I preferred the square “pencil” tip, and I recommend choosing a finer line than the default 5 pt. Don’t go too fine, though; the line may look big on the screen, but could become hard to read when shrunk down to 12 point type.

You must enter each letter, number, and character one at a time. For my review, I tried this with both my finger and a Pogo Stylus. I preferred the stylus for finer handwriting control, but even a finger works fine. Being able to write directly onto the screen is great for making a handwriting font, and the large screen size means you can get a decent line even with your fingertip.

The 2TTF website promises that you can make your own font in about five minutes, and that’s true. It took me about 5 minutes to create a decent set of 95 standard characters. The app gives you the option to do more than 400 characters, however, including another 96 Latin characters (many of them accented letters), 256 extended characters, and two Japanese font sets. It’s great that they don’t limit the fonts to a basic character set, and it real adds to the app’s international appeal.

Generating Your Font

Once you’ve entered all your characters, creating a usable font is pretty simple. You just upload it via WiFi to 2TTF.com–you don’t even need an account name or password–and the website sends you a passkey. Within a minute, the font is ready, and anyone with the URL and passkey can download your creation for free.

The fonts work, too. I imported both of my fonts into a Windows PC without a single issue. I tried them out in both Microsoft Word 2007 and an older version of Adobe Photoshop CS; they functioned without issue, the same as all my other TTFs. They didn’t necessarily look great, but then, my handwriting rarely does.

Long-Term Value?

So, should you buy iFontMaker? Ultimately, the question boils down to: how badly do you want a font based on your own handwriting? The app delivers what it promises, a font based on your handwriting for the relatively low price of $7.99. Getting a personal handwriting font created online generally costs $10 to $20, and with those services you don’t get to go back and create another one, or fix the one you have, or let your six-year-old make a font. So iFontMaker is definitely a value for what it does.

Once you’ve perfected your personal font, however, there’s really not much reason to keep iFontMaker on your iPad. It lacks any drafting type tools, so there’s no way to create straight lines, elegant curves, or the next Helvetica. Sure, some graphic designer types, or those artists on YouTube drawing phenomenal portraits on the iPad with their fingers, might be able to suss more out of this app (2TTF.com features a few). But for most of us, this is a finite process: complete your personal font, transfer it to your desktop or laptop, and then delete iFontmaker from your device.

Conclusion

I commend the 2TTF for putting out such a neat app that allows many of us to do something that we’ve always wanted to do, in a way that makes use of the unique iPad interface. I hope that they create a more robust font creation tool out of iFontMaker in the future. In the meantime, though, it’s a fun experience for anyone interested in a novelty handwriting app, and even though it’s of finite use, it’s still a couple of bucks cheaper and more flexible than online font creation services.

[ iFontMaker for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]


‘Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge’ Review – Guybrush Threepwood Returns For Another Adventure

Posted on by

‘Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge’ Review – Guybrush Threepwood Returns For Another Adventure is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Few games inspire more heartfelt nostalgia than the classic LucasArts adventure games of the late 80's and early 90's. While we've still got our fingers and toes crossed that we'll eventually see similar "special edition" treatments to Maniac Mansion and/or Day of the Tentacle, we couldn't be happier that the Monkey Island series is being re-released with the level of intimate care that we've seen so far both with the previously released The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition [$7.99 / Free], and Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge [iPhone: $7.99 / Free - iPad: $9.99 / Free] which just hit the App Store mere moments ago.

Monkey Island 2 takes place after the events of the first Monkey Island where wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood is introduced and meets the cast of characters included in the game as he seeks out the pirate leaders and attempts to prove himself through three challenges. A ghost pirate named LeChuck is thrown in to the mix, along with the beautiful Elaine Marley. Without spoiling too much, the game concludes with romance, root beer, and fireworks. Even though playing the original is by no means required to enjoy the sequel, Monkey Island is filled with great writing, silly characters, funny situations, and often extremely odd solutions to the problems that Guybrush must overcome which is really worth checking out– Especially considering the fantastic job LucasArts did on the iPhone port of the special edition release.

Monkey Island 2 opens with our familiar protagonist Guybrush Threepwood setting the scene for his next adventure. Now that LeChuck is no more, he decides to search for the treasure of "Big Whoop", and in typical Guybrush fashion, he has no idea where it is, has no way to get there, and doesn't really know if it even exists at all. Regardless, this hasn't stopped him in the past, and it certainly won't stop him now. Of course no LucasArts adventure game could ever be as straight forward as finding out where some treasure is, figuring out a way to get there, then digging it up, and it doesn't take long before you're toe to toe with Largo LaGrande, LeChuck's old henchman. One thing leads to another, and LeChuck returns, turning your simple treasure hunt in to yet another epic battle with the ghost (now zombie) pirate.

With a development team that was nearly identical to that of the original Secret of Monkey Island, the sequel shares all of the same fantastic writing and cartoonish charm. Monkey Island 2 is hilarious at times, and incredibly cheesy at others, but manages to maintain a highly entertaining witty atmosphere the whole way through. The port of the original to the iPhone was a load of fun, with the only real complaint being the control system which treated the touchscreen like a trackpad which you used to move the in-game cursor around. Thankfully, this has been replaced by a new default control scheme in the sequel which works like many other iPhone adventures games where you just touch areas in the game world that you want to move to, or objects you want to interact with.


Interactive objects highlighted on right.

The special edition of Monkey Island 2 also has several other refinements over the first, my personal favorite being the highlighting system that shows you objects and areas that you can interact with. Tapping the screen with two fingers makes everything interactive glow, easily allowing you to see things you've missed, or other things to try. This is an incredibly welcome change from the standard tap/click on absolutely everything once you get stuck in an area. This two finger tap also illuminates doors you can walk through, making it very easy to see where you're able to go so you don't miss anything on your journey.

If you do get stuck, Monkey Island 2 features the same great hint system found in the original where you can get hints which initially start out extremely vague to push you in the right direction which eventually ramp up to flat out telling you where to go and what to do. Having played quite a few classic adventure game ports on the iPhone, this really is the best approach as you never need to leave the game to check a walkthrough online, and it's usually much more fun to just get a small hint to send you in the right direction instead of just reading exactly what to do. (Of course, that's there if you need it.)



iPad top, iPhone bottom – Comparing both graphical styles.

Monkey Island 2 also has the incredibly superfluous yet amazingly cool classic graphics included which blew out mind when we first saw the previous special edition. By default you can play the game with its redone graphics, stellar voiceovers, and the toolbar of actions that Guybrush is capable of. Swiping two fingers across the screen causes the game to fade out in to its original pixelated glory with the top half of the screen displaying the original game with the set of actions below.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge launched with separate iPad and iPhone versions of the game, and while I would have loved there to be one universal version for both devices, the iPad game is definitely the one to have. Not only does it have the same adventure from its iPhone counterpart, but currently for an additional two bucks (assuming you own an iPad) you get high resolution graphics and audio commentary. On quite a few areas of the game, you're able to tap a microphone icon in the top right corner and listen to the creators talk about wherever you are in game. It's not exactly a killer feature that's worth getting upset over if you only have an iPhone or iPod touch, but it is a nice addition.

The one thing that is a bit of a disappointment is that LucasArts flaunts these fantastic looking high resolution art assets in the iPad version, but played on my iPhone 4, the iPhone version is disappointingly low resolution in comparison. It still looks good, but I would have loved to have seen some Retina Display support in Monkey Island 2, I'm hopeful for future updates that might beef up the graphics, but it seems doubtful that audio commentary will ever make its way to the iPhone.

I could go on and on about how great the Monkey Island series is, how wonderful any game build on the SCUMM engine is, and the genius of the original creators Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman, but really this is just a game you need to play. LucasArts is covering all its bases with this launch, with free lites corresponding to both the full iPhone or iPad versions. If you've never played an adventure game before, I can't think of a better place to start. The Monkey Island series is great, and the few minor refinements added to the sequel makes this one of the most accessible point and click (point and tap?) games on the App Store. Download the lite version and give it a try, if the game hooks you in, chances are you will enjoy the entirety of both Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2.

On the other hand, if you're ever played a Monkey Island game before, I doubt you even made it this far in this review before just clicking the first iTunes link you could find and downloading the game for whatever device you own.


‘Galcon Fusion’ for iPad On Sale – 75% Off for a Week

Posted on by

‘Galcon Fusion’ for iPad On Sale – 75% Off for a Week is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

iOS developer Phil Hassey is running an 75%-off sale on Galcon Fusion [App Store], the iPad take on his popular fast-paced space strategy game, Galcon [App Store], winner of the IGF Mobile 2009 Innovation in Mobile Game Design award. Normally $7.99, the game is available for just $1.99 for the next seven days. The sale coincides with a gameplay contest the developer is currently running to see who is first to achieve the Grand Admiral rank in the game's multiplayer mode. (The winner takes home a Galcon t-shirt and a piece of original artwork hand-drawn by Hassey himself.)

Galcon begins with a galactic playfield filled with planets of varying size.  The green planets belong to the player, neutral planets are grey, and planets of any other color belong to the enemy.  The goal is to take over all the planets.

The size of the planet indicates the production rate of the planet.  A number appears on each planet indicating how many ships exist on that planet–for neutral and enemy planets, this is the number of ships that must be defeated in order to take control of a particular planet.  The player clicks on one or more green planets and then drags to a target planet in order to set ships in motion to invade said planet.

Galcon Fusion takes full advantage of the iPad's large display to deliver really a deeper play experience than is possible on the iPhone. And, like the original Galcon, Galcon Fusion provides a truly excellent, real-time strategy game experience. Since it's initial release, Galcon Fusion received a 1.1 update that enabled multiplayer action, doubled the framerate, and improved the overall graphics and lighting effects.

App Store Link: Galcon Fusion, $1.99 (iPad Only)


‘1112 episode 02 HD’ Now Available

Posted on by

‘1112 episode 02 HD’ Now Available is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Agharta Studio released the sequel to their 1112 series last month, 1112 episode 02 [$4.99] for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Following up the original, 1112 episode 01 [$4.99 / Free], that came out back in November 2008. And now the iPad version 1112 episode 02 HD [$7.99] has hit the App Store.

If you never played episode 1, we recommend you try out 1112 Episode 01 Lite [Free] to get some background and hands on with, to find out what the type of puzzle game that the 1112 series is like. For the less inclined, episode 2 offers a short summary video to get you up to speed on the story line from the original.

The goal is to help your character, Louis, discover why he has ended up in New York. Through the use of multitouch, you'll be looking for objects and solving puzzles, including some sudoku puzzles, to find your way to completing the mystery of 1112. The game is made up of awesome hand drawn environments to navigate through and admire along the way. Episode 2 includes a multitude amount of new content to interact with;

  • All new advanced graphical design and artistic direction
  • 25 new larger than life environments
  • 14 new characters
  • Various puzzles, each with a specific gameplay
  • An incredibly responsive Multi-Touch user interface
  • Original score
  • Elaborate interactive narrative
  • Totally redesigned game engine

Despite the larger screen and redrawn graphics in HD, the game doesn't play very differently between the iPhone and iPad version. The storyline and gameplay is the same between the two. In fact, aside from the pixelated text, the game plays quite well in pixel-doubling mode. The graphics don't take a major hit at all and look very good still. Because of that, we don't recommend upgrading to the HD version if you already own the iPhone version, as you won't gain much. But if you held out for the HD version, or haven't picked up any of the episodes before, you won't be disappointed by going with the iPad specific version.

The overall consensus in our forums discussing episode 2 seem very positive. The developers have already updated the iPhone version earlier this month to fix some bugs and say the iPad version ships with the fixes already included. With users reporting gameplay length between 3-7 hours long, depending on how long it takes you to solve some of the puzzles, the game offers a fair amount of content. We are already looking forward to episode 3 of the series, so be sure to get your copy of episode 1 and 2 to keep up with the intriguing story.

App Store Link: 1112 episode 2 HD, $7.99