Best Iphone Apps Review

Friday Five: June 18th, 2010 is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

It’s Friday! Hurray! Of course, for me it’s summer vacation and Fridays aren’t quite as exciting. But, we’ve still got our traditional sampling of delightful new releases from the past week, so that’s something. Big names like ngmoco and Illusion Labs make an appearance this week, as well as a few more mainstream companies like ESPN. Enjoy!

Godfinger
Godfinger from ngmoco allows you to build up a little world of cartoony followers and exert your godly powers on them. In Godfinger, you can be a kind, caring deity—performing Wonders and helping your civilization prosper—or a wicked demagogue, leaving a path of destruction in your wake. You can control sun, rain, lightning, floods, and fire. As you play Godfinger, your actions shape the terrain and your populace’s opinion. It’s almost ngmoco’s answer to Pocket God. Go on, give it a try and test out your godly abilities…Godfinger, like many of ngmoco’s newer games, is free.

Geometry Wars: Touch
Geometry Wars was already a classic Xbox game, but it made its iPad debut back in March. Now, it’s a universal app, meaning that iPhone and iPod owners can get in on the action! Geometry Wars is a simplistic arcade shooter with basic, geometric graphics and a strong retro theme. It also was one of the first major games to make good use of the dual-stick shooter system that’s so popular on the App Store today. The iPhone/iPad version also includes a brand-new mode, Titan, in which you gradually break giant foes apart into swarms of smaller pieces.

ESPN Pinball
In honor of the World Cup, ESPN has a released a pinball app with some football-themed tables (ahem, soccer for us Americans). There’s also a Basketball table. The new pinball app is full of flashy graphics and boasts pass-and-play multiplayer, global and local leaderboards, and voice-overs from ESPN Sports Center host Jay Harris. It’s a marriage of a TV network, sports, and pinball…if that sounds a little strange, well, it is, but the game looks like some solid pinball fun nevertheless.

Onion News Network
Where would we be without the Onion? In case you haven’t heard of this magnificent publication, the Onion is a completely satirical news network with both an online and a print publication. (Yes, that’s right: you can get a real Onion newspaper.) Their stories are funny, witty, snide, and clever; you’d be crazy not to enjoy browsing them. The Onion’s new app gives you mobile access to the entire Onion archives, including both textual stories and videos. There’s not much more to say: it’s a typical newspaper app. The only difference is that the Onion is anything but a serious, esteemed publication. It’s here to make you grin, and, perhaps, think.

Foosball HD
Illusion Labs has long expressed an interest in touchscreen gaming on larger screens (think back to their tabletop demo of Touchgrind) and now they’ve released an impressive iPad-only title: Foosbal HD. Foosball HD takes full advantage of the iPad’s large screen, transforming it into a top-down view of a foosball table designed perfectly for “local multiplayer”: both you and your friend just play foosball! You can also play against the computer, of course, but multiplayer is the real draw. Foosball seems like a natural fit for the iPad, and it’s great to see Illusion Labs putting the iPad to good use. Sorry, iPhone users; this one isn’t for us.

[ Friday Five: June 18th, 2010 is a post from 148Apps ]

German Hip Hop Group Fanta 4 Gets iPhone Pinball Game is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Okay, stay with me on this one. We’ll take it slow.

Now, we’re all familiar with Die Fantastischen Vier, otherwise known as “Fanta 4.” The group is a pioneer in German rap, and produced what is arguably the world’s first German-language hip hop hit, “Die Da?!”

Today, Fanta 4 makes its App Store debut with Fanta 4 Pinball ($3.99), an Amiga-styled pinball sim from Bad Monkee, publishers of the well-received iPhone remake of Giana Sisters.

And that’s it, basically. If you enjoy titles like Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies and have longed for a pinball sim that also addresses your passion for German hip hop, today is officially the greatest day of your life.

Sometimes, I love the iPhone. There’s also a trailer, which you absolutely must watch:

Review: Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators Ver. 2010 is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

• Price: $4.99 (Download here)
• Version: 1.0.1
• Official Site: BeXide, Inc.

Pinball is a very technical game — there’s a craft to playing it. It takes a lot of practice before one even begins to approach competency. Learning to manipulate the flippers and line up shots while coming to grips with the intricacies of a table is far from second nature.

When pinball is reproduced in video game form, it becomes technical in another sense; that is, it relates to technology. It’s technological.

If that game is then emulated to run on a different hardware configuration, as the cult classic pinball game Last Gladiators has been, another usage of the word can be applied. In this case, technical implies a straight-down-the-lines approach to replicating the object at hand.

So when I say this is a technical review of Last Gladiators Pinball, I mean in it all three ways.

Since I’m traditionally of the opinion that the design of a game, that is the designer’s skill at evoking technique, outweighs the value of technical achievement, design seems a good jumping-off point.

The design in Last Gladiators is forgettable. It’s hard to understand what all those Saturn proponents on YouTube are praising. The game feels like it was made by people who knew what pinball was but didn’t get what it was about.

The best pinball tables have a puzzle-box quality in how you manipulate the bumpers and targets to gradually unlock the playfield for a huge payout, lighting up hundreds of dazzling, multi-colored indicators along the way.

Last Gladiators opts for a more arcade-like approach (if that even makes sense). Almost everything that can be known about the table is taken as a given. The game relies on the immediacy of its objectives for its kicks, serving up a frantic pace with a perchance for multi-ball, but at the expense of any semblance of depth.

The game has issues at the foundational level as well. I’m pretty sure it’s running on an emulator. Requests for the player to press the Saturn’s L and R buttons seem to be a good indicator.

The game runs fairly smoothly, though. It has a few hiccups here and there and crashes far too often, but when it’s working, it works well enough. If you happened to download and be let down by the ultra-slow Ultra Legend Pinball demo — an Ultraman skinned version of this exact table — you’ll find that Last Gladiators runs a LOT faster.

Still, emulation is less than ideal. The visuals lack sharpness and everything is far too tiny for its own good. I had trouble hitting the ramp from the right flipper and attribute this to flipper shrinkage (I was in the pool!).

One thing that’s definitely not small is the price. Last Gladiators is an expensive proposition. The initial purchase comes with one table. That’s what I reviewed. Three additional tables are available as in-app purchases, and maybe they’re better, but at $5 a pop, I’m not willing to find out.

‘Last Gladiators Ver.2010′ Review – Mo’ Money, Mo’ Tables is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Last Gladiators Ver.2010 is a port of a 1995 pinball game for the Sega Saturn. In a world where there's so many different options to satisfy your pinball needs available on the App Store, some aspects about this release will stick out like sore thumbs. The price, the dated graphics, a lack of features, no online scores… the price. It can be kind of a hard sell on the surface. But make no mistake about it, this is hands down the best pinball gameplay available for your device. If I'm going to be trapped on a desert island with my iPhone and can only have one pinball app, I want it to be Last Gladiators.

Let's get right to the elephant in the room, the cost. The app itself is $4.99, and comes with the Gladiators table. The other three tables that make up the original Saturn game are sold separately as DLC for $4.99 apiece. Yep, $4.99 for each additional table. I know that most of us who were fortunate enough to have grown up during the arcade era have probably spent well more than five bucks playing a good table for a couple of hours. So asking that much for a table you can play infinitely that fits in your pocket doesn't sound unreasonable. In the App Store economy, however, it's equivalent to an arm and a leg. The pricing alone means this game won't be for everybody.

Pricing aside, Last Gladiators does everything right in the gameplay department. It's amazing that with all the different pinball games that have been released on iPhone, none of them have ever quite felt like playing a real life table. This one's different, this one feels right. The physics of the ball and the design of the tables are nearly perfect. I'm not going to go into specific table detail (a video of each one can be seen in the thread in our forums) but all four feature multiball and more rounds and missions than I can even count. The instructions run 30+ pages for each table so you can familiarize yourself with every scoring nook and cranny, and also get an idea of just how much depth is on offer here.

This isn't the most visually impressive pinball game, after all it is 15 years old, but it still manages to have a great look that functions well. The table designs are more akin to the pinball tables of the late 80's and early 90's, rather than the highly complex mechanical behemoths of the later 90's. A neat effect is a scaling ball, so it looks smaller while in the back of the table and quite a bit larger as it's near the flippers. Handy on-screen indicators point you towards active goals, and it's always clear what you're supposed to be doing even for a beginner. There aren't really any iPhone specific features, and as far as ports are concerned this is pretty bare-bones. This is basically the Saturn game reworked with touch screen controls, and that's about it.

If you're a pinball fanatic, and just want the best experience regardless of price, then you owe it to yourself to drop $5 on the initial Gladiators table. It will keep you busy for a long time, and you can always decide to splurge on the extra tables sometime down the line when you're ready for something new.

There's no official lite version available, but you can try Ultra Legend Pinball which is basically the Gladiators table with slightly reworked functionality and Ultraman artwork. I hesitate a bit recommending this, as it's entirely in Japanese and the Ultraman version of the table isn't nearly as good as the original, but at the very least it gives you and idea of what the Last Gladiators tables are like. Whatever your feelings on the pricing of Last Gladiators, it's a stellar game that shouldn't be missed if you're looking for an accurate simulation of pinball.

App Store Link: Last Gladiators Ver.2010, $4.99

Acclaimed Sega Saturn Pinball Sim Last Gladiators Gets App Store Release is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer KAZe’s 1995 pinball compilation Last Gladiators has been ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch, under the unassuming title LGR2010 ($4.99).

Last Gladiators and its Japan-only sequel Digital Pinball: Necronomicon are regarded as two of the best pinball sims to ever see release on home consoles. Recent titles in Crave’s Pinball Hall of Fame series have surpassed KAZe’s offerings in terms of realism, but Last Gladiators still remains a compelling play for pinball fans.

LGR2010 includes the “Gladiators” table from Last Gladiators, with the “Knight of the Roses,” “Dragon Showdown,” and “Warlock” tables available as somewhat pricy in-app purchases at $4.99 each.

An Ultraman-themed free trial version of the “Gladiators” table is available in Ultra Legend Pinball, if you’d like an example of the kind of quality you can expect from the LGR2010 collection.

[via @rdb_aaa]

Gameprom’s ‘The Pinball HD’ Now Available for iPad is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Gameprom has more than proven themselves on the App Store with three fantastic iPhone pinball games: Wild West Pinball, [99¢], The Deep Pinball [99¢], and Jungle Style Pinball [99¢]. Their latest game, The Pinball [$2.99], combines the three of these games in to a single high-resolution iPad game.

All of the high scoring, table objectives, and everything else from the three iPhone games are included, in addition to several different options for playing the game in 3D using stereoscopic 3D glasses. The red/cyan 3D works fairly well, but feels kind of gimmicky like most games that feature this kind of 3D.

Much like the iPhone versions, the pinball physics of each of the included games are phenomenal, but what has left me scratching my head with The Pinball HD is how few view options are included. The iPhone games are played in portrait mode and the camera can either follow the ball or zoom out to view the whole table. On the iPad, this is controlled by which way you orient the device.

Holding it horizontally allows you to see the whole table at an odd skewed perspective, while holding it in portrait mode follows the ball around. This really seems backwards, and I've love to see the whole table in portrait mode. Judging by the response in our forums, I'm not alone on that.

Even though the camera is kind of weird, The Pinball HD seems to be the best pinball collection available for the iPad right now. Gameprom has had a fantastic history of updating and maintaining their games, so I have faith they'll listen to and implement feedback to change the in-game camera around.

App Store Link: The Pinball, $2.99 (iPad Only)

Pinball Roundup: Multiball, Pinball Ride, and The Pinball is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Apple's devices almost seem built for pinball. It just feels right seeing a pinball table running below the elongated glass touch screen. It's a well represented genre on the App Store with many quality options available. Recently, there's been a brand new game released, a significant update to an existing game, and a new app that gives you a truly unique experience while playing pinball on your Mac (and PC soon too), all of which are worth a mention.

Multiball Pinball ($1.99)

The newest game from Matmi, makers of Monster Pinball, is another blisteringly fast game with a focus on multiple balls in play. Unlike more traditional tables, this game makes it easy to unlock multiball modes and ensures that you're almost always playing with at least 2 balls concurrently. It features the same fantastic graphics and art designs that are a hallmark of Matmi games.

The only downfall here is that there is just this one table when their other games feature at least three, however this one table is well designed and extremely fun to play. If you liked Matmi's previous pinball offerings, you will most certainly like this.

Pinball Ride ($4.99) and Pinball Ride (Free)

Although released last November, Pinball Ride never gained much notoriety due to a difficult table design and a relatively higher price. Well, Massive Finger has been hard at work since then and have released a 1.1 update that really improves the game greatly. Certain aspects of the table have been reworked to be more forgiving, and in turn the game is overall much more fun. It's a completely 3D table which looks impressive, and the pinball action is fast and smooth.

The $4.99 price still may be a bit high if you're not a pinball fanatic, as there's only the one table. A lite is available to try so you can determine for yourself if you want to plunk down the cash. The lite features a Burst Mode that puts 45 seconds on the clock to play and achieve a high score. This isn't nearly enough time to get a good feel for the game. Fortunately, the developer has created a TouchArcade exclusive link to get 5 free credits of unlimited play in the lite. Each game lasts a long time, and 5 credits should be more than enough to help you decide if you're into it or not. Definitely worth trying out.

Pinball Remote App (Free)

Gameprom is known for bringing out high quality pinball games at extremely low prices. Their Wild West, The Deep, and Jungle Style games have all seen a lot of success. Now, all three of them are available on your Mac. The Pinball can be downloaded from Gameprom's website for free with Wild West already included. For $2.99 each, you can download The Deep and Jungle Style as well.

The interesting thing is that the only way you can purchase these additional tables is as DLC through the Pinball Remote App itself. Besides acting as the online store for The Pinball, the remote can also control the game on your Mac via Wi-Fi. Sit back and relax as you control the flippers, plunger, and tilt on your computer screen using your iPhone or iPod touch. It works well for the most part, although I encountered occasional lag with my screen taps on the remote triggering the flippers in the game. Still, it's a really fun concept to use and since The Pinball and Pinball Remote are both free, you can try it out without risk. The Pinball is currently Mac only, but Windows users can join in on the fun in the next month or so.

Jerky Boys Pinball Does Exactly What It’s Supposed to Do is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Price: $0.99    Score: 6/10    By Steve Beaudry

The basic idea behind a pinball game has been the same since its inception: keep the ball away from the hole, and get points for hitting things. The idea of bringing pinball to the video game market is not unprecedented. As long as you can get the physics right, you’ve got a workable pinball game. The Jerky Boys Pinball by Inner Four takes the Jerky Boys franchise and brings it along with pinball to your iPhone. Which means, basically, that if you’re a fan of either of these two things, you’re going to enjoy the app. Otherwise… well, it’s just another pinball game.

There are several ways a manufacturer can customize a pinball game, obviously. There are an infinite amount of configurations, and so long as you have paddles on the bottom that hit the ball back up to the top, you’ve got a successful machine. And this is one area where Jerky Boys Pinball fails. There is exactly one configuration that is shared between four different themes. So the game looks different and sounds different (with different Jerky Boy characters yelling at you with their own catchphrases), but it plays exactly the same. Don’t get me wrong; that one configuration is a pretty engaging one. It’s a fun pinball game to play. But if you’re going to have four different themes, I would expect four different games. Or at least four different levels of difficulty.

A minor squabble I have is that it doesn’t allow you to tilt. I mean, c’mon… this is the first portable console with an accelerometer and you give it a pinball game that doesn’t tilt? Something’s wrong with that. We’ve got about a dozen different Labyrinth games where you tilt the iPhone to guide the ball into the appropriate hole, how about a game where you tilt it to try and keep it away from the hole?

All of these things aside, however, the game really is playable and the Jerky Boys characters are exactly as hilarious as ever. They’ll even call you out if you end up not playing for a while. Fans of the off-color prank callers will have fun for hours. Also, the creators of the game have said that they welcome fan input. So tap the information button to find their email address and give them feedback. Tell them about the tilt function!

The Jerky Boys Pinball is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch.  It requires the iPhone OS 3.0 or later. A small expedite fee was paid by the developer to speed up the publication of this review.

Coming Soon: ‘Pinball Remote’ iPhone App and ‘The Pinball’ is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

We just got word that Gameprom's set of three pinball games for the iPhone are coming to the Mac in one application that is going to serve as the hub for all of their desktop-sized pinball ports. The Pinball will allow you to play full screen high resolution versions of Wild West Pinball, The Deep Pinball and Jungle Style Pinball and bring several new features to the table such as greatly improved graphics, as well as a stereoscopic 3D mode that will require red/blue 3D glasses to play.

Available along side the launch of The Pinball is the companion iPhone app Pinball Remote which will allow players to utilize their iPhone as a wireless controller while playing The Pinball. You will also be able to use Pinball Remote to browse scores online, as well as purchase other pinball tables to play. Gameprom mentions Wild West Pinball available for free for users who download Pinball Remote, but has yet to reveal pricing details on both The Pinball Mac game or additional tables for Pinball Remote.

Here is a video of Pinball Remote and The Pinball in action:

Gameprom is hoping to launch The Pinball and Pinball Remote on March 1st, and being a Mac user who obviously owns an iPhone, I'm anxious to try these games full screen on my iMac.

Jungle Style Pinball is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Any pinball game needs a few things: responsive controls, a complex table design, and solid physics. Jungle Style Pinball has all of that, plus incredible, fully 3D graphics. The table looks great and is tons of fun to play, which is no surprise; Gameprom is also the developer behind two other much-loved titles: Wild West Pinball and The Deep Pinball. Jungle Style Pinball continues the evolution of their games and does so with their signature polish and flair.

The first thing you’ll notice upon booting up Jungle Style Pinball are the graphics. The table is filled with lush and vibrant objects, all of which are fully 3D. Tiki-style wooden bridges serve as “chutes” that crisscross the playing field; Big Kong crouches at the far end, and a shaman guards the giant maze. The 3D isn’t just there to look pretty, either; it’s actually an important aspect of the game. When you tilt your iPhone, the table tilts, too, and you can use this to give yourself a better view of the table. You can also use the tilt feature to save your ball, if you’re skilled enough.

Controls are straight forward and fast. There are a total of four flippers on the table: two standard flippers at the bottom, and two separate flippers on either side of the table closer to the top. Tapping the left half of the screen triggers the left flippers; tapping on the right triggers the right flippers. Hold the screen to keep ‘em up. It’s simple, and the buttonless control scheme works wonderfully.

As for the actual gameplay, well, you’ll need to play a few times before figuring out exactly what each hidden trigger controls. There’s a guide available online from Gameprom, but it’s not accessible from within the app. Once you get the hang of it, the game becomes much easier. “Keys” can be obtained, Big Kong can be awoken and defeated, and you can even make it onto the aircraft that hovers above the table. Multiball can also be unlocked, which just unleashes more havoc. Whether or not you’ll prefer this dense table to other App Store offerings is a matter of personal preference, as always, but I found Jungle Style Pinball to be a blast. My only wish is for an in-app explanation of the missions; even with the online guide, it’s not always clear how to trigger certain events.

At least Gameprom put a lot of effort into the small details. Pausing the game is as easy as tapping the top of the screen, and if you get interrupted by a push notification, the game resumes with nary a hitch. Even if you close the app, it’ll recover your game. Though the game description trumpets that it was initially “designed to show you the possibilities of your iPhone 3GS,” I’m running a second-generation iPod Touch and have yet to experience any lag. Both local and global high score boards are integrated, and you can even change the camera from “live” to “fixed” by pinching the screen.

All in all, Jungle Style Pinball is a great addition to the iPhone’s library of pinball games. Again, personal tastes will determine if you prefer this table layout over others, but Gameprom’s physics engine and 3D graphics are simply superb. If you’re a pinball fan or just a gamer looking for a quick pick-up-and-play title, Jungle Style Pinball’s low price makes it an easy buy.

The Deep Pinball – iPhone App Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

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Gameprom’s ‘The Deep Pinball’ and ‘Wild West Pinball’ Go Free to Celebrate the Release of ‘Jungle Style Pinball’ is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Among iPhone gamer pinball fans, it seems like debate of which of the pinball series is the best on the platform is as hotly contested as Star Wars nerds arguing over which is the best movie in the original trilogy. I'm partial to Gameprom's pinball games, as they all load very quickly, seem to have realistic pinball physics, come packed with online leaderboards, and have camera options to either follow the pinball or stay locked and display the entire table.

Wild West Pinball [Free] was released first, followed by The Deep Pinball [Free] and as of a few days ago, Jungle Style Pinball [99¢] is the latest in Gameprom's pinball lineup. Normally both 99¢, Wild West and The Deep both went free to promote the launch of Jungle Style. On top of that, the previous two games also were recently updated to "Christmas Editions" which just amount to each of the tables having their art slightly modified to be more festive.

Jungle Style Pinball takes the same gameplay and adds a new jungle themed pinball table. Much like The Deep was an improvement on the table found in Wild West, Jungle Style takes this even farther with even more things to hit and hidden areas to boost your score.

The developer released the following gameplay trailer:

I highly recommend downloading The Deep Pinball and Wild West Pinball while they're free. If you enjoy either of those games, you should like Jungle Style Pinball just as much if not even more.

App Store Links

• Wild West Pinball, Free
• The Deep Pinball, Free
• Jungle Style Pinball, 99¢

Pinball Wizard!: A Customizable iPhone Pinball Sim is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

iPhone publisher Zidware has released Pinball Wizard! ($1.99), a customizable pinball simulation developed by pinball industry veteran John A. Popadiuk, Jr.

Popadiuk was a member of the pinball division at Williams during the height of the game’s popularity in the mid-to-late ’90s. Popadiuk’s iPhone title includes a feature not found in any other pinball simulation on the platform — if you don’t like the table design, you can change the playfield’s object placement using the included design mode.

Pinball Wizard! promises “top to bottom real pinball action and physics” and includes authentic ambient sounds and visual effects. The game also features leaderboards and an option to connect with Facebook to share top scores.