Best Iphone Apps Review

‘Entombed’ — A Puzzler That’s Grave Robbery…In Reverse is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Yesterday, Fun Guy Media released Entombed for the iPhone [App Store], an exploration puzzler set in the labyrinthine underground tombs of ancient civilizations. The game is something of a grave-robber scenario, but the other way around.

You play the role of Blake (indeed), whose father, a heroic archeologist of his time, has recently died in a freak accident, leaving you with a dread family legacy. During his life, your father explored the ancient tombs of long lost civilizations — the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs, the Persians, and the like. He stripped them of their treasures for display in museums around the world, but, known only to his closest family members, he secretly kept a number of precious items for his own, personal collection. Over the years, your family has seen many a dark and tragic event befall them, your father's recent demise among them. Upon consulting an Egyptian mystic, you learn that the only way to avoid the same unfortunate end as your father is to return the artifacts in the secret collection to their rightful resting place.

And, so the adventure begins. As you move through the levels of this game, your goal is to return the artifacts in question, which requires solving various puzzles that riddle these subterranean labyrinths to get to your final destination. Along the way you will find various objects and obstacles that must be collected, moved, or crumbled in order to gain access to closed off areas of the tomb. There are pits, dart traps, sliding walls, and sketching challenges that test your observation skills as an archeologist.

You negotiate the many twists and turns of these catacombs by tapping where you'd like to move. Certain objects can be tapped to trigger interactions and a pinch / spread mechanic is used to zoom in and out of the play area. The angled top-down 3D graphics are simple but nice, with great, moody lighting accompanied by a similarly atmospheric audio track.

See our demo video that shows bits of early gameplay.

I, along with several forum readers, encountered a few glitches here and there in the game which required a level restart. It's an unfortunate blemish on a clever and enjoyable game, but I expect the developer to address these in a near-term update. Despite the glitches, our forum members are rather enjoying this one.

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

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

• Price: $1.99 (Currently free, during one-day introductory special. Download here)
• Version: 1.0
• Official Site: Toco Games

I once worked at a company that celebrated the launch of one of its products by handing out little plastic trinkets to all the employees. One of these trinkets was a puzzle sphere made up of 4 nearly-identical pieces, the object of which was to work out how to build the sphere again once disassembled.

It was readily apparent how the pieces fit together; the trick was trying to do it with only two hands. One day, after fiddling with it for some time, my officemate exasperatedly cried out “This isn’t a puzzle, it’s a skill!”

I have a similar reaction to the puzzle mode in MagniFusion. The goal of each single-screen puzzle is to push all like-colored bubbles into each other, each pair merging to form a larger bubble. These larger bubbles won’t fit through smaller openings, but will slide over smaller pits, meaning there is often a fairly precise order in which the bubbles need to be merged.

The challenge of these puzzles rarely lies in figuring out the order in which to merge bubbles, or the paths on which to move them, but in doing so within the generally brief time limit.

In most cases you do not drag the bubbles directly, but push them along with your fingertip. Since this means the bubbles can easily get away from you if you are not careful, moving quickly whilst avoiding obstacles (including other bubbles you do not wish to merge with yet) can become quite the test of manual dexterity.

Fortunately, most of the puzzles reside on the proper side of the line between challenging and frustrating, so the overall experience remains fun. Unfortunately, the difficulty curve varies wildly, and you could slog your way through one maddening puzzle only to find the next several are cakewalks. Since you must complete all five puzzles in each tier to unlock the next, this can wind up prematurely hampering progress in the later stages.

MagniFusion also contains an arcade mode, which features exactly the same gameplay found in Toco Games’ earlier title, Magnify Physics (see my earlier review for details).  Importantly, however, the terrible slowdown problems that plagued Magnify Physics have been resolved, and the framerate remains smooth even with a large amount of action on screen.

The arcade mode also now comes in three difficulties, which determine how much of the edges will freeze bubbles. Magnify Physics represents hard mode, with all borders off-limits, and the penalty area is reduced from there.

Even with these improvements, the game is still a little rough around the edges. Aside from the inconsistent difficulty in the puzzle mode, the controls sometimes feel a bit glitchy, especially when squashing a bubble to move it more precisely.

In fact, I found the squash functionality in general to be more of a hindrance than a help, especially in arcade mode.  For the most part, though, these minor flaws don’t detract much from the fun, and any puzzle failed due to a glitch is easily retried.

MagniFusion addresses the critical flaws in its predecessor, and adds an equally-compelling puzzle mode. A few polish issues notwithstanding, it is an entertaining skill-based puzzler built around some fresh mechanics.

Bonus Protip: For an additional challenge, enter the code 477201 at the “Codes and Extras” screen to unlock the Special Maze Mode.

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‘Aerox’ Review – A Stylish Physics-Powered Ball Roller is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

If you're one of the many people who always loved the Super Monkey Ball games on consoles, but never could really get in to the iPhone and iPad iterations because of control issues (I'm definitely one of those people), Aerox [$1.99] by Synoptical Studios is worth checking out. Aerox features extremely clean looking graphics, almost as if the game itself was designed as some part of a Aperture Science training program. This graphical style is paired with soothing music which creates an oddly relaxing experience– A phrase I never really thought I'd use to describe a ball rolling puzzle game.

Much like Super Monkey Ball, the object of Aerox is to roll your ball to the end of each level. In between the beginning and the pillar of light you must reach are all kinds of crazy obstacles ranging from simple ramps, moving platforms, and narrow platforms. It doesn't take long for the difficulty of the game to ramp up and throw other physics-based obstacles at you. For instance, you'll need to bump in to tall skinny blocks to get them to fall over to make a bridge to cross, other times there will be objects you need to move around to pass, or even move out of the way so a ramp can drop down to climb up.

The ball is controlled by tilting, and tilting your device back and forth controls rolling while tilting right or left controls the camera. For additional precision, you can touch and hold the screen and the camera will lock behind your ball at which point tilting right or left causes you to roll that direction. It's a pretty decent setup, although I have found myself rolling out of control by tilting too much and having the camera skew to an unexpected angle. A sensitivity slider in the options would likely solve this problem, which the developer has mentioned is coming in an update in the Aerox thread on our forums.

Aerox utilizes the graphical power of the iPhone 3GS, 3rd generation iPod touch, and iPhone 4 to do realtime reflections on the ball along with some fancy shadow generation not available on other devices. Currently the game runs at the typical 480×320 iOS game resolution, but in the not too distant future is getting updated with complete Retina Display support along with universal iPad compatibility.

With 30 levels to go through, online leader boards (although they haven't been working for me), and updates on the horizon to make the game take advantage of the increased resolution of iPad and iPhone 4, there's a lot to like about Aerox. The game isn't perfect, as I'd love to see some mid-level checkpoints added, but people on our forums are enjoying it, and it's easy to get behind any game with developers actively participating in the forums with plans to implement user suggestions in future updates.

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‘Graveyard Shift’ Review – A Fun Physics Puzzler with Great Style is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Graveyard Shift [$2.99/Lite] is a new physics puzzle game where you are literally working a graveyard shift in a graveyard putting back skeletons that have inexplicably decided to pop out of their coffins. It features a charming art style that's Retina Display ready, a multitude of levels, and best of all some great level designs that are hard not to appreciate. It also doesn't hurt that the game is universal, and there's a lite to try before you buy. If you like games like Saving Private Sheep, Angry Birds, and Ragdoll Blaster, then Graveyard Shift should be right up your alley.

The premise is that you're a boy looking for a job to earn some extra cash, and you come to find that the local graveyard is hiring. For some odd reason, the skeletons from the graves have popped out of their coffins and perched themselves precariously amongst objects throughout the graveyard. It's your job to use the different properties of these objects and the physics in the game to get the skeleton back into their coffin homes. Some blocks can be touched to make them disappear, some must be touched by the same type block to eliminate them, and some just can't be removed from the level at all. There are also boxes of TNT that can be used to launch objects or the skeletons themselves to aid the task of getting them back to their eternal resting place.

The graphics in Graveyard Shift are nice, with lovely hand drawn backgrounds and crisp in-game elements that look especially great on the iPhone 4. The music is also very catchy and fitting, but the thing that really stands out about the game is the excellent level designs. Some levels are very straightforward, with the skeleton on top of stacks of blocks that must simply be cleared in order for him to fall into the coffin. But others are more complex, and almost Rube Goldberg-esque in their execution. For example, you may pop a box of dynamite that sends a ball rolling down an incline, that will then cause a latch that is holding back a giant pendulum to disappear. Gravity will then cause the pendulum to swing, and once it hits it's apex another box of dynamite is used to blast the pendulum further upwards into a platform where the skeleton resides, catapulting him into the nearby coffin. There's plenty of examples of situations like these during the game's 72 levels, and I certainly had my fair share of laugh out loud moments as I stared in amazement while the level played out.

As much as I enjoyed playing through Graveyard Shift, it's not without a couple problems. The biggest issue is the extremely finicky physics system. While it does create for some hilarious moments with the ragdoll skeleton, it can also cause objects in the game to behave wildly different from one play to the next. As a result, some of the levels can be frustratingly hard as you try to get things to do what you want them to, and completing each one is more luck than anything else. Somehow this doesn't really hinder the enjoyment though, and levels are easy to instantly replay at any moment, which you'll be doing often. The other issues with the game are very minor glitches where sometimes graphics don't display properly or levels load without any objects. These are easily fixed by simply reloading a level, and the developer is already working on an update to iron out these kinks.

Minor issues aside, I had a ton of fun with Graveyard Shift. The moments of figuring out how a level should work and then executing it, all while the ragdoll skeleton is flailing about the screen, brought a smile to my face every time. As an added challenge each level has a par for completion time and taps used, so beyond just completing each one you can also shoot for these goals. Unfortunately there's no sort of social network like OpenFeint to tie these accomplishments together, but at the very least it still adds replay to the game. If you are a fan of these physics games you should definitely try out the lite version of Graveyard Shift, and join in on the forum discussion for further player impressions and developer responses.

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Bulkypix Launches Bermuda Triangle is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Veteran App Store publisher Bulkypix (Pix’n Love Rush, Saving Private Sheep) announced the release of its latest iPhone title, the aquatic puzzler Bermuda Triangle: Saving the Coral ($1.99).

In Bermuda Triangle, players must match like-colored pods in order to feed the ocean’s coral. Each launched pod will push surrounding pieces down a row, allowing for complex scoring and combo possibilities.

Players also have access to bombs, anchors, and other limited-use items that will clear pieces from the game board.

Bermuda Triangle features a story mode and a series of timed challenges, along with an endless mode for high-score seekers.

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Paradise Quest HD Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to review match three games, as they have become so plentiful on iPhones and iPads. Still, Paradise Quest HD manages to maintain some originality in the face of so much sameness, and that has to count for quite a lot. It’s a good game for adults, but there are many features that make this an even better game for kids.

I’ve never imagined that match three games could be even in the least bit educational, but Paradise Quest has some educational elements that add to the atmosphere of the game without, fortunately, standing in the way of the play mechanics. The premise of Paradise Quest HD is that you are an explorer/scientist (the two get a bit confused along the way) attempting to revitalize a failing rainforest ecosystem. Matching three in this case allows you to gather precious resources (water, food sources, trees, etc) that you can then use/spend to rebuild the suffering landscape. I give the developers points for making the game eco-friendly; as the ecosystem is improved players are notified of life forms that have returned to the rainforest. These are then catalogued in a scrapbook along with achievements you’ve unlocked, leaderboards and other relevant discoveries. The animal pictures are nice, but it would have been a good idea to provide some information about the animal as well. If you’re going to have an educational element in a game, you might as well go all the way with it.

The designers also include a few variations on the classic match three formula. The main one is that you cannot see the entire board at one time. Each time you make a match, the board shifts subtly in the direction of that match. This, along with attempting to gather specific resources on the board, causes shifts in strategy in terms of which items to match. It’s not a major innovation, but it’s a welcome change.

Visually, the game is extremely colorful and is really delightful to view. Sound is equally impressive, with tribal beats underscoring most of the game’s action. The only significant downsides in the game are the loading times and the match three controls. It seems as though every change in the game is accompanied by a lengthy (by iPad standards at least) loading screen. Once or twice is fine, I suppose, but after several of these they really grow tiresome. Shifting items to make matches also doesn’t feel as elegant as the rest of the game. It works, so from a utilitarian perspective it’s not a huge issue, but moving pieces on the board does not have the usual snap and polish that I usually associate with this sort of game. There’s a slight lag when moving pieces that serves to disconnect the player from the game, and it’s an issue worth addressing in future updates.

Taken as a whole, Paradise Quest HD is a clever, lengthy game, certainly worth $2.99, that seems best suited to children. Even adults will enjoy saving the rainforest, though.

[ Paradise Quest HD 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

TouchArcade Rating:

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Finger Physics: Thumb Wars Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

2009’s Finger Physics was immensely popular, and a fun physics puzzle game to boot. Press OK was tasked with creating a sequel that would follow up on the original’s foundations but to be different enough to be worth playing even for fans of the original. And so, Finger Physics: Thumb Wars is based around the concept of countries competing through high scores to propel their country to victory. Your high scores on levels are added to your country and state’s totals, helping to lead them to the top of the leaderboards.

There are two types of gameplay in Finger Physics: Thumb Wars – levels where you have to manipulate objects to get a blue star ball to come in contact with the spinning goal, trying to collect stars along the way for bonus points, and construction levels where you are given blocks to stack up in a way such that none of them fall off of the stage after 3 seconds.

Finger Physics: Thumb Wars is definitely a different game than its predecessor, while still playing similarly, due to the narrower focus on the 2 level types. This difference makes the game feel familiar while still being something new, which I applaud Press OK for doing. It would have been easy to just make some new levels and call it a day, but they really did decide to try to change up this sequel. And for the most part, it works. This is still a fun physics puzzler, and the focus on star collection gives you an optimal goal to shoot for in the levels, and the nationalism-based high score system means that there is incentive to really play for high scores.

The menu layouts in the game are unintuitive and confusing, often using strange wording and odd layouts to make them a challenge to properly use. Even just changing the “Back to Game” text to “Resume” would make things a lot easier to comprehend. The original Finger Physics was notable in part for its multiple puzzle types, and Thumb Wars’ reduction to only 2 types is disappointing as the game feels more homogenized than the original did, even when elements such as magnetic blocks and exploding blocks come into play. It’s just the same basic 2 goals – either get the star ball to the goal or build a ’stable’ structure. I say stable loosely, as the structure you build can be falling entirely apart when the 3 second timer starts, all you need to do is keep all the pieces on screen.

Finger Physics: Thumb Wars does a good job at differentiating itself and adding the novel country competition mechanic, but the monotonous gameplay and frustrating menu layouts drag the game down. This is a solid entry into the physics puzzle game genre, but its flaws keep it from truly being one of the best.

[ Finger Physics: Thumb Wars Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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