Spore Creatures Review for iPhone and iPod Touch

Price: $6.99

Publisher EA Mobile

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If you’re unfamiliar with the Spore universe, it was Will Wright's (The guy behind both SimCity and The Sims) final game he created while at EA. The general scope of the PC game took you from being an incredibly small single celled organism, to eventually building up your species through a series of evolutions into a galactic traveler/dominator. When EA Mobile brought Spore Creatures to the mobile, it was done on a much smaller scale but with the same basic principles. You design a creature and take it from its infancy to be the dominant creature on the planet.


One of the first things you will notice when loading the game is that the color palette is fantastic.  Every color is bright and rich and gives an almost cartoon feel to the world.  The gameplay revolves around you creating a new species and evolving different traits in order to be able to kill or socialize with other species in the world.  It is entirely up to you what type of species you will create.  Will you create a creature with spikes for a tail and razor sharp teeth?  Or will you create a character that is extremely defensive based and can socialize with the best of them?  The choice is yours and that is one of the best parts about the game.

The game revolves around you moving your character through a series of levels and finding ways to evolve.  Eating smaller creatures, finding other species and either socializing with them or fighting them , and even killing bosses on each of the four levels will move you character closer to inter-species dominance.  You have quite a few choices as you move through the game about how your character will look and what traits you have.  Those traits will help you determine whether or not you should fight a new found species or socialize with them.  However, the choices are much smaller than the PC version of the game and no matter what you choose to do; you cannot interact with other users throughout the Spore Creatures world.  This is a single player game only.

The controls are done by tilting the device in the direction you want your creature to slither, crawl, or walk.  There are a few additional buttons on the screen, one of which is the action button.  To eat food, simply guide your creature towards it and it will lunge forward to grab it.  While the competing creatures are often cute, there isn't much substance to the world.  None of the creatures create societies, compete for resources, or are on their own missions for world dominance.  Apparently you are the only one that has aspirations for world domination.  The end result, it feels kind of empty and doesn't really sit well for me.  I had gone in expecting to find a world like Civilization; instead I found something much simpler.

The music and sound are very well done.  In fact, the entire game is very well produced but it seems like an empty shell of what it could have been.  The game gives you about 2 or 3 hours of content.  Of course, some of would say that there are limitless possibilities since each time you can create a new character.  That isn't the case.  The world is the same every time you load it up.  The same species, the same levels, the same bosses.  If it contained some dynamic engine to load up other user's content, that would have been a joy, but sadly it is not the case.  Once you go through the four levels, there really isn't much else to do.

Spore Creatures isn't a bad game but it feels like it could have been much more.  For $6.99, I say to pass unless you are someone that really enjoys casual gameplay.  In fact, the best market for this game might be the Touch users out there that fall into the Teen category.  For us adults and/or people who like more of a challenge, I recommend Civilization Revolution.

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Starball Review for iPhone and iPod Touch

Price: $.99

Publisher: Quantum Squid Interactive

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Starball is a simple game for the iPhone and iPod Touch where you roll around a green ball and gather stars. The obstacles are little red balls that move both horizontally and vertically.  If you run into one of these red balls the game is over. As time goes on more red balls are added so you must maneuver around them to keep gathering stars. There are also extras (gold circles with question marks) that pop up along the way to help you out. These extras include: clairvoyance, slowmo, invincibility, shrinkage (do women know about this?), the ability to freeze time, star beam, and even a power up that erases all of the red balls.

The game play is probably the best part of the game…it is incredibly easy. You just tilt your device and the ball rolls. It can’t get much easier than that. There are three difficulty levels to choose from, beginner, normal, and insane.  Par for the course, the higher the difficulty, the more difficult it is for you to maneuver around the red balls.

The graphics are great. There are even three different graphical themes to spice up game play. Vector is my favorite. The audio is good as well, with two techno options. The sound FX are simple, yet easy on the ears.

My honest opinion is that this is a fun game. With that said, there isn’t much to it. If you want a game that you can play when you have a spare five minutes here and there, then this game is for you. If you are looking for a game with hours and hours of gameplay, you should probably look elsewhere.

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The iPad means the beginning of $20 - $30 games on App Store

If you were around on Wednesday you probably saw both Need for Speed Shift and NOVA were spoken about during Apple's presentation.  These are optimized versions of their pre-existing iPhone apps.  I have a feeling that the word optimized means more expensive as well.  After all a publisher like EA would be cannibalizing its own market if it put out fully featured games like NFS: Shift on the iPad and only charged 10 dollars for it.  Who would pay 30 or 40 dollars for a DS or PSP version when they could pay $10 for the iPad version that has a bigger screen and an accelerometer?  I think the end result is that we will quickly see the beginning of the 20 - 30 dollar game on the iPad.

For both Apple and the developers this would be a huge win.  Apple receives their cut and the larger developers ensure they can get a ton of the money without any chance for a used game market.  This is the way things are going in the console world as well, although we are not there quite yet.  Look at how poorly the PSP Go was received (not really a big surprise).  One thing the large developers should worry about is Apple’s inability to stop piracy on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  What is their plan to stop it for the iPad?  I'm sure one additional revenue stream the iPad developers will want to cash in on are in-app purchases.  In fact, that's one way that developers can cut down (or make up for) piracy.  Time will tell but I think it is very important that you all go into buying an iPad very carefully.  I am nearly positive that we will start seeing $20 "optimized" iPad games being delivered to the App Store as soon as the device comes out.  And I think that number is sure to rise in the future.

Bungee Stickmen 2010: Space Edition Review

Price: .99

Publisher: Poulet Maison

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Bungee Stickmen 2010: Space Edition is pretty well explained by its title alone. It is an physics based game for the iPhone/iPod Touch where you indirectly control a little stick figure that jumps from various platforms in a variety of locations. I say indirectly control because all you really do is choose the length of rope that the stickman uses on each jump. The closer your stickman gets to the ground the more points you earn. You must earn a certain amount of points to move on to the next level.

There are several variables that change to make each level different. The platform height is main variable but the stickman’s weight and height also change. One other variable that changes in later levels is the rope flex factor (the flex factor is set at 1.0 during early levels then changes to try to throw off your guess).

As far as gameplay goes, there isn’t much. All you do is slide a bar that selects the rope length then press a button that says jump. That’s it.  The challenge is trying out whatever you would like to on your first jump and adjusting on the following 2 jumps.  In fact, the games gameplay and its strength of challenge are both fairly poor.  The levels within the game play exactly the same regardless of the setting.  Set the rope length, click a button.  Watch the result.  It’s pretty tedious and not likely to keep your interest for very long.

The graphics and audio are subpar. The graphics are just background images that don’t move. The only moving graphics are the occasionally eagle or UFO and the stickman and his rope. Sometimes the physics feel a bit off as well.  I have a 3gs and though the graphics are simple I still have the occasional slowdown on my jumps.  The sound FXs and background music follow suit and could have both been done better.

Bungee Stickmen, 2010: Space Edition is a game with a great concept but came up short on everything else. I would like to see a remake with more interactivity and controls.  Some iPhone and iPod Touch games come out that only have a single developer yet feel incredibly polished, balanced, and fun.  This is not that game.

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Apple iPad, Pros and Cons

By now you have likely read many things about Apple's new iPad.  I imagine some were good, some were bad.  I wanted to do an old Ben Franklin style list, listing its pros on one side and its cons on the other side.  Please let me know if I am missing something on either side.  The end result of this list should be able to tell us whether or not the device makes sense to buy.

Pros:

Interface is extremely similar to the iPhone/iPod Touch.  This means that most of the 50 million odd owners of one of these devices should be able to pick it up and go.
The App Store is the iPad's single biggest strength.  No company has a finer base of programs (or nearly as many) available to its end users.  Apparently 140,000 or so of those App Store programs will be able to be loaded up right away on the upcoming iPad.
Large screen.  In fact, its 10 inches makes it larger than most netbook screens, portable DVD players and mobile video game players
10 hour battery life is pretty decent.
Big developer buy-in - It was good to see both Gameloft and EA demo their stuff during today's presentation
Ability to read books, newspapers and magazines in a simple format.
Built in speaker and microphone

Cons:

No multitasking.  In fact, its Safari browser seemingly doesn’t support multiple websites being pulled up
No flash.  Flash is a major part of the web.  Without it being included, you will likely be missing a lot.
No removable battery.  When it dies completely, so does the iPad.
It's too big to easily carry in one hand.  1.5 pounds can weigh you down after an hour or so of reading.
Questionable endurance.  How long can a device that only weighs 1.5 pounds take abuse?  One of its selling points is that kids could use this for their textbooks in school.  I don't think I am going to allow Little Bobby Butterfingers near this $500 piece of technology.
No HDMI port, no camera, no built in phone
Screen does not use 16:9 aspect ratio (as many videos now are) resulting in a black box on each side when they are  played.

Where does that leave us?  On the ropes I think.  Personally I think I'll hold off for a while and see what happens.  What are you going to do?

Firemint Announces Development of iPad Optomized Flight Control

After today's iPad announcement by Apple, Firemint (developer of both Flight Control and Real Racing had their own announcement.  In that release Firemint said, "We're delighted that we can now make our own announcement: we will bring an optimised and re-imagined version of Flight Control to iPad. Like almost 140,000 other apps on the App Store, Flight Control will work perfectly on iPad without any changes from us, but we want to ensure a delightful experience on iPad that feels just right.

We started developing Real Racing before the iPhone 3G was announced. Similarly, we are already building our next generation of games for higher definition, more powerful devices than are available today. We like to imagine what the devices of tomorrow will be capable of, and invest in bringing our games to the next generation of hardware. The iPad announcement and Apple's A4 chip have come at a fantastic time for us. We are working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch."



Time will tell if Firemint will be bringing their world famous racing game to the big screen.  Haven't you always wanted to play it on a bigger screen?  More details to come.

Grand Theft Auto: CW Cheat Codes Part 2

Part 2 of Rockstar Games GTA: Chinatown Wars iphone/iPod cheats have arrived!

From Rockstar's website:

This set of Chinatown Wars “Player Cheats” will garner you additional cash, armor, health, wanted level fluctuation... and a special weapon that snuck its way in there.

Cheats are spelled out using the magnetized letters on the Mission Replay Board located in any Safe House.

Player Cheats

Money - CASHIN

$10,000 cash each time.


Armor - SHELLY

Gives you full armor.


Health - LIFEUP

Gives you full health.


Wanted level up - COPIN

Increase your wanted level.


Wanted level down -  COPOUT

Decrease your wanted level.


Explosive Eagle - BOOMCAN

An explosive-freakin'-pistol.




A cheat is entered successfully when all of the magnetized letters go back to their original position on the board and a piece of text appears at the bottom of the screen with the load-out name you selected.

Rockstar is saying there will be one more round of cheats.  Haven't played the game?  Read our review.