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Reviews - page 107

Game On (And On) With These Stunningly Superb Siberia Elite Gaming Headphones [Review]

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Gaming headsets are quite the rage lately, with products from Turtle Beach, Logitech, and Sony gracing any decent gaming aisle at your favorite retailer.

Siberia Elite Gaming Headset by SteelSeries
Category: Headsets
Works With: Mac, iPhone, Android, PCs
Price: $199.00

SteelSeries has a long history of providing high quality gaming peripherals, like mice, keyboards, and controllers, for the high-end PC gaming market. They’ve recently made some fantastic forays into iOS gaming peripherals, as well, like the SteelSeries Free controller for iPad and iPhone.

These Siberia Elites, then, have a fantastic pedigree at a fairly competitive price, and I’ve fallen in love with their sound, build quality, and fancy extras.

The Cave Is Great In Theory But Desperately Needs A Controller [Review]

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The knight The Cave

Some games just aren’t meant for touch screens, and it’s very unfortunate that The Cave is one of them. In developer Double Fine’s dark look at inner desires and magical caves, you guide three of the seven available “heroes” through a labyrinthian network of tunnels that slowly unveil each character’s inner corruption.

The Cave by Double Fine
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPad, iPhone
Price: $4.99

Its fantastic-yet-eerie atmosphere and stellar narration definitely translates well to portable screens, but the lack of physical controls or even on-screen button prompts is a serious issue.

Nakama Has The Cutest Cloud-Riding Ninja You Ever Did See [Review]

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In a world overrun with endless runners, it’s nice to see a cheery little beat-em-up among their number. Nakama is the delightfully colorful quest of a ninja rescuing his friends from bad guys then teaming up with them to take on even bigger, badder dudes ahead.

Nakama by Crescent Moon Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

Nakama is yet another faux-retro style brawler, complete with pixel graphics. The use of color sets it apart from most, however. Splashes of brilliant greens and vibrant pinks set a whimsical tone as you slash through hordes of baddies. When you fall in battle, you can even ride a cloud back to your last location, Dragon Ball-style.

Pahelika Secret Legends Will Have You Feeling Smart Before Long [Review]

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Hidden object games don’t usually catch my fancy, to be honest. I’ve never been a big fan of the mechanics, which typically require you to find objects to then reveal other objects, which can then be combined to become actual useful objects. I’ve also never been too taken by the typical romanticized story lines, either.

Pahelika: Secret Legends by Ironcode Gaming
Category: Mac Games
Works With: Mac OS X
Price: $4.99

Big Fish’s new game, developed by India-based IronCode Games, Pahelika Secret Legends has found a way to convince me otherwise,t hough, and I find myself being drawn back to playing it often. There’s a fairly interesting story, and the puzzles are tough enough to provide a challenge without busting a brain.

If you’re like me and have been ambivalent about trying a game like this out, perhaps this is the one to start with.

Puzzle Dungeon – A Box-Pushing Hell Of Your Own Design [Review]

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When role-playing game heroes die, I suspect Puzzle Dungeon is what their hell looks like. Plodding music, 60 progressively tricky puzzles, and a bare-bones presentation, Puzzle Dungeon gives you a glimpse at the unpleasant side of the 16-bit afterlife.

Puzzle Dungeon by Robert Lane
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone
Price: $0.99

If you’re familiar with games like Chew Man Fu, The Adventures of Lolo, and all those generic block-pushing programs on old cell phones, you’ll immediately know how to play Puzzle Dungeon.

Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel Gets The Job Done (And Nothing Else) [Review]

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Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel

The adventure-game genre has two salient qualities: puzzles and story. I’ve played titles with great puzzles and crappy stories, and I’ve played ones with amazing stories and awful, boring puzzles. I’ve even played some in which both the puzzles and plots were great, and some where they were both bad. There may be some kind of permutation formula at work here, but that’s not important.

Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel by G5 Entertainment
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free ($6.99 to unlock full game)

Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel‘s story and puzzles are neither great nor terrible; it is completely average across the board. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing if you need an adventure fix, but it probably shouldn’t be your first choice especially since something like seven Monkey Island games are currently available in the App Store.

Regardless, Paranormal Hotel serves its purpose and does what it needs to.

For Something So Simple, The Rolio Dock Sure Manages To Do A Lot [Review]

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Rolio byBlue Lounge
Category: Docks
Works With:Lightning iOS Devices
Price: $10

If you’re looking for an ultra-simple dock, or just for a way to stop your iPhone skittering across your desk every time you snap it’s cable, then you might like the Rolio from Blue Lounge. Not only is it one of the most versatile iPhone and iPad charging accessories around, it’s also one of the most affordable.

Wonky Screen Protectors Are A Thing Of The Past With ALIN For iPhone [Review]

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I’ve applied dozens of screen protectors to my iPhones over the years, and I’d say less than 10% of them actually went on straight. They almost always go on wonky first time, and that means pulling them away and applying them again.

ALIN by TYLT
Category: Screen Protectors
Works With: iPhone 5/5s
Price: $25

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about this anymore, because I have the ALIN from TYLT. The ALIN plastic alignment tool that clips into the side of your iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s and ensures that every single screen protector you apply goes on completely straight first time.

It takes the hassle out of the whole process, and it turns a ten-minute job into a two-minute one. And as you might expect, ALIN is reusable, so you can keep hold of it and put it to work every time you need to apply a new screen protector.

ALIN costs $25, and for that you get the alignment tool, plus four screen protectors — three clear ones, and one anti-glare one. Is it worth your money?

Tactical Espionage Office: Level 22 Brings Stealth To Work [Review]

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Waking up, looking at your clock, and seeing that you’re late for work or class is one of the worst feelings in the world. In that heart-stopping instant, you feel your control over your life drop into your stomach, and all you can think about is how annoyed or mad or disappointed the people waiting on you are going to be. It’s an adrenaline-drenched nightmare of a moment in which you realize just how quickly you can put your pants on and brush your teeth, and as you bolt out the door to face your fate, you wonder why you can’t always get ready that quickly.

Level 22 by Noego Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $3.99

Gary, the hero of developer Noego’s Level 22, is caught in that situation, and the really bad news is that he’s been late to work so many times that if anyone sees him this morning, he will lose his job. So on top of the already stressful situation of being late, he has to sneak his way up to the 22nd floor without anyone seeing him.

That’s right: This is a stealth game about going to work. And it’s every bit as silly and fun as that sounds.

Gurk III Is A No Nonsense RPG That Won’t Spoil You With Fancy Animations [Review]

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Gurk

If you’re in the mood for an old-fashioned computer role-playing game but don’t want to go through the dark rites of hardware emulation, Gurk III is a welcome alternative.

Gurk III by Larva Labs Ltd. Category: iOS Games Works With: iPhone, iPad Price: $1.99

Originally released exclusively on Google Play, the Gurk games are bare-bones RPG adventures that pit a small group of adventurers with generated stats against kobolds, goblins, and all sorts of cave-lurking baddies–kind of like the old DOS Shareware title Castle of the Winds.

SpellGrid Gives You A Quick Fix Of High-Pressure Spelling [Review]

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SpellGrid

I can really appreciate an app that values my time, so I’m going to just throw this in here at the start: SpellGrid, an anagram/crossword game out now for iPhone and iPad, will have you playing within five seconds of opening it. That doesn’t affect my review, but I’ve seen enough startup loading screens to think this is worth mentioning.

SpellGrid by Song San Hong
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

Alright, now about the game:

In SpellGrid, you start with a word which contains no repeating letters (e.g. smelting). Then, you have a set amount of time to see how many more words you can form, crossword-style, from those letters. The amount of time depends on the length of the starting word; it can be seven, eight, or nine letters long, and you’ll have one, two, or three minutes, respectively, to play your round.

SIMPLcase For Travelers Takes Care Of Your Spare SIM Cards [Review]

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SIMPLcase
byLGCL Designs
Category: Cases
Works With:iPhone 5
Price: $29

Back in March we took a look at the SIMPLcase, an iPhone case which stored your spare SIM cards and a SIM tray eject tool inside. One Kickstarter campaign and several months later, the SIMPLcase is a shipping product, and one which I which I have been testing out in a recent move from sunny Barcelona to gray Germany.

Does the SIMPLcase pass? Yup. With flying colors, in fact.

Space Qube: Destroy Aliens, Create Ships [Review]

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Space Qube

Every once in a while, an alien threat arises that is so malevolent and so heinous that the only thing to do is send a one-man ship out into space to take them all on singlehandedly.

Space Qube by Qubit Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99 (discounted from $2.99)

Alright, so that’s never happened in the history of ever, but in video games, it’s been going on at least since Space Invaders in 1978. And it is in this fine tradition of lonely, foolish heroism that we have Space Qube, a new shooter for the iPhone and iPad. If you’ve played any “One ship vs. all aliens” game before, you know what to expect here: The ship goes back and forth; the aliens fly in distinct patterns and shoot at you; you pick up powerups; and every once in a while, you fight a boss.

And if that’s all it did, I would say that Space Qube is very capable and leave it at that. But it has one extra feature that makes it stand out.

Link the Slug Invites You To Commit Cute, Puzzle-Based Genocide [Review]

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Link the Slug

Video games are all about solving problems and helping people. Sometimes, the problem is “too many monsters” and the people are the ones who made all those monsters in the first place.

Link the Slug by OX Play
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

So it is with Link the Slug, a puzzle game from developer OX Play, which is about a hapless scientist who accidentally creates a new species of colorful slugs and immediately decides that they must all die horribly. And that’s where you come in.

To destroy the slugs — who I will remind you have done nothing wrong — you must “link” them by tapping on two slugs of the same color. This will cause electricity to arc between the two targets, killing them both. Electricity can turn either left or right once so you want to link slugs around corners, but it can’t pass through obstacles or other slugs.

Gunner Z Makes Driving A Giant, Armored Truck Kinda Boring [Review]

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Gunner Z

I really hate zombies. They’re gross and smelly and violent, and they get everywhere. So killing them is basically a victimless crime, right? For example: If I were to, say, take a truck and attach a giant mechanical arm to it, and then put a gun on the end of that arm, and then have my buddy drive me around a zombie-infested city so I could sit inside and just fire endless rounds into the undead legion and maybe laugh like a crazy person while doing it, which court in the world would convict me?

Gunner Z by Bitmonster
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free

No court, is which one.

That’s kinda the premise of Gunner Z, minus the lengthy, sensational trial: You’re the gunner of a suped-up armored truck that drives around shooting zombies and occasionally members of a fringe paramilitary group. It’s an arcade-style, free-to-play shootfest in which you mow down endless waves of zombies in a world gone mad.

And it’s surprisingly dull.

Braven’s Rugged 855S Bluetooth Speaker Is Tougher Than Old Boots, And Sound Way Better [Review]

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855s by Braven
Category: Speakers
Works With:Anything
Price: $299

Braven’s 855S is the companion speaker to the 850. The internals are much the same, but the cases are as different as can be, with the heavy, rubberised 855S looking more like something you’d find in a military tank rather than on a tasteful shelf next to your fish tank.

That said, it looks and feels great. But how does it sound?

Drop That Candy Contains Every Kind of Sweetness [Review]

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Drop That Candy

Everyone loves feeding cute little animals, and mobile-game developers are no different. Games like Cut the Rope and Cat on a Diet are all about bringing food to adorable, tiny faces, and Drop That Candy continues the tradition.

Drop That Candy by Greenfly Studios
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $2.99

In this colorful puzzle game, you are tasked with clearing all of the candy in a series of boxes in order to drop them into the waiting mouth of Gizmo, a woodland creature of indeterminate species. You do this by tapping on the candy, and you can clear multiple pieces of the same color with a single tap if they are touching.

It’s an odd setup, but it all adds up to a game that is equally cute, clever, and fun.

UE Boom Mini – Tiny Speakers, Huge Sound, Colorful Look [Review]

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Mini Boom

Ultimate Ears, owned by Logitech, makes my favorite portable speaker ever: the UE Boom. The cylindrical powerhouse of a speaker is rugged, stylish, and easy to use.

Mini Boom by Ultimate Ears
Category: Portable Bluetooth Speakers
Works With: iOS, Mac, Any sound source
Price: $99.99 per speaker

Imagine my utter joy when I received Ultimate Ears’ latest entry into the portable speaker market, the UE MiniBoom, and found them to be even tinier and equally rugged and easy to use. Oh, and they sound fantastic, too.

Cat On A Diet – Like A Bunch Of Games You’ve Already Played [Review]

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Cat on a Diet

You know what people love? Cats. Just look at the Internet: It has cats everywhere.

You know what else people love? Breaking stuff. Just look at Angry Birds.

Cat on a Diet by Nawia Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

And a third thing people love? Taking two things and jamming them together. So now we have Cat on a Diet, a game about breaking stuff. Plus, it has a cat. And the cat is overweight. So that’s like a hat trick. Best game ever.

Well … it’s alright.

Charming Pocket Trains Rewards Patient Progress [Review]

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Pocket Trains

The Bitizens are back, and this time, it’s all about trains! Who doesn’t like trains?

Pocket Trains by NimbleBit
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free

Fresh off their hit Snake re-imagining Nimble Quest, NimbleBit has turned in a lovely little game that looks and plays a lot like last year’s hit Pocket Planes, with retro pixel art style and transit-themed, schedule-based gameplay. There’s a lot to like in this new iteration, as well, including streamlined mechanics, refined strategies, and updated graphics.

Let’s take a look.

Kanex Multi-Sync Keyboard Switches Between iPad And Mac, Bluetooth And USB [Review]

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Kanex Keyboard

Multi-Sync Keyboard byKanex
Category: Keyboards
Works With:Mac, iPad, iPhone
Price: $69

I used to keep three keyboards around the place, just to use with my two iPads and my iMac. This was clearly absurd, and I have since settled on the still-excellent Logitech K811, a Bluetooth keyboard which can easily switch between three Bluetooth devices at the touch of a button.

The Kanex Multi-Sync Keyboard offers a similar feature set, but is more geared towards the desktop. It’s pretty good, but won’t replace my K811. Let’s see why.

The Harman Kardon Go + Play Wireless Is A Great Sounding Boombox That Is Hard To Recommend [Review]

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Go + Play Wireless by Harman Kardon
Category: Bluetooth Speakers
Works With: Any iOS Device, Bluetooth
Price: $399.95

These days, small, pocketable Bluetooth speakers are de rigeur, but what about the veritable boombox of 80’s yore? What for the man for whom Beats are not enough, but must march across the subway platform with as big a driver as possible pulsating against is ear?

Harman Kardon’s Go + Play Wireless is for the person who wants more oomph than a Jambox, and doesn’t care if it takes up more space as a consequence. It’s for the guy who loves the boombox aesthetic, and thinks all of these pocketable speakers are losing the plot. It’s a beautiful Bluetooth boombox that looks just as good in the living room as it does blasting tunes while camping or at the beach, but a few strange design decisions might make it a tough sell to some, especially at the price.

Boson X Cuts Out The Extras For A Pure Endless-Running Experience [Review]

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Boson X

The endless runner genre might be in a bit of a rut. You run, run some more, kick that thing, avoid that other thing, jump over that third thing … it’s all getting a little predictable.

Boson X by Mu & Heyo
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $2.59

Luckily, we have games like Boson X to mix things up a bit. Its developer bills it as a “rotational runner,” and it takes an interesting approach to adding to the genre: subtraction. Boson X doesn’t add new features like lasers or parkour like, for example, Runbot; it’s actually very minimal. And therein lies its strength.

NewHeights Electric Standing Desk Is Good For Your Health, Hard On Your Wallet [Review]

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Several months ago I decided that I needed to change the way I work. Like most bloggers, I spend the majority of the day at my desk. I’m 6’2″ and over the years I’ve developed not-so-great posture by hunching over my computer screen. The back and neck pain eventually got so bad that I realized I needed to change up my workspace.

NewHeights by Beyond The Office Door
Category: Standing desk
Price: starts at $1378

I’d heard a lot about standing desks, so I decided to look into getting one. After researching, I zeroed in on the NewHeights electric desk. I’ve been using it for the past several months, and now I can never go back.

Strata Will Challenge Your Mind While Pleasing Your Eyes [Review]

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Strata

Strata, a puzzle game by developer Graveck, has been out for a few months now, but I only recently stumbled across it. Like FlowDoku, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, it’s a deceptively clever title that uses a couple quick rules to create complex tasks for players to solve.

Strata by Graveck
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

The rules of Strata are simple: You receive a square grid between 2×2 and 6×6 boxes in size, and you have to place colored ribbons across every row and column. Some boxes have colored squares in them, and the top ribbon on that square must be the same color. That sounds way more complicated than it is, but it makes sense once you’re looking at it.

And you should look at it because it’s really, really pretty.