Reviews - page 109

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Keyboard

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

While we knew almost everything there was to know about the iPhone 5s prior to its official unveiling last week, I don’t think anybody expected Apple to announce a fancy new case to go with it.

The Cupertino company has released an iPad case or cover for every model it has ever made, but this is the first time it has provided first-party iPhone protection since the iPhone 4 Bumper back in 2010. But I’m glad it’s back in the case business.

The new iPhone 5s case — which fits the iPhone 5, too, by the way — is made from soft, premium leather and designed to “look and feel luxurious,” Apple says. It is precision crafted for a tight fit that maintain’s your iPhone’s sleek, slim design, and its microfiber lining promises to protect its aluminum shell from scuffs and scratches.

The case is available in six pretty colors, and it’s priced at $39.95. That’s pretty expensive for a case of this kind, but is it worth it?

You know how it goes: You’re the king, you have prestige and power and piles of riches all around you … and then some goblin shows up and steals your pants.

Alright, maybe none of that has ever happened to me, ever, but it is the premise of Trouserheart, a new hack-and-slash action game out today by developer 10tons (makers of the Joining Hands puzzle series).

Given the “epic quest to rescue kidnapped pants” premise, you’d expect Trouserheart to be a pretty light affair. And it is, but it’s also a solid, satisfying experience.

Time to come clean: I play guitar and sing in a disco band. I know, I know, the backlash against that kind of music has been going on since 1977. Trust me, I know.

But the way people respond to this still-valid, we-use-real-instruments form of music is so much better than the way they used to when I played guitar in modern or classic rock bands. In those days, the most reaction I’d see in an audience was a foot tap, or maybe–if I was lucky–a head bob or two. Happy, gorgeous people dancing their butts off? So much more fun.

Now, playing in a cover band requires knowing a lot of music, like the chords for the 50 plus songs that we play. As I also take on half the lead singing duties, so I’m required to know the lyrics as well. I don’t do this for a living; I do it for fun and some beer and gear money. I don’t have tons of time to memorize all those songs, let alone the new ones we learn every few months. So I use lyric sheets. I used to use them on paper, but boy is that annoyingly old school and easily lost.

Now I use my iPad (and an amazing app called GigBook) to organize and keep track of my lyric sheets. And I also use the incomparable iKlip 2 iPad holder to attach that iPad to the microphone stand right in front of me.

When our own Rob LeFevre reviewed the Earskins, he was surprised to find them to be an “essential accessory” for his EarPods. I decided to give them a go too. And guess what? They really are essential: I actually have a spare set, because now I can’t imagine using my EarPods without them.

I have a confession to make: I was probably the only human being on the planet not playing the original Angry Birds when it came out all the way back in 2009. As much as I love both birds and giant slingshots, I never really saw the appeal. I played for about five minutes, shot some birds into some things, and then shrugged and gave up.

Apparently, the game’s developer, Rovio Entertainment, saw this happen and did not approve, so it spent the next few years trying to come up with a way to get holdouts like me to buy in to its anti-pig propaganda machine. And so we received Angry Birds Star Wars, a dangerous cocktail of addictive, deceptively simple, physics-driven gameplay and just straight-up, unabashed nerditude. It was in many ways the perfect mobile game: accessible to everyone and irresistible to giant geeks like myself. But still, I resisted.

Now Angry Birds Star Wars II is out, however, I’m totally in.

You’ve got to admire a game that matches its own intent so perfectly that you suddenly can’t visualize how else the genre should be done. That’s certainly the case here with Zynga’s Solstice Arena. It’s currently my favorite MOBA game on any platform, which is great, since it plays well on both iOS and the Mac. I’m reviewing the Mac version here, but assume that–aside from touch controls–the game plays exactly the same on iOS. This is a good thing.

As a genre, the action real-time strategy (ARTS), or multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), has a history reaching back to modified RTS game maps for Starcraft and Warcraft. Recently, League of Legends from Riot Games has taken on the mantle as the most well-known game of its type, moving into the lucrative world of eSports, as well.

Zynga may be more known for Farmville and other Facebook games, but the San Francisco games publisher has delivered a much more midcore game than I expected. Developer A Bit Lucky has created a streamlined, compelling take on the ARTS genre, and while the game may not surpass more traditional entries in the field, Solstice Arena still engages players of all levels without sacrificing too much of the strategic depth of the game type.

The idea of being a martial-arts master has always sounded cool to me. But not the Zen-like, pensive, thoughtful type. If I’m honest, I’d really just kinda like to be the guy in the movies who can walk into a room full of generic dudes and beat them all up while they attack him one at a time. And I’m not particularly proud of that, but I challenge you to picture yourself doing it and not once think, “Yeah, that would be pretty neat.”

But one thing is standing between me and that dream. Alright, maybe a few more than one, but one major thing: I am completely uncoordinated. I don’t have the balance or grace to execute any of the amazing fighting maneuvers I see in movies, and so I watch them with a sad sort of wistfulness and self-disappointment. And this feeling extends to video games, in which physics and animations unbound by natural law allow for inhuman feats of martial prowess about which my clumsy limbs can only dream. If limbs dream, I guess.

Anyway, Dragon Finga, the recently released fighter by developer Another Place, did not inspire those feelings of inadequacy in me because it contains the least graceful fighting system I’ve ever seen.

And that’s a good thing.

The iPhone 5s is undoubtedly the biggest iPhone ‘S’ upgrade Apple has released to date. Not only does it come with the usual improvements you’d expect from an “incremental” upgrade — a faster processor, better graphics, and an improved camera — but it also boasts Touch ID, a fingerprint scanner built into its home button; the M7 coprocessor, and a new dual-LED flash

Touch ID will change the way we manage security on our iPhones. No longer must we remember 4-digit pass codes that have to be entered dozens of times a day; we can simply scan our fingerprint to quickly gain access to our device. It takes the hassle out of securing our data, and there’s no good reason why you wouldn’t use it.

The iPhone 5s is the biggest iPhone ‘S’ upgrade to date.

As for the M7 coprocessor, that’s “like a sidekick to the A7 chip,” Apple says. It’s specifically designed to measure motion data recorded by your iPhone’s built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass — a task which was previously handled by the processor itself. Why? Well, the M7 chip is more efficient and handling this task, and with little input needed from the main processor, there’s less drain on your iPhone’s battery.

While the iPhone 5s make look identical to its predecessor on the outside, then, there are lots of improvements under the hood. But are those improvements worth your hard-earned cash?