iPad Apps
September 13th, 2011 at 7:24 AM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
Some of the most popular games on the iPad are those that are based on well known and well loved board games. Electronic Arts has done a good job of porting a ton of the board games that have spent time in living rooms for decades. Monopoly, Battle Ship, Scrabble and Risk all provide hours of run on the iPad. One game that seems to miss the mark when it comes to its iPad app is The Game of Life. I really tried to enjoy this game, but there just seemed to be something missing.
The graphics and interaction are all there to make a pretty good game. The fact that you can both play against the computer or in a pass and play mode with friends should make the game that much more fun. For a short period of time it probably does. Maybe it is just the fact that the Game of Life, like no other board game I played back in the day, doesn’t seem to lend itself to a digital version. I remember thinking when I was playing the board game version of Monopoly that I would have liked a computer to keep track of how much money I had and what the rent for my individual properties were. The Game of Life was a board game where you were actually seeing your little car, suddenly loaded down with a wife and kids, tooling around the board. That translation just doesn’t seem to make it for me onto the digital form.
The Game of Life is also a game that doesn’t have a distinct ending. Of course you can go around the board once and then retire and count up your money. But in the board game, the funnest part was going around and around, changing jobs and having more kids and taking in even more money. The digital version seems to take a little fun out of this. The app is actually quite nice looking; the animation is done well and sticks very much to the theme of the game. But there is just something that is left lacking. I liked being able to move my car and decide which turns it was going to take more than when I was playing any other board game.
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September 10th, 2011 at 1:04 PM EST | by inu846W
There are plenty of different Facebook themed apps for the iPad but there is one that gives a different enough view it stands out from the crowd. While several of the Facebook apps for the iPad offer you the ability to interact with the social networking site, the MyLine for Facebook iPad app gives you the ability to see what has happened with your account over a long period of time.
MyLine Facebook app for the iPad gives you a look at what has been going on with both your own account and your friends in a sort of timeline. This allows you to better see exactly what people were talking about a month ago or a week ago or even an hour ago. There is the ability to look at different sections of the Facebook pages as well. You can see the statuses for all your friends or the pictures that they have posted. The app is actually free if you want to go with a very basic timeline that is only represented by the time you have had the app installed on your iPad. However, if you want to upgrade for $1.99, the app will go back and look at everything that has been done on your account since you first set it up on Facebook. Depending on how long you’ve had an account, this can be quite a walk down memory lane.
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September 8th, 2011 at 10:35 AM EST | by inu846W
While there are plenty of iPad apps that are made to feel as though you are playing a television game show of one kind or another. There are plenty of iPad apps that are built to have you running through dark hallways and dank tunnels, blasting away at all sorts of creepy crawlies. There are very few iPad apps that have you doing both at the same time. Rage HD for iPad is one of those games that does that and more. Because of this, it’s one of the funnest games out there right now.
Part of the reason that Rage HD for iPad is so entertaining is because unlike a lot of the other Zombie shooting games you don’t have to worry about moving around in this one. The computer will have you zooming through the map automatically. Your only responsibility is to shoot as many circus freak looking villains as you can. Where exactly does the game show come into play you ask? Rage HD is supposed to be taking place in a futuristic wasteland where you are a game show contestant. The point of the game is to shoot as many as the enemy as possible, while ALSO shooting bags of money and bulls-eyes placed surreptitiously throughout the map.
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September 6th, 2011 at 2:15 PM EST | by inu846W
One signature of quite a few iPad games has been that there are several games that incorporate real physics into their games. Demolition Master 3D HD for the iPad is no different, though the graphics and what you have to do are original enough that the app is worth picking up if you are on the lookout for another app. Demolition Master 3D is a game where you actually set different kind of explosive charges on wooden and metal posts and try and get the constructions to explode to the point where the materials drop below a certain level.
This is actually a combination of two different kinds of games that are fairly well represented on the iPad. Still Demolition Master 3D offers these familiar genres with a new look and a game that is actually quite addicting once you really start playing it. There are basically three different kind of charges and an almost infinite way you can plant them in order to get the reaction you are looking for. There are numerous differnet kinds of constructions you can eventually blow up with the constructs getting harder and harder as you go through the levels. There are also parts that you are not trying to destroy or that will cause you to lose should they explode.
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September 6th, 2011 at 10:30 AM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
While there are quite a few first person shooter apps on the iPad, few have the sort of horror movie feel that Dead Space can bring to the tablet. If the name of this particular game sounds familiar, it should as it was one of the most popular console horror/shooter games in history. Dead Space was actually so popular and so spooky that there have been a couple of different animated movies made in an attempt to tell more of the back story.
What makes the Dead Space app for the iPad so good is that there doesn’t seem to be much left out of the iPad version that was in the original. The graphics on the Dead Space for iPad app are almost as good as what you would see on the Xbox360 or the PlayStation 3, though obviously miniaturized a little for the screen. The basic premise is almost identical in that you arrive aboard a space station only to find it deserted … or at least MOSTLY deserted. After wandering around the station trying to get your bearings and learning how to play the game you eventually run into some truly evil creatures who seem intent on tearing out your throat.
The controls for running through the station are fairly easily, swiping along the left side of the screen will actually have you moving in whatever direction you would like to go. Swiping along the right side of the screen will allow you to look around, hopefully seeing the evil that is coming your way before it gets to you. While some people are certainly going to want to play the story mode, that goes along with the console game the iPad version does bring some different options.
Dead Space for the iPad also allows you to select the “Endless” feature which is pretty much what you would expect. There’s no health regeneration and no time limit, simply kill as many bad guys as possible. The “5 Minutes to Kill” game is like endless except you are trying to kill as many as possible before the timer goes to zero. Each kill will tack on a little extra time.
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September 2nd, 2011 at 12:59 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
One of the coolest features to me about the iPad is the ability to read a plethora of great full color digital comics on the device. One of the drawbacks for me is that while the Comics iPad app by Comixology has long been my first choice simply because of the massive library it’s rarely been the best actual app. The first problem was stability. The app generally crashed 5 to 10 times a night when I’d sit down to read a string of digital comics. The second was an interface that was never all that intuitive to me.
Comixology seems to realize that while they owned the market as far as content, their presentation was falling behind other digital comics apps. Because of this, the developers did a complete revamp of the look and feel of the app and their reboot does indeed improve it immensely. The first big change is of course the stability, and coming from someone who uses the app daily it has crashed just once in the week since the reboot.
Where the app really wins points is how it now organizes the comics. The old version of the app had sort of a hodge podge of those comics you already owned and finding a specific series in your library could be a drag. Now every series has its own icon and when you download a new comic in a specific series a badge will appear telling you it’s ready to be read.
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