iPhone4idiots

Run Roo Run, 5th Cell Media LLC $0.99, is another time wasting game along the lines of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump and Feed Me Oil. The storyline is a mother kangaroo has to travel from Perth to Sydney to find her stolen Joey. The journey entails twenty levels of twentyone boards (fifteen regular and six extreme). You complete a board by simply hopping from one side to the other without hitting any obstacles. Each level unveils a new tool to be used to help move across the board. Some of these include a springboard, tire swing, moving platforms, umbrellas, cannons, tunnels, barrels and more. The hardest one has to be a ghost that turns you invisible as you then can’t tell exactly where you are and when to jump. The first few boards in each new chapter are very simple. Of course, they get more difficult, but you can make an in app purchase of bus tickets which beat the board for you. In the board pictured here you jump over the shovel and into the barrel which rolls across the water. You jump out onto the tire swing and off into the next barrel to complete the board. Once you have finished all 420 boards the next challenge is earning gold stars for each one. You get a gold star when you finish it quickly. I believe it’s under four seconds but it might be different for each level. In a neat twist ten new boards are released each week for free. This app is similar to those I mentioned in the beginning. Personally, I find Doodle Jump more addicting than this game, but I like this far more than Feed Me Oil. To each their own, but if you like these type of games, you’ll want to try this one out.

Zombieville USA 2, Mika Mobile, Inc. $0.99, has been my favorite game to play ever since Halloween. Yes, I even like it better than Infinity Blade 2. I don’t see myself getting too bored with this game as I just started playing over Bluetooth with my 7 year old which makes it even more fun. The game is simple. Choose a character and three weapons and start killing zombies. For me the animation in the game is perfect. Fun looking zombies that explode in blood when killed. IMO, the gore is fine for children because it’s more cartoon like than real. There is not an option to turn the blood and gore off which might be nice for some people. Gameplay is simple with a directional pad on the bottom left corner to more your character and three buttons on the right to fire one of your weapons. Continue Reading…

Wow, this was an easy article to write. This Apple Cards app is the biggest fail since Ping. I thought this was a brilliant market for Apple to enter. However, they have done so in such timid fashion that Hallmark has nothing to be worried about yet. Almost everything about this app and the ordering process is terrible. Don’t believe me Continue Reading…

Parking Mania, Clickgamer Technologies $0.99, is game that test your abilities to park. I thought of playing against my wife, but I already know I’m a better driver. There are a hundred levels and about 30 cars. The graphics on the cars are poor, but gameplay is still fun. The app smartly offers three modes of control. You can tilt your iDevice to steer, use a slider to turn the wheel or a steering wheel (this is what I prefer and is pictured here). This gives you options to figure out how best to move your automobile. The levels start simple and slowly get harder. Arrows show you the direction you must drive to get to your parking spot. Crash five times and you have to start the level over. Some levels require you to park two or three cars. Around level 15 you are given an 18 wheeler to try and navigate through the turns. Obviously, this is much more challenging. This app only held my interest for a couple of days. I would only get the free lite version if you want to give it a try.

Jetpack Joyride, $0.99 Halfbrick Studios, has been in the top five of paid apps in the iTunes App Store for weeks. After playing it and watching my five and seven year olds play it for weeks it confirms something I believe. The best and most popular iPhone games are simple. The graphics don’t have to be the best as long as the game play experience is fun. Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja, Spy Mouse and Plants vs. Zombies prove this. The goal of Jetpack Joyride is to get as far as you can. You fly in only one direction (left to right) and tap the screen to raise up or go down. As you move along you collect coins and dodge lasers, electricity fields and missiles. There is a special box that when you fly into gives you one of five special powers: a stomping robot machine, a motorcycle, a flying bird machine, a teleporter or upside gravity suit. Any of these essentially gives you an extra life as the first time you crash it is removed and you go back to the jetpack. As you build up coins you can goto the Stash to buy additional jetpacks. Some use steam others use rainbows or bullets. Even after death the game may not be over as you are given the chance to pull a slot machine. You can win coins, a blast to push you further down the “course” or even an extra life. Continue Reading…

Electronic Arts Inc., released a new game this week called Spy Mouse (currently $0.99). When I think of EA, Real Racing comes to mind or maybe Flight Control. This game is quite different, but being EA you know it’s well done. Spy Mouse is simple, get the cheese and back into your hole before a cat eats you. There are six worlds of 12 levels for a total of 72 boards. The game starts simple, but quickly gets harder. You move your secret agent mouse by swiping your finger. Once a cat spots you must quickly find a hole as the cats move much faster. Luckily, you can sneak behind them without being seen. There are numerous objects that can help in your quest for cheese like a toy mouse that you can pickup to disable mouse traps. There are hot peppers to make you run faster or a chair or teacup to hide under. There is a TV that when turned on distracts the cats. You can even use a cat called Kiska to help you through the harder levels. The cat springs a trap on you in the last board of each level. However, these aren’t too difficult and you should quickly make your way through the first 20 to 30 boards. This app is currently the Top Paid app in the App Store and for good reason. It’s kind of addicting. Easy enough for kids yet can still hold the interest of most adults.

iFile, BigBoss $4.00, is one of the two or three most popular Cydia apps and for many people the main reason to jailbreak. iFile gives you complete access to your iPhone, iPod or iPad file system. It’s basically like having windows explorer for you iDevice’s directories. This has tons of uses one of which is making it easy to manage and view your video files. With iFile you can watch not just mp4 but avi or mkv files in seconds. iFile can even unrar your movie files for you! Couple iFile with Downloads Lite and a free video player like OPlayer and you should have no troubles download and watching movies from almost anywhere. I don’t. So the next time I get asked (which will probably be today) how to watch a video file that won’t play I will just refer you to this post. Watch the video and for those that are not jailbroken and thus can’t get iFile . . . . WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?????

Screens, Edovia Inc. $19.99, is a great VNC client for your iPhone, iPod or iPad. For some reason it hasn’t gotten great reviews and is nowhere near as popular as LogMeIn Ignition. However, it was so simple to setup for me and works so well for my needs that I’m not even bothering with looking at any other VNC app. I’m using this app more and more. Watch the video to see what it’s like and how to setup. Even if you choose another VNC client, setup is basically the same. Get your ip address from your router and forward a certain port number to the ip address of your computer. Any questions just ask.

The past week the iPhone game that has been wasting most of my time . . . I mean filling the lonely boring moments of my day is Flick Kick Football, Prodigy Design Limited $0.99. If you aren’t familar with the wide variety of flick games you should be. Fishing, golf, football, soccer, field goals, bowling, basketball, darts and baseball all have their own filck app games. Flick (aka swiping) is more natural for some sports games than others. IMO, bowling, golf and soccer are the best. I guess I should have mentioned by football, this app is soccer. To play you swipe your finger and flick the soccer ball into the goal. There are various modes of play like skillshots or shooting at bullseyes. In arcade mode you shoot at the goal with increasingly difficult angles and more defenders blocking the goal. Shooting into the top corners earns extra points. The game offers mutiplayer mode through Game Center or simple pass and play. There is a free version of the game with ads as well which is what I’d recommend. If you are a soccer nut like me definitely give this a try. If not, I still think you should check out any of the flick games for some laid back casual gaming fun.

Ever been listening to a song on your iPhone or iPod and wondered what the lyrics were to that last line? Happens to me a lot. While very poetic and talented Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder aren’t always the easiest to understand. Remember that hilarious Adam Sandler skit on Saturday Night Live where he sang Evenflow? What made it so funny was his jibberish sounded exactly like the song! Anyway, there have been apps before that would display lyrics, but most either didn’t have a large database of songs or were not polished enough to be simple to use. That has changed with the release of free app called musiXmatch. The app has lyrics for more than 5.4 million songs and its own built in music player that will display the words while the song plays (see the photo). The large database of songs and how easily and quickly it installs, no computer required, really makes this a killer app! Continue Reading…