This Week at 148Apps: April 13-17, 2015

The Apps of April

How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

Mega Drift

There’s a lot about Mega Drift that reminds me of the 16-bit days of gaming. Besides its font evoking memories of Streets of Rage, the soundtrack is a lot like many racing games of that era. Mega Drift is more casual than most, simply requiring you to use one button frequently, but it’s kind of fun and an easy way to waste a few minutes.You work your way round various race tracks. They’re typical rallying areas, meaning that drifting is imperative to your chances for success. Your car drives automatically but you can hold your finger to the drift button in order to take corners quickly. Also, you can tilt your device so as to dodge obstacles or pick up collectibles, but this isn’t as frequent as you’d expect. --Jennifer Allen

Count

Managing your finances is rarely fun and, admittedly,Count was never likely to add the fun factor to such proceedings. It is, however, a reasonable way to arrange your budget - even if it isn’t quite as intuitive as it’d like to be.Pick a currency and you’re thrown in to Count without any tutorials to guide you through the paces. Fortunately, it mostly makes sense, with the main splash screen offering the basics. At the top, you’re provided with an income total and an expenses total, with the middle devoted to currency rates, and the bottom relying information on where the money is coming or going from (i.e. credit card, savings, or wallet). It does require more taps to get anywhere than most, though.--Jennifer Allen

iDocs

Free for the first 30 days, iDocs is a pretty handy way of editing various documents while on the move. It can be a little sluggish at time though, and you might find that irritating after a while.Laid out in a tabbed style interface, the iPhone 5’s screen will feel pretty small here. It’s something that works better on the iPad. On the left hand side is a selection of folders, relating to local files, Dropbox accounts, and also allowing you to sync via your PC, or look up a file on a built-in web browser. Swipe that to the side and you get a folder interface for further browsing. It’s all very Windows-esque in its layout, right down to the fact you have to double tap to open anything, but that does make it easy to use, if not stylish to look at. --Jennifer Allen

MLB Manager 2015

Formerly known as iOOTP Baseball but with a shiny new official license attached to it comes MLB Manager 2015 - a baseball simulator that’s light on cool looks but heavy on content. Baseball fans are going to love leading their team to victory and lament those moments when it turns to failure. It’s a format that’s worked for many years and that continues here. You’re the manager of a team, making a mixture of financial and strategical decisions in order to build the best team. It’s never easy, of course, trying to juggle the books while also succeeding on the field but that’s what make it so satisfying. Each game is a matter of making pitch-by-pitch decisions if you want, or you can opt to let the CPU simulate everything. You can even leap ahead to pretty much anywhere in the season if you really want to. Where’s the fun in that, though? The beauty here is in watching how your key decisions make all the difference, otherwise MLB Manager 2015 would be a pretty dry experience. It’s mostly a text based management game with some fairly rudimentary visuals, so you want to savour those moments where you can affect what unfolds. --Jennifer Allen

DSTRUX

A wise person would correctly suggest that you should never upload anything to a social network that you’re not willing to show off to the world. Sure there are many privacy settings abound, but you want to be careful, right? DSTRUX aims to ease some of those concerns by allowing you to publicly share various posts via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, while still being safe in the knowledge that it’ll self-destruct at a certain point in the future. Think of it as a kind of SnapChat. It could be pretty handy, too.The sign up process takes only a couple of moments then you can get straight into submitting posts. You can opt to include a text based message, or upload a photo or file. In each case, there are various settings for adjusting how long the information is available. You can change things via a slightly fiddly slider, choosing many days or mere minutes for how long something is available for. Each entry can be assigned a different length, too.--Jennifer Allen

Corridor Z

Corridor Z is a combination of some of the most well-worn mobile game tropes. It's a zombie-themed free-to-play endless runner that focuses on having players complete objectives to earn coins and unlocks. Although this sounds like one of the most run-of-the-mill experiences out there, Corridor Z does add some of its own twists of originality that keep it from being an immediately write-off, which is both impressive and commendable. Make no mistake though, these changes - while welcome - only slightly elevate the game out of average territory.Like most other runners, Corridor Z consists of players swiping in various directions while their character automatically runs away from their adversaries; in this instance, a horde of zombies. It's a little different though, in the sense that the perspective is reversed and players aren't dodging obstacles. Instead, as the player character runs toward the screen players are supposed to swipe boxes, pull down ventilation ducts, and pick up guns in order to slow down the ultra-fast undead enemies.--Campbell Bird

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Police Cars vs Street Racers

The title just about says it all: Police Cars vs Street Racers.The premise is simple: be a cop, catch the bad guys. The tools are pretty understandable, being a cop car and, well, the ability to control it in pursuit of rowdy street racers. The control set is fairly intuitive; there’s a bank of direction buttons to the bottom left, and brakes and accelerator virtual buttons to the right. Using these in conjunction controls the cruiser (with the added wrinkle that the foot brake creates negative acceleration). Additionally, there is a directional pad that can be used to direct the cop on his feet, as well as a door button.--Tre Lawrence

Lemur BlueDriver OBDII Scan Tool

Another day, another opportunity to allow connected mobility make life easier. We are all for that.Enter the BlueDriver OBDII Scan Tool, a piece from Lemur that allows folks to really drill down into auto management.It is irregularly shaped, with a cuboid base at the core, but retains a relatively small profile. On the one end, one finds the plug-in portion with the telltale pins; on the opposite side is an LED light. The review piece is black with white lettering, and looks and feels like a a well-fused item.--Tre Lawrence

Satechi Spectrum Connected Bulb

So yeah, I’m all about spoiling myself nowadays. To be fair, I’ve always enjoyed spoiling myself; it’s just that with mobile technology, it becomes so much easier. As we continue to see more and more connected peripherals, life has the potential to be a bit more whimsical and whole lot more tech-ified.We had an opportunity to check out some gear from Satechi, and got to take a look at its Spectrum Smart LED Bulb.--Tre Lawrence

All this, plus 4 features we want to see included with the NEXT Apple Watch. Head to 148Apps now!