Friday Five: July 16th, 2010
Posted by Bonnie Eisenman on July 16th, 2010
Where is the summer going? My apologies for last week's lack of a Friday Five. We're back this week, though, with five interesting apps from the past week, just like always. Enjoy!
Hellsing's Fire is a beautifully illustrated puzzle-adventure game from Clickgamer (Angry Birds, anyone?). Dr. Hellsing's illuminating torch and his assistant Raffton's tonics are both necessary to defeat the undead hordes. The puzzles are trumpeted as being "quick but rewarding"...sounds great for pick-up-and-play or, you know, losing hours of your life. With 90 monster-packed levels, Crystal integration for leaderboards and achievements, and wry dialogue, Hellsing's Fire looks to be a great new App Store game.
Audible.com is one of the biggest audiobook sites on the web. Subscribers to the website enjoy a market of digital audiobooks that's hard to beat, and now with the Audible app, said users can download their Audible.com libraries to their iPhones. The Audible app runs in the background with iOS 4 on multitasking-enabled devices. It also support chapter navigation, Play as You Download, bookmarking, Button Free Mode, and Sleep Mode. It's a great app if you want to listen to your Audible.com audiobooks, but unfortunately this app doesn't yet allow you to buy them in-app.
This app brings the famous TV game show to the iPhone...finally! Test your wordly wit against the app or with others via multiplayer mode. The wheel and the sound effects are true to the show, and the puzzles are written by the producers themselves. You can customize your characters, too. Multiplayer comes in the form of pass-and-play, local multiplayer (Bluetooth / WiFi), or network mode (yes! online multiplayer!). "Theme Weeks" featuring custom puzzles and wedges will be introduced, too. The app itself looks pretty good, though some players have apparently experienced crashing...so proceed with caution. As famous as Wheel of Fortune is, though, I'd expect a bug-fixing update soon.
Remember when MaqQuest was practically the king of online mapping? It's no longer the undisputed champ, but MapQuest is still as solid a service as ever. MapQuest 4 Mobile finally brings it to the iOS platform, with awesome features such as turn-by-turn spoken directions, quick re-routing, backgrounding support on iOS 4, and even pedestrian directions. Best of all, however? It's free! It might not be brand-new, but the latest version of Mapquest 4 Mobile is such a step forward that I felt justified in including it here.
On the surface, Fly Vs. Car is simple. Playing as a small fly, you must tilt your iPhone to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic. Simple, simple, simple...even OpenFeint and Facebook / Twitter score posting can only add so much to such a basic premise. But what makes Fly Vs. Car unique is that the developers at Snow Day Games have pledged to donate half of all profits to Child's Play Charity, a not-for-profit group that donates toys and games to sick children. Now that's a mission we can get behind.