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Posts Tagged editors choice
Your Trusted Source for App Reviews
Having trouble making sense out of the overwhelming number of apps released each week? Have no fear! Just look to 148Apps for the best app reviews on the web. Our reviewers sift through the vast numbers of new apps out there, find the good ones, and write about them in depth. 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. Want to see what we’ve been up to this week? Take a look below for a sampling of our latest reviews. And if you want more, be sure to hit our Reviews Archive.
WB and NetherRealm’s original DC Comics fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us has been adapted for the iPad, and that doesn’t just mean that they ported down a full console fighting game, or just made an Infinity Blade clone like some are wont to do; no, they converted this into an actual touchscreen-friendly game that’s free-to-play, though definitely encourages spending money. The actual combat is dramatically less complex than the Street Fighters of the world, because players have three basic actions: tap to do a light attack, swipe forward to do a heavy attack, and tap & hold with two fingers to block. Combos will call up swiping actions to knockdown the opponent, and special moves will require different inputs to unleash those attacks. The complexity comes in with using the three chracters efficiently; not only is it about letting them go to the sidelines to regenerate health, but also to swap in characters whose special power meters are recharging while on the sidelines. As well, different special attacks have different effects that are useful in various scenarios. I like to keep one character with a power drain effect with me when fighting bosses so as to limit the number of times they can do massive damage. The combat strikes a great balance between being simplified for the platform, while keeping enough strategy to be interesting. –Carter Dotson
Mittens, both the name of this app and of the cat which the game revolves around, is the latest physics puzzler from Disney. The company had an extreme amount of success with Where’s My Water a couple of years ago and this is definitely a notable follow-up. As one would expect from a Disney game, the visual assets are top-notch. The cartoony visuals and cute cut scenes definitely feel like something Disney would have a hand in. Players interact with the level components by tapping and swiping, and swiping an electrical wire or piece of wood will cut it. Players can only interact with the level components and can’t directly control Mittens. All of the normal laws of physics apply, so Mittens falls and bounces, and will automatically grab onto ledges. Besides static environmental elements like wires, awnings, and planks of wood, other animals also appear in the levels, like birds to latch onto. Ultimately, the goal is to make it to a floating milk bottle. When he finally gets to it, Mittens does a little dance. –David Rabinowitz
Mailbox represents a perspective shift to email, in that it treats the inbox not as a list of messages hanging around one’s neck like so many albatrosses, but as a list of tasks that need to be completed. So, reading an email and being done means that it can be removed the list like a completed task, meaning it is archived from the inbox. Messages can be ‘delayed’, making them temporarily hidden from the inbox, reappearing at a later time defined by the user to be completed later. But, the important thing is that they are removed from the inbox, making inbox zero a potential daily occurrence. –Carter Dotson
BADLAND is a quite beautiful amalgamation of side scrolling platform action, with a dash of Endless Runner about it. The latter part comes more from the one touch controls that ensure that BADLAND is easy to play for any ability, albeit not necessarily easy to complete thanks to a series of challenging obstacles. 40 levels pave the way and, while early stages are quite easy, later stages prove rather fearsome and tough. Even better, there’s plenty of replayability through the acquisition of clones which boost the rating of a level, once captured. BADLAND might sound immensely restricted due to its one touch controls, but that’s quite far from the truth. At first, tapping on the screen is used more to keep the cuddly yet mildly sinister creature afloat, thrusting them through each stage and avoiding simple obstacles. Get pushed off the screen and it’s game over, but when early structures simply consist of pillars and platforms, it’s no great hardship. As things progress, however, and the player learns more about how to play, the imaginative nature of BADLAND shines through. Orange colored globes affect the size of the creature, either making him grow or shrink to some degree. Both have advantages and disadvantages, the former allowing him to crush certain things, and the latter allowing him to sneak through small gaps. Other power-ups emerge, too, such as one that allows him to stick to walls or roll at speed through the scenery. –Jennifer Allen
Other 148Apps Network Sites
If you are looking for the best reviews of kids’ apps and/or Android apps, just head right over to GiggleApps and AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews these sites served up this week:
GiggleApps
Alex The Handyman – Kids Educational App is a cute and fun app allowing children to use various tools to help friends with a variety of home repairs. Ten scenes are included, each one bright and colorful to look at as one meets a friendly animal character who needs help. From fixing fence posts and ladders to a tree house, to inflating a tire on a car or mending a tear in a dress, Alex the Handyman is a true jack-of-all-trades as he takes on tasks such as sewing, painting, spot-cleaning stains or light gardening. Children will need to choose the correct tool for the job, such as wrench to tighten a leaky faucet or screwdriver to repair a toy, that will become highlighted if help is needed. –Amy Solomon
Zachy the Robot: Quest for the Museum Treasures is a terrific interactive app that delves into different topics of natural history in a way that is sure to captivate children and their adults. This is the second Zachy the Robot app. This one takes place again in Robocity, focusing on a group of robot friends, the Robocity Repairbots, who help their town with their problems, as their wheelhouse is fixing structural issues in buildings, as seen in the first app which focused on engineering. Here, the gang is brought back to add exhibits to the newly built and empty Robocity Natural History Museum, explained in the bright, colorful and fun animated intro. I love how excited these characters are by the topic of natural history – an enthusiasm that parents will hope rubs off on their children. –Amy Solomon
Most adults remember playing “memory” – also known as “concentration” – as children, where cards or tiles are laid out in pairs face down and players have to take turns turning over two cards looking for mates, remembering where the other cards are in order to create matches. This style of game is also a very popular one in an application form, be it the app’s main focus or an additional section found in a storybook so it is very nice to see a “memory” style game that really stands out from the pack in terms of game play and overall quality. –Amy Solomon
AndroidRundown
Nimble Quest, the latest from NimbleBit, starts off with an immediate nod to its direct influence, Snake. Before mobile games exploded, everyone enjoyed Snake on a Nokia mobile phone, because what else was there to do besides play Snake? So, immediately, it seems like there may not be much to this at all. Nope. Nimble Quest takes that simple concept and makes it deeper and more fun than it has any right to be. It starts by adding a bit of strategy to the standard Snake gameplay of turning left and right, avoiding walls and enemies. See, players control a character that has a special attack ability that triggers when near enemies, and they use that to take out enemies. Other heroes can be collected as drops from enemies that form parts of the snake, and can use their own individual attacks. Now, enemies can attack as well, so it becomes about staying out of danger, as the heroes have health bars that will quickly diminish, and if the lead hero dies, it’s game over. So, there’s a strategy to approaching the enemies, one that is about taking as little damage as possible. –Carter Dotson
This week’s KickStarter Spotlight focuses on an ambitious, and impressively polished product that is squarely aimed at parents who are concerned about their child’s computer usage called MiiPC. It is not so much the content as the amount of time wasted that most parents worry about, and it is a fact that technology can be a major distraction for young people with homework. I can attest that even in the course of writing this post, I have looked away to a USA Today update and watched a few YouTube videos that were sent to me by a few Facebook friends. What MiiPC aims to deliver is a computer that, in all honesty, is not much more than a converted, overpowered tablet in a box. The main feature is the complete control parents have over the device. From setting time restrictions on apps or websites, to monitoring exactly what activity a user is doing at any time; MiiPC allows a parent to have total peace of mind while still ensuring their children get an appropriate introduction to the vast wonder of the internet. –Joseph Bertolini
Fate of the Pharaoh is a fun simulation set in, well, ancient Egypt. In this game, I worked as an Adviser to Pharaoh, tasked with rebuilding the empire after a victorious but devastating war.
To make it easy, it’s a G5 game, so I expected nice graphics. I wasn’t disappointed. I found the rich graphics, sharp animations and fine detail that we all have come to expect from G5. There were two modes: Adventure Mode (timed) and Relaxed Mode. Anyone who has read my reviews knows I am a sucker for tutorials, and thus, this gamee found a way to my heart early on. The teaching section allowed me to use taps to get a basic understanding of gameplay: accruing money, and the different ways you can spend it. I learned that to progress, I had to finish tasks and manage resources.–Tre Lawrence
Posted by Rob LeFebvre on December 18th, 2012
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Editor’s Choice tower defense game, Kingdom Rush, is now completely free for the rest of the day. If you love tower defense games, you’ll love Kingdom Rush, so get on over to the App Store right now and save three bucks for this fantastic game!
Of other noteworthy news, a free Kingdom Rush comic is out, and the game is also now on Steam Greenlight. Hooray!
source: Official Game Website
This week at 148Apps.com, we brought another amazing app into the Editor’s Choice fold. This is what Kalle MacDonald had to say about Horn: “As a fan of both the Legend of Zelda series on Nintendo consoles and the Infinity Blade franchise on iOS, I welcomed HORN with open arms. Believe it or not it delivers on both counts.
HORN is hard to explain. In essence it is an action-adventure game, but the details make it so much more than that. When inn the “adventuring” portions of the story, the game is played in a third-person perspective and the titular Horn is controlled by tapping where the player wants him to go. To go along with this, there are action portions of the game. These portions are played similarly to Infinity Blade, with a swipe to attack, and various ways to evade the enemies.”
Want to know more? Of course you do. Read the full review at 148Apps.
$6.99  + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-08-16 :: Category: Games Over at GiggleApps.com, Amy Solomon gave us an art lesson in her review of PlayArt: “PlayART by Tapook is an interesting art app allowing children and adults to create their own images using the details found within famous works of art. Five artists are covered, specifically Van Gogh, Monet, Klee, Cezanne and Rousseau allowing children to be exposed to different styles of art, also learning about these artists from watching short videos and exploring a museum of these artists’ original paintings.”
Read more at GiggleApps.com.
$3.99 iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2012-06-27 :: Category: Education  And finally, 148Apps.biz writer Carter Dotson contributed a piece about elblabs: “German studio elblabs is launching a new ad network, GameAdTrading. What elblabs is claiming that their network can do better than other networks is simple: adaptability to many different platforms.
This adaptability is largely because GameAdTrading is currently available as a plugin for Unity, the engine that’s primarily designed for 3D games, but often finds use simply as a cross-platform engine. For example, Cthulhu Saves the World, a 16-bit-inspired RPG that has pretty much nothing three-dimensional about it at all, was ported from XNA to Unity for the mobile versions. The ability to publish to iOS, Android, and PC/Mac makes it an attractive option for even simulation games that aren’t as graphically-demanding. elblabs is also taking requests via email for other engines, including Flash.”
Read more about this move to cross-platform advertising on 148Apps.biz.
And…..we’re done for this week. But that’s the great thing – one week ends, and another’s just right around the corner. Join us on Facebook and Twitter to get the news, reviews and contests you want, right when you want them, from app experts. Until next weekend, go plunge the depths of Horn.
 Apple has made a couple of changes to their weekly app features that pop up in the Featured tab of the App Store. While “App of the Week” and “Game of the Week” appear to be just rebranded as “Editors’ Choice,” there’s a new feature: the Free Game of the Week. It appears as if Apple is jumping into the kind of promotion that services like FreeAppADay have been doing, but with this being an official Apple promotion, it has the potential to drive massive numbers of downloads.
The first free app that Apple is giving away is Cut the Rope: Experiments for both iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. The game supports iCloud sync between the two versions, so multiple device owners will definitely want to pick up both.
What’s interesting is that it appears that on the initial installation of these apps, it’s not necessary to put in the account password, as the app just automatically downloads. This will make it easier for people to get these free apps. The question remains to be seen how long Apple plans to run these promotions, and if they will only feature paid apps that drop down to free, or if some apps released as free will be featured as well.
$0.99 iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-08-04 :: Category: Games $1.99 iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2011-08-04 :: Category: Games
This week, June 13-17, 148Apps announced that is will be one of this year’s Muther of All Hackathons media sponsors. “148Apps is proud to be a media sponsor of the Muther of All Hackathons coming up next weekend in Mountain View, CA. The goal of this hackathon is quite ambitious, they hope to develop 100 mobile applications in just 24 hours!” writes 148Apps Founder Jeff Scott. And, as part of a special promotion to mark the occasion, we’ll be giving away ten free passes to the Hackathon. Click here for all the details.
In other news, with Father’s Day looming ever closer, Namco have slashed their prices across over twenty applications, including PAC-MAN and Isaac Newton’s Gravity. “If there is one thing that everyone loves about Father’s Day it is spending a little quality time with their parents, right?” quips Blake Grundman, contributor at 148Apps. “Okay, so maybe some of us may not be as eager to spend quality time bonding with our parental units, so why not give your Dad a game or two instead?” The full list, available here, represents a temporary price cut that will be reversed after the big day – so grab your copies now!
$4.99 iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2008-07-11 :: Category: Games $0.99 iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-01-21 :: Category: Games On the application front, the Editor’s Choice badge was awarded to Vice President Al Gore’s interactive book, Our Choice. “This app will not only inform, but also help readers become proactive in the fight to save Earth. Eco-warriors, tech junkies, and readers alike should celebrate Our Choice, it’s interactive reading as never before seen on iOS” writes Lisa Caplan, who awarded the application five stars for its flawless user interface and iPhone integration. Our Choice is available for $4.99, and can be downloaded by following the link below.
$4.99 + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-04-28 :: Category: Books With SEGA‘s announcement to move their console titles Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing to the iOS platform, Blake Grundman had a hands-on with upcoming application. “If what I played was any indication, players will want everything you can snag. Oh, and did I mention multiplayer? There will be both local and online multiplayer available at launch that will accommodate for matches between folks on both iPad and iPhone.” Coming soon.
Favorite Four took a turn to board games this week, as Kevin Stout examines the most enjoyable turn-based games available to download. RISK, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Game Table all made it to the mix. See the full run-down here. Remember that iOS 5 will bring Game Center support to turn-based games, meaning the titles above, and others of the same concept, can be played through Apple’s official social gaming network.
Finally, Episode 89 of The Portable Podcast is now available to download, featuring special guests Colin Walsh of Celsius Game Studios, Gavin Bowman of Retro Dreamer and Peter Bibey of Strapped to a Meteor Studies. Host Carter Dotson discusses iOS 5 and the future of development on the platform.
That’s it for this week – be sure to check back soon for all your latest iOS news!
 With a game name like Egg vs. Chicken, it is hard to pinpoint what kind of game you should be expecting. Then, after taking a look at the 148Apps review archive, it was brought to my attention that not only is the game good, but it has also landed our highly coveted Editor’s Choice Award. This match three/tower defense hybrid was strong enough to stand on its own two feet, but the developer PlayFirst Inc. isn’t just content to rest on a high rating. They have a new update in the pipeline for the rapidly approaching Easter holiday.
A new Easter egg hunting mechanic has been added to the game’s 36 stages, which upon completion unlock a dozen new levels. As an added incentive for those that complete these new stages, players will get another special surprise with Egg vs. Chicken next updates. There is no word when this post holiday update will be landing, but in the meantime this additional carton of egg themed updates should keep you more than occupied.
FREE! + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-02-24 :: Category: Games
Light was shined on the darkness surrounding iPad 2 this week, with Apple formally launching the new device on March 2, shipping nine days later on the 11th of the month. In addition to a new, thinner and lighter design, engineers have packed in two cameras (720p HD for the back), a CPU upgrade in the form of an all-new A5 dual core processor and a gyroscope as found as in the iPhone 4. All the while, battery life and price remain the same as in the previous generation. Interestingly, and to the disappointment of many, the screen is the same 1024×768, 132ppi 9.7″ model found in iPad 1 – no match for the iPhone 4, which packs in 326ppi all within its 3.5″ display.
On the software front, iOS 4.3 will be available to download on March 11 also, featuring two new applications built for a selection of iOS devices: Facetime and Photobooth. These two applications, already available for Mac, will come pre-installed with iOS 4.3, meaning there’s no downloading necessary. with regards to iMovie for iPhone, Apple are upgrading the application to a universal build – meaning iPhone 3GS/4 owners will be able to reap the benefits of the on-the-go movie creator on their iPad. Garageband is coming to iPad also, sporting the same $4.99 price tag as iMovie.
$4.99 + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-06-24 :: Category: Photography This week, 148Apps awarded the Editor’s Choice badge to Guitar World Lick of the Day, created by Agile Partners, for its consistent re-use / replay value, as well as a beautiful user interface. “This app is pure guitar gold,” writes Jason Fanguy. “Regardless of your playing-level, Guitar World Lick of the Day evens your playing field, providing access to quality tools and resources that would normally cost hundreds of dollars, at a minimum, in instructor fees.” The application itself is free to download, with a number of different in-app purchases to choose from, ranging from 11 months of licks ($4.99) to 33 months of licks ($12.99). As the name suggests, a new lick is available to download each and every day.
FREE! + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-11-15 :: Category: Music In other news, two weeks ago Carter Dotson commented on physical gaming solutions for the iPad. This week, Carter took one of the solutions – namely JOYSTICK-IT – for a test drive. “Games with fixed firing joysticks work wonderfully with the JOYSTICK-IT. Games like Gun Bros., Etolis Arena, and Infinity Field feel remarkably natural with the the joystick, and you will notice an accuracy improvement while playing the game” he writes, but goes on to warn: “There’s just too many ifs, ands, and buts to properly recommend the JOYSTICK-IT, because of its design limiting the number of games it works with.”
Favorite 4 takes a turn to productivity this week, with Chris Hall focusing on four note taking applications. Simplenote, Evernote, NotePad Pro and PhatPad all made the list this week, each with different strengths and syncing options. And on a final note, Episode 74 of The Portable Podcast is now available to download, with guests Defek Laufman from Halfbot and the developers of Haypi Kingdom.
That’s all for this week – and remember, 148Apps has specially built feeds to bring you all of the latest news, top applications and price drops right to your RSS feed, Twitter and Facebook accounts. So really, why go elsewhere?
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