This Week at 148Apps: April 15-19
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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.
Trial of the Clone
I won’t dawdle with getting this out there: I love Trial of the Clone. It made me laugh numerous times and it made me want to replay it many, many times just so I could see how things could work out differently. Like all of Tin Man Games’s other releases, it won’t be for those who want fast paced gaming, but for those who want to read an entertaining story while interacting with certain elements, it’s fantastic. The story, based upon the book of the same name by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith, follows the tale of a clone in a distant future, as they find themselves having to undertake a special destiny. It all sounds incredibly pious and worthy but it’s merely the backdrop to some great self-referential humor and some playful digs at popular Science Fiction. Consistently tongue in cheek, not only will players find themselves having to decide what to do about the galaxy’s fate, but they’ll also find themselves having to fight angry mothers, outwitting little old ladies and getting drunk with fellow soldiers. --Jennifer Allen
Vendetta Online
Online games are lucky to maintain a fan base for weeks, let alone for months, or even years. In the case of the interstellar MMO Vendetta Online, the game has managed to feed a thriving fan base since 1998. For those of you keeping track at home, that is a whopping fifteen years! Now that the game has managed to conquer most major platforms including the likes of PC, Mac and Android, the company has now set its sights on iPad. Can this massive experience make the jump to iOS, or will the gigantic scope overwhelm the more mobile-minded gamer? Everyone who has ever complained about the lack of a significant PC-centric MMO experience on iOS now has permission to sit down. Vendetta Online has somehow managed to port its entire online platform to iPad in a way that would seem impossibly succinct given the depth of the experience, yet just as fully featured as its big brother counterparts on Mac and PC. If it sounds too good to be true, rest assured, it isn’t. Just know that depth comes at the cost of a steep learning curve. --Blake Grundman
Fish Out of Water!
Fish Out of Water is Halfbrick’s long-awaited next game; it’s hard to believe that their last mega-release, Jetpack Joyride is over a year and a half old at this point. It’s very playable, but may not be something with a lot of longevity. The goal is to launch three different fish across water, trying to maximize the distance they go along with the number of times they skip across the water, to try and impress the five different crab judges who score on various criteria. Most fish should be launched at a low enough angle that they go far, but won’t just fall in to the water. Some fish are wildly different – for example, Finlay the dolphin (yes, the game knows dolphins aren’t actually fish) can jump and dive out of the water, with each dive counting as a skip. However, he shouldn’t touch the bottom of the water, because that will slow him down immensely. The brothers split into multiple fish, so if used properly, they can rack up massive numbers of skips. --Carter Dotson
Might & Magic: Duel of Champions
Might & Magic: Duel Of Champions is a digital card battler, much like Wizards of the Coast’s Magic 2013 or Gameloft’s own Order and Chaos: Duels. There are some subtle differences in the mechanics of the basic ruleset, but the idea is the same: lay out artistically rendered cards on a grid, using warriors, spells, and events to outscore an opponent, dropping hit points of the enemy Hero card to zero. Duel of Champions works similarly. Players get a deck of cards and an initial hand of randomly dealt creatures, events, spells, and fortunes to lay out on the grid. The virtual game space is laid out left vs right, with the player taking the spot on the left. Turns proceed in phases that are less linear than, say, Magic 2013, in that players can increase resources, play cards from their hand, or utilize special cards in any order. Instead of resource cards, here, players increase either Might or Magic via the Hero card, which is chosen for them initially by the specific deck they pick during setup. --Rob LeFebvre
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
Mystery Math Town
Mystery Math Town is a wonderful new math app that will engage both children and adults. I am really impressed with this app, as players here guide a friendly ghost who has agreed to help release fireflies that have been caught in jars hidden among rooms and outdoor spaces of wonderfully stylized houses – per the plead of their firefly mom as seen in an introduction to this creative math application. To do so, one will need to gather numbers that are to be used in math problems that one will come across in order to enter or leave any of the rooms of outside spaces connected to the house, be it by simply crossing over a threshold of a door, climbing up or down stairs or a ladder or even levitating outside the house as well as other unique ways of coming and going. --Amy Solomon
Sid the Science Kid: Sid's Slide to the Side
Sid the Science Kid – Sid’s Slide to the Side is a fun and educational application which delivers an episode of the terrific PBS kids’ show of the same name, developing into an interactive, animated storybook appisode that reads much like a traditional storybook which includes optional narration as well as illustrations often animated, allowing readers to propel the story with the tap of a finger, bridging the gap between an illustrated storybook and an interactive application, also including two mini-games as well. Parents who do not know of Sid the Science Kid are missing out on a great educational science-based show, bright and colorful, about Sid and his friends from school who learn about science in ways children will find most engaging. --Amy Solomon
Gro Memo
Dr. Panda’s Beauty Salon is a charming new app in a series of delightful role-playing applications for children that let them explore different characters such as a doctor, chef in a restaurant, farmer and now a worker at a beauty salon for animals. Fans of these Dr. Panda apps as well as those new to this genre will delight in all that this salon has to offer their animal clients, many of whom have starred in previous applications, as well as a few new faces. --Amy Solomon
AndroidRundown
Blocks Party
Simple games will always find a home with me. Blocks Party, come on in. Blocks Party is a game with an easy premise. You guide a rolling ball on a track with plenty of bonuses and obstacles to the end as fast as possible. Now, it’s the type of obstacles — coupled with the breadth of control options — that really made the game such a compelling option for me. The colors were sharp, allowing for the visual separation that made playing a quick-reaction game of this type possible. It was a rich fantasy environment, with beautiful pastels outlining the sky, the ground and everything in between. The green foliage that showed up in most screens evoked memories of the Dorothy prancing down the Yellow Brick Road. --Tre Lawrence
Smart Bags
I can speak from personal experience, and I am sure that many of our readers can as well, but there is nothing more nerve-wracking that bringing a smartphone along in a place that can get messy. Be it out in the garden, in the shop, on the lake, or in the kitchen; smartphones take a beating and, for the most part, bounce right back up. I am not talking about falls but more spills and general debris that can accumulate on phones in dirty environments. Picture someone working on a car who has grease and oil on their hands, but still needs to answer their smartphone to answer an important call. Usually they will have to completely clean their hands or bite the bullet and dirty their screen, but now with an incredibly simple and inexpensive KickStarter project that decision will become obsolete. Smart Bags are honestly nothing more than reinforced and fully biodegradable sandwich bags which are tailored to fit around conventional smartphones. People have been doing this for a while but never has their been bags that are disposable and offer the ability to conform to specific brands. Because the plastic is thicker and anti-static the risk of damage is incredibly minimal and any user should feel more than safe bringing their phone with them to the beach or out camping during a misty, muddy afternoon. The plastic still allows use of the phone without the threat of a scratched screen or water damage, and its thickness prevents the bunching and sticking that is common with regular sandwich bags. --Joseph Bertolini
Crazy Labyrinth 3D
I like simple games, and if there is one nice thing that accelerometer-equipped devices have spawned, it is the proliferation of cool labyrinth games like Crazy Labyrinth 3D, that continually seem to push the envelope. Pleasantly. Crazy Labyrinth 3D is really nice to look at. I loved the graphical three-dimensional representation of the playing area. I could practically smell the wooden surfaces, and liked the glow of the ball and shadows of the barriers. The animations were sharp and responsive; even the slight rebound of the ball looked remarkably real. It looked like the developer spent valuable time and effort on the interface, and I, for one, loved it. --Tre Lawrence