1st Impressions

Brot is an incredible Mandelbrot fractal viewer for the iPhone, at $4.99, it is one of the more costly fractal apps on my iPhone, but it has some really unique features that are usually reserved for desktop apps.

First, the app is extremely fast, more so than other iPhone apps I have tried. The color options are very nice as well. what puts this app in a whole different category though is its video capability. By using the play button, it gives you a vooming view into fifty levels of zoom to a certain point in the image. It is very nice to watch.

My suggestions are simple. First, I would love a way to save those to my camera roll. You could then do some nice things with iMovie to join them. Second, I would love to see ability to upload a position and color mat for others to download and explore. I was really surprised that an app of this category would be missing something included in competing products that cost leds. If it had those capabilities, I would give it a solid 10. Without it though, I have to give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

One other thing that I would like to suggest is that right now you only have 50-steps of double-magnification. That is due to rendering time involved. But as I have spent weeks rendering a single image before, I wish we were given an option to totally override that and go to whatever level our patience would endure.

All in all, this is a great app and would be towards the top of the list of suggestions that I’d give on apps like this.

I love crime dramas on television. so much, in fact, that I have already programmed my DVR to record all variations of CSI and NCIS (along with Bones and The Mentalist) even though the new season will not start for another week or two.

Of all the crime shows that I watch (and any other for that matter) my favorite character on television is Abby Shiuto, the quirky tech in NCIS. That is why I immediately had to check out and purchase the newly released NCIS app when it became available in the iTunes App Store.

For those if you that, like me, purchased the CSI Miami game when it was released then you will have an idea if what this game is like although it is slightly more difficult since the evidence is harder to find. to assist you in your job (Tony does have the habit of easily getting distracted) there are indicators at the bottom of the screen letting you not only access the clues that you have already found but it let’s you know how many more there are that need to be found at that particular crime scene.

The premise behind the game is simple. You direct the actions of the current NCIS team as they examine the crime scene, locate clues which Abby can then work her magic with, deal with Duckey when it comes to autopsy results, use various interrogation techniques when interviewing / interrogating suspects, and perform the rest of the duties that are required to solve the crime – preferably without a slap on the back of the head by Gibbs.

One if the biggest improvements over the CSI Miami game is that this game offers not one but five different crimes to solve.

Although the game costs $4.99, I didn’t hesitate to purchase it due to the length of time it takes to complete each case and the fact that there are 5 separate cases to solve. While I have yet to run across any animation, the graphics are great and the game play is wonderful.

If you are a fan of NCIS or just want to see if you can earn Abby another Calf Pow, then this game is for you. At the very least it will quench your need for a NCIS fix until the new season starts up in another couple of weeks.

It has been a very long time since I have anticipated the release of a game with so much excitement.  I’ve literally been searching the app store every morning to see if it is there yet.  I knew within 10 minutes of this game going live in the App store.  When it showed up, it was like a new gift showing up under the Christmas tree!   And, unlike many games that don’t quite live up to the anticipation (or utterly fail to do so), I have to say that Virtual City is no disappointment.  And I dare say that the 250,000 folks that tried out the free version won’t be disappointed either.

Virtual City, a G5 Entertainment release, is a successful port of a game available for other platforms.  I like it better than other games in the genre of Sim City because while the game does have its complexities, game play itself is not as cumbersome and doesn’t require memorizing huge poster-size technology trees.  It works so well on the iPhone touch screen that I’d have to say that it would likely be at the top of my list of purchases should I ever get an iPad.  The very intuitive pinching to zoom in and out and moving around on the map does not really require a full size screen though.

The premise of the game is simple.  Each of the 50 levels has a list of stated goals.  They can be accomplished in any order in order to complete that level.  There has to be order in the completion of each task though.  For example, your goal may be to send pies to the neighboring city.  In order to do that, you have to work out the dependencies of that goal.  You can’t just build a pie plant though.  You have to get grain delivered to the mill, flour from the mill and milk from the dairy farm to the bakery, and pies from the bakery to the next town.  This may require construction of roads or tunnels, trash pickup and delivery to the recycling center, additional homes for workers, and responses to natural disasters, fire, illness, and the eventual breakdown of equipment.

The dependencies are easy to figure out though as they are primarily transportation related.  If you click on a factory, it shows you what items it needs and what items it produces.  Items that are already being taken care of are checked off.  In effect, your goal is to deliver all the dependencies for each of the required items in a game.  It is more about connections and transportation than it is actual construction or utility infrastructure like other games of the genre.  The goals of the game are not just in the make & deliver category though.  Even the “make & deliver” goals depend on a proper balance of money, environment points, population, and community happiness.  It can be quite a job.  And, I have to say that from the standpoint of someone that was once  a project manager as a career, I found the “job” to be very enjoyable.  The focus on raw materials, manufacturing new items from them, and transportation is something that I find unique and refreshing and makes this game so much more than a clone of SimCity.  If you like games like SimCity, to which games of this genre are forced to compete with and be compared to, you will like this one as well.  I’d go so far as to say you might actually be like me and enjoy it better.

As I said before, Virtual City comes with 50 different levels across terrain found in 5 different states.  There are 7 different “production chains” to master (things as diverse as baking, printing, and cosmetics), multiple upgrades available for 50 different types of buildings, new technologies to unlock, and even 5 different “sandboxes” (to be added in the next release) that allow for free form play to your heart’s content.

I only have a couple of suggestions for the game.  I’d love to have an easy way to cycle through trucks, dumpsters, and buses and “follow” them around in the game to see where their pickups and drop-offs could be maximized.  While there is a way to select each item individually, there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily find which truck(s) visit a particular factory, for example, without clicking on every truck in the fleet to find out.  I’d love for there to be an option when I select a factory to see it’s current transportation.  It would make upgrading them easier.  My other suggestion would be to clarify something in the tutorials.  I know that a garbage truck (a “dumpster”) can visit multiple places and deliver at a single location (the recycling center), but does that stretch to other kinds of trucks as well, and what is the limit?  It appears that I’m limited to a single destination, but is there a limit to the number of “pick-ups” before I get there?  I figured it out by trial and error, but it would have been nice if it had been spelled out in a clear fashion in the tutorial.  Finally, I’d love to see a better way to tell what parts of your infrastructure are not needed for a particular level’s goals.  Early on, I deleted a factory that I didn’t realize I needed and could not find a way to re-build it.  What I was wanting to do wasn’t part of the level’s goals/tutorial, but I’d hate to make that mistake on something important and be forced to re-start a level.

You can download a teaser version with the first four levels for free (takes about half an hour to complete), but my recommendation is to skip that and go right for the full game.  At an introductory price of $2.99, it is guaranteed to bring you hours and hours of gaming pleasure.  I’d hurry though, as the price is going up on September 13th.  This game is one of the few that makes my “Must Have” list and I could not recommend it any more highly.

I have to admit first off that, as much as I love to play RPGs, this is he first one that I played that involved the actual rolling of dice to determine the damage done during a battle. It seems to add a delay to the game that, while I can understand the need if you were playing in person with friends, just seems to create an extra delay in an electronic version of the game.

That being said, I have to admit that Rimelands ranks near the top of all the RPGs that I have played on my iPhone. it didn’t take long (the screen shot is actually from the beginning of the game…) for me to realize that Rimelands will be a hot seller in the iTunes App Store.

The story line involves you, after humanity has spent 1000 years underground shelters to survive a frozen earth, being sent out on various quests in a frosty and frozen world that is inhabited by the Fair Folk.

Utilizing what has become a common D-Pad for control, you control the movements of Rose Cristo (the name is editable although you still have to play as a girl – something I hope a future update will allow you to change) as you not only perform the expected quests but solve puzzles along the way. One thing I really enjoyed was the amount of vaults to explore and treasures to find.

As the game progresses you can choose to follow one of three different character paths (Barbarian, Assassin, or Shaman) which gives this game a lot of replayability. That is only the beginning, however, as Diceworld Games and Crescent Moon Games are promising this is the first in what will be a Hammer of Thor series.

If forced to give this game a rating, I would give it a 9 out of 10. I wish there were an option to turn off the manual dice roll and something about a girl running around named David reminds me of the “Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash.

If you like the old school RPGs with the rolling of the dice than jump all over this one. it costs $4.99 in the app store.

In the last several months, I have purchased about a dozen apps looking for “that one perfect app” that would do everything I wanted when it came to ambient noises and the perfect alarm clock.

It has reached the point where I still have 8 of these still on my iPhone and liked one of then so much that I reviewed it not once, but twice for this site.

All that changed, however, after I spent the night with Nightstand Weather Clock.

While having a weather icon (much less a forecast) wasn’t a feature that I was looking for, I found it extremely helpful when it came to predicting how much difficulty I was going to have with my extremely arthritic knees that day. If, for example, I wake up and see that it is going to be rainy that day, I know that I will need to wear my knee braces and keep my pain pills handy.

The best part about the program, however, is that it will play built in ambient noises or music from a play list for up to 24 hours.  While doing so, it will display the time, a weather icon, and either a background of your choice or one of several landscape (or even celestial) backgrounds. You can also choose to cycle through these backgrounds in many different time increments, from a few seconds to a day. (That sounds handy with photos of my new grand baby… LOL) You can also adjust what part of the portrait or landscape screen the information is portrayed in.

My only suggestion for the app is that it allow for streaming music in the background.  While an iTunes playlist adds a lot of options, it would also be cool to do things like listen to a Pandora station overnight.

Now, for the best part. As good as this $0.99 app is, the developers are set to release a newer version that is so drastically improved that it is getting a new name as well. When that happens, you can read all about it right here…

Word Quest is a basic word-search game for the iPhone.  At $0.99, it offers unlimited game play that incorporates not only different difficulty levels, but twenty different lists of words.  I found the variety to be very entertaining.  Game play is very simple as you can not only tap the first letter of the found word and dragging to the end of the word, but you can also just tap the first letter and then the last letter.  There are even hints available if you get stuck.  The graphics are nice, and the interface very intuitive.  Overall, it is a fun game for when you have a few minutes.  Anyone that likes word games will not be disappointed with the versatility of this one.

The long awaited Pochi in Space has finally arrived in the app store. With the highest user rating of five stars, this game is a sure crowd pleaser.

The object is simple. you (Pochi) are blasting through space, doing your best to avoid running into UFOs, asteroids, and other space junk. Along the way you can pick up upgrades, such as shields, which will allow you to get even further.

Pochi offers two modes of play: an Exploration mode which is a good place to start for beginners, and a Speed mode that requires even faster reflexes.

As  many other games have begun using, the developers of Pochi has chosen to utilize the ever more popular Open Feint for tracking your scores and comparing them to others.

Speaking of the developers, my hat is off to you for making it so east to contact you with the option to do so built right into the About screen, something that guys like me appreciate. So many times you have to dig deep into the iTunes store just to find out how to make a game suggestion.

Regardless of that little rabbit trail, Pochi in Space was an entertaining surprise for me and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic arcade games.

Flight Doodle is one of a number of “doodle” games that seem all the rage right now.  At $0.99, this one puts you in control of a hot air balloon in an attempt to survive as long as you can against attacks.  As you can see in the attached screenshot though, you can configure your vessel and your attackers with a number of different choices.  In this case, I chose missiles against a jetpack.

Game play is very simple.  Using the tilt controls of your iPhone, you “steer” yourself around not only attackers, but also through power-ups that do things like shrink you or give you offensive weapons.  They can also speed you up and slow you down.  One interesting thing though is that you also go past the benchmarks of those that have gone on before.  This is facilitated by online leaderboards that can be set to automatically update after every attempt.

The game is not static though.  Future updates to the game over the next month will be adding new game modes.  Not sure where that is headed, but it should be interesting to find out.

While this is not one of those games that will keep you captivated with new content for hour after hour, the simplicity of little games like this that can be picked up and played for a couple minutes at a time speaks a lot for the million dollar success that some of these “doodle games” have achieved.  Every iPhone needs a few of these for just such occasions.

I have to admit that am not typically a fan of “find the missing objects” games. They are typically just one page after another in which you look for one item or another. sometimes you are given hints and other games outright give you a list of what to look for. It reminds me of the hidden object game you could always find in that children’s magazine I could always find in the doctor’s office or dentist’s office as a kid.

Mushroom Age has actually changed my mind about this genre of games.  The game not only includes 23 chapters and over 40 different levels but throws in 41 different mini games just for added benefit.

What I found most pleasing about the game was the excellent graphics, an exceptional story line involving a damsel in distress searching for her missing fiance, and the fact that the game not only takes place in the present but in the past and future as well.  The graphics and audio are excellent and, in many ways, the game reminds me of the Jules Verne Mysterious Island game.

I haven’t finished the game yet but, for the first time with this type game, look forward to doing so.

Marketed by G5 Entertainment, the game is available from iTunes for $2.99. if you are squeamish about dropping that mush on a game that you haven’t checked out, there is a free Lite version that will be sure to wet your appetite for more.

Supermarket Mania is one of the better iPhone time management games for the iPhone platform.  I tried it out last year when it was first released, and have to say that the re-visit has been an enjoyable experience.  The latest version of Supermarket Mania, version 1.5, adds not only language support, but also support for the iPhone 4 retina display.  And I have to say that the graphics are sharp.

This game is not some easy-to-beat game that you will quickly tire of.  The complexity of the game is not only reflected in it’s $2.99 price tag, but also in its 50MB download size.  The game not only incorporates an endless mode with leaderboards, but also a 50-level story mode across five different stores.  Multiple types of customers and goods exist, as well as a variety of upgrades as you progress in the game.

I do have two suggestions for the game.  First, as a guy that used to stock grocery store shelves as a teen, I wish the game had an option for stock-boys.  Being able to choose your gender as well as your name would, I believe, increase the size of the target demographic of the game.  Second, I’d love to see the game (or maybe a new one) morph into something that better incorporates growth in the character.  Taking a page from empire building games, perhaps, over time, one goes from stock clerk managing individual inventory items to store manager over different departments and ultimately to a franchise owner over different stores.  I just think that having different graphics for managing different stores might keep people involved a bit longer than upgrading the kind of meat they are stocking.

If you are into the time management genre of games, you really can’t go wrong with Supermarket Mania.  And if you are the try-before-you-buy type, a free lite version is available.