Real-time tactics evolve with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Blizzard’s long in the making sequel to one of the most beloved, bestselling sci-fi strategy games of all time. Oh, so you’ve heard of it, then? More »
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Review
For some reason I always find myself drawn to a good Jet Ski game. Read on to find out if that is the case with Aqua Moto Racing 2.
Aqua Moto Racing 2 is the sequel to Aqua Moto Racing released back in 2009, a game where, as the title suggest, is a race on water. The first Jet Ski that is provided is neither fast nor fancy. It is pretty crappy to be honest. This won’t be quite noticeable though, not yet at least. After you have won a few races you will be able to buy new Jet Skis that are indeed fast and fancy. Is winning the only thing that will give you money? No, of course not. It is not all about straight line speed, stunts can be unleashed as well. Depending on the Jet Ski that you are using, you will be able to perform from Easy to Medium to Hard stunts (there are three difficulties of stunts, two for each difficulty which, if you are good at math, equals to six different stunts). Credits will be awarded depending on the difficulty of the stunt. For example, an easy stunt is awarded with and a bar in the Turbo Pie (more on that later), on the other hand a medium one is awarded with and two bars and last but not least the hard ones will be awarded with 0 and three bars. And by the way, that money is game money…just in case.
Then, how does this “Turbo Pie” work? Well it has ten slices, and in order to have turbo all one has to do is fill them all up. Now, you can fill up the slices with the stunts like I mentioned earlier but there are also other ways to do this. By taking a turn perfectly by the buoys (which by the way, means the closer you can be to it…even by crashing into it you will be given the “perfect” award, which is definitely flawed) you will be awarded with two slices, if you only turn it and do it “great” you will be awarded with one, but if you don’t turn really close to it you won’t be awarded with any. Now this seems like a great addition, but it can also be a pain. If by any chance you miss one of these buoys, a slice will be taken off. Not only that, but by missing three buoys will equal to a disqualification. Penalization also occurs by falling off the Jet Ski, which is pretty annoying to say the least, and will result in the loss of another slice.
The biggest addition to this sequel is the waves, they look great and deform in a pretty realistic way. Thanks to the waves you will have a more challenging race, and a more realistic one too, especially when compared to the relatively flat original. Having to fight against the waves, your opponents, and trying to stay within the buoys is a very challenging but fun task.
The graphics aren’t jaw dropping, at first they will seem N64-ish, but they actually look better than that. Think PS2 maybe, which is a shame because they could have really taken advantage of the Retina Display for iPhone 4 but it doesn’t seem like they did.
The game is not perfect though, apart from the graphics it also has some collision flaws. Sometimes you will go through bridges or mountains, which takes off the reality of the game. Another flaw I found was that sometimes the countdown before a race wouldn’t come up. It would go directly to “GO!” (This seemed to happen every time I pressed the accelerator before the countdown would come up).
Apart from those little flaws though, you will be happy to know that there a lot of hours of gameplay within this baby. Not only are there over 40 challenging courses, there are also unlockable Jet Skis that will make you want to come back to get those bad boys. The good thing about the Jet Skis is that it gives you the opportunity to pick from your style of gameplay. You prefer speed? Check. You prefer stunts? Check. That kind of variety is pretty cool. There is also an option to edit your rider (only the colors) and you can also choose which flag you want to appear besides your name (fail because there is no Puerto Rico flag). If that is not enough, there are also achievements (around 25) which will keep you very busy for a while.
This is a full PS2/Nintendo 64 kind of game, it is the kind of games we used to pay for before and we had to play it on the couch. This one is only worth .99 and we can play it anywhere we want. If it wasn’t for the lack of online gameplay and the few flaws it has, it would be a perfect game.
You can also check it out for free by downloading the Lite version. There are only three Jet Skis and three courses, but it will give you a taste of what the real deal is.
Aqua Moto Racing is out now for.99. get it on the 
Aqua Moto Racing 2 – Review is a post from: TouchGen
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Oh Castlevania, how do I love the, let me count the ways… Konami’s Castlevania series has received a lot of acclaim, but the question you want answered is; does this new puzzle iPhone app live up to the royal Castlevania pedigree?In a word, “no”. Encore of the Night is an average puzzle game that just happens to have your favorite characters from Castlevania thrown in. At first I found the game pretty fun. The puzzle mechanics are good, the graphics are true to the series, and the music is great, however after putting in a few hours of gameplay, I am finding it hard to keep interested in this game.
Encore of the Night is RPG styled puzzle game. Similar to Puzzle Quest you move along a mostly linear path fighting baddies. You can also explore along different branches and find items, different enemies and shops. You can use items in game to increase health, attack an enemy or perform magic. You level up and learn spells, as well as equip items that help your stats and let you progress through the castle.
See that small, sliver of a rectangle on the left? That's where Konami expects you to stare for the next 20 hours.
Now, when I started playing I really really wanted to like this game. I love Castlevania and was really excited to hear that the iPhone version was out, but Encore of the Night is riddled with many annoyances that add up to pretty poor gaming experience. The first thing that started to get to me was the puzzle screen itself. You spend most of your time in the game in match-3 puzzle battle, but the part of the screen you look at (the part where you are matching the gems) is TINY. Less than one third of the screen is your play area, followed by a large area of pretty much wasted space showing you and your enemy giving each other badass looks while you throw down tiles, then the last section is the enemy’s play area. Your telling me after getting my beautiful new iPhone 4 with the high-rez 960X640 screen that you want me to focus on a small sliver of the screen with non-retina display optimized graphics? No thank you.
I kept trudging through, figuring not everyone can figure out how to use the whole screen like Puzzle Quest (iPhone) or Lumines (PSP the iPhone version does not have multiplayer, boo!) but the annoyances kept piling up. As Nigel mentioned on the unleashed podcast the menus look dated with a small font, and plain blue backgrounds. In some places it feels like they just didn’t bother to finish making graphics for the game. The interface is not optimized for touch controls at all, and can name the menus and in-game movement around the board quite annoying.
OMG, Dracula, I'm totally downloading this game now.
Every time you encounter an enemy you get this long drawn out animation, almost megaman style, but it’s longer and less interesting. To fully complete Encore of the Night you also have to backtrack a lot to get to areas that were to hard or inaccessible in the beginning. This is where you realize that getting around the board is a real hassle. Just walking around from point to point seems like a chore as you move so slowly around the map. While traveling you will also find many “random encounter” battles. This may be fine while moving foward, but when backtracking you often have to sit through the long sequence for the battle to start, only to have the enemy die quickly because you are so much more powerful than him.
I have to admit, with this review done, I probably won’t touch Castlevania: Encore of the Night again. If I want a puzzle RPG I’ll play Puzzle Quest. If I want to play a puzzle battle against AI, I’ll dust off my PSP and play Lumines. You can’t even play Encore of the Night multiplayer, local or online! It’s true Encore of the Night is more than just a cheap cash in, but not much more. Unless your a Casltevania fan, and want Encore of the Night just to complete a collection, I don’t see much value in getting this game.
Bottom Line: Castlevania: Encore of the night tries to a lot of interesting things, but succeeds at none of them. Even hard-core Castlevania fans will have a hard time making it through this one.
CONS:
- Encore of the Night is not a good match 3 style puzzle game
- Encore of the Night is not a good puzzle battle game
- Encore of the Night is not a good puzzle RPG
- Encore of the Night is not a Castlevania Game
PROS:
- More Castlevania Graphics and Music
Let me put it another way:
Currently .99 in the App Store
Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night – Review is a post from: TouchGen
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If you're one of the many people who always loved the Super Monkey Ball games on consoles, but never could really get in to the iPhone and iPad iterations because of control issues (I'm definitely one of those people), Aerox [.99] by Synoptical Studios is worth checking out. Aerox features extremely clean looking graphics, almost as if the game itself was designed as some part of a Aperture Science training program. This graphical style is paired with soothing music which creates an oddly relaxing experience– A phrase I never really thought I'd use to describe a ball rolling puzzle game.
Much like Super Monkey Ball, the object of Aerox is to roll your ball to the end of each level. In between the beginning and the pillar of light you must reach are all kinds of crazy obstacles ranging from simple ramps, moving platforms, and narrow platforms. It doesn't take long for the difficulty of the game to ramp up and throw other physics-based obstacles at you. For instance, you'll need to bump in to tall skinny blocks to get them to fall over to make a bridge to cross, other times there will be objects you need to move around to pass, or even move out of the way so a ramp can drop down to climb up.
The ball is controlled by tilting, and tilting your device back and forth controls rolling while tilting right or left controls the camera. For additional precision, you can touch and hold the screen and the camera will lock behind your ball at which point tilting right or left causes you to roll that direction. It's a pretty decent setup, although I have found myself rolling out of control by tilting too much and having the camera skew to an unexpected angle. A sensitivity slider in the options would likely solve this problem, which the developer has mentioned is coming in an update in the Aerox thread on our forums.
Aerox utilizes the graphical power of the iPhone 3GS, 3rd generation iPod touch, and iPhone 4 to do realtime reflections on the ball along with some fancy shadow generation not available on other devices. Currently the game runs at the typical 480×320 iOS game resolution, but in the not too distant future is getting updated with complete Retina Display support along with universal iPad compatibility.
With 30 levels to go through, online leader boards (although they haven't been working for me), and updates on the horizon to make the game take advantage of the increased resolution of iPad and iPhone 4, there's a lot to like about Aerox. The game isn't perfect, as I'd love to see some mid-level checkpoints added, but people on our forums are enjoying it, and it's easy to get behind any game with developers actively participating in the forums with plans to implement user suggestions in future updates.
App Store Link: Aerox, .99
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Monitor temperatures on five components and control up to five fans—without sacrificing a 5.25-inch drive bay—with NZXT’s Sentry LXE.
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Who says practical can’t be stylish or cute? The need for portable storage grows every day and Mimoco has a fun and often funny solution: USB drives modeled after popular game and entertainment characters like Master Chief, Darth Maul and even Hello Kitty.
The Mimobot designer USB Flash Drives sport various capacity(2-16GB) and designs. Recently, Mimoco forwarded a copy of the HALO licensed Master Chief model for our review.
The Master Chief flash drive we received supported USB 2.0 transfer speed and is Windows Readyboost compatible. A super-deformed version of the Spartan’s power armor covers the hard plastic shell of the unit. The protective USB cap snaps on snugly and securely, taking a little pressure to easily remove.
We received the 2GB version and my Mac and Windows 7 PCs recognized it with no need for software. A small red light rests between Master Chief’s feet showing that the flash drive is getting power and blinks when the drive is in use.
The Mimobot worked well for me and its capsule like design, including the rounded corners, actually felt comfortable in my pocket. One missing feature that bothered me was the lack of a lanyard. Since there is no way to secure or tie the flash drive to a key chain, I worry that the small unit will be easily lost.
A bonus feature of the Master Chief version was the zip file already contained on the drive out of the packaging. When expanded, the file contained a flash front end and a collection of HALO related videos and images. The pictures made me laugh mostly because they included images of the Mimobot in HALO concept art, my favorite being the Mimobot Master Chief posed before an angry Brute.
The media files don’t take up a lot of space but are worth a quick look and chuckle. The included videos concern the launch of HALO 3 so at this point they’re a little outdated.
If you’re looking for a conversation starter the Mimobot Master Chief edition is a good choice.
If you’re a HALO fanatic and need every licensed product it is also nice that at least this product has a practical use as a storage device. The price makes it more expensive than a generic 2GB thumb drive but the attractive case makes up for the extra cost. If the olive drab color of the Master Chief is just not your style the Mimobot also comes in red and blue spartan armor.
You can get more details or order a Mimobot of your own on Mimoco’s website.
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Alan Wake's ending is open for interpretation. Some people believe the dark presence exists in Alan's world. Others see it as a figment of a mental patient's mind. A few souls out there will even tell you that Alan Wake is just a character in a book.
I believed strongly in one of these possibilities…until I played through Alan Wake's first DLC offering The Signal. The game didn't sway me to a new possibility, nor did it make me believe my theory was invalid. Instead of giving an answer, or even a few clues to point toward the correct theory, The Signal recognizes and teases every conceivable outcome, and in the end, just made me all the more confused. I'm now of the mind that any and all theories are correct. I'm even beginning to think that Alan Wake may have been abducted by aliens.
If you went into this DLC expecting answers, you'll undoubtedly be disappointed. However, if you just want to play around with a flashlight more, you're going to love what Remedy has cooked up. The Signal offers the game's most dynamic gameplay. Enemies swarm in great numbers, and light is used in different ways to combat their assaults. I don't want to ruin the surprises ahead, but I will say that fire, explosions, and words are used brilliantly in fights. This chapter is just as lengthy and polished as any of the others in the main game. Instead of collecting flashlights, you are now tasked to collect 10 alarm clocks. Before you say anything, the clock did make me think about one of the theories out there. One of the many possibilities that this DLC taunts you with.
The most closure delivered from this DLC is the fate of that creepy deer float. That's something, right? I enjoyed playing through this new chapter and grabbing a few new Achievements, but it confused me more, and left me with that Lost-like feeling of "Do the writers really know where they are going with this story?" Here's hoping the next DLC offering, The Writer, wraps it all together. If Alan has to endure more of this mental chaos, I fear he may turn the shotgun on himself. And yes, I'd settle for that ending.
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Got an old P4 kicking around? Why not turn it into a killer security gateway with Astaro’s free software?
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