iphone

Texas Tea

by ZombieSkittles on February 22, 2010

IMG_0526 Texas Tea by Snakehead Software is a game which can be (and has been) best described as a game which takes elements from games such as Bejewelled, Yahtzee and Poker and creates an interesting puzzle game out of them.

The premise is simple; there are dice on the board, and you need to construct poker hands out of them (such as a three of a kind, straight, full house) by dragging your finger along such a combination (across or up and down). When you highlight a successful combination, those squares black out and more dice drop. To win a level, all the squares must be blacked out. You can swap dice around by tapping the two that you want moved, as long as they’re touching.

The whole time you’re playing a level, there is a timer at the bottom of the screen to watch out for. However, if you’re playing without distraction the timer isn’t much of a worry as the game tends to go quickly.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many levels, so the game ends quite quickly if you sit down with the intent of playing continuously. Texas Tea does utilize the OpenFeint network, and as such has achievements to be earned. However, these are relatively simple, and you’ll get most of them in the first sitting (the majority are for completing levels).

Hopefully, as with many iPhone games, more features and levels will be added in future to increase playability, but for now it’s a good simple puzzle game. You can grab it from the iTunes store here.

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geoDefence

by ZombieSkittles on February 18, 2010

IMG_0524 Tower defence games are a popular genre on the iPhone. It’s a simple casual game type that a player can log into, play a level or two (or even just half a level) and jump back out when they run out of time. I’ve played a few, and the latest of which is GeoDefence.

geoDefence is a basic tower defence game, made by Critical Thought Games. There’s a path that enemies (referred to as creeps,and represented by simple shapes like stars and spirals) move down towards a final point that you need to defend. To stop these monsters, you place towers alongside the path that attack them. GeoDefence starts you off slowly with a simple straight-shooting tower, but as time goes on the player is given a variety of different towers which use lasers, bombs, etc. At the beginning of a game there’s a set amount of money to get started with, and as each enemy dies more money is gained for more towers.

What separates this from a lot of other tower defence games is the art style. Maps are futuristic, with neon colours for the enemies and explosions, and makes it a pleasure to watch. While this makes the game captivating and interesting, it’s also it’s downfall. Sometimes so much is happening on screen, so many flashing lights, that concentration is lost and the game destroys the player.

The game isn’t easy either. I’m personally stuck at the sixth level on the EASY set. There is a challenge about the game, and it really makes you think through your tower placement. If a single mistake is made with the placing of towers, the game can be lost. With that said, tower placement can be difficult at times, with the game being pretty sensitive to the touch. I’ve accidently placed towers in wrong places because when I’ve tried to let go, I’ve dragged slightly. You need to be precise.
To help ease the difficulty, at the beginning of each level the game gives tips to assist in winning, but leaves out enough to still keep it a challenge.

Apart from that, it IS a fun game, and well worth the couple of dollars it costs. You can buy it from the iTunes Store here.

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No Telstra service

by ZombieSkittles on September 30, 2009

IMG_0398It’s 3am, and for the first time in what I’d have to say is years, I’m confronted with having no service on my phone in my own house.

The screenshot shows that for the past 30 minutes, I haven’t been able to surf the net (which means no Twitter or email), and have been unable to send/receive text messaged. It’s been absolutely torture. That “No Service” message will be in my nightmares for awhile I think.

If hell exists and I go to it, I can’t see any worse torture than being given a phone that comes up with those two words every time I try to send an important text message to the president of the world about a cure for cancer, which in solving would inevitably solve world hunger at the same time. That message would get me a noble peace prize AND a free holiday to the moon for two weeks, but OH NO, Telstra in hell (Hellstra?) won’t let me because they don’t have coverage to that metre squared that I am standing in.

Ok, it’s 3:50am now, and coverage mysteriously came back when SOMEONE ELSE messaged me. Obviously Telstra like THOSE people more than they like me. Have it your way Telstra; I didn’t want to be your friend anyway.

Die in a fire.

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TweetDeck on the iPhone

by ZombieSkittles on June 17, 2009

I’ve written a much better review of the program, viewable on a much better site than this one.

IMG_0001 Dear Diary, today was the best day ever. Today was the day that TweetDeck came out for the iPhone. This is the one app I’ve waited for practically forever, and it was more beautiful than I imagined. I was curious as to how they would manage the ability to create columns, manage who’s in them, flipping between columns, and so forth; I was too stuck on thinking in terms of already popular established twitter apps like Twitterfon and how they could be modified to work like TweetDeck, which was something I couldn’t come up with.
TweetDeck however, thought fresh and created the much better concept than I’d ever expected for a Twitter iPhone app; the columns are displayed much like the tabs in the phone’s internet browser, and give the user the ability to preview the columns, and move them into whatever order desired. The app displays new tweets in a similar fashion to the desktop application, supports multiple accounts and even syncs with the computer to share columns. I love this and my only annoyance is that THE SHIT DIDN’T COME OUT SOONER. It is absolutely brilliant, and if you use twitter, and have an iPhone, you need to get it immediately. If not, at least get the desktop version.

Also, Seesmic Desktop sucks. Balls. It sucks balls.

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nin:access

by ZombieSkittles on April 23, 2009

NINYAY

Woah, that’s a big logo…did it get your attention?

Trent Reznor, singer and only “real” member of the band Nine Inch Nails, has been one of the pioneers on the forefront of changing the way the music industry operates. He’s gained worldwide media attention for stunts including telling a live audience at one of his shows to steal his album because he felt fans were being ripped off by the current price.
Reznor has also gotten recognition for the unique way he released Saul Williams’ record Niggy Tardust, by offering fans the choice of either downloading the album for free, or paying five dollars to support the artist. He then went on to offer his album Ghosts I-IV online, with the ability to download a preview torrent for free, containing the first nine songs of the album. The entire album was also placed under a creative commons license, actually allowing people to do what they want with the music on the record, as long as they give the band credit. To top it off, his very latest album, The Slip, was put up for completely free download as a reward for all the fans over the years.

IMG_0001 The latest venture of Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor is a little different; the story goes that apparently before a gig, Trent brought out his iPhone while backstage and looked at Twinkle (a location based Twitter program) and saw people were already messaging and posting pictures while waiting to get in. So he did what anyone in this situation would do; he started posting pictures from backstage on Twinkle too.
So started the idea for nin:access; an iPhone exclusive application (for now) which serves as a tool which integrates the same location based chatting used by Twinkle and other such iPhone apps, with the majority of features that appear on the band’s official website.
Starting up the app, you are introduced to the front page, complete with photo blog and news feeds. From there you can navigate to the website’s media library, the chat, profile messages and the forums. While access to everything is essentially open, to communicate with other fans a profile on the website is required, which can be both created and signed into via a little icon in the top corner of the screen.

IMG_0002 While having access to band news and the forum in your pocket is awesome enough for any fan (including myself), my favourite feature by far is the media library, which is home to various band videos, streaming music, photos, and even exclusive iPhone wallpapers, featuring images which stretch across the bands catalogue.
nin:access is the ultimate application for a fan like me. I only have two real problems, the first being that it took almost two weeks after the program going live, before I was able to use it, because it kept crashing on the start up screen (apparently had something to do with time zones, I don’t know). The other is that while I can stream remix galore from the default playlists at NIN Remix, none of the playlists of “official” songs would work when selected, and instead bomb out to the main screen of the iPhone.

The only feature I’m disappointed that wasn’t added was the ability to listen to the custom playlists of the remixes created while on the remix website. I guess I’ll have to wait and hope an update comes out that rectifies this. Even if it doesn’t, I’m still content with what is on offer, as I am sure any fan will be.

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