No Pro. No Air. No mini. No Pencil. No Stage Manager. No Magic Keyboard. Just a big aluminium slab running iPhone OS, sitting somewhere between an iPhone and a Mac — and leaving everyone wondering what on earth they were supposed to do with it.
(more…)Tag: Review
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Quick Blast: Real Racing HD
As a huge racing game fan since I was around two, and being a proud iPad owner, I thought to myself maybe I really should check out Real Racing HD. So I did .. and I was amazed. (more…)
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Bloomies – The Little Garden In Your Pocket
Bloomies is a real time game were you the gardener have to plant and look after your flowers, also known as Bloomies. Keep them happy and you will have a huge garden full of pretty little flowers.
The game is basically a time management one. You plant a flower and keep it happy by watering it often. The flower produces pollen which the bees collect and change to nectar. Nectar gives you coins and with the coins you are free to upgrade, decorate or buy more flowers to plant.
It is very easy to play. When you first launch the game you have an empty garden so you need to plant a few flowers. To do this you hit the spade button at the bottom left, then hit a patch of grass where you want it to grow. Next tap on the patch you have just dug and a choice of available bloomies will pop up. Select one and it is ready! To start with, it will have a sad face which means it is not happy, to make it happy simple water it. To do this tap the flower and options will appear above its head, select the cloud and it rains on it and puts a smile back on its face.
When you first plant a Bloomie they are babies but after 36 hours they become an adult. The difference with this is a baby bloomie produces one pollen where as a adult produces two. The pollen you can collect, the nectar the bees and butterflies collect. You will be able to see your bee collecting the nectar with his little pot. When he’s collected 100 pots you get one honeycomb. You can as I said before use the honeycomb to buy items so you need to build it up to progress in the game .
When the bee collects the nectar in his pot it can be a bit slow so you can boost your bee along. To do this you must have pollen available. Simple collect it from the flower, tap on the pollen ball then tap on your bee and tap boost. It will make him collect nectar a lot quicker and more of it. Which then boosts your honeycomb coins much quicker.
There are also stars to collect daily from the sun and moon or when you move up a level. You move up a level by gaining experience points. To gain them you have to purchase items, so at times it can be a bit slow before you can level up. You can also upgrade your beehive so you can choose decorations like flowers and trees but again you need stars to upgrade so you will have to wait until you have leveled up and collected enough of them.
There are lots of things to buy with your honeycomb, there are flowers and trees to make your garden pretty. You can also buy more bees to work harder and they all differ in style and price. You can have a police bee or a football bee the choice is yours. The more expensive the bee is the more experience points you will get.
You can decorate the garden how ever you choose just make sure you visit often to water your bloomies. It is the sort of game you can dip into each day and play for half an hour then leave and either come back later or just play the day after. When you close the app your garden still grows and the bees still work hard for you. The game is also OpenFeint enabled and there are achievements within there that you can unlock. When you do you earn stars, all which help you upgrade.
The game is very good and I enjoyed going back to water my flowers and see how they had grown. I think the garden though is quite small and does fill easily, so you are limited to how much you can buy. You need to buy to level up so once your garden is full you would have to buy to level up but then delete some flowers away just to make a bit of room to buy more. So I feel that this game would improve greatly if it had more gardens or at least bigger ones. There is also no way to restart the game either which I felt there should be an option to at least.
The graphics are lovely to look at. The bloomies with their cute little faces and the garden is full of bright colours. The music playing in the background is a magical twinkling sound with twinkling sound effects when collecting nectar. All adding to a well designed game and fitting very well together.
IÂ don’t think I will get bored with the game as it is one you can play for any length of time and doesn’t require a lot of daily attention. It is a game that would suit any age, children will love it but I also think because it is a real time, good time management game adults will enjoy it as well. To top it off, it is only 59p in the app store and you are really getting a great game for an absolute bargain!
Gameplay [rating:3/5]
Controls [rating:5/5]
Graphics [rating:4/5][rating:overall]
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Dropbox for iPhone and iPad, Sync and Share Your Files With Others
If you haven’t heard of @Dropbox by now, you’re missing out. Dropbox is a cross-platform computer application that syncs files onto a Dropbox server. This server can be viewed as a folder on other computers which you have been validated. On a Macintosh or other computer, you simply drag a file into the Dropbox folder, and it immediately syncs with other computers/devices. (more…)
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180 – A Fun All-Action Puzzle Game for iPhone and iPad!
180 which is developed by Headcase Games is a great match 3 puzzle game, all you have to do is flip and shoot your coins.
The gameplay is easy to pick up. On the screen at the top are coloured coins with two sides, each side being a different colour. If you are happy with that colour you can leave it, if you want to change the colour you tap it and it flips over to the other colour.
At the bottom you’ll find the coin you are going to shoot out next. When you are happy to fire the coin out you just tap the space where you want it to fly. If the coin happens to match any of the other coins of the same colour, equaling three or more, it clears them off the screen. The game involves that you keep on doing this, but beware .. don’t let them cross the line at the bottom, or the game is over!
Where you can benefit with 180’s style of matching is the ability to flip these coins. You can see what colour is coming up next, so you then can change the colours at the top to try and match, ready for when that next coin shoots out. It adds a nice twist to the popular type of match-3 game already hugely popular in the app store.
There are three modes in which you can 180:
Endless – This mode sees how long you can keep the game going
Score Attack – Within this mode you have 90 seconds to gain a high score
Drop Attack – In this mode you get to add more lines to score points, choosing between a difficulty of either easy and hardThe graphics are bright and colourful and whilst you are playing there are some nice sound effects to accompany them. Another great feature to this game is that it is @OpenFeint enabled, so you can compete and play against your friends and family, collecting trophies and achievements.
There are so many games of this kind already available on the store, that I wasn’t sure how long my interest would last with 180. With the ability to flip the coins over though, it really (for me) made the gameplay a little more challenging than usual. 180 is a vibrant and colourful game in which you can use strategy and skill to gain those all important high score points. A puzzle game really for any age and one all the family can easily pick up and play.
Gameplay [rating:4/5]
Controls [rating:4/5]
Graphics/Sound [rating:3/5][rating:overall]
