Categories
App Review

App Review: Peggle

Busting some Peggle Moves
Busting some Peggle Moves

I heard about Peggle (buy Peggle on iTunes) several times before I actually tried it.  Being Scottish I can be a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to paying for apps.  There a re a good number of high quality apps available for free and the price (£2.99/$5) seemed quite high to me and ignored it.  I had even read about the Peggle pricing experiment, found it interesting but not the game itself.

Then I was in an electronics store waiting (quite a while)  for something to be brought out to me and they had Peggle running on a PC.  I played it without really knowing what it was and became addicted.  So i ponied up the money and bought it.

The aim is to knock out all of the orange pegs on the different boards. There are a majority of blue pegs which help your ball to have something to bounce off and the occasional purple score multiplying peg.

The most interesting pegs are the green ones, which offer new “special powers” depending on which level you are on and which of the 10 Peggle masters you are studying under.  Among the powers are:

  • Super Guide – showing you where your ball will go after its first bounce
  • Space Blast – lights up all nearby pegs
  • Fireball – blasts its way through pegs instead of bouncing off them.

There is a collector barrel moving from left to right on the bottom of the screen then you are able to re-use the ball (useful when you’re running out)

I’ve played it for hours since I downloaded it and am re-playing it.  It’s a great “quick” game, to play in spare minutes, but you could also play for prolonged periods and it’s well recommended.

It does behave very well when I’m listening to my own music, keeping the sound effects but dropping the music (although the “Handel’s Messiah” music when you finish the level is fabulous)

(8/10)

Categories
Great Games

Great Games: Day of the Tentacle

Hoagie meets the founding fathers
Hoagie meets the founding fathers

“Day of the Tentacle” is one of my favourite games of all time.  I played it through as a teenager and I loved the 3 streams of play.

The basic concept is that you play as 3 friends, all separated by 100 years (Laverne in 2176, BerNARD in 1976 and Hoagie in 1776) and you have to co-operate to make sure that you can all get back to 1976 and defeat the evil Purple Tentacle (as opposed to the good natured Green Tentacle)

For example you Bernard has to retrieve a “help wanted” sign from the present, send it to Hoagie in the past so that he can get a job and deliver a battery to Laverne in the future.

It’s very complicated but wonderfully humourous.  you play havoc with time (adding amendments to the US  constitution so that everyone has a vacuum cleaner in the basement, just so that you’ll be able to use one in the future) and it can be a bit frustrating trying to work things out but the game is so cleverly written that it’s a joy to play.

I’ve been playing it again recently thanks to my jailbroken iPod.  ScummVM is available via Cydia and it has been great playing through this and “Flight of the Amazon Queen”  (now available for free!) Next up is “The Secret of Monkey Island!”

Categories
App Review

App Review: Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile

1_Axel_Guitar_Dazed_Venue2

I’m under no illusions that android is not (yet?) a gaming platform.  I’ve found precious few games which are worth keeping on  my phone.  However I do have some standards and Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile (Demo) fell far below those standards.

The game weighs in at around 7mb which, for a phone with only 74mb for all applications and operating system, that’s a sizeable chunk.  I could forgive this rudeness if it weren’t for the absolutely useless gameplay.

I’ve played Guitar Hero on the PS2 and the Wii, as well as Tap Tap revenge on the iPod Touch so I know what the deal is.  The problem with this version is that it’s so jerky and jumpy that it’s impossible to be in time.  I tried several times and never made it past 30 seconds into a track.  I’m no genius at Guitar Hero but I can usually complete a track on the first few difficulty levels.   I made sure that I had nothing big running in the memory and went back to try again – to no avail.

I’d much rather shell out on independent games that are more fun (and significantly cheaper)

Do yourself a favour and don’t bother with this turkey.

(1/10)

Categories
Gadgets

Cool Sites: GDGT

As you hopefully know by now I’m a gadget fan.  I’ve been updating my profile (and list of gadgets I’ve owned) on the recently launched GDGT website.  There are still some of the older gadgets which I have had which aren’t in there yet but it’s hard for me to remember the product numbers so I’m waiting for that.

In the meantime, here’s my gadget list, and I’ll be keeping an updated one in the sidebar.

Categories
App Review

App Review: Sentinel

Zapping the aliens on Mars
Zapping the aliens on Mars

I’m a big fan of Tower Defence games.  I’ve played quite a few over the years and I have to confess that Sentinel is one of the best I’ve played (buy Sentinel on iTunes.)

In a tower defence game you face waves of enemies, slowly increasing in difficulty while you build up your defences against each wave.  There are usually waves with different characteristics (i.e. some can fly so are immune to ground based weapons) and weapons to match lots of characteristics.  The idea is to build up a mixture of defences to defeat al enemies.

The premise here is that you are defending the Mars base from invading alien hordes.

One of the things which hits you immediately about Sentinel is the high quality visuals and sound effects. Of all of the games in this genre which I’ve played this is by far the best produced.  It’s also one of the most addictive.  There  are 4 separate layouts to defend, in either assault (90 waves of attack) or endurance (unlimited waves.)

Since the release of Sentinel 2 (review coming soon), Sentinel has been reduced to 99c – well worth the money.

My only bugbear with the game is that it stops whatever you’re listening to when it starts but you can get around that using the double-click trick.

(7.5/10)

Categories
General iPod

iPod Hint: Quick Playback Access With a Double-Click

The DoubleClick Menu
The DoubleClick Menu

Okay, so I’m probably the last person to find this (and it’s probably in the manual which I’ve never bothered to read) but I’ve discovered that a doubleclick on the iPod’s circular button brings up a little control panel for the music settings, allowing you to resume listening, skip forwards and backward and adjust the volume.  I find it particularly useless when battling with apps which won’t let you listen to what you’d like to listen to.

Categories
Downloads

Hama Time: Mario Patterns

I, Robot, by Andy Hay, in Hama Beads
I, Robot, by Andy Hay, in Hama Beads

In my spare time I do some work with teenagers and sometimes we do bead crafts with them, laying out beads on a rack of pins, then ironing the beads until the come together as a whole.

Usually the boards come in stars and circles and can be used to do whatever you like but I’m not that creative, or interested in loveheart shaped coasters.

What I am interested in is Videogames and so I’ve made some Hama Bead patterns for Mario, a Koopa, a Mushroom and a Question Box.  They might be bigger than your average Hama board but you can make them in bits then iron them together.  I have made the koopa but it got “donated” so no picture . . .

Anyway, here they are, and I may produce more in future.

koopa_grid
Koopa Hama Pattern
mushroom_grid
Mushroom Hama Pattern
mario_grid
Mario Hama Pattern
question_block_grid
Question Block Hama Pattern
Categories
Rant

Rant: Importing scores from free versions

image by Steve Rhodes
Image by Steve Rhodes

I’m a big fan of free games.  I download lots of them to try out.  Some of them have paid-for versions and I’ve bought some of those because I’ve so enjoyed the free versions.  Two recent examples of this are Bubble Defense for android and Flood-it on iPod.

I’ve not yet found one paid-for ganme which loads high score data for the free versions.  I had a fairly enviable score on flood-it but I had to start again once I installed the paid-for version.

It’s not a big deal but I do wish that game developers would consider this tweak for the benefit of those they entice to pay.

Categories
Great Games

Great Games: Invincible Island

invincibleOne of my earliest gaming memories is in screaming in rage at this game.

It would say something like “you can see a bent fork.”  I would type “Pick up bent fork.” It would say something like “I don’t understand the word “bent.” I would scream.

The game was released in 1893 and I was only just able to read properly when i was playing it so it’s not surprising that i got frustrating.

The basic idea is to move around the island and to try to escape.  Part of the joy for me was the time that it took to draw the picture of each scene which you were in. There was new and fairly evocative art for every area and it was the height of excitement back then. It’s an old-skool game though i.e. you can die.  There are lots of ways to die and i found most of them.

It’s still available in various spectrum emulator sites and d a “one click” version which plays reggae music during the game, killing the sinister atmosphere.

I’m feeling like a game – hope I can escape the natives!

Categories
General iPod

Itunes Hint: locate your Library on an External Drive

itunes-logo

Having finally submitted to the march of the iPod (after loving my iriver and i-audio x5)  I’ve had to come to terms with iTunes.

I’m no iTunes fan – never have been – but it’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be.  It’s picky and clunky in parts (and i won’t get started on my obsession with album art) but I’m learning to live with it, if not love it.

My main problem is that I keep my iTunes library on an external drive, my laptop not having enough space.  This usually works okay but sometimes iTunes forgets where the library is, re-sets the location to my local disk,  and I lose the ability to play all of my tunes.  Every time I try to play something I get the error

I scouted around on the internet for a script or something to re-associate the files until I found a very simple solution – tell iTunes where the library is.  In the settings for Itunes you can specify where the music is located and, once I do that, it finds all of my tracks again.  Some things are so simple I have to be told what to do.