Review: Five Dice
Posted by Jesse | Filed under Games, Reviews
One of my absolute favorite games for iPhone, Five Dice has been available on jail-broken iPhones way before the 2.0 software / app store had even been announced. Five Dice us a mobile version of Yahtzee that has gotten a nice little interface upgrade since the old jailbroken version (not to mention the words Yahtzee and Chance gave been replaced with Fuve Duxe and Wild).
The new interface is absolutely gorgeous and you now receive small colored hints when your number points are higher or lower than needed for the bonus. Overall highly recommended for someone who wants a fun, quick casual game and got the hardcore Yahtzee fan.
Review: Texas Hold’em
Posted by Jesse | Filed under Games, Reviews
Texas Hold’em has been riding the top of the Top 50 Paid Apps pretty much since the launch of the App Store in iPhone 2.0. After a week or so of playing it I am convinced it fully earns it’s place at the top.
Texas Hold’em is an iPhone game developed by Apple which takes the poker craze and makes it mobile. The beauty of this app, is that it really is two wholly separate versions of the same game.
Video Poker aka portrait style
This is the game you will hear the most about. With the iPhone held normally (portrait style) you get a pretty slick video poker game with simple controls and very nice, very smooth video playback. Each opponent has several videos for folding, raising, checking, etc which not only looks great, but is actually useful as each player has their individual tells.
The control is dead simple as you can double-tap to check, drag your hand to the center to fold, or adjust the slider to bet. If you are in a hurry simple tap the screen to bring your next action to the front.
Table Poker aka landscape style
While the video poker is much flashier, I prefer to play with the slick landscape view, which replaces the videos with a view of the Poker table. This allows you to much more easily see who has folded and who you are up against. With some quick tapping you end up a it much quicker gameplay as well.
All together Apple’s Texas Hold’em app offers two highly polished and fun experiences which I highly recommend.
Review: Tiny Violin
Posted by Jesse | Filed under Games, Reviews
Tiny Violin is a simple little app that is nothing more than the world’s tiniest violin.
This app is hilarious. Simply hold your iPhone up so that you can place your chin on the violin (for full effect), grab the bow with your finger, and slide it across the violin to show your best friend some sympathy as he shares a sad, pathetic tale.
There really is nothing more to the app than this, and some may say it’s not worth the $.99 pricetag. I personally find it to be the app that keeps on giving, I’ve used it enough in just the first day of owning it to produce more than enough laughs worth the price of a value cheeseburger.
The only problem I have - there is not enough customizability in this app. A random 5-10 second clip of a song (from a selection of 9) plays every time you use it - I would prefer to be able to select a specific tone to play every time. Though most of the 9 songs are perfect, a few of them just do not fit the sad mood needed when playing this to someone’s tragic sob story.
Though for the laugh, it usually doesn’t matter.
Review: Othello
Posted by Jesse | Filed under Games, Reviews
I’ve been a huge Othello fan since I first discovered it years and years ago on my old Windows machine as Reversi. I’m a very competitive gamer (I hate to lose) so I spent many games on the hard difficulty losing horribly but picking up on the regular strategies until I got to be pretty decent. Now I consider myself a pretty well skilled Othello player.
I first downloaded Morocco, the first iPhone othello app, and have enjoyed it a lot, despite its lack of polish. I was excited to try out Othello for a more polished and visually pleasing experience. Unfortunately, Othello does not deliver.
The graphics are definitely pretty, but the gameplay is anything but. The AI in this little app is a mess. Once you get past the first 10 moves or slow things start to get extremely sluggish. You can make your move just fine, but it will take the game a solid 5-10 secs at least before every move it makes. To make matters even worse… when with this extra processing time - this game is dumb. Even on the “expert” difficulty, it was routinely making moves that anyone who plays more than a game or two knows to avoid.
Though the interface in Othello is much cleaner than that of Morocco, I much prefer a graphically rough interface over extremely slow response times and dumb AI.