Mach Dice ($0.99) is a very slick, impressive dice simulator for the iPhone. You can select any combination and number of dice, so it can be used for all dice games, from Yahtzee to Dungeons and Dragons. It also utilizes a unique 3D effect when tilting the phone that I’ve haven’t seen on the iPhone before. Check it out the video below.
There is an official licensed version of Tetris ($9.99) in the iTunes apps store, but it’s expensive and bloated and has long loading times. There are, however, two free basic Tetris clones, Teto Teto!! and Tris. Here’s a look at both of them:
While both of the Tetris clones are flawed, the better of the two is Teto Teto!! It won’t win any awards for graphics, but Teto Teto’s button controls are much more accurate than Tris’s, which becomes important when the game speeds up. The buttons rotate and move the blocks left, right, and down. The buttons are in no way comparable to classic tactile buttons, but for Teto Teto, they work well enough to not get in the way of game play.
There is one one minor glitch. If you tap the down button, which accelerates the descent of the blocks, too zealously, it will immediately drop not only the block on the screen and but also the next block in the queue. This is an annoying flaw, but not a game killer, as you learn to be careful and work around it.
Teto Teto also features an interesting strategy twist. There is an area on the right side of the screen called the Stock. Tapping the Stock button will place the next block in the queue in the stock area, and tapping Back will place it back in the queue. You get 5 stocks, which you keep track of on the left side of the screen.
Overall, what makes Teto Teto superior to Tris is the accuracy of control. This becomes more important in later stages when the pace of the game begins to pick up.
iLounge recently took a look at both of these games and listed Tris as the better of the two. While I agree that Tris is the better looking and intially the smoothest, I found it frustrating to control the blocks accurately as the game sped up.
Tris uses finger swipes to move the blocks left, right, and down. Players simply tap the screen to rotate the blocks clockwise (there is no option to rotate them counterclockwise). The problem with Tris’s controls comes with the inaccuracy of the finger swipe positioning. Also, accidental taps tended to be a problem.
Both of these games are very basic (neither features sound) and make for a very average Tetris-like experience. Their controls will take some time to get used to thanks to some control flaws. Since they’re both free, they are a risk-free proposition.
Toy Bot Diaries ($3.99) is a cartoonish 2D platformer for the iPhone that utilizes touch and tilt controls that, if done right, could have been revolutionary and refreshing. However, the game is filled with so many game design mistakes, the actual game becomes forgotten as you try to work through the game’s quirks. It’s clear now that many developers are using the app store as a beta-testing dumping ground, delivering unfinished products and using the iPhone’s ability to update apps to make promises to fix later if you buy now. I would put Toy Bot Diaries in this category, except it plays like it should have never escaped alpha.
The control scheme for Toy Bot is interesting enough. You move a robot through the 2D world by tilting the iPhone left or right. The robot can also swing through the air like Spiderman by shooting out an electric grappling hook. The robot also has magnetic boots that are activated by tapping the robot and can attach to objects or walls. This skill is often used to lift and move objects around.
As the robot moves through the world, strange game quirks and errors will leave you scratching your head. The picture above shows the first real puzzle in the game. The robot must move a plate to access the pit, but once in the pit, the robot becomes cut off by a weird darkness that should have disappeared.
The robot often becomes stuck, controls frequently fail to respond, and puzzles are unsatisfying. I frequently found myself tapping the screen over and over in frustration trying to get the grappling hook to attach to the correct surface, only to have it launch to a different one.
Conclusion
Half-baked games like Toy Bot Diaries will no doubt continue to appear in the app store; the initial gold rush is on, and being early can mean a quick easy buck. Be patient and skip this one. There are a couple good choices (some free) already out there, so it pays to wait.
iFlix ($1.99) is an iPhone app that allows you to manage your Netflix account anywhere with the iPhone. You can add or remove movies from your queue or reorder the queue. You can also rate the movies you’ve watched.
For movie suggestions, you can access Netflix’s lists for top movies and other categories. It also allows you to search through the Netflix movie database, view movie information, and add any of the movies to your queue.
This looks like a killer app for anyone with a Netflix account. See our look at Dashbuster Free for another app with similar capabilities (Dashbuster features both Blockbuster Online and Netflix, but the free version doesn’t allow you to add movies).
iLounge has reviewed every single Solitaire game in the iTunes app store, spending a total of $75 to try them all. Their top choice is Solitaire Forever from Mike Sedore with an A- rating. They were impressed with the game’s slick 3D graphics and 150 different Solitaire rulesets, as well as the basics such as undo and redo features and the ability to see playable cards.
There were 4 other solitaire games that received a B rating or higher, including the second-place Mondo Solitaire, which received a B+. Head on over to iLounge to see the complete article.
Links
“Every Solitaire Game, Review” at iLounge.com
Dashbuster Free is a free iPhone app that lets you view your Netflix or Blockbuster Queues on the iPhone and change the order via drag and drop. Unfortunately, the ability to add movies to the queue is not in the free version but is coming in a future pay version.
Besides viewing and manipulating your Netflix or Blockbuster queue, you can also view your shipped and saved movies. There is also a tab for RSS feeds showing new releases, top 100, and other categories.
Dashbuster Free offers the ability to search the Blockbuster and Netflix databases for movies, as well as switch between DVD or Blu-ray formats. Search results show box art, movie description, as well as limited movie information such as actors, director, and rating. Again, the ability to add these movies to your queue will be in the pay version which will hopefully be released soon.
Dashbuster is also available as a widget for your Mac’s dashboard.
Other links:
Official Dashbuster for iPhone website.
Gotta Go is a $1.99 iPhone app that will fake a phone call on your iPhone after a set amount of time and save you from boring meetings or dull friends. You can set the name of the fake caller and a location that will show up on your screen. Now all that is left is your acting skills when answering the fake phone call.
It looks exactly like the real thing, and even comes with its own set of ringtones.
