Appletell review - Mystery Mansion Pinball for iPod

Section: iPod + iTunes, iTunes, iPod, iPod nano, Features, Review Genre: Pinball sim Format: iPod game Developer: Gameloft S.A. Minimum Requirements: 3G iPod nano, iPod classic or 5G iPod (video), iPod Software v1.2, 42.9MB disk space Retail Price: $4.99 Availability: Out now Fact: In movies, whenever there’s a battle against the devil, the heroes will be Catholic, and a good portion of the confrontation will take place in a beautiful church or some sort of holy ground with all manner of decorative crosses and windows and a life-size corpus with bleeding eyes. Another Fact: In video games, it’s okay if that same battle takes place in a mansion over a game of pinball, and your religion is irrelevant. Although, considering this game is constantly telling you, “I am the devil,” I wonder if Catholics aren’t maybe better equipped to hit multiple jackpots? Regardless, pinball fans may get a kick out of Mystery Mansion Pinball, as may iPod owners looking for a quick way to kill some time with a game that fits quite well within the iPod’s capabilities and control scheme. Pinball games generally require only two buttons, after all, and the iPod has two buttons. Well, you need three, actually; although you can use the left and right flippers simultaneously with the iPod’s fast forward and rewind buttons, you can also do this by hitting the center button on the click wheel. The center button also comes into play in the video mode mini-games, which I’ll get to in a bit. The board itself is fairly well designed, featuring items that could very well be found on an actual pinball machine. Aside from some electrical effects on the bumpers, everything about the gameplay is fairly realistic. Of course, there’s no plunger on your iPod, so the center button puts the ball into play, with the force determined by a sliding power meter (as you’d find in a golf sim on the computer). Game play itself is somewhat entertaining, with challenges are that aren’t too hard to reach. This is due in part to the decent board layout, but also to the easily identified targets, which make good use of lighting to call attention to them. Considering the iPod’s small screen, this is very important; a muddier layout with too much going on would’ve been unplayable. Game play is also both helped and hindered by the scrolling camera, which moves up and down to follow the ball. This scheme is used pretty much across the board in video pinball sims, as widescreen (and even full frame) displays simply aren’t conducive to the portrait layout of pinball tables, but it’s not always done well. Here, the ball sometimes moves too quickly and disappears from view before the camera can catch up. Therefore, you’ll often be hitting the flippers blindly, hoping your ball is actually nearby. Even worse, the camera mostly keeps panning during multiball, making it extremely difficult to see all the balls and therefore hit most of the targets (especially considering there is a third flipper at the top of the screen). When the ball does get moving too quickly, a ghost trail appears to help you follow it. This bugged me at first, but without it the ball could get completely lost on the screen, so I’m glad it’s there. I wonder if it doesn’t screw up the ball physics, though, as there were times when my flippers seems to hit the ghost trail, not the ball. The physics aren’t that good throughout, for the most part, as the ball takes some impossible bounces off flippers and bumpers. It also seems to have a mind of its own when deciding which lane to drop down, although this usually works in your favor. I’ve played extended games without a single drain down an outlane; good for scores, bad for realism, especially when the ball visibly hops from an inevitable drain over to the inlane. There were also a couple of points where my flippers stopped working completely for a few seconds. I’m assuming this is a programming error, as there’s nothing in the game to indicate why this would happen on purpose. As mentioned earlier, the gameplay is broken up by “video” games that play out as if on a pinball machine scoring screen. They’re well implemented and look cool, but a couple of the games are quite confusing. One in particular tells you to use the click wheel to position a beaker under the appropriately colored drop of fluid, but how do you use the click wheel? Spin it? Click in the direction you want to go? Click the button in the position of the beaker you want? I don’t know...I never got it to work. The final problem has to do with the audio. This “I am the devil” voice gets annoying very quickly, because it never quits saying it! After a couple minutes, I was just thinking, “Okay, I get it, you’re the devil. Now either shut up or go outside!” And the annoying laughter/cackling throughout the game is even worse. It comes in three or four variations, each of which is equally annoying (and loud). Pinball machines, by and large, always try to sound sexy in an effort to entice players to drop their coins. If this were a real pinball machine, not only would they keep their coins in their pockets, they would flee the arcade for protection. And so, in Mystery Mansion pinball, we get a well-designed board with some fun mini-games that’s hampered by bad ball physics and some incredibly annoying audio. What’s worse is that the two work together to prolong your agony...the bad ball physics make each game last too long, forcing you to listen to the audio for much longer than the human brain can withstand. Maybe that’s the terror of the Mystery Mansion. There’s only one way to find out for sure… Appletell Rating: Buy Mystery Mansion Pinball See other iPod game reviews. Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Spore Origins out for iPod, iPhone version due this week

Spore Origins has wriggled its way out to the iTunes store for the iPod. The game is a slimmed-down version of the early microbial stages in the upcoming PC game -- in the main game, you'll be able to take your little microbes up through the evolutionary ladder all the way up to space travel, but in the iPod game, you just guide a little cellular organism around in the primordial muck, eating what's smaller than you and running away from what's bigger.We haven't played the iPod version, but the iPhone version, which we got a hands-on with at E3 earlier this year, is due out later this week, according to the game's creator, Will Wright. Both games pale in comparison to the creativity and polish that the full Spore game will offer -- running a creature around in the muck isn't nearly as fun as guiding it through the history of time itself, and unfortunately, as we were told at E3, online play and character transfer never made it into the final version, so the portable games have no relation to the full game at all.So what you're left with is a little arcade game, which probably isn't actually worth the $5 it costs. There are, after all, better games out there for less.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Macintosh/iPhone software update round-up - September 15, 2008

Section: Software + Apps, Miscellaneous, Third-Party, iPod + iTunes, iPod Accessories, Cases, iPhone + Communications, iPhone, iPhone SDK & Apps, Mac + Computers, SoftwareMacintosh and iPhone software updates and announcements for September 15, 2008: CardScan, a leading provider of contact management systems, today announced the availability of CardScan Executive for Mac, comprising a contact management software and business card scanner. CardScan for Mac software features automatic synchronization to Address Book, allowing users to keep data the same across devices and applications. The company also announced that all CardScan Executive Version 8 systems will include software for both Windows and Mac. The assignment is daunting. The “thinnest” and “funnest” iPods ever created. But the challenges are nothing new to the designers at Speck Product’s innovation lab in Palo Alto, California. Fast on the heels of last week’s new iPod announcement, the team is fiercely on task delivering fresh designs for the arrival of at least five new iPod cases between now and the upcoming holiday season. Just days after the official release of the new iPod touch and iPod nano, MacCover offers the matching protection covers on their site. The covers are made in 3mm thick, shock absorbing felt in 9 colours, and are made to fit the new models exactly. There is also a D-ring attached for keys or personal gadgets. 21 Pro: Blackjack is the ideal blackjack game for every player, novice and expert alike. With life-like high-resolution graphics and authentic game play, 21 Pro provides a genuine casino experience. If you have never played or have been intimidated by sitting at a blackjack table, this is the perfect game to learn how to play. If you are an experienced player, and want to take your game to the next level, the 21 Pro’s card counting will help you fine tune your skills. Marware has announced its latest leather holster case for the Apple iPod touch 2G, the C.E.O. Premiere. The classic design offers textured, perforated leather, an ultra-slim belt clip and elegant contrast stitching. Providing a sleek, upscale look, the C.E.O. Premiere is a stylish premium hip case that works with both the new iPod touch 2G and the original touch. They’ve also announced the new executive flip-top leather case, the C.E.O. Flip Vue for the new iPod touch 2G. Designed to provide the perfect balance between all-around protection and easy access, the C.E.O. Flip Vue is a sleek, elegant holster case. The C.E.O. Flip Vue allows for all iPod touch functionality while providing elegant leather protection. And because two announcements in one day just isn’t enough, they’ve also released the C.E.O. Sleeve for the Apple iPod touch 2G. The C.E.O. Sleeve is a slim, attractive Nappa leather sleeve that combines elegant protection and quick access to the new iPod touch. This case is uniquely designed to appeal to the more discriminating, style-conscious wearer. The C.E.O Sleeve is a premium holster sleeve that works with the new iPod touch 2G and the original touch. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), will arrive in stores on November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18. Details regarding the launch of Wrath of the Lich King in mainland China will be announced at a later date. Plyxim, LLC. has announced the release of Exibia 1.3, their broadcast scheduling application for Mac OS X. Exibia allows clients in a multi-user, multi-platform environment to upload and schedule QuickTime-compatible videos to a centrally-located server. Media Atelier has released GrandTotal 1.0, its invoicing application for the Mac OS X Leopard platform. GrandTotal is ideal for freelancers, small- to mid-sized companies, and any organization that needs to generate personalized, invoices, estimates and account statements. GrandTotal sports an easy to use, sophisticated interface that will have you up and running in minutes. A wide range of word processing and layout tools makes creating handsome, customizable documents simple and quick. Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Preview: GTS World Racing for iPhone / iPod touch

digg_url = 'http://www.tuaw.com/2008/08/08/preview-gts-world-racing-for-iphone-ipod-touch/'; If there's one company in the world that is in the business of keeping people happy, it's Astraware. They're a UK-based development firm that excels in writing games for handheld devices. In the past, they've published games like Bejeweled 2, Cubis, and Zuma for Palm and Windows Mobile, and now they're entering the iPhone market with a splash. GTS World Racing is an arcade-style racing game licensed from Pazzazz Games that, like Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, uses the accelerometers in the iPhone / iPod touch for control. Tilting the iPhone left or right steers your car, tilting forward accelerates the car, and tilting back applies the brakes. The game provides 64 different track layouts, so you're not likely to get bored going around the same track again and again. There are 16 different worldwide locations for backdrops, as well as three different car types and four different levels of difficulty (I hate to admit that I'm still stuck at the "Easy" level...). You can also play your own music in the background if you tire of the built-in soundtrack.This post will be updated when GTS World Racing appears in the App Store at a US$7.99 price. In the interest of full disclosure, the author has had a long-term reviewing relationship with Astraware. Gallery: GTSWRRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments

OpenCL gets touted in Texas

Attendees at the SC08 high-performance computing conference in Austin got a progress report on OpenCL, the the Apple-spearheaded parallel computing API that figures to be a prominent new feature in the upcoming Snow Leopard update to OS X.

EVE Online coming to retail stores in March

EVE Online, which has been available through online distribution only since late 2003, will soon be available at retail stores thanks to a distribution deal with Atari.