The App Shelf for iPhone and iPod touch
Top Shelf Apps for week of May 15, 2012New apps added every Tuesday! |
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Reviews
Quick Review: Office Heroes
Price: Free
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Like it
Replay Value: Medium
Pros:
Fun artwork; unique setting.
Cons:
Unoriginal concepts, monotonous tasks, no mini-games while waiting for tasks.
Lasting Appeal:
There’s not really a lot to this game other than designing and decorating your office. If earning new office accessories is enough to keep you coming back, you’ll get plenty of play out of this game, but if it’s not, you’ll probably tire of the game quickly.
Bottom Line:
Office Heroes is really just Farmville with a makeover, so if you’ve been craving your next fix of social gaming along the same lines as Farmville or We Rule, you might find Office Heroes hits the sweet spot. However, if you’re of the opinion that social networking games provide shallow gameplay with no purpose other than to waste time, this game won’t do anything to change your opinion.
Looking for a way to spice up boring, cubical work life? Office Hero is a new addition to the Farmville-style, social gaming genre that's become so popular over the past few years. In this adaptation, players control a cute, animated avatar that performs various work-related time management tasks around his cubical in order to level up and earn in-game currency which comes in two forms, career points and paper clips.
As you work your way towards becoming a level 40 Office Ninja, you can expand, upgrade, and decorate your office with a treasure trove of unlockable swag, as well as visit your friends' offices and assist them with their work. Like most fremium games, if you're willing to spend some real-world cash, you can purchase extra in-game goodies to give your avatar a leg up on the competition or a little extra flare around the office. The pirate suit was my attire of choice.
Overall players aren't going to find any gameplay mechanics particularly new or original here that don't ready exist in one of the many other social networking games. That said, the office environment is a fun change of pace from managing crops and animals, and the cartoonish artwork is definitely appealing. Personally speaking, I'm always disappointed when games like this don’t offer more mini-games, virtual interaction, or in-game activities, but generally speaking, I think fans of the genre will find the office setting and fun visual style a nice change of pace.
Review: Blizzard’s Mobile Armory is great for iPhone users; iPod touch, not so much.
Price: Free
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Like it.
Replay Value: n/a
With Blizzard’s backing, [the Mobile Armory is] the best WoW-related app in the App Store for the iPhone. Those of you who aren’t Internet-everywhere-ready might want to look elsewhere.
Any of you who have followed World of Warcraft apps in the past year have probably learned one thing: Blizzard doesn’t like people stepping on their toes. Months before the release of their official Armory app, Blizzard issued a cease and desist order to a few of the more popular WoW-related app developers who were charging for similar functionality. So, was it worth the wait in the end? If you’re an iPhone user, yes!
I’ll get to that clarification after the break.
First, though, I’d like to spend some time going over the features provided in the WoW Mobile Armory. The best part that I’ve found about Blizzard’s new application is the calendar. Any of you who have played World of Warcraft with a good raiding guild are familiar with the in-game calendar features. This feature, unavailable in the web-based Armory, allows you to keep tabs on what raids and events your guild may be up to in the near future. The calendar updates regularly (about 5 minutes or so) and has an option for alerting you, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on a last minute adventure.
Other features include an item search, a talent calculator, a guild listing, and even a WoW news feed. Each of these features works just as their web-based counterparts do. All of them have the polish that you would come to expect of any Blizzard product, but this is not to say that there aren’t things that could be improved upon.
The major qualm I have with the app is that it requires you to use WoW login in order to function at all. While this probably helps to save some of the space on your device, it requires that you have the Internet with you everywhere (sorry iPod touch users!). Other WoW talent calculators and item databases, though not necessarily as expansive, do not suffer from this quandary.
More problems come when trying to get the calendar alerts to work. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how that’s supposed to work. I blame this partially on the fact that I play on a server within a different time zone, but I have to tell myself that this would be silly and that the problem must be elsewhere. So, while I can give them points for including the feature, it’s somewhat frustrating to see it not working easily. Another glitch: an event I placed for the 21st on my guild calendar shows up on the 20th, but with the correct information for the 21st. There just seem to be a few kinks to work out still.
Still, the app works great. And with Blizzard’s backing, it’s the best WoW-related app in the App Store for the iPhone. Those of you who aren’t Internet-everywhere-ready might want to look elsewhere.
Review: Zynga’s Word Scramble Will Leave You at a Loss for Words
Price: Free
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Love It!
Replay Value: High
A high standard has been set for word-based games. Word Scramble by Zynga has everything you could want. And, best of all, it’s free!
Zynga is best known for a large collection of games made for a number of different social networking sites. You may not know the company name, but if you’ve got a Facebook account you’ve probably at least heard of their most popular title, Mafia Wars. While Zynga has brought that title to the App Store, today we’ll instead be looking at their Boggle-clone, Word Scramble.
For those unfamiliar with this type of word game, the point is simple: Connect letters together in a string to make words. The longer the word is, the more points you’ll receive. Spell as many words as you can within the time limit to raise your score.
While the point of the game is very simple, Zynga has presented it elegantly. There are two ways to select the letters as you spell. You can simply tap each letter in succession and then tap the checkmark near the top once your word is spelled; or, if you’re a speedster like I am, then you can also drag your finger across the letters and when you take your finger off the screen the game checks the word.
The game itself is extremely well developed. The sounds are helpful and unobtrusive. The visuals are polished, but not gaudy. The real majesty of the game, however, comes out in the multiplayer options.
As previously stated, Zynga has a lot of experience in social gaming and this comes across with their included multiplayer features. On the main screen, there are four options: Play Solo, Play and Pass, a new Challenge mode, and Play Online. Also included on the main screen, you will find the standings where you can see how you rate against some of your friends. There’s even an option that allows you to connect to your Facebook account and keep score against your friends who play there.
The Play and Pass mode allows you to pick up to 4 players to play on the same Scramble board. After each turn, the player swaps off the device to the next one in line for their attempt. After each attempt is through, the game shows everyone’s score along with the list of words found and words missed.
The Challenge mode allows you to send challenges to other friends with the App, as long as you’re connected to the Internet. It also keeps a running tab of all the games you have finished in Challenge mode. High scores in Challenge mode also count towards your standings.
The Play Online mode pits you up against a much broader audience on the Internet. This option shows the standings live while you play, so you can actively compete against others.
Overall, it’s these multiplayer features that have kept me coming back to the game. Naturally competitive people will enjoy the idea of playing against their friends through one of the many modes offered by the game. Those who seek a greater challenge can take the game online and play against hundreds of other players. Don’t let the price fool you; Zynga’s offering is far more complete than many others of its type that you would have to pay to play. Word Scramble is the most well rounded word game I’ve found on the App Store to date, and you’ll see why when you download it.
Zillow Real Estate
Price: Free
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Love It
Replay Value: Very Useful
Whether you're in the market for a new house or just want to find out what your house is worth, Zillow Real Estate brings the power of the Zillow site to the palm of your hand for a very affordable price.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Zillow website, basically they take a bunch of information about house prices in an area (Sales, for sale homes, county information) and use it to figure out what a house's value should be in the current market along with providing a lot of other useful information about the house as well. The Zillow Real Estate app brings most of the features of the website to the palm of your hand for a very useful app for house hunters and the the curious alike.
When you first turn on the app you can zoom to your current location and will display the prices of the houses around your area. You can also search for houses by just entering an address, a city, or a state and it will show you the area you're interested in. Of course the further out you are the more aggregate the information becomes. If you're at the street level you'll see all the houses in that area, if you're up a little bit it will give you the aggregate for subdivisions. Go up a little higher and you'll get different areas of the city in aggregate and so on.
You can view the map information in 3 ways: Street View (street names and house dots), Hybrid View (pulls down the satellite images for the area), and List View (which gives you a list of all the houses in the area). In any of the views you will see 3 different house icons. Yellow means the house has sold recently, Blue means the house is not for sale, and Red means the house is for sale. Once you've found a house you're interested in you can tap it to bring up a summary about the house including address, price, bedrooms, baths, type of dwelling. If you tap the summary information you will be brought to the detail page which gives you more information like how many sq ft the house and lot are, photos of the house if available, what they estimate the house to be worth as well as a chart indicating historic values for the house, tax information, as well as comparable sales in the area. From here you can add the house to your favorites for future reference or view the house on the Zillow.com website.
One of the nice features to have, Filter, makes it's appearance here, though it is not as full featured as I would like. It let's you filter by price range, beds, baths, and For Sale, Recent Sale, and Not for Sale. While this is useful for narrowing down your search results, it would be nice to have the full featured search available on the site. Of course I guess they still want you to use the site so the decision to do it this way makes sense.
Overall I would say that everyone should download this app. If you're looking for a house or are a realtor you should definitely have this app on the first page of your iPhone.
Battle.Net Mobile Authenticator
Price: Free
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Like It
Replay Value: N/A
Get it if you play World of Warcraft and don't have a Blizzard Authenticator already.
World of Warcraft(WoW) is the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game(MMORPG) to date and with that popularity it has become an prized target for account hackers. To combat this, Blizzard (the creators of WoW) updated their game to support authenticators. Originally this could only be done with a $6.50 authenticator purchased from the Blizzard Store. Then in March 2009 Blizzard released the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for iPhone for free.
In order to use the mobile authenticator, you will need to have a Battle.net account. Once you have logged in, setting up the authenticator is very easy; you just go to Change Security Options and click on add mobile authenticator. On the iPhone app, go to the Setup option and type in the serial number given along with one code. After you have completed these steps, you will now need your iPhone/Touch with you whenever you want to log in to your Battle.net account.
Using the authenticator is very easy, you just type in the code it gives you and it works. I have been using regular authenticator for a while now and just started using the mobile authenticator for this review and personally I am not sure I will continue to use it. The regular authenticator is a lot more convenient as compared to the mobile authenticator; it really is the difference between "pull out keys and hit button" versus "pull out iPhone, press button, slide, touch icon."
I will say however, that if you don't have a regular authenticator or don't want to pay $6.50 for one, this app will meet all your needs, especially as little as you need the code off of it. Something I would like to see in this app would be a Blizzard News feature, kind of like when you use the launcher to start WoW.