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Daily iPad App: John Lewis' Bear & Hare is for the child in all of us
Today's Daily iPad App is Bear & Hare, an interactive children's book based on the Christmas advert of the same name, which is one of the UK's most celebrated holiday ads. The £1 million ad for UK retailer John Lewis is a two-minute short film that combines traditional hand-drawn animation (by Lion King alums, no less) with computer graphics and tells the story of a bear who usually hibernates through Christmas and his friend, a rabbit. I don't want to ruin the plot, but be prepared to shed a few tears when you see it. To go along with the Bear & Hare ad campaign, John Lewis has released the companion app, which explores the store in hand-illustrated book form and also allows children to interact with the forest animals in the story. It also offers interactive games such as The Woodland Orchestra and Decorate the Christmas tree. John Lewis will continue to update the app with new games in the weeks leading to Christmas. If your children have seen the Bear & Hare ad, download this app. Trust me; it will make their day. It also is a great story to read to children as you are tucking them into bed as the winter approaches. The Bear & Hare is a free download, but it is only available in the UK App Store. There is also a separate iPhone version of the app too.
Daily iPad App: True Color is a color recipe tool for artists and digital designers
Finding the right mix of colors to get that perfect shade can be a challenge at times, especially when you are trying to match a color in a photo or a digital drawing. To help you get the right blend, you can use True Color from Snickerdoodle Software. True Color is a color-mixing tool with a series of primary color dials -- blue, red, yellow and white -- that you can use to mix your perfect color. Every move of the dial changes the color on the screen, allowing you to carefully adjust each primary dial to get just the right blend. Once you have created your color of choice, you can save that recipe for later use. True Color is more than a standalone color mixer. The app also can be used to match a color in a photo. Just import the image into the app and grab the target color using a dropper. The app will then generate the correct color recipe automatically. It's a huge timesaver to not have to manually adjust the color and eyeball it to see if it matches your photo. Like other recipes, you can save these photo grab recipes for later use. True Color isn't a do-everything color tool -- it's a basic color mixer that does one thing and does it well. It's great for artists who want to play with colors without wasting precious paint or pulling out all the tools needed to work on a real canvas. It's also perfect for folks who enjoy color theory and just want to mix things up on the fly True Color is available in the iOS App Store for US$1.99. It's a universal app that works on the iPad and iPhone.
Daily iPad App: Hay Day is a casual farm sim that'll have you raising chickens in no time
If you are a fan of sims like Theme Park, then you should check Hay Day from Supercell. Hay Day is a farming sim for the iPad and iPhone that brings the spirit of Farmville to the iOS platform. Hay Day kicks off with a brief tour that walks you through the basics of the game. Once the tour is over, you are prepared with the skills to turn your small plot of land into a booming agricultural metropolis. You can grow crops, raise animals, produce eggs and even make baked goods like bread. Everything flourishes over time, but you can speed things up with diamonds. When you harvest your bounty, you can trade with friends or sell your wares to make money to improve your farm. Hay Day is a freemium game, which means it is free to download, but includes in-app purchases that may be required to advance in the game. It's good clean fun for sim fans with some time on their hands and a bit of cash to spare.
Daily iPad App: Rockpack allows you to bundle up your favorite videos into shareable playlists
Rockpack is a social video-curation app that allows you to create and share a bucket list of your favorite online videos. The lists are called "packs" and are shared with your friends and the larger Rockpack community. It's a visually striking app that makes excellent use of video thumbnails and profile images. The app encourages you to create your own curated "packs" of videos and add them to categories so the world can see them. You can view and follow lists created by other people, which is a great way to find quality online content without spending hours watching terrible, time-wasting clips. A pack friending feature makes it easy to find other people who share your taste in videos whether it be adventure sporting, DIY, cooking or more. The biggest drawback to Rockpack is the registration requirement, which is a turnoff to people who just want to try out the app. I understand that you need an account to save and share videos, but there should be a guest option that allows you to view the content created by other people without having to sign up. If you enjoy finding new online videos and don't mind the free registration, then you should check out Rockpack. The app is available for free from the iOS App Store and works on both the iPad and iPhone. I recommend the iPad version as watching videos is a much more enjoyable experience on the bigger screen.
Daily iPad App: Costume Quest lets you be a kid again
We may have to wait until early next year for the highly anticipated (an robustly funded) new title from Double Fine Productions, but to help hold us over, the company has released one of its most charming previous games for iOS devices. Costume Quest lets you play as one of a pair of young twins on Halloween night. You soon discover that the neighborhood isn't just filled with spookily dressed kids, but monsters as well. A kidnapping occurs, hilarity ensues and the story marches on at a fairly brisk pace. It's a relentlessly nostalgic experience as you trot the dimly lit streets with fellow trick-or-treaters, but the game takes a dramatic turn during battle segments where you must dispatch the demons that are terrorizing your town. As soon as you enter a battle, your character and their costume transform from cardboard and tin foil to full-sized robots, knights and other heroic figures. Being an RPG at heart, combat in Costume Quest is turn-based, and on the iPad's touchscreen you can tap specific icons during attack or defense to boost your performance. The game may appear a bit cartoonish -- and to be fair, the visual style and overall theme seem very casual -- but this is no walk in the park. Battles will test both the reflexes of your finger and the strength of your character, and you may find that you need to gain an experience level or snag some Battle Stamps before you can best certain foes. The game fits well on the iPad, and moving your character around the screen is done by either dragging your finger to new areas or tapping on the spots you'd like to travel. I played the game on the third-generation iPad, and while it was buttery smooth most of the time, I did notice a few instances of stuttering, though nothing that affected my overall enjoyment. Costume Quest is a bargain at US$4.99, and with its lengthy story and plethora of bonus objectives, it'll take you a while to beat it. It's a perfect game for the Halloween season, and if you've not yet given it a whirl on other platforms, you should do yourself a favor and pick it up on iOS.
Daily iPad App: Magical Weather delivers a load of weather info to your iPad
Magical Weather (US$0.99) is an app for the iPad and iPad mini that is simple in operation, but packs a lot of information onto it's nicely rendered screens. The app starts up with thumbnails of up to nine selected locations. For each location, Magical Weather displays the temperature and sky conditions, shown with an icon and a very nice photorealistic background. From there, tap any location to view an animated weather graphic as well as current conditions, humidity, wind and UV index. You also get the change from yesterday, today's high and low, and the chance of precipitation. Slide those numbers over and you get an extensive 22 hour look ahead at predicted temperature, humidity and sky conditions. The app sits at a middle ground between apps that are weak in information and those that can be overwhelming with information you might not need. The app performed as expected. All the data and statistics are in white, though I would like to see some color in the app. I also thought local time should be displayed for each location, both on the thumbnail and detail screens. I'd also like for Magical Weather to display local sunset and sunrise times and the moon phase, because that information is useful for many people in making their outdoor plans. Other than that, Magical Weather is all that most people could want in a weather app. It's easy to set up any location you want weather info from, and the forecasts seem accurate and well in line with other forecast information. This is not the app for you if you need radar plots, satellite images or wind vector charts, but it delivers the most needed weather information simply and concisely. The clean design is an added bonus. Magical Weather is a 64 MB download, larger than the usual weather app because of the high quality animations. It requires iOS 5.1 or greater, and will run only on an iPad.
Daily iPad App: Get a change of perspective in Call of Duty: Strike Team
To be completely honest, I wasn't expecting much from Call of Duty: Strike Team. It's not that Call of Duty titles on iOS are notoriously bad -- in fact, most of them have been quite good -- but the fact that we had heard practically nothing about the game prior to it popping up in the App Store made me think it wasn't a particularly rich experience. I am pleased to say I was wrong. The plot of Strike Team is fragmented and presented as multiple conflicts that dot the globe. You can pick and choose which missions to play (or replay), and each will have you performing familiar tasks such as eliminating enemy forces, collecting key items or surviving an onslaught of attackers. As the "team" moniker suggests, squad play is a major part of the game, and you'll almost always need to control multiple soldiers at a time. This is less cumbersome than it may sound, and as you maneuver through each mission, there's always an on-screen button that forces your teammates to gather on you. Strike Team doesn't try to completely replicate the traditionally twitchy first-person Call of Duty experience on iOS, but instead takes a more tactical approach. Most missions allow you to switch seamlessly between a first-person perspective and a top-down view that lets you control all your squad members independently. You can drag them to new positions and control even the tiniest aspects of your approach, which is something never before offered in a Call of Duty game. The on-screen controls work well for an iOS shooter, and in first-person mode it's still rather easy to make accurate head shots and dart from cover to cover. The environments are similarly excellent for a mobile title, though the ultra-smooth framerate comes with some relatively ugly textures if you happen to get up close to an object or flat surface. Completing missions earns you experience points that helps you level up, as well as in-game currency which you can use to unlock additional weapons, perks and other goodies. You can also take a shortcut and use the in-app purchase option to get an edge, but even the earliest missions are so enjoyable that there's really no reason to want to skip them. The game costs US$6.99, which is more than you might be used to paying for an iOS game, but it's certainly worth the premium. There's a lot of content here, and online leaderboards can keep groups of friends busy trying to best each other for a long, long time.
Daily iPad App: Dig deep with Terraria
The easiest way to describe Terraria would be to say that it's like a 2D version of Minecraft, but this would also be selling the game short in many regards. The familiar sandbox gameplay mechanics that the two titles share -- things like gathering resources and crafting items -- mask a much deeper game that lies just below the surface. It offers an experience that will suit a large variety of gamers thanks to the ability to play in many different ways, and progress towards your own desired goal. When you start up Terraria, you are dropped into a randomly generated world with just a few tools at your disposal and nothing in the way of shelter or supplies. You must explore your new surroundings and gather things like wood, stone and iron ore to begin building a proper shelter. For those who found the resource-management part of Minecraft to be a bit much, you'll likely feel more at home with Terraria, as it streamlines the process quite a bit. For example, if you want to gather all the wood on a tree, you don't have to chop each individual portion of the tree separately; you can simply hack away at its base and the entire thing will come tumbling down. This same simplicity is carried over into the crafting menus, where a list of craftable items is presented to you, rather than forcing you to discover the right crafting combinations on your own. Doing basic tasks like constructing buildings, defeating the various low-level monsters that roam the world and speaking to other human characters help to flesh out the world as well as open up things like new items and enemy encounters. Like Minecraft, Terraria doesn't require that you do anything, and you could quite literally play the game for an infinite number of hours doing little more than building a shelter and sitting inside of it. It's up to you to seek out things to do, and once you do a little exploring, you'll realize that the game could well suck up tens if not hundreds of your hours before you see everything it has to offer. Despite drawing influences from a very popular title, Terraria really is its own beast, and you'd be foolish to pass it up on iOS. The Windows version of Terraria costs US$9.99, and while that alone is a bargain, the iPad cuts that price in half to $4.99. It's an absolute bargain and a gaming experience that will be unique for every single person that plays it. A must-have.
Daily iPad App: Blocksworld HD lets you build and play with 3D blocks
Blocksworld HD from Linden Lab brings creative block building to the iPad and gives it a twist by letting you control the creations that you build. At its core, Blocksworld is a building app similar to Minecraft that allows you to build creations using Lego-like 3D blocks. Blocksworld is an open environment -- you can snap blocks together and build anything you can imagine. Specialized blocks make it easy to build cars, robots, planes, creatures and more. Once you create an object, you can bring it to life using actions that'll make the creation walk, jump, fly, drive or even fire weapons. It's this action scripting that sets Blocksworld apart and makes it extra enjoyable. It's great being able to build a hovercraft, and it's even better when you get to fly it around your world. When you start building, you are given a limited number of blocks and a small number of coins. You can buy additional blocks or specialized block sets using coins, which are available via an in-app purchase. A set of 100 coins costs US$0.99, while block-hungry builders can spend up to $24.99 for a set of 6,000 coins. I started off with a $10 set of 2,000 coins that lasted for about two weeks with very heavy usage from my three kids and me. The average person will likely get more mileage out of their coin purchases than I did, but I would still plan on buying coins as part of the game. There are daily gift blocks and a free bonus block set, but these sets are small and give you just a handful of items. Hopefully, Linden Labs will make it easier to earn bonus coins within the game, so you don't always feel like you are paying to play. Blocksworld ties into Game Center and has a social component that allows you to share your block creations and browse through a catalog of items that others have built. If you find a creation that you enjoy, you can play it and also "like" it. One of my recent favorites was a dart challenge in which you drive a car over a ramp and try to hit a bullseye while in mid-air. Game Center hosts a leaderboard that shows the builders who have earned the most "likes," while the Blocksworld app tracks both likes and views for each creation. Blocksworld HD is for both kids and adults who have a passion for building with blocks. It's basic enough for a 7-year-old to easily pick up, while challenging enough to entertain an adult who enjoys creative building. It is available for free in the iOS App Store and is compatible with any iPad running iOS 6.0 or later.
Daily iPad App: Amateur Surgeon 3 is pretty bloody good
Would you believe that after releasing two totally obnoxious, over-the-top Amateur Surgeon games, Adult Swim's newly released Amateur Surgeon 3 is a tasteful, realistic look at the medical practice? No? Ok, good -- because it's really, really not -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Amateur Surgeon 3 lets you poke around inside the bodies of a whole cast of characters and creatures, each with their own medical ailment. Using the touchscreen, you'll need to cut out organs, yank broken bits of glass and other objects from within bodies and of course sew up wounds and clean up your work at the end. But this is an Adult Swim game, so there's absolutely nothing realistic about this experience whatsoever. You often cut up your patients with a pizza cutter, cauterize wounds by burning them with a Bic lighter and can use special "tag team" powers -- like bringing your dog into the operation so he can lick the patient's wound -- to help you complete your overall goal of saving the life of your patient (or was it victim?). Everything from your "medical" tools to the organs on which you are operating are rendered in an overly cartoony fashion, which is a good thing since the visuals would look pretty gruesome if they attempted to appear realistic. Still, the app carries warnings for profanity, nudity, violence and horror, so it's probably not a good recommendation for especially young app lovers. Unlike Amateur Surgeon 2, this third iteration is free to download (though that may change later). Of course, you'll still have plenty of opportunities to shell out cash towards the developers via the in-app purchase options which allow you to buy everything from in-game currency to "blood packs" which are required in order to retry failed missions. If you're not too squeamish and don't mind dropping a few bucks in the event that you fail a few times in a row, Amateur Surgeon 3 is a fine choice. Or, you know, you could just find a giant bear and attempt to operate on it using random kitchen utensils. Same thing.
Daily iPad App: Knightmare Tower is a dream to play
Knightmare Tower -- a fast-paced action game for iOS -- plays off some extremely worn-out video game tropes: You have your faceless knight, tons of cookie-cutter monsters and even a story that revolves around rescuing not just one, but 10 princesses. And despite this laundry list of things gaming could do without, this one is an absolute blast to play. The kingdom is gripped with terror as the good king's 10 princess daughters have been kidnapped by a demonic force. They are being held on different floors of a massive tower, and you, as a loyal servant to the king, must jump on your rocket and blast as high into the tower as you can in an attempt to bring the captives home. On your way up, you must slash your way through dozens of monsters, each of which provide a small boost to your flight. You can gain additional bonus boosts by completing combos and you'll also find items like bags of gold coins and health pickups while flying upwards. Once your speed runs out -- or your health becomes fully depleted -- your flight ends and you are brought to a summary screen where your gold is tallied. From here you can choose to either give it another go or purchase upgrades for your knight or rocket. There is no way to fast-track this process (read: no obnoxious micro transactions, yay!) and saving up in-game currency to purchase huge upgrades pays off when you see how much better your knight performs in the tower. It's extremely easy to lose an hour or two without even realizing it, and the game's cartoony-yet-brutal visuals are easy on the eyes even during particularly long play sessions. The singular complaint I have is that the game starts to chug a bit if you've played it for a stretch without stopping. During my playtime (on a third-generation iPad, for the record), the game ran smoothly for a good while, but then began to stutter randomly. This was remedied by restarting the game, which isn't a huge deal, but it's still a bit of a bummer. Knightmare Tower is easy to pick up and play, but rewards players who decide to sink some serious time into unlocking upgrades and improving their performance. The game is US$2.99, but with no in-app purchases to worry about, that's an absolute bargain.
Daily iPad App: SpiritClips from Hallmark brings family-friendly programming to your iPad
SpiritClips from Hallmark has a star-filled history. It was founded in 2007 by filmmaker Rob Fried who produced the inspiring film Rudy and worked on the equally uplifting flick Hoosiers. Fried originally founded SpiritClips as way to showcase inspirational short films and e-video cards. In the past six years, he has grown SpiritClips into a full-fledged online movie streaming service with hundreds of family-friendly titles. Unlike Netflix or Hulu, SpiritClips doesn't show R-rated films, movies with excessive violence, language or nudity and avoids shows with political agendas or divisive social issues. It includes Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, The Dove Foundation-approved content and classic feel-good movies like Good Will Hunting. The UI of the iPad app has a Netflix look and feel with scrollable rows of movie tiles that are organized by film type and genre. When you tap on a tile, you can read a description of the movie or TV show. The description provides you with the plot overview and the length of the flick. There's also a list of related movies if you are in the mood to browse. Movie playback was solid on WiFi and occasionally choppy on cellular, with poor signal quality pausing the movie intermittently. The app has the standard suite of basic playback controls and a toggle to watch the movie in full-screen or letterbox mode. The biggest feature missing from the app is the ability to pick up watching where you left off. Once you stop a movie, you have to manually scroll back to where you stopped. There's also no way to mark a movie as a favorite or set it aside to watch it later. These are critical features, so hopefully they show up in a future update. SpiritClips from Hallmark is for the movie or TV fan who wants to watch heartwarming films on their iPad. The SpiritClips app is available for free, but it requires a subscription. You can sign up and get a free week of access to the service. A yearly, unlimited subscription costs US$35.99, while the monthly option will set you back $4.99.
Daily iPad App: Fight the monster horde in The Drowning
The Drowning is a first-person shooter set in a post apocalyptic world where grotesque creatures that used to be human now roam, and your objective is it take out these monsters while gathering supplies. It's a rather played out premise, but in truth the iPad doesn't exactly have a long list of enjoyable shooters, so I can't really hold the tried-and-true story approach against it. The action plays out in arena style throwdowns where you face off against a timer and a horde of mutated creatures who want nothing more than to kill you. You are often given the option to either attack or defend a specific area, and depending on which mode you choose you'll either be protecting barriers to keep the monsters out or running about the small environments and popping headshots as they attempt to chase you down. After each round you are rewarded with supplies and items based on your performance, and the better you do the higher your chances are of scoring rare gear. When you retrieve a new weapon after a battle it's often in need of repair, meaning you'll have to find new parts and tools before you can actually use it to protect yourself. This is where The Drowning's in-app purchases come in. If you want to expedite your progress in the game you can purchase rare loot using gold, which is obtained by purchasing it with real cash. To the game's credit, it appears to be entirely possible to progress as far as you want without spending a dime, but you're going to waste a lot more time replaying levels you've already beaten in order to unlock the gear needed to proceed. Much is made of The Drowning's control scheme in its App Store description, which in all honesty is one of the most unique approaches to shooting I've seen on the App Store. Rather than use virtual analog sticks to move, turn, and shoot -- this option is still available as a secondary choice, for the record -- you tap on a spot in the environment and then wait for your character to run in that direction. You turn your point of view by swiping in either direction and shooting is handled by tapping two fingers on the screen, between which your bullet flies. This scheme takes some getting used to, and I often found myself firing wildly as the game seemed to have trouble picking up my taps when the action got too heated. The Drowning is free to download, but requires at least the 2nd generation iPad in order to play. If you're willing to spend a few bucks you'll probably have a great time, though if you'd rather grind your way through you'll be playing for considerably longer. If you're a fan of shooters on the App Store and feel like trying a new control scheme, it's certainly worth a look.
Daily iPad App: Jurassic Park Builder makes me wish in-app purchases were extinct
I have to admit that I'm not typically the kind of person who gets sucked into those Farmville-style games -- be it on Facebook or in app form -- that require hours and hours of tedious upkeep while slowly whittling away at your wallet a dollar or two at a time. I am, however, a fan of dinosaurs, and anything with the Jurassic Park logo stamped on it will get at least a passing glance from me. And so I downloaded Jurassic Park Builder for my iPad, because my love for extinct animals somehow trumps my common sense. As is quite evident from the screenshots as well as its name, Jurassic Park Builder indeed a game about building and maintaining a zoo for dinosaurs. You begin with just a basic home base and must expand your park by clearing land, cloning dinosaurs from DNA you discover while digging, and adding additional buildings like hotels as well as attractions such as amusement park rides. The landscape is rendered in a flat two-dimensional fashion but the animals themselves are actually 3D, which makes them pop off the screen and feel fairly alive, at least for digital dinosaurs. Using the touchscreen to place new buildings and attractions works well, though it can be a bit touchy at times, requiring you to take your time while building or risk misplacement. The micromanagement of the park comes in the form of feeding and caring for your animals. Carnivores need a steady supply of meat while herbivores require various plant-based foods, and if you don't keep an eye on your stockpiles it can be pretty easy to run out of one or both of them. The same goes for your supply of cash, which is used to build new exhibits and keep your park in working condition. And here's where the game shows its true microtransaction-driven roots: You're going to run out of something sooner or later, be it cash or food for your animals, and the game is built in such a way that you're probably not going to be able to build a self-sustaining park without throwing in a few bucks every now and then. I have nothing against this nickel-and-dime approach in principle; The app is free to download, and far be it from me to deny the developers their income. However, I would have preferred an app that costs a flat fee upfront -- even $2 or $3 -- but offers at least a reasonable opportunity to build a park that can keep itself going with proper management rather than the unspoken understanding that the player is going to have to pay for in-game supplies later on. Jurassic Park Builder will certainly satisfy fans of similar games like Farmville or even Sim City, but before you dive into the prehistoric landscape make sure you get your credit card ready. Chances are you're going to need it before long.
Daily iPad App: Spaceteam brings sci-fi fun to iOS and Android
My husband was excited and kept egging me on, but I was pretty nervous. This was the sort of thing that tested your marriage, and the only thing standing between us and defeat was our ability to work as a team. Finally, I agreed to play Spaceteam with him. Spaceteam has been on iOS since last year, but it released an update recently that added support for iOS 7 and Android. This allows the game to be played in a multi-OS household. There are no solo missions. The game requires two to four players connected on the same Wi-Fi network or via Bluetooth. Experimental modes will add support for up to 8 players on Wi-Fi, perhaps 6 or 7 on Bluetooth. We played over Wi-Fi, and the game immediately detects how many others on the same network are playing. Apple and Android logos in the corner show how many are playing and what platform they're on. The game is like an extreme version of Nintendo's Warioware: Smooth Moves. You receive a set of instructions to execute before you're swallowed by a supernova, smacked by an asteroid or devoured by a wormhole. Unlike Warioware, you're actually shouting these instructions to your partners -- who has panels that you don't -- while trying to listen to orders from the other people in the game. The game quickly places stress on your team, with broken panels swinging wildly that you have to fix, broken translator circuits, complex picture symbols to be deciphered and goo you have to swipe away. At the same time, you're shaking your tablet or twisting it upside down to avoid other disasters. Then there are the pilot errors. My husband kept turning off his tablet by accident while I dropped my iPad by flipping it in my hands too fast. I don't even want to know what the neighbors were thinking as we shouted commands such as "vent your frustration," "set the sigmaclapper to 2" and other technobabble at 2 a.m. My biggest issue with the game is that it could really use a help screen. We weren't sure of the correct way to twist the iPad to avoid the magnetic fields until I Googled it (for newbies, just turn your iPad upside down so the home button is facing up), and a basic rundown of the symbols would be nice. Spaceteam is a free download with a number of US$.99 in-app purchases that adds on to your ship and unlocks different challenges. You can play on both iPhone and iPad, but I prefer the larger screen of the iPad -- especially as the game went from pretty easy to hard to oh-my-god-driving-in-Manhattan-is-easier. We made it through 11 stages on our best effort before we were finally killed because of our failure to understand alien languages. After each level, Mike gasped, "Oh my God!" while I tried to calm my racing heart. As we were awarded our posthumous medals -- him for valor and me for agility -- he immediately asked if we could play it with four people. "It'll be nuts," he vowed. He's absolutely right.
Daily iPad App: Bloodmasque will steal your soul... and your face
The newly-released vampire RPG brawler Bloodmasque is yet another game in the strange sub genre of iOS apps that think they are full-fledge, console-quality releases. You may already be familiar with other games in this niche including Infinity Blade, Rage, and the recently released Deus Ex: The Fall, but Bloodmasque is an even more ambitious experiment thanks in large part to its ability to actually put you in the game. When you first embark Bloodmasque's dark adventure - which tasks you with ridding the world of vampires, while you yourself are partially afflicted with the condition - the game prompts you to take a photo of your own face to be used on the primary character. Getting the right lighting is key here, but if you manage to grab a decent snapshot you can actually craft a rather impressive digital replica of yourself. Of course if you'd rather enjoy the additional level of escapism you can simply choose a pre-rendered face instead. The combat gameplay in Bloodmasque is rather basic and fights are a mix of swiping to dodge, tapping to attack, and launching devastating special attacks when the time is right. The action plays out with cinematic camera angles and plenty of flash, and the game's Unreal Engine-powered graphics flow smoothly with only the very occasional hiccup. As you progress you unlock new areas of the city to explore, new weapons and armor to equip, and, of course, new bits of the story. All told the game takes between 10 and 15 hours to complete, with additional challenge quests hidden beyond the credits. It's the kind of game you can play in either short bursts - individual battles can be completed fairly quickly - or in marathon sessions where unlocking gear and bettering your character becomes the primary focus. In short, Bloodmasque, as a game, is quite fantastic, but there is one "feature" that actually holds the title back from being a must-have: The recruitment of other players' characters to your party. When you're offline your character doesn't rest, and he or she can embark on quests with other players around the world. While this sounds kind of neat, it means that playing the game requires an internet connection at all times. Because of this, taking my wifi iPad on a road trip - or on a flight, for example - means I can't play Bloodmasque at all. Period. If you attempt to play the game without an internet connection you are given a network error and the game will force you back to the title screen. That's a pretty big bummer for the many iPad owners who are perfectly content taking their tablets offline. Despite that one - possibly deal-breaking - issue, Bloodmasque is a great iPad game that rivals PC and console games for its story, depth, and fun factor. If you don't care about the offline play issues, it's an easy recommendation.
Daily iPad App: Cannon Crasha offers nostalgic medieval combat
Your goal in Cannon Crasha is simple: Destroy the castle on the right side of the screen while protecting the castle on the left side of the screen. There's a relatively disposable story that is designed to push you on, destroying castles and leaving rubble in your wake, but in the end it's Crasha's fantastic medieval combat and old-school aesthetic that will keep you playing. Equal parts Angry Birds and a lesser known classic, Crush The Castle, Cannon Crasha gives you one weapon to start with: a massive cannon. With each successfully aimed shot, your opponent's castle takes damage until it eventually crumbles. Of course, your computer-controlled adversary returns fire as well, and if you're not careful you could end up on the losing end. The battles start off simple, but after a while you are introduced to various cannon upgrades, additional bonus attacks like soldiers and airborne bombers, and defensive tools like customizable barriers. Your gold level controls this micro economy, with your monetary level rising each time you strike your enemy's stronghold. Cannon Crasha's old-school 16-bit design style works great on the iPad, and everything from your castle to the background environments feel both retro and extremely crisp. The same goes for the sound effects, which are basic but fit in well with the nostalgic vibe. The only real complaint I have is that at times there is almost too much stuff going on to be able to pay attention to. With bombs going off, planes and dragons filling the sky, and ground units attacking both sides it can be rather easy to forget to launch your cannon as soon as it's ready to fire. When precious seconds count, missing a well-timed cannonball can cost you a round, but managing every aspect of the battle can be very distracting. Still, this doesn't take away from the fact that Cannon Crasha is a great addition to any iPad game library and a must-have for fans of games like Angry Birds. Just be warned: You may need to grow and additional hand to keep up.
Daily iPad App: Drive Assist is your new car dashboard companion
Most new cars have an in-dash computer that displays all sorts of pertinent information about your car's location, speed and other similar parameters. For those who have an older car and an iPad, you can duplicate this dashboard display with the new Drive Assist app from Woo.do. Drive Assist is a multi-function app that lets you map your trip, monitor your speed, watch the weather and listen to music while you drive. The biggest part of the app is the navigation and Google mapping feature that updates your location and provides driving directions as you travel along your route. You need a wireless connection to pull down the map data as you drive, but you can shut off the mapping function and replace it with a music player if you have a WiFi-only iPad. Besides navigation, Drive Assist also monitors your speed and lets you know how long you have driven and how long you have been idle during a trip. The app can save your route and driving data, so you review these stats at a later date. This is useful for commuters who want to study their stats and bemoan the fact they sat in traffic for 40 minutes on the way home from work every day this week. The Drive Assist app is chock-full of other real-time goodies. There's a compass to keep you on track and an altimeter for those driving below or above sea level. A weather display conveniently shows the conditions outside your car. DriveAssist won't make it any easier to step outside of your cool car into the summer heat, but at least you can mentally prepare for the transition. The app has a wonderful layout that makes it easy to navigate your trip and your music library at the same time. The font sizes and the color choices of the iPad app are appropriate for driving --- the onscreen elements are not too big to be distracting and not so small you have to squint. That being said, there is so much going on that you have to be careful that you don't get caught up in the app and drive off the road. I found it best to set everything up when I left my house and consult the app when I made a pit stop. I asked my passenger to scan the app when I wanted an update while I was driving. I don't have any bad things to say about Drive Assist. It performed very well for me when I used it on my short day trips in western Maine. The route data and the speed statistics seemed accurate for each trip. The only thing I noticed was a bit of a lag in the GPS data, which resulted in my speed occasionally being too slow or too fast for about 30 seconds or so. A few times, the weather data was way off, but, once again, that may be a GPS data issue. If the app can't get an accurate GPS fix, it guesses my location. I am not ready to blame this wonkiness on Drive Assist as I somewhat expect these inconsistencies given the rural, mountainous area in which I live. Drive Assist is a universal app that works well on the iPhone, but, in my opinion, is better suited for the iPad. For this review, I put aside the iPhone because its display was too small and left the Retina iPad at home because it was too big to fit comfortably inside my compact pickup truck. I settled on the iPad mini, which is petite enough to fit in a car mount, yet big enough to display all the options available in the app. Drive Assist is an app for the driver who wants their trip statistics right at their fingertips. It's also handy for a passenger who prefers to do more than just stare idly out the window. You can download Drive Assist from the iOS App Store for US$2.99.
Daily iPad App: You can't go wrong with Write
There's no shortage of text editors available for the iPad, and if you're someone who uses your tablet for word processing on a regular basis you've probably been through at least a few of them. Write is one such app, and while its straightforward design masks a lot of its bells and whistles, it proves to be one of the most capable productivity apps available. Write features full Markdown support, allowing you to compose a document using syntax and then preview the final result in real-time even as you're still editing. You can activate the standard text editor features you'd expect - like bolding, italics, etc - as well as more advanced features like in-document tables via a slim toolbar just above the keyboard. This makes composing a document a smoother overall experience than when using most other word processor apps, simply because everything you need to complete your work is readily available on your screen at all times. One of the slickest features that helps set Write apart is its various swipe controls. Depending on your individual settings you can swipe downward on the screen to delete or save a document, swipe to the right to view works you've previously saved, and swipe to the left to view all available sharing options. Speaking of sharing options, Write has perhaps the most comprehensive list of sharing tools available on an iPad text editor. You can email your document as an attachment, HTML, plain text, or PDF. You can shoot your text out to the world via Twitter or Facebook, or save it to Google Drive, Evernote, or PasteBin. Oh, and the app offers automatic syncing via Dropbox and iCloud. When it comes down to it, text editor apps aren't particularly sexy, but if you're looking for an extremely capable word processor for your tablet you just can't go wrong with Write. The app is priced at an almost laughably low $1.99, which only makes this recommendation even easier. If you type on your iPad, you should probably get Write.
Daily iPad App: Questimate! lets you estimate the answer to wacky questions
Questimate! from Motion Math is an enjoyable estimation game in which you create off-the-wall questions and try to estimate their answers. It's a challenge you can play alone or against others in either pass-n-play mode or Gamecenter mode. As its name implies, Questimate! is based on quests that are comprised of a series of questions. You are given three lives, which allows you to make three mistakes as you progress along a quest. It's a game of estimates so you don't have to be perfect, but you do have to answer most of the questions in a quest reasonably well if you want to win. The app includes a free intro quest, with additional quests available via an in-app purchase of coins. When you start a new game, you are prompted to build a question by combining several phrases like "How many microwave ovens", "would be as long as" and "a household ladder?" Once you've formed your question, you then must estimate the answer on a number line. The app will score your answer based on how close your estimate is to the actual answer. The more accurate your answer, the more points you will earn. Points will net you hints and power-ups, which you can redeem when you need help answering a hard question. If your answer is way off, you will lose one life. The goal of the game is to finish each quest before you lose all three of your lives, so you want to estimate your answer with accuracy. I let my 12-year-old son and my 11-year-old daughter play Questimate!, and the reviews were mixed. My son is a visual learner and spatially aware, while my daughter is not. She just guessed at the answers (and was usually way off), while my son was walking around the kitchen sizing up the microwave to see how many he could fit on our ladder. He loved the game and its offbeat questions, while my daughter was ambivalent about the questions, but took delight in how far off her estimates were. Questimate! is a barrel of fun for older children and young-at-heart adults who enjoy comparing items and making estimates. It is available for free from the iOS App Store, though it does require an in-app purchase of coins to unlock levels.
