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Daily iPad App: Leviathan Warships features sweet, turn-based boat warfare
First of all, go enjoy the wonderful trailer for this game. If you're not sold on Leviathan Warships (US$4.99 on the App Store) after watching that, then I'm not exactly sure what else you want. Leviathan Warships is a turn-based naval strategy game. Your job is to guide a series of ships through watery battlegrounds, leading them turn by turn against your opponents. The game is similar to Bungie's Crimson: Steam Pirates, in that you guide ships around by dragging them, but it's much more complicated. You can aim each ship's guns separately, upgrade your ships as you see fit and take on co-op and multiplayer battles in addition to the main campaign. The whole package is impressively thorough, and in that sense, the trailer is dead on. In fact, there might be a little bit too much here to play with. Those looking for a casual title will find Leviathan Warships overwhelming. But the $4.99 price is fitting -- enough to signify the game is substantial, but still cheap enough for anyone interested to jump right in. Leviathan Warships is highly recommended for sure.
Daily iPhone App: Daedalus Touch
If there's one thing bad about being a tech blogger, it's that you're constantly exposed to new and exciting hardware and software. More often than not, a first glance at an app turns into a buying opportunity, and the next thing you know you've spent anywhere from $0.99 to "a big amount" on the latest and greatest. That was the situation I found myself in with an OS X text editor called Ulysses III (US$39.99) after Megan Lavey-Heaton wrote about it. Well, it turns out that I'm now using Ulysses every day for blogging, and that it also has a companion iOS app named Daedalus Touch ($4.99, universal), which of course I had to buy. Both apps are products of German development house The Soulmen GBR, and there are some similarities between the two. Both work on the concept of stacks of sheets of paper and both are amazing plaintext editors. Install Daedalus Touch on your iPhone or iPad, choose to sync it with iCloud, and a Daedalus folder shows up in Ulysses III on your Mac. One of the features of Ulysses III that I appreciate so much is the "fourth pane" that can be added to the app window that provides one-click access to just about every Markdown style. While Daedalus doesn't supply that pane, it does support export of Markdown style conversions from the app. However, I made up for the lack of that pane by just creating a text document with the Markdown commands I use most often. Like Ulysses III, there's a row of customizable shortcut buttons that appear over the top of the iOS virtual keyboard. That keyboard row also displays a character and word count, perfect for authors who are tied to a specific document length. Daedalus Touch can import files or folders from Dropbox, WebDAV, and Box.com, and even opens zipped text files. Documents can be exported as single or multiple sheets, or entire stacks of sheets. The export options available include emailing as TXT, PDF, RTF, and zip archive, creating an ePub ebook file (including asking for a cover image and meta information), printing, converting Markdown styles, copying to the iOS clipboard, or opening documents in other iOS apps. There are four different color themes, including modes for editing at night, and three nice typefaces. One of my favorite features in Daedalus Touch has to be its excellent use of gestures for navigation in the app, many of which are included in the video embedded below. Another nice touch is a web browser built into the iPad version of Daedalus Touch, which makes it quite easy to do research without having to leave the app. The Soulmen GBR have created a winner with Daedalus Touch, and if you've already succumbed to the charms of Ulysses III, do yourself a favor and get the iOS app.
Daily iPad App: Magicka arrives on iOS with Wizards of the Square Tablet
Magicka is a long-running game series from Swedish developer Paradox Interactive that the company has recently decided to go big on. In addition to an upcoming multiplayer spinoff, Paradox has released this version for iOS today, hoping to bring some of the PC game's magic to Apple's touchscreen platform. And in general, they're successful. While it's not perfect, Magicka for iOS does recreate some of the desktop series' wackiness and creativity. On the PC, Magicka is a top-down RPG of sorts, where players can control various wizards that run around blasting off spells. On iOS, that game has been translated to a side-scrolling beat-em-up, but the spell-combining mechanic from the original title is still included. Basically, you have a series of elemental icons across the bottom of the screen, and you can combine any four to create spells on the fly. Hit four fire icons or ice icons to cast spells of those types, or you can combine fire and water to cast a steam spell, or fire and electricity to cast a thunderstorm spell, or water and electricity to both wet down your enemies, and then light them up with current. You can attack any of the bad guys that are pestering you or your allies (the game offers local co-op, which can be a lot of fun). There's also a "life" spell to either heal yourself or others. The spells have some really fun effects, too. For example, casting life on the undead hurts them. You can also use a wall spell on your various elements. Extra weapons and robes provide stat bonuses, just like in the main game, but most of the fun involves sussing out which spells to use in any given situation. The game also carries a wacky tone -- Paradox's Swedish sense of humor shines in its weirdness. I don't think Magicka for iOS is quite as fun or original as the PC title. To a certain extent, Paradox is just trying to spread the brand more than creating an original iOS game. But it is a lot of fun. Whether you're a Magicka die-hard or just want to try the game's spell-creation system on your iPad, Wizards of the Square Tablet is a very good time for a price of US$1.99.
Daily iPad App: FX Photo Studio HD adds more filters, Retina support
FX Photo Studio HD has been a staple on my iPads for a while. The US$1.99 app from MacPhun, which is used to edit and apply a variety of effects to images, has recently been updated to version 5.0, adding more effect filters and now including support for Retina displays. The update also improves performance on the iPad mini and officially provides support for iOS 6. If you're not familiar with FX Photo Studio HD, it's well worth the investment if you want to jazz up your photos, crop them or adjust the colors. Thanks to a well-designed UI, the app is a snap to learn and use. Images are imported by tapping a "load photos" button (it looks like a flower) which then displays three buttons -- one to load from your iPad photo library, one to import images through a Camera Connection Kit, and one to take a photo using the iPad camera. Once an image is loaded, it is displayed with a palette of tools across the top and a scrollable list of effects on the right side of the screen. %Gallery-181404% Those tools include items for loading photo, undoing or redoing edits, cropping or rotating photos, resizing images, or making adjustments to such items as gamma, brightness, contrast, hue or saturation. If you want to compare your doctored image with the original, a small "eye" button to the lower right of the photo reverts instantaneously to your original photo. The updated Photo Studio HD has 190 included effects, textures, frames and tints to enhance (or degrade) your favorite photo. While most effects are quite useful, there are some that are downright cheesy -- the one that adds lipstick marks and the little teddy bear are notable examples. Of course, your tastes and needs might be different from mine... There are also a number of $0.99 in-app purchases that provide additional frames and effects, perfect if you want to add more power to an already loaded app. FX Photo Studio HD is a worthwhile app to load on any iPad, whether you're an experienced digital photographer or just beginning to dabble in the digital arts.
Daily iPad App: My Measures & Dimensions PRO
Today's Daily iPad App is My Measures & Dimensions PRO. It's universal, but I only tested it on the iPad. The app is a beautiful and useful tool for anyone who needs to take measurements around the house. Though it's designed with carpenters, engineers, architects or landscapers in mind I found it an incredibly useful app to have during my recent move between flats. My Measures & Dimensions PRO allows you to snap a picture quickly or choose an existing picture from your library and add photos with measurements to objects in the app. For example, say you're viewing a new apartment and you want to know if your furniture is going to fit. With the app, simply take a picture of the new apartment, tap the screen with two fingers and then drag to place a lined arrow on the desired area. Then simply add the measurement of the area you are recording. Measurements can be entered in Imperial, metric, Chinese or Japanese standards. Measurements must obviously be inputted manually as the app cannot calculate the distance between two points just from a photo. Another great feature is the ability to easily add angle measurements. Just select the angle tool and adjust its degrees by dragging the tool to match the angles and the photograph. Angles are calculated automatically. What's really great about the app is it can also calculate the sum of all your measurements and even the surface area of your measurements. Lastly, the app allows you to write simple text on photos so you can make notes on the same canvas you're recording dimensions on. What My Measures & Dimensions PRO does is it allows you to stop carrying around a pen and paper for your measuring needs. By taking a photo and recording measurement on a photo you'll have a much better idea of what the space you are working in actually provides and looks like. Another nice feature lets you export your measurements as a PDF. That way you can share your measurements with just about anyone. There is also a basic version of My Measures & Dimensions PRO. That version, called My Measures & Dimensions, is a few dollars cheaper and lacks some of the features of the PRO version including iCloud sync and backup, the ability to zoom in on pictures, the ability to snap arrowheads together, and loupes and cross mode. The only problem I had with My Measures & Dimensions PRO was that the iCloud sync feature didn't appear to work on the iPad version of the app. I took photos and measurements with the iPhone version of the app and I could see that those documents were stored in my iCloud account, but for some reason the iPad app couldn't see the documents were there. Still, once that bug is ironed out, I can't recommend My Measures & Dimensions PRO enough. My Measures & Dimensions PRO is US$5.99. The My Measures & Dimensions basic version is US$2.99.
Daily iPad App: Green Kitchen offers healthy recipes in a great-looking app
Green Kitchen was just featured on Apple's best of 2012 list -- it's a really well-designed cooking app with a focus on healthy recipes. It's all based on the Green Kitchen Stories blog, so looking through the content over there will show you what the app is all about: Healthy, interesting food. It's not necessarily the more traditional staples, so if you just want a heads up on how to cook some simple items, you should probably look elsewhere (I personally really like the How to Cook Everything app if you want a more straightforward cooking experience). But the Green Kitchen app does have some good and interesting ideas, and everything is organized well. Once you choose a recipe (which you can find either in a list or by browsing through big pictures in the app itself), you get an interactive list of instructions that clearly guides you through each step of the recipe. And throughout the whole process, everything is very clean and smartly put together. The app's big drawback is that while it is fun to browse through big pictures of the recipes, if you're looking for something specific (like a certain dietary restriction or a central ingredient), you just have to drill down through the recipes in there. There aren't a lot of recipes, either, especially compared to bigger and older apps. But more are being added all the time, and again, this isn't a traditional cookbook: It's more a nice list of options when you want to try cooking something different. Green Kitchen is available in the App Store now for US$3.99.
Daily iPad App: Jack Lumber goes chop socky on trees
Sega has just started publishing other developers' games on the App Store through an initiative called Sega Alliance with Jack Lumber, a game by the folks who made Smuggle Truck (or Snuggle Truck, if you caught it post-censorship). This is a title that's heavily inspired by the great Fruit Ninja, but instead of just ripping off Halfbrick's apple-slicing classic, it actually iterates forward on that game quite a bit. For one thing, instead of just slicing through the air as quickly as you can, Jack Lumber will actually pause and slow down the logs you're meant to be cutting through, which lets you set up a little more strategy to your slices. You can cut through multiple logs in one swipe for bonus points, and some logs have to be cut in a certain directly, or chopped twice for maximum points. The game's great fun, and the goofy "Trees killed my grandma" cartoon aesthetic goes a long way towards making the game really colorful and interesting. If you like Fruit Ninja, Jack Lumber is a must buy, and even if you're looking for something new from a line-drawing game, this one's well worth a look. Sega definitely started off its publishing choices right. Jack Lumber is universal and available from the App Store now for just 99 cents. Edit: A previous version of the post listed the wrong publisher. Apologies for any confusion.
Daily iPad App: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is gonna take you for a ride
After quite a while, Capcom has finally released Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in the App Store, and you probably know right away if you want it or not. This Dreamcast-era fighting game might be a little silly and colorful, but it offers up some insane, excessive action that other fighting games have yet to match. Those on full consoles are already playing version 3, of course, but version 2 is a masterpiece of 2D animation, with all of Capcom's and Marvel's heroes decked out with great graphics and animations. Unfortunately, the game suffers from the same issues that most fighting games on the iPad and iPhone do: The virtual controls aren't the best for this type of gameplay. Capcom's dealt with it as best they can with something called the "flick button," but still, for games like this, nothing's going to substitute for a real joystick and buttons. The app description doesn't mention iCade support, but that would be nice. The title does have local multiplayer over Bluetooth, however, so you and a friend can face off locally, and all 56 characters are here and playable out of the game. If you have a new iPad, the graphics aren't yet compatible with the new Retina Display, but that's not too big a bother, and an update might fix that anyway. For its launch sale price of $2.99 (until May 6), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is definitely a great title for those who love fighting games. It's so Pringles!
Daily iPad App: Bounty Bots is full of cartoony shooter action
MunkyFun is the group of developers behind first-person shooter Archetype for the iPhone, so they know already how to put a console-style shooter on Apple's mobile devices. Archetype was published by Villian, but MunkyFun's latest title is self-published. It's called Bounty Bots, and it's available for free on the App Store right now. Hopefully, at the word "free," you already went to go and download the game to see what it's like. But in case not, I'll tell you that it's a shooter where your main goal is to run around collecting coins as quickly as possible, and then to deliver those coins into banks (but without getting killed by other players). Coins delivered get banked, but you still get XP for picking up coins, so even if you're terrible, you can progress through the game. Progression gets you various parts to customize your bot with, and the game is finely tuned for both casual and hardcore players, so those ready for a real challenge can buy special parts that make things tougher but can also come with rewards as well. The game's freemium bent can be frustrating at times (if you ever lose all your coins, you're locked in a jail that you can then pay your way out of, which seems targeted right at guaranteeing those all-important in-app purchases). But there's enough action here that it's worth the free download, and if you get hooked, well, all the better. And MunkyFun is already updating the title as well, so there's more content on the way. Bounty Bots is a fun use of the company's expertise so far, and I'm sure it will lead to even better things in their future.
Daily iPad App: Paper by FiftyThree may make you an artist
I am not an artist. I love art, but don't have the necessary skills (except for those I've picked up on my own) to really do anything that I'd want other people to see. When some of the early iPad drawing/painting apps started coming out, I eagerly bought them to try, but found that my lack of talent was just transferred to a new medium. A new iPad app, Paper by FiftyThree (Free, in-app tool purchases available) may actually help me to become a half-decent artist. After you've downloaded Paper, you have a one tool available - Draw. Draw is an expressive ink pen that responds much like the steel-nibbed pens we used in art class in 7th grade, except there's no way to drip ink on yourself or the page. All of the other art tools -- Color, Sketch, Write, and Outline -- are available through in-app purchase for US$1.99 each or as a combined "Essentials" purchase for $7.99. Launching Paper, you see three Moleskine-like notebooks on the screen. To open one for viewing, you tap on it, and you're immediately rewarded with a two-page view of the notebook. To zoom in on a set of pages, make another tap; to get back to the notebook view, you pinch two fingers together. New notebooks can be added from the main screen of the app by tapping a "+" button, or erased with the tap of a trash can button. You can name each notebook, and give it a cover photo or texture. Once you're in a page view in a notebook, you can begin to draw or paint. I immediately purchased the Color (water painting) and Sketch (pencil drawing) tools; I frankly wish I had just spent the full $7.99 and bought the Essentials. When drawing or painting, you can either use the eraser tool or a "rewind" function to get rid of mistakes. Rewind uses an swipe and rotate gesture to "turn back the clock" on your misdeeds. The tools are all available from a tool tray that slides up with a swipe and can be put away with another swipe. I found myself grabbing a tool and color, then dropping the tray out of sight so I could concentrate on my work. For each tool, you have a limited palette of nine colors. Unfortunately, you can't change that palette. The Fifty-Three team says that they want people to concentrate on creating, not getting picky about colors. While this works well with some tools, like Color, which let you blend transparent colors, it's kind of annoying with the pen and pencil tools. You can layer different colors, of course, so I'm not sure that alternative palettes are a definite need -- instead, Paper users just need to understand how to layer colors properly. A quick look at the comments on the FiftyThree support forums shows that many people are asking for alternative palettes. I've dabbled in watercolors in the past, and I found the Color tool to be the closest thing yet to a watercolor set for the iPad. The tool works just like a watercolor brush, letting you build up color by laying on more "paint," blend colors, even use the white paint like a gouache. I didn't try the Write and Outline tools, but they are essentially fine and broad point markers for marking up your paper. The Sketch tool is also the best pencil-drawing tool I've found for the iPad. Using my Adonit Writer Pro stylus with Paper, I felt like I was really drawing on a piece of paper. Speaking of the paper, your "canvas" is 2048 x 1536 pixels, so it takes advantage of the Retina display. Images that you create can be shared through Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter or by sending an email. When you share an image, it's exported as a JPEG at 1024 x 768 pixels. I found a good way to get full-resolution images -- I just do an iPad screenshot, and then the image shows up in my Photo Stream in full resolution. How good is Paper? Let's just say that every other "art app" that I purchased in the past has been taken off of my iPad. I love the concept and execution of this app, and it's going to be my sketch and watercolor pad from now on. Paper makes me wish that I hadn't spent a lot of money a few years ago putting together a portable watercolor kit...
Daily iPad App: Pholium
The iPad's journey to becoming more of a content-producing and creative tool took another step forward recently with the release of a new app called Pholium (US$9.99). The app is centered around the creation, viewing, and sharing of iPad photo ebooks. All of the creation of the photo ebooks is done on the iPad. Whether you're taking images from a camera through the Apple Camera Connection Kit or using photos you took with the iPad's camera, all of your camera roll images are available in the Pholium Gallery. The Gallery lets you bring in Photo Stream images as well, and you can store the pictures that you want to use in your ebook. Once you have a collection of photos to place in your ebook, you move to the Studio -- a place in the app where images are placed into the book for viewing, arranged or rotated, and text is added. One issue I had with the app is that text can only be added to certain special pages -- when producing photo books with iPhoto, I like to put some captions on images and occasionally write a paragraph or two describing a place shown in the pictures. At least with the 1.0 version of Pholium, you can't do that. %Gallery-152510% Pholium optimizes photos to look their best in the books, and you can only had cup to 42 images per book. With a 2-page spread, you're limited to 4 images, or 1 image on a full 2-page spread. Pages can be added or removed easily, so it's easy to make your book a bit larger. I felt that the 42 image limit was quite limiting, and I'm hoping that the next version of the app will increase or eliminate the limit. Once you're done creating a book, you can store it in the Pholium Library, and also share the book through the Pholium website with up to 10 recipients. After the first 10 recipients, you need to purchase a new "Pholda" that provides another 10 readers with the ability to see your ebook. Reading the ebooks is a treat -- the app uses an animation that's familiar to iBook readers to emulate the turning of pages. One gripe I had was that the faux "fold" between the left and right pages was too darkly shadowed and really distracting when looking at images that went across both pages. If your recipients don't have Pholium -- which is likely to be the case -- they're sent a low resolution PDF of the images in the books. I preferred the look of the images in the book, where they could be rotated during my production of the book, then tapped by readers for viewing in a larger, non-rotated image. One cool feature was the ability for readers to tap a single button to see a slideshow of all of the images in the book. However, the timing of the appearance of the images and the transitions between images could not be adjusted. Pholium is a pretty powerful and very useful photo ebook tool, but it could benefit from some additional work. I'd like to see the app get rid of the 42 image limitation, add the ability to send the formatted ebook to a print-on-demand service to create a "real" book (like those created with iPhoto), and the ability to add captions and text boxes to every page in the book. Still, if you want to create and share your own picture ebooks with friends or relatives, Pholium is a really easy way to publish without a lot of hassle.
Daily iPad App: deck
The iPad's built-in iPod app used to be my favorite way to interact with music on any device. It struck a good compromise between the heavy, sidebar-driven UI of iTunes on the Mac and the simple text-only music browsing on the iPhone. Then iOS 5 came along and ruined everything; the old iPod app got replaced with a UI catastrophe called "Music" that convinced me to switch to my iPhone as my primary music player. Although I'd occasionally use a visualizer app like Planetary to play music on my iPad, I still longed for a music player on the iPad that was as easy to use as the old iPod app was. Szello, Inc. contacted me about their music player, deck, and after just five minutes of using it I was in love with it. deck is about as simple as a touchscreen music player gets, and its interface reminds me of either a big 8-track player or one of those touch tone phones with giant buttons marketed toward the elderly. That might sound like I'm knocking deck, but in reality that kind of interface is exactly what I was looking for. The iPad's built-in Music app is an unnecessarily complex beast with inexplicably tiny controls, terribly inconsistent user interface colors, and an album-art-driven music browser that's a chore to navigate for all but the tiniest music libraries. deck strips out all that UI cruft and instead presents a decidedly superior alternative: big, unmistakeable buttons that tell you at a glance what's going on with your music. The default Music app's UI, or What Not to Do. deck: Your music, streamlined. That's more like it. Unlike the flashy but frustrating art-driven UI of the iPad's default Music app, deck takes a page from the iPhone's Music app and presents a simple, text-driven interface. No more hunting through a grid of album covers to find playlists or a specific artist -- deck simplifies browsing music on the iPad even for my 8000+ song library, and it supports playback of songs uploaded to iTunes Match, too. deck is close to perfect as a music player for the iPad, but there's still room for improvement. The app doesn't have built-in controls for AirPlay and requires that you enable/disable AirPlay streaming via the iPad's multitasking bar. Since the app is basically a UI "wrapper" for the iPad's music library (AirPlay streaming technically occurs via the built-in Music app in the background), I don't know if this is necessarily something the developers can work around. deck also doesn't have lyrics support, but since the built-in Music app doesn't either, I'm willing to give deck's developers a pass on this one. Three changes I would like to see in future versions of deck: deck doesn't appear to support playlist nesting at present. All playlists appear in one long, unbroken list, with no nested folders. Not everyone uses nested playlist folders in their music library, but I've found it a necessary feature to keep my playlists organized. Artists and Songs have the little alphabet slider on the right side for ease of navigation, letting you jump around the music library quite quickly, but the Albums view doesn't. For someone like me, with over 1000 albums in my library, this makes navigating albums harder than it has to be. Controls for Shuffle and Repeat show a little green light when active -- a definite improvement over the inconsistent color scheme in the Music app -- but the light might still be too subtle for some users. I'd suggest instead changing the control color on the button to a blue glow, similar to the Music app on the iPhone. With those three minor changes, deck will be pretty close to flawless. For US$1.99, deck provides a more than capable alternative to the bloated mass of UI inconsistencies and feature creep that Apple's Music app became in iOS 5. If you've found the default Music app frustrating or confusing to use, deck is a great replacement and worth every bit the developers are charging. At the same time, those of you at Apple who bollixed up the Music app in iOS 5 had best download deck and take some detailed notes.
Daily iPad App: Fuze Meeting HD connects to telepresence systems
The flexible Fuze Meeting web conferencing platform already had a very solid iOS story, with the ability to schedule and start meetings from the iPad (including multiparty HD videoconferencing). Now, with the recently released version 4.0 of the app, the company is building a bridge to corporate high-end conferencing gear. The new app is compatible with Fuze's Hosted Telepresence Connect service, which allows iPad users to join in videoconference sessions with high-end installed systems from Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize and other vendors. These enterprise conferencing room systems don't come cheap, but adding the iPad clients into the mix expands their flexibility and may increase their utilization. (If you have to ask: the Telepresence Connect service starts at US$2,000 a month for connection to three endpoint systems.) In addition to the big-ticket feature, the new app version also includes the ability to start a meeting recording from the iPad, touch annotation of shared documents, and more. The free app paired with a trial Fuze account allows you to test out the meeting functionality; monthly plans start at $29.
Daily iPad App: Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics first came out for the original PlayStation in 1997 as a more strategic take on the famous roleplaying game franchise. I didn't get around to playing it until 2001, but when I did, it turned out to be a peerless game that still ranks among my all-time favorites. Between a deep combat and character growth system that satisfied the stat nerd in me and an extremely well-crafted, almost Shakespearean story, the original PlayStation version consumed a solid two months of my free time 11 years ago. In 2007 I was excited to hear it was being re-released with an updated translation and some other tweaks, but I was then disappointed to hear that it would be exclusive to the PSP, a system I never had any interest in owning. Final Fantasy Tactics was announced for iOS not long after the original iPad's debut, and right away I imagined the game fitting the then-new tablet like a glove. But a series of delays meant the port kept getting pushed back, and it wasn't until over a year after its initial announcement that Final Fantasy Tactics came to the iPhone... but not the iPad. Square Enix promised an iPad version within a month of the iPhone version's release, but Square Enix is definitely a company where you have to take release dates with a very large grain of salt. Six months after the iPhone version launched, Final Fantasy Tactics has arrived at long last on the iPad, but at US$17.99 it may well be one of the most expensive games on the App Store. Any review of Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad has to answer two questions at minimum. First, how well does this extremely complex game translate to the iPad's simple, touch-driven interface? Second, is this game worth almost twenty bucks in a market dominated by an overwhelming majority of games that hover between $0.99 and $2.99? First, I'll address the interface. Final Fantasy Tactics is a very deep game, one whose user interface was always fairly obtuse to begin with: menus within menus within menus, like the designers were predicting the film Inception years in advance. That complex and highly layered interface carries over from the earlier versions onto the iPad; in fact, as far as I can tell Square Enix essentially ported the PSP version to iOS while barely revisiting the interface at all. Without having re-optimized the game's controls for a touchscreen (aside from a welcome tweak that lets you rotate battlefields to any angle), Final Fantasy Tactics' interface can often be a chore to wade through. Even at nearly twenty hours into the game, I still find myself struggling to target units on the battlefield correctly on a first attempt. The game's veritable explosion of menus will prove daunting for novice players to navigate on the iPad's screen; this is not a game an eight-year-old is going to enjoy unless his/her I.Q. and patience are both off the charts. None of this should imply that the game is unplayably confusing, but as I navigate through the mostly menu-driven UI I'm silently thankful that Apple didn't simply shove OS X onto the iPad and instead went with a more simplistic approach in iOS. If Final Fantasy Tactics' interface is anything to go by, using a full port of OS X on a touchscreen would be maddening if I had to do it every day. It's worth noting that the iPad port doesn't suffer from the infamous slowdowns that plagued the PSP version of the game and earlier versions of the iPhone port. Final Fantasy Tactics runs extremely smoothly on my iPad 2, and the app fully launches within only a few seconds, much faster than I expected it to. The second big question: Is Final Fantasy Tactics worth eighteen bucks? It depends. Final Fantasy Tactics on iPad is definitely worth $17.99 if: You played the original on PlayStation, but never the PSP remake You played the PSP remake but don't have a PSP anymore You're a fan of tabletop-style or strategic RPGs and looking for a challenge You don't already own the iPhone version For me, Final Fantasy Tactics on iPad was a guaranteed launch-day purchase regardless of the price, and the relatively high cost of the iPhone version actually makes the iPad version look like a bargain by comparison. Final Fantasy Tactics costs just two dollars more on the iPad than on the iPhone, and the game's interface is unquestionably better-suited to the iPad's much larger screen. The game has an epic play length, too, especially compared to the more disposable "pick up and play" titles that litter the App Store's $0.99 price tier. Though $17.99 sounds like a big outlay in the App Store economy, by the time you've played all the way through Final Fantasy Tactics that may well turn out to be fifty cents or less for every hour of gameplay. I don't remember exactly how much time I spent on the original PlayStation version, but it was probably in excess of a hundred hours. Whether that $18 is well spent is harder to answer if you're new to the game or the genre. Final Fantasy Tactics is difficult to master; the game's difficulty is punishing, especially in the earliest chapters of the game. If you're more used to the "press X to not die" gameplay that Final Fantasy XIII offered, you may find Final Fantasy Tactics' learning curve unforgivably harsh. On the other hand, if you're looking for a game that has one of the most well-crafted stories ever written for a video game combined with gameplay that has almost limitless options, that may well be worth the $18 all by itself.
Daily iPad App: Pets vs. Orcs combines cuteness with battle
Pets vs. Orcs (free) is a game that seems to have been designed for my gaming tastes. It's got a few flaws, but when I saw that screenshot heard it described as "a mix between Civilization and Warcraft 3," and I couldn't download it fast enough. Now that I've played Pets vs. Orcs, I'm disappointed that it doesn't live up to that description (or the screenshot, unfortunately). It's more of a cross between We Rule and tower defense, which is less epic than Civilization plus Warcraft 3. There are two modes in Pets vs. Orcs: town mode and fight mode. In the town mode, you place and grow buildings (freemium style) and queue up training camps to build up your army of pets while you wait in real time. When fighting, you send various waves of pets to battle the orcs. The gameplay is simple and the colorful graphics are simpler, so don't expect polished good looks. But the core mechanics are good, and those who like freemium city-building games will enjoy assembling an army sending them into battle. Pets vs. Orcs doesn't quite live up to the promise of its premise, but it doesn't completely fail either. It's a solid title that I suspect will improve with a few more updates. Pets vs. Orcs is a freemium app, available on the App Store right now.
Daily iPad App: NPR Music is a treat for music fans
Everyone knows about NPR's quality podcasts, or at least they should. All Things Considered, Car Talk and Whose Line is it Anyway routinely top the charts on iTunes. But I'm also a fan of NPR's music. They do a great series of podcasts called All Songs Considered, and they often release great live performances, available as free downloads in iTunes. Now, NPR Music has released its own iPad app, and as you can see above, it's very snazzy. Most of the content in the app is simply what's available on the NPR Music website, but it's all been redesigned for a touch interface. And while you can play new music straight through the website, playing it in a browser isn't always as easy as through an iOS device. The iPad version also has a very excellent playlist and a live radio, so there are tons of great ways to listen to awesome new music, all completely free. There's a lot of other stuff in here too -- articles, reviews and other videos. But honestly, the music is enough: the app offers a great, curated experience of hours and hours of great free content and tunes. NPR's Music app is one of the best gifts I've gotten all year (paid for, of course, by our tax dollars). If you're a fan of new music, especially indie or alternative, definitely give it a download.
Daily iPad App: Monster Wars is a great addition to Legendary Wars series
I first saw Monster Wars a little while ago at Macworld as Liv Games was just publishing it, but the title has been out for a little while now and I've had a little longer to play with it. Monster Wars is not only another huge content pack for Legendary Wars, with tons of new stages, modes and units to play with, but it is a nice iteration on the series as a whole, with a lot of subtle but solid improvements to the gameplay. Unit animations are generally better across the board, and the controls work basically the same. I still sometimes have trouble keeping track of which heroes I'm controlling and which lanes they are supposed to be in. The UI is much improved. The pacing of the game shows that Liv Games has learned quite a bit about how to move players from level to level. The new modes add quite a bit to the game, which was likely a tough task considering how much variety was already there. If you loved Legendary Wars, you've probably already grabbed this one. But even if you've never heard of Legendary Wars, Monster Wars is a steal at 99 cents. New players might be slightly overwhelmed by what's going on in the new title, but Liv Games has made two really spectacular titles here.They really shouldn't be missed, especially on the iPad.
Daily iPad App: Paper Monsters
I've found that iOS isn't the best platform (so to speak) for platformers. I love games like Mario and Sonic, where you drive a little character around, jumping between platforms and collecting goodies. The lack of physical buttons on Apple's touch screens (and let's face it: cheaper production values) make it hard to pull off a great platformer. Often times developers are forced to cut corners or really stretch to generate new ideas. Not so with Paper Monsters (US$.0.99, universal). Crescent Moon's latest is a traditional platform game (complete with double jumps and warp pipes), and it plays that role perfectly. The little box-headed character can navigate the colorful and nicely-designed environments with skill thanks to some well-turned controls. The whole experience shines through the iOS platform right back to the classic days of 2D platforming. There are some new tricks, too. At times, the action feels more like Little Big Planet than Mario's old adventures, with solid 3D graphics and some interesting twists, like playing in the background scenery. Paper Monsters is a lot of fun, and there's plenty to keep you engaged through all 16 levels. It's available as a universal version right now for just 99 cents.
Daily iPad App: Triple Town
Triple Town was originally a Facebook game, so it does have some weird freemium elements that are kind of annoying: There are some weird turn mechanics where you actually need to "buy" turns, either with in-game gold or real money, that can get annoying after a while. And the graphics themselves do look as though they were created with HTML 5 -- they're serviceable, but the game definitely doesn't take advantage of all of the power of your iOS device. All of that said, however, Triple Town still comes with this sparkling recommendation: I first fired it up late one night last week before going to bed at 3 am, and found myself still playing it two hours later. It is a really incredible take on the match-3 genre: instead of switching items around, you instead place them down on the board, and then three of any kind (in any direction) will automatically combine into one of the next kind up the hierarchy, so grass combines into bushes which combines into trees, then houses, and so on. Bears appear on the screen and need to be blocked out into tombstones, which then combine into churches, which combine into larger churches which can earn extra points. The game is turn-based and simple to play, but very tough to master, and it has that extremely addictive "just one more turn" quality. Triple Town is really a great title -- it doesn't quite outgrow its Facebook roots, but there's more than enough game here that it's definitely worth the free, universal download. Just be careful starting it up late at night -- you might find yourself losing as much sleep as I did.
Daily iPad App: The Bard's Tale
The Bard's Tale was originally released on Microsoft's first Xbox console, and it was a sort of a side-make of the original point-and-click RPG adventure game from the 80s (which itself is represented on the App Store by an app called Silversword, if you'd rather go even more old school than this one). But the Xbox title has just recently appeared on iOS, and it's a respectable port of the title that makes fun of a lot of fantasy and RPG video game tropes. The Bard's Tale features amazing voice work (including by the late great Tony Jay) and the hack-and-slash action isn't half bad. Fans of bawdy humor and wacky stories (there's a zombie dance-off hidden in the plotline) will definitely get a kick out of it. The app is Game Center-enabled and uses iCloud across a universal version, so you can trade saves between your iOS devices. Some iTunes users have reported a few bugs, unfortunately, but there are updates coming (driven by a few in-app purchases that are optional but definitely not required), so hopefully if you hit an issue, it should be fixed before long. To sweeten the pot even further, the app's on sale this week, down to US$2.99. The Bard's Tale is definitely worth a play through, especially if you missed it during the original run on the Xbox.
