Pinball machines are not always easy to find in the 
real world these days, but War Pinball HD does a good job of recreating the experience. Playing this app is like a return to a 1980s arcade, with cheese-tastic war films like the Chuck Norris-starring Missing in Action and Charlie Sheen vehicle Navy Seals. Also included is the Academy Award winning Platoon. The movies are just background art for the pinball tables, though. The heart of the app is hitting the flippers (by touching the screen) and trying to get a high score. Fans looking for an authentic experience will also be happy to hear the app supports tilt — and will even warn you if you try to use it too much. The war theme might make this iffy for some families and very young kids, but at it’s heart, this is classic harmless pinball.
Category Archives: Common Sense Media
Game Review: Conduit 2
Conduit 2 is hardly perfect, 
but it’s much better than most shooters on the Wii. The action is fairly well paced and the boss battles are fun. More importantly, though, the game never takes itself too seriously, injecting humor into the action — such as an enemy who shouts, after you’ve been shooting him for quite a while, “That’s it! I’m through negotiating!” The story, though, is pretty thin and some moments will have you wondering what the heck is going on. The multiplayer mode is a welcome addition, given the natural fit between online play and shooters. For parents, this is an example of the Wii’s limited online capabilities working in their favor, as they can easily monitor who children are playing with.
App Review: Facebook for iPad with Chat – Pica HD
Facebook for iPad with Chat – Pica HD is, basically, a 
customized version of Facebook’s rather anemic touch site. Sure, you can navigate between your news feed, profiles, and inbox easily enough — and even choose a custom theme — but the shortcuts taken by the developer are quickly apparent. Chat, for instance, doesn’t stick with your chosen theme, and scrolling through your available friends list is not an intuitive process. Search was also hit and miss (mostly miss) during our testing. In addition, some links and buttons have issues with unresponsiveness. If they aren’t tapped in just the right spot, the action won’t register. And the inability to pinch and zoom photos is glaringly obvious. It is, at best, a so-so app that shows little to no ambition in moving Facebook forward on iDevices.
App Review: Dungeon Hunter 2
Diablo has spawned some really, really bad clones. Thankfully, Gameloft 
(which has made a business of cloning well-known titles for the app world) dodges that bullet with Dungeon Hunter 2. While it’s nowhere as good as its source material, the game is less graphic. It is an enjoyable action/RPG with a fairly lengthy campaign, which you can play with others over local and online co-op. The game has an open world design, letting players travel and quest where they want, but suffers from some basic errors — like the main character often gets stuck while walking about, the graphics are sub-par, and the price is really too high compared to other apps. It’s far from perfect, but for RPG fans looking for an app alternative with a little depth, this one’s worth the try – especially if it’s on sale.
App Review: Stupidness 2 PRO
It would be easy to accuse Stupidness 2 PRO of 
living up to its name, but that would be lazy and misleading. The app does include some good brain-teasers — and it smartly includes hints for people who can’t figure out a solution (at the cost of IQ points). However, many of the puzzle solutions are random and seem meant only to showcase the iDevice’s abilities (like the gyroscope or multitouch). Additionally, it’s a very short app. Some users can breeze through it in 10-15 minutes, which makes the price tag — even at 99 cents — questionable. Unless you’re hopelessly addicted to these sorts of puzzles, the free version should suffice just fine.
App review: The Civil War Today
Leave it to The History Channel to make 
any other history-oriented app seem paltry. The Civil War Today is a breathtaking undertaking, crammed with fascinating data and presented in such a way that it never overwhelms the user. Daily updates mirror the events of 150 years ago, with newspaper reports and summary information, but the app also underlines the growing tragedy of the war with casualty counts on both sides, letters and diaries from soliders (again, on both sides), photos, quotes of the day, maps, and an interactive quiz. History buffs will be in heaven, but even students who have a moderate interest in the Civil War will find themselves anxiously awaiting updates every day.
App Review: Air Penguin
The key to success in the app store, it seems, is to include birds in 
your game. Air Penguin features another flightless fowl bouncing from point to point. That’s much like Tiny Wings, but this game uses the iDevice’s tilt function rather than gravity to move the bird around. And that requires the controls to be perfect. Unfortunately, they’re not in this app. As you advance through the 100 levels, the obstacles increase, which makes the control problems more noticeable. And while it’s a decision that was obviously made for gameplay, it’s odd that the game ends when your penguin hero falls in the water. Last we checked, penguins could swim….
The push to earn fish, the in-game currency, by downloading and playing other apps (some of which cost money) is a bit annoying. Parents might want to talk to their kids about this kind of marketing. Since you can earn fish by simply playing the game, it isn’t necessary to downloading other apps. On the whole, this app is entertaining, and is the very definition of bite-sized gaming.
App Review: You Don’t Know Jack
One of the highlights of the You Don’t Know J
ack series has always been its topical nature. And the series couldn’t be more topical in its iDevice debut, with questions and comments about Elizabeth Taylor’s death, Charlie Sheen’s bizarre behavior, and the royal wedding. As with the recent console version, this is a wonderful blend of sarcasm and trivia and melds old school gameplay with modern times. The jokes might go too far for some parents, though, so this is definitely not a game for younger players. Older players will love the humor, however. And, as an added bonus, the questions are truly challenging, which could help you learn a thing or two as you play.
App Review: Collision Effect
Collision Effect is downright mesmerizing. 
Armed with both a puzzle mode for strategic thinkers and an arcade mode for people who like their action a little faster paced, the game takes a basic mechanic — don’t let two comet-like orbs of different colors collide, but match up the ones of the same color — and with a little polish turns it into a game that’s hard to put down without taking just one … more … turn. Bonus points for not going with the obvious explosion sound when two incompatible orbs collide and for the colorful “tails” the orbs leave behind them as they move. They’re particularly helpful when you’re trying to figure out what you did wrong — and they add to the difficulty in later levels as you’ll need to brush them away with your finger to get a better view of what’s happening on screen. This is a rare game that can both calm and excite you — sometimes simultaneously.
App Review: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12 for iPad
Compared to its peers, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 
12 is one of the best golf games on the iPad, but judged against the larger console gaming category, it falls a bit short. The swipe mechanic used to take shots works fine most of the time, but occasionally adds more power than you expect — and little errors in the angle of your swipe can have tremendous consequences on screen. However, these controls do provide you with the ability to shoot the ball at a slight angle and add some English to it, which affects its landing. The commentary is also sometimes inappropriate for the situation on screen — not in an offensive way, but it often seems disconnected to the player’s situation. Players can create their own character or use one of the pros, but it doesn’t tremendously affect gameplay. All of this said, the game looks great and the Closest to the Pin challenge is one of the better Facebook integrations of any app. Dedicated duffers might like parts of this app, but casual fans of the sport — and young players — are likely to get frustrated.
Chris Morris: Journalist 