Square Enix, the company behind RPG giants like the 
Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises, knows a lot about the role-playing genre — and with Chaos Rings, it shows that it can transfer its knowledge into the mobile market too. The game is playable in bite-sized chunks, which is hard to pull off in this sort of title. The pace is quick, but steady, never significantly penalizing players for mistakes, keeping them engaged.
Tag Archives: iPad
App review: Diner Dash: Grilling Green
The Diner Dash franchise has been a hit among casual gamers 
for years – and for good reason. It’s an upbeat, enjoyable strategy game that makes you smile. Diner Dash: Grilling Green follows in those footsteps, keeping you on your toes, but never overwhelming you completely. The game, which was developed specifically for the iPad, takes advantage of the hardware’s capabilities, with a real focus on multitouch. As you enter the middle and later stages of the game, you’ll need to use both hands to keep up with demanding customers and help cook the food. A multiplayer mode lets you share the workload with a friend, though — one seating the customers and handling orders, while the other assists with food preparation. It’s something that wouldn’t be possible on the iPhone, but that works wonderfully on the iPad. The only disappointment is the game’s length — 20 levels instead of the 50 that came with Diner Dash on the iPhone — but they’re all masterfully done.
Read more at Common Sense Media
App review: Vacation Mogul HD
Building simulations often run the risk of becoming repetitive, 
but Vacation Mogul HDavoids this by peppering in a decent story and a pair of mini-games that are woven well into the story. The game holds players’ hands through the early stages to make sure you grasp play concepts, but not in an annoying manner. Novice players won’t feel any pressure to hurry – and there’s no “losing” a round, since there are no time limits. Veteran players of the genre, though, will enjoy the challenge of winning gold cup rewards for finishing within a time limit.
Apple TV moves from download to streaming
Apple is wading into the stream. The company’s 
much-anticipated overhaul of its Apple TV service eschews the download-to-own model in favor of an HD Web streaming rental biz.
Apple’s plan to make movies available day and date with DVD for a $4.99 rental is in keeping with the film biz’s piracy-combatting push to make titles available for easy legal downloads through a host of platforms, from Apple’s iTunes to Netflix (which Apple TV will support); Amazon, Hulu and Blockbuster; the major videogame consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo; and, soon, YouTube.
Apple revamps Apple TV, iPod and a whole lot more
Apple certainly wasn’t lacking for news at its press 
event today. We’ve got a story up on the front page of Variety, focusing on Apple TV, right now – and an analysis piece will be in tomorrow’s daily edition.
One thing that has seemingly been lost in the shuffle is Apple made it clearer than ever that it was gunning for Nintendo and Sony – and it’s not afraid of either company’s gaming legacy. In the meantime, here’s a recap of some of the other news that Jobs & Co. unveiled.
Apple enters rental biz
Apple has made it official: It will soon offer 99 cent TV 
show rentals as part of the launch of an extensive revision of its Apple TV service.
Apple said it would offer streaming rentals of skeins from Fox, ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel and BBC America on a rental basis. Users are able to watch the show for 30 days from the moment the episode is rented, and once it starts playing users have 48 hours to finish watching it.
App review: Can You Find It?
Can You Find It? doesn’t offer a lot of innovations in the hidden 
object puzzle genre, but it doesn’t need to. The game uses a smart hint system, eye-popping photos, and a local high score board to keep players captivated and challenged. Fans of Where’s Waldo and Little Things will feel right at home, looking for a hypothetical needle in a haystack. It will take a while to figure out all the puzzles, but once you do, there’s not a lot to keep players engaged. Until that happens, though, it’s a great diversion.
Read more at Common Sense Media
App review: Textfree Unlimited
Today’s phones are often used more for texting than calling — 
and the costs of those SMS messages can add up quickly. TextFree Unlimited lets people text as much as they want without causing a spike in their phone bill. The reliability of the app is pretty solid. We didn’t encounter any “dark” periods when testing, regardless of time. Receivers always got their messages promptly and their replies were just as speedy. The volume of ads is annoying, though — and tacking on a recurring annual fee to a free app feels a bit iffy. (The app used to carry a one-time charge of $5.99 for no ads.) Parents will still need to monitor who their kids are texting and what’s being said, but for the budget conscious, this is a good alternative.
App review: Mother Goose Interactive Nursery Rhymes
Mother Goose Interactive Nursery Rhymes strives hard to bring the 
joy and magic of the classic children’s tales to life, but misfires on a few key points. While the art and illustration are gorgeous, the app only tackles a small number of nursery rhymes — certainly not enough to justify the price. Worse, the narration of the rhymes often doesn’t match the words onscreen, which will be unhelpful to kids who are trying to learn to read via the app. (For example, in “Three Blind Mice,” the text reads “they all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife,” but the narrator skips the word “off”.) The extras — a puzzle and a freeform art pad — are fine, but are done better elsewhere for less.
Read more at Common Sense Media
App Review: Touch Maze
Touch-based maze puzzles seem like a great idea for products like the iPhone 
and iPod Touch, but in order to be fun, the touch sensitivity has to be flawless. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with TOUCH MAZE. All too often, the screen will fail to keep up with users’ finger drags, taking players’ minds off of the solution and focusing it on getting the on-screen marker moving again. That’s a problem when playing a time-based game. The iPad two-player version of the game is a nice twist — and adds to the enjoyment of the app, but ultimately suffers from the same flaws.
Chris Morris: Journalist 