Even though services like Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo, AOL, Twitter and Facebook make it possible to instant or direct message just about anyone online these days, some folks still swear by Internet Relay Chat (IRC). In fact, for many die-hard geeks and software development teams, IRC is the only way to fly.

There are plenty of Web-based and standalone apps that let you join IRC chat rooms (or, channels, as they’re typically called) from your desktop computer, but once you go mobile, your options dwindle. Colloquy, one of the most popular open-source IRC clients for the Mac, now has a spiffy new version for the iPhone that lets you stay connected in-channel while you’re on the road.

Once installed, Colloquy sets up easily in minutes. To add an IRC network to your preferred list, simply supply its address and your identity information. You can choose to automatically connect to the server and even individual rooms at launch.

It’s easy to remove networks from your list if you decide you no longer want to visit them.

Colloquy runs in the background to track conversations and tells you at a glance where the action is. It also alerts you when someone in the channels you’ve joined uses your nickname or keywords you’ve pre-designated.

Channel conversations are streamlined thanks to nickname and emoticon completion popups and support for all the common IRC commands you’re used to using with computer-based IRC clients.

Colloquy for the iPhone has a number of other useful features including support for landscape mode, a searchable room member list, and secure connections over SSL. Clicked links open with the built-in browser, and Colloquy even stays connected when you lock your phone.

If you use IRC for online communication, then Colloquy for the iPhone’s $1.99 price tag is well worth it. The app is easy to use, even for a novice, and has a great user-community that can help you get started or answer any questions that arise. Once you have the app up and running, be sure to come by TheAppleBlog’s IRC channel and say hi.

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For its latest title, EA has brought Bioware’s Mass Effect to iPhone. This installment builds on the story from the original critically acclaimed console game.

Set in the same universe as the original console game, Mass Effect Galaxy features a rich story peppered with action-packed gunplay.

As you’d expect with a game set in the Mass Effect universe, the game is driven by a strong plot, leading you from one shoot out to the next. Imagine an episode of 24 set in outer-space featuring feuding alien races, with you as an intergalactic Jack Bauer.

Talk First, Shoot Later

The story is compelling, but the conversation branching — being able to guide your character through interactive dialogue scenes — seems like smoke and mirrors. More often than not it seems thst there’s a predetermined outcome to a conversation and that there’s nothing that can be done to change it.

Setting dialogue navigation aside though, the artwork and animation is impeccable. Instead of going for hi-res 3D motion graphic sequences, we’re treated to a cartoony take on the Mass Effect universe. Indeed it was so effective that I was left hankering for a Mass Effect Saturday morning cartoon.

Tilt ‘n’ Tote

The combat sequences, slotted in between each dialogue segment, are played from a birds-eye view. The controls are a great twist on an established genre: your mercenary fires automatically, it’s up to you to tilt the iPhone, moving him to a more strategic area of the map.

Unfortunately, on my iPhone 3G, the combat sequences suffer from slowdown. At times, the game is rendered unplayable to the point that I rebooted the iPhone several times throughout the game. Plus, the game suffers from an occasional bug whereby a combat sequence begins but you’re unable to control the main character. It’s a horrid bug and, for EA and BioWare, unexpected and improper.

There are also long loading times between combat rooms. Its frustrating enough to have to wait a minute or more to play through a 30 second sequence, it’s worse still that EA has seen fit to place advertisements on the loading screens. It’s a real drag to be advertised to in a premium app, especially when the advertising breaks up the story and ruins what little immersion the game has to offer.

Summing Up: Rotten Apple Award

EA needs to up its game on iPhone. It may be the big boy on console and PC, but young upstarts like ngMoco, Chillingo and BulkyPix are making better games — games that are fun and stable.

Gamers who are familiar with Mass Effect would be forgiven for expecting more from the iPhone iteration. The game’s bugs are a major disappointment and, while it may be an interesting play for avid followers of the franchise, this is one to avoid for everyone else.

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Doom Resurrection is aptly named, the archetypal shooter having risen from the grave for the iPhone and iPod touch. The thing is, though, when the dead return, they never come back the same.

You know the story: future, Mars, research facility, teleportation experiments, hell unleashed. Mayhem ensues as you, the sole surviving marine, attempt to thwart the evil and escape, killing anything that moves along the way.

The game itself is clearly derived from Doom 3, the 2004 re-imagining of the PC franchise. Remade again for a handheld experience, Doom Resurrection is visually stunning. The textures, the models and the lighting all are superb, as are the sound effects. Doom Resurrection made me forget I was playing a game on a phone or a media player. The detailed graphics are something I would expect to see on a PlayStation Portable, and yet the frame rates are fluid on my iPhone 3G.

Controls

However, unlike the PSP, the lack of physical controls on Apple’s devices has condensed Doom Resurrection, too. At 80MB and eight levels of play, there is still plenty of game, but it’s a different kind of play.

Accelerometer = Aim/Look

The biggest change is the control scheme with the accelerometer being used to look and aim by tilting the device. It’s a responsive, well-designed implementation, as is the solution for player-controlled movement: eliminating it. A “shooter on rails” has been the pejorative refrain from critics describing the lack of free roaming in Doom Resurrection. Instead, the player is moved along a set path through the levels, pausing for combat and story exposition, the latter playing out in IM chat bubbles — voiceovers, please!

Doom Resurrection User Interface

The UI is built around the core of the Doom franchise: shooting things. Up to three weapons can be cycled through, most of which need reloading. Ammunition, as well as health packs, are scattered and hidden on the levels. Touching them on the screen picks them up, but since movement is guided, they can be easily missed.

Shake Move

Besides shooting, there are three other actions the player can take during the game. On the first few levels, fat zombies will attempt to grapple and bite. Shaking the device pushes them off.

Dodge Move

Dodging missile attacks like fireballs is accomplished by using the special move button located on the bottom, opposite the fire button. Timing is everything, and it’s best to learn early. Dodging is used throughout the game, as is cover.

Uncovered

Some enemies will stand off and shoot at you. In that situation, by toggling cover you can hide behind objects and avoid damage.

Under Cover

Whether behind cover or not, a yellow hexagon will appear as enemies fire. That shrinking hexagon represents enemy accuracy, and when it turns red you’ll start taking damage if you are out in the open.

Overall, the control scheme is great for a multitouch device. The question then becomes whether the game itself is worth playing, not to mention paying $9.99.

Gameplay

Three most important rules for Doom Resurrection: headshot, headshot, headshot.

Play begins with acclimation to the control scheme and introducing the story that continues throughout the game. While some exposition can be skipped, other dialogue has to be tapped through, annoyingly even on replay. The story and dialogue could be better, too. One character, a little plot device robot that follows you, makes sounds in lieu of speech. Does a game that’s based upon blowing bodies apart with a shotgun really need a cutsie R2-D2 knockoff?

You see this? This is my BOOMSTICK!

The repetition of the storytelling is a small annoyance; a larger one is the repetition of the killing. Sadly, there is no random spawning of monsters. The game is exactly the same, regardless of difficulty setting, and that would be the third disappointment. The four levels of difficulty are based upon how much damage attacks inflict. One other complaint would be that only a single saved game is allowed. Still, the complaints on play are small, and the praise deservedly big.

I said stay down! Bad dog! Here, have a chainsaw chew toy.

The first time through, around three hours at moderate difficulty, was a riot. The lack of roaming was never missed, the near-constant combat keeping me fully engaged. It’s not just point and shoot, either.

Two-headed monkey demons, meet the chaingun, chaingun, demon monkeys.

Nicely migrated from the franchise is the need to match weapon to foe. There are eight seven weapons: assault rife, shotgun, double-barrel shotgun, chainsaw, chaingun, plasma rifle, and, of course, the BFG. In my opinion, the assault rifle is a concession to the casual gamer, what with an infinite ammo supply, but the rest require judicious use of supplies.

Attention, monsters, there’s a blue light special on aisle nine, the plasma gun.

The best firing solution is short bursts when possible. If not, switching weapons often takes less time than reloading. Frantically reloading while an unspeakable evil charges down a hallway is another hallmark of Doom. Resist the Pavlovian urge to reload after every kill, as there is often an immediate follow-up attack.

BFG: good times, good times

Of course, bosses require an entirely different approach: biggest weapon to smallest, full auto, keep shooting. The exception is the BFG. That weapon requires holding the fire button down as long as possible, releasing a correspondingly large plasma discharge. I love the BFG, and I love Doom Resurrection.

Summing Up: Gold Award

Doom Resurrection is bloody fun, if you swing that way. For those that do, but worry over a “rails” ride, Doom Resurrection is “rails” like a roller coaster. For those wary of repetitious play, the replay value is in the perfect level as scored at the end. New features will diversify play with future updates like leaderboards, downloadable content and cooperative multiplayer, but even without new play, Doom Resurrection is golden.

Scoring a Level

Doom Resurrection is the best game to date for the iPhone and iPod touch. Seriously, it is, and if $9.99 seems like a lot, it’s really not, not for a game that can compete with content on dedicated handhelds like the PSP. The big brains at id Software have done it by creating the next evolutionary leap in casual gaming, and it has teeth like razor blades.

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Due to hefty 3G roaming rates, Apple’s Maps app just won’t cut it when you’re out of the country. The oMap app lets you download maps for offline viewing — dodging a shocking bill post-vacation.

The iPhone is an almost perfect companion for travels to distant lands. With a bit of foresight and time set aside for planning, it’s possible to mix and match the perfect blend of vacation apps, ensuring you make the most of your journey.

My own package of essential travel tools includes Evernote, QuadCamera, Gengo Flashcards and HearPlanet. Without a 3G connection overseas, though, Apple’s Maps app proves utterly redundant — if I can’t connect, I can’t use it.

oMaps brings offline mapping to the iPhone. The app includes GPS, multiple zoom levels, map bookmarking and search functionality.

Don’t Google It

Notably, oMaps doesn’t make use of Google Maps. The developer, Thomas Bonnin, cites licensing restrictions from Google as the reason. Instead, the app utilizes OpenStreetMap, a service referred to by Bonnin as “the Wikipedia of maps.”

Despite being a community-maintained mapping service — meaning that there may be lower detail in some areas — in practice, the maps seem to be accurate, detailed and certainly useful for tourists. Even better, OpenStreetMap includes restaurants, ATMs, bus stations and other notable landmarks — a boon for lone travelers.

Best of all, because oMaps makes use of an open-source solution, after purchasing the app, individual maps are free to download. Admittedly, in-app purchasing of new maps would have been a neat iPhone OS 3.0 feature, although for me to grumble about that is akin to performing extended dental work on a gift horse.

Making Your Map

To create a new offline map, you simply open the app, browse to the location you’d like to view later and click save. Maps can only be downloaded via Wi-Fi, due to potentially large download sizes (the app saves the current zoom level and each increasing level of detail beyond that).

Although the developer states that you can save unlimited maps, there is one major constraint. The app will only start saving a map from a certain level of detail. If you zoom too far out — in my case when trying to download all of Helsinki — oMaps will refuse to save.

Essentially, the app draws a line as to how much you’re able to download in one go. It certainly doesn’t ruin the app or its functionality, but it’s a seemingly arbitrary obstacle, surpassed simply by downloading a given area in several separate chunks.

On Your Travels

Downloading a useful portion of a given city takes time and requires a stable connection. To make the best use of oMaps, you’ll need to plan ahead and prepare at least a day or so before traveling.

Once you’re offline and on the move, the app comes into its own. For me, flipping the iPhone to Airplane Mode and opening oMaps felt like cartographical witchcraft — the app located me immediately and I could zoom in and out, viewing my surrounding area in various levels of detail.

It’s worth clarifying for less tech-savvy users how this works. Your data connection — 3G, Edge, GPRS — may cost money to use overseas, usually at an inflated rate. The GPS in your iPhone — used for locating you — is free. oMaps uses the GPS to locate you and requires no data connection because the data itself, the map, has already been downloaded and saved to your iPhone.

Just like Apple’s Maps app, oMaps includes a GPS button. Pressing the button will locate you, assuming you’ve downloaded the corresponding map for the area you’re occupying. There are a few differences and drawbacks, though.

Unlike Maps, once you’re on the move, there are no directions or search functionality. Directions may be an arguably complex function, however Search does seem like something that could have been achieved — even if it means downloading a little more data when initially saving the map.

Summing Up

The app has a few issues that, while irritating, don’t ruin the overall functionality. Saving multiple maps for one city can be a drag, but then it’s all free and can be used offline, even with GPS. Plus, the lack of search functionality means that you may have to do a little extra pre-planning before setting off.

Rather than comparing oMaps to Apple’s Google-powered Maps, it’s perhaps best to see the app as a replacement to a traditional map. It saves purchasing horrid foldout maps and, as such, is more discreet and agreeable for meandering tourists.

Most importantly though, oMaps is a time and money saver. Although it won’t prove useful at home, when you’re in foreign lands this really will be an essential app.

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Mixing neon visuals and techno music with top-down shooting action and inertia-based movement, circuit_strike.one pushes the limits of Apple hardware, and possibly the patience of the casual gamer.

Setting

The player is pilot of a virtual ship that hacks network nodes, in a stylized metaphor for a computer network. A mission is completed by destroying a shield generator protecting the data core, then by destroying the data core itself. Against the player are enemies rendered as wireframe polyhedrons, attacking by ramming and/or shooting the player’s ship.

Player firing laser and missing badly

An animation sequence follows loading, complete with an ancient modem sounding over a phone line, which is a nice touch. There’s a lot of that in circuit_strike.one. Die, and you are mocked in l33t speak. Attacking enemies pulse to the bass of the background music. The graphics are lavish: transparent overlays, trailing, lens flares, a visual experience designed as much to impress as to kill with distraction, as if the game wasn’t good at that already.

Controls

Basic control scheme

Everything about circuit_strike.one is deceptively easy to understand. The zoomed playing field is a wraparound with the shielded data core located in the center. You rotate the ship using the thumb-control on the left. Fire button is on the right. Tapping accelerates the ship, while swiping downward brakes. Braking is crucial because movement is inertia-based, though a ship in motion will not remain in motion forever. It feels not so much like flying through space, as sliding across ice, but the learning curve is steep. Here are a few tips.

• Don’t move. Seriously, that’s the most important advice for beginners. New players should practice turning the ship and firing at enemies before ever using thrusters.
• Tap, then swipe. That’s the way to learn moving and stopping the ship.
• Chasing powerups is a good way to learn basic movement.
• Intermediate movement begins with thrusting forward, spinning the ship and shooting back along the flight path.
• Learning to circle enemies by rotating the ship and thrusting, while strafing, too, is an advanced technique (at least for me).

Two enemies, ship, green Ghost Data

Gameplay

The main form of enemy attack is ramming the player’s ship. Enemies differ in that some are fast, some slow, some take multiple shots to kill, some split into more enemies or swarm, and at least one shoots back. One other common characteristic is that destroyed enemies leave behind Ghost Data, and Ghost Data means Bullet Time.

Bullet Time, 1.83 seconds left

By shaking the device, the player can induce a kind of slow-motion mode of play. While the player’s ship speed remains constant, enemies are perceptibly slow. In addition, the player’s ship becomes temporarily invulnerable, and that’s an invaluable feature for completing the level.

Top left, Shield Generator, bottom left, Turret, center, Imminent Death

Shield generators are defended by stationary turrets which track the player’s ship and shoot projectiles. While taking out the turret is not required to destroy the shield generator, it’s a good idea. However, it’s also a good idea to do so without using Bullet Time.

Data Core, top left, overlaid by timer, 4.04 seconds left

Once all the shield generators are destroyed, the data core, which is located in the center of the playing field, is vulnerable. It will take several seconds of constant fire before the data core is destroyed and the level completed. This is the best use of Bullet Time, as it also slows the self-destruct timer. Advancing to the next level means more enemies, more shield generators, and less time to destroy the Data Core. That’s circuit_strike.one, and that’s why I hate it.

Summing Up: Silver Rating

I hate circuit_strike.one, and that’s the highest compliment that I can pay any game. It’s the kind of hate that brings me back again and again to try to beat it — not play it. That is the difference between “hardcore” and “casual” gaming for me, and that’s why circuit_strike.one may not be for everyone. There’s also the occasional freezing glitch during play, most likely from my iPhone 3G receiving a beat down rendering the visuals. I contacted the developer, and an update will be forthcoming. It addresses memory overhead and allows the player to reduce visuals and other CPU-intensive settings.

At 99 cents, it’s not about the money, but your time. Whether or not you want to make the kind of investment required to play circuit_strike.one comes down to how much of a challenge you are looking for. I strongly recommend finding out.

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A genie, a load of balls, and an ancient labyrinth come together to create a frustrating, but fun, puzzler.

One of the big boys in the movie biz, Warner Bros., has been solidly churning out iPhone apps for the past few months. Most of these apps have been global franchises, though, including Terminator Salvation, Watchmen and — the double whammy of brand-names — LEGO Batman.

Without a movie, cartoon series, or line of toys, Stuck Genie is an entirely original game. Containing 73 puzzles, the game challenges you to complete each one and earn the highest score.

You Look Like You’re Stuck

It’s immediately clear that the game is worthy of the Warner Bros. name. It’s bright and colorful, instantly pleasing to the eye and, although it’s not an established brand, the game has an artwork style that is very much its own.

The attention to detail, especially important from such a big publisher, pervades almost every aspect of the game. Even the name-entry screen is fun, finding you spinning an alphabet wheel, and dragging letters around to spell your name.

Musically, the game features a chill-out soundtrack pinched straight from the beaches of Ibiza. It’s absolutely out of character for a puzzle game — especially one featuring a mischievous cartoon genie.

And yet it works: When the puzzles get tougher, the mellow background music makes it feel more like you’re chillaxing, as opposed to seriously flexing your cognitive problem-solving muscles.

Control Your Inner Genie

Before jumping into the first level proper, there’s a tutorial section. The tutorial explains the basics: By tapping and dragging, you control an orange ball moving through a labyrinth.

Your aim, in each level, is to collect the other balls dotted around the maze. The mazes are incredibly simple, and collecting the balls is achieved simply by colliding with them.

The real challenge is that the balls stick to your orange ball as you collect them; your shape grows and changes with each added ball. Maneuvering through the maze becomes tougher as you collect each ball, and forward planning is key to solving each puzzle.

Misadventures in the Maze

My sojourn through the freaky genie’s labyrinth hit a major roadblock, though. Closing the app to take a break, due to a tough level, I returned hours later to be sent back to the start of level one.

Apparently, Stuck Genie features no auto-save functionality. This means that to save, you have to exit the game by first pausing it and then clicking exit (which instigates a save). Simply tapping the iPhone’s Home button will exit, but it won’t save.

Furthermore, after working my way back to the tough level I’d been stuck on, I discovered that there’s no rest or rewind button. This is an all but essential feature for this genre of puzzle game.

To reset the level, you have to open the menu and select rewind; it doesn’t ruin the game, but it’s an oversight nonetheless. Far more preferable would be, say, tapping the genie to use a magical time-reversing crystal, or even just a plain old rewind/reset button.

Summing Up

There’s something about the cartoony yet ornate artwork, which, when melded with the Café del Mar-esque chill-out soundtrack make for a very mellow but challenging puzzler.

This mellow vibe is immensely important in Stuck Genie’s case, because some of the puzzles had me literally roaring with frustration — the good kind of frustration, though, when you know you’re being beat by a devious puzzle and you’ve just got to solve it.

Despite being so much fun from the off, the difficulty curve was unexpectedly steep. Nevertheless, fans of challenging puzzlers should download Stuck Genie and get stuck in immediately.

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If we were to liken the iPhone to a Greek hero — all muscle-bound and chiseled man-face — it would surely be Achilles, the guy with the wonky heel.

The iPhone is our modern-day electronic hero, savior of our interconnected lives. Yet it is a hero with one tiny flaw, a weakness that even its fondest admirers are prone to point out: This wonder-device features an awful camera.

Face Fun aims to put your iPhone’s questionable camera to good use, using face-recognition technology to place your face in a variety of amusing situations.

Funny Looking

Upon launch, the app immediately dishes up two options: Select a photo from the iPhone photo album, or take a new photo using the camera. There’s no tutorial, no funny splash screen or amusing introductory animation — just two options to choose from, with no indication of what might happen next.

As such, even before Face Fun has properly started, it feels half-finished. There’s no attempt to build a fun, playful environment and no effort to explain exactly what’s going on.

Once a photo has been loaded, clicking the Detect Face Button starts the magic happening. The app “automagically” detects all the faces in the image you’ve selected. Given such a shaky start, it’s surprising to find that the face recognition really works — never failing to detect faces, despite weird expressions and odd angles.

With the automagical detection done, you’re then able to select one of the faces out of a thumbnail lineup. The face you chose is then superimposed — as if by tiny Photoshop imps inside your iPhone — onto a larger scene.

Funny Ha Ha or Funny Weird

The app presents a selection of 19 varied scenes to choose from, almost all of which are dismal attempts at kooky humor. You can choose from scenes such as the laugh-a-minute “your face on a TV screen while a cat watches,” or the downright giggle-fest that is “your face projected on the screen at a business conference.”

I really do have a sense of humor. I pride myself on taking regular rides in the ROFLcopter; Face Fun though, isn’t much fun and the humorous situations on offer fail to amuse.

Within this disappointing mess of humorless instances are a couple of acceptable attempts — my favorite being creating a jigsaw puzzle out of the face, an imaginative and well-realized scene. It’s worth noting, though, that the jigsaw puzzle isn’t playable; it’s just a static image.

Inter-Face Fun

Besides lacking any sort of scene-setting introductory tutorial, the app also lacks aesthetic flair and, thus, feels somewhat drab in terms of user interface. Face Fun is, in effect, a wonderful example of poor interface design. The app feels cheap and lazy: There’s either been no usability testing or no effective feedback from testers.

For instance, to create a scene with your face in it, you have to physically drag the face thumbnail over, and onto, the scene thumbnail. It’s a smart and literal method interaction, however, there’s nothing to explain this in the app.

I spent a couple of minutes single tapping and double tapping until it dawned on me to try dragging. There’s no other dragging within the app and no indicator that to access this part of the interface I’d need to drag.

The Detect Face Button is another example of drab design — it’s just a plain text-button in the bottom right corner. This button exemplifies the app’s biggest issue — there’s nothing fun or exciting going on, certainly no wacky sounds or kooky user interface. Face Fun is just an expensive, and drab, tech-demo.

Summing Up

It’s not a great app, lacking as it is in both functionality and content. At the core of the app, where there should be a cavalcade of content, there’s just an incredibly limited amount of scenes, many of which just aren’t amusing.

And what’s worse, there’s no way to mail your silly creations to friends or to upload to your favorite social network (apart from saving the image out and doing it manually). It’s interesting technology, though, and so, while I can’t recommend this app, I do hope that the developers invent some much more compelling uses for their face-recognition system.

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A bag of metal balls, a rockabilly soundtrack, exploding pegs: Rockchinko is the pachinko machine from hell.

Harking back to the old American parlor game Corinthian Bagatelle, pachinko has captured the imagination, and yen, of Japan. While the game may not have invaded Western casinos, there’s a steady stream of pachinko apps arriving for the iPhone.

Rockchinko gives pachinko an injection of rock ‘n’ roll, featuring physics-defying tilting, plectrum powerups and tons of guitars across more than 40 levels.

Pinball Wizard

Breaking away from the seedy glitz and smokey fog of traditional pachinko parlors, Rockchinko restyles pachinko’s dated look for the rock generation — installing a twisted metal board coated in a neon glow.

The design can be a little inconsistent at times though, one moment shiny metal, the next pixellated skulls — it’s a messy milieu that floats between edgy and geeky.

Of course, there’s a rocking soundtrack too: Each stage is based on a different sub-genre, including blues, rockabilly and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll. Although none of the music seems to be directly licensed from well-known bands, à la Tap Tap Revenge, the music certainly captures the theme of the game.

Scales and Modes

There are three main game modes, two of which are initially locked and unavailable. To unlock the two game modes, you’ll have to complete Normal Mode — a feat that’ll only take a couple of hours at most for a new player.

Once Normal Mode has been beaten, Randomizer and Rock Mode are unlocked. Randomizer allows you to play through the array of stages on offer in Normal mode in a random order — it’s simple and effective, and revisiting even the early levels can still present a challenge to seasoned players.

The third game mode, Rockstar, contains a set list of brand-new stages to launch, tilt and turn through. The Rockstar stages blend together all the previous features and gameplay twists discovered in Normal Mode.

Everyone Can Play Guitar

The aim of each level is to destroy all the red pegs by bouncing your metal ball around the stage. The balls are fired from the funnel at the top of the screen, which can be adjusted by dragging side to side.

Tapping anywhere on the screen launches your shot and, once the ball is in play, the iPhone can be tilted, affecting the ball’s direction. With enough practice it’s possible to move the ball around the playing field, squeezing out each shot’s destructive potential.

There are obstacles, too, unlocked as you progress through Normal Mode. Windmills, moving platforms, and warp holes can prove formidable hindrances or useful tools, depending on your perspective. Also enhancing the puzzle aspect of the game is a range of effective powerups, from the tame Triple Ball to the impressive Flame Thrower and bombastic Mega Ball.

Destroying all but one red peg instantly throws the game into “Matrix”-esque slow-motion. The camera dramatically crash zooms on your ball and you’re given full control, even the ability to turn the iPhone upside down, sending your ball plummeting upwards and defying the laws of physics.

As your metal ball speeds across the screen, combusting any pegs it collides with, you’re thrown in to slow-mo for your coup de grâce. Oddly, this destructive slow-mo finale reminds me of Burn Out (the hyper-destructive crash and burn driving game) as it’s so exciting, needlessly dramatic, and satisfying.

Summing Up

Even with the levels I couldn’t beat on first try, I knew I could adjust my strategy, come back and keep advancing through the game. And that’s where Rockchinko introduces depth. You’ll need to be strategic, planning out your shots and tilts before hand, for each stage.

There’s still work that needs to be done, though. It needs more stages, online scoring, and some kind of competitive element. Plus the load times are abominable. However, the main game is executed almost perfectly. It’s incredibly satisfying, so much fun, and has consistently left me wanting more after every session.

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Easy Wakeup is an advanced alarm clock, designed to gently nudge you from your slumber, helping you wake up alert and ready to tackle the day’s tasks.

For some of us, sleep is a real bane — an interruption to what would otherwise be the perfect non-stop working schedule. To others, settling in to the glorious dirge of dreaming is a true joy. Regardless, we’ve all got to wake up sometime and, aside from those truly gifted natural-risers, most of us rely on an alarm clock.

Easy Wakeup is pitched as a smart alarm clock for the iPhone. Alongside waking you at the optimal moment, based on your sleep cycle, it also incorporates custom alarm tones and sleep-related statistics.

The Science of Sleep

Free Terra, the team behind the app, claims that Easy Wakeup helps you rise refreshed, energized and alert. The core features of the app are based on their assertion that the phase of sleep in which a person wakes up, affects how they feel throughout the day.

The idea is that Easy Wakeup prompts you to wake up at the optimal moment, rather than one pre-determined specific time. The developers say that there’s a link between our sleep phases and our body movements. With this in mind, in order to determine when we should rise, Easy Wakeup monitors your movements as you sleep and then calculates the ideal moment to wake you.

Having swallowed all the pseudo-science, this seems like a reasonable enough assertion to a lay-sleeper like myself. In testing Easy Alarm, I wanted to determine whether the app would bring any additional benefit to me, beyond that of a traditional alarm clock.

Looking Sleepy

Seeing as many users will be interacting with the app when they go to bed, or when they rise from bed, I expected the app to feel comfortable and intuitive. Instead, perched on the edge of my futon, trying to configure Easy Wakeup for the first time, I found the app’s look and feel inconsistent and frustrating.

The Alarm Clocks screen is where, much like the iPhone’s Clock app, you’ll configure multiple alarms – useful for those with shifting sleep routines, or partners who rise at a separate time. The alarms incorporate a cavalcade of settings, from customizable melody, to snooze and wake up intervals.

The incorporation of shake to snooze is terrific. It’s a smart way of having a snoozing user interact with the device. However, being able to configure wake up intervals felt confusing — I just didn’t understand what palpable affect this would have on my sleeping and waking.

Of note also is the Statistics screen, a section of the app which collates data relating to your sleeping patterns, specifically your rest time. The data is then rendered as an ugly looking graph which can be e-mailed out to acquaintances showing an unnatural interest in your sleep patterns.

While it could be wonderful to have access to these kind of statistics, the information it’s recording seems to be useless. I’d love to know how much I rolled around on a given night, or if I mumbled in my sleep, or to be able to consistently rate the quality of a night’s sleep and compare this data over time. Unfortunately, Easy Wakeup’s statistics just aren’t that useful, imaginative or fun.

Sweet Dreams

Setting it up for a night’s sleep I discovered that Easy Wakeup certainly isn’t as easy as the name asserts. Once the alarm is activated, the app instructs you to turn on Airplane Mode, turn off Wi-Fi, set the iPhone brightness to a minimum, charge the battery and attach the iPhone to your hand.

A frustrating, overwhelming, and downright irritating list of instructions that pile on the stress when you’re attempting to settle in for a good night’s sleep. The app is left open while you’re sleeping, hence the brightness needs to be turned down and the battery charged. Frankly, leaving your iPhone on all night with an app open just isn’t going to work for the vast majority of users.

And then there’s the big deal-killer: attaching the iPhone to your hand so that the app can record your movements. Apart from this instruction being utterly odd, killing any enthusiasm I had left for the app, I was quite befuddled when attempting to determine how best my iPhone should be literally attached to my hand: would I use a belt, string, tape, glue, a staple-gun?

Summing Up

The bafflingly long list of instructions, apexing with the über-punchline of, “attach the iPhone to your hand,” utterly ruin this app. I don’t think it’s a realistic, comfortable, or natural proposition to expect users to actually hold or attach the iPhone to their hand while sleeping.

Not being a sleep specialist, dream doctor, or nocturnal nerd, I can’t vouch for Free Terra’s pseudo-scientific assertions when it comes to the theory behind this app. However, sleeping with the iPhone in hand just doesn’t sit (or lie) right with me.

Furthermore, the app is ugly, counter-intuitive, and the stats seem to be useless. For the record, after trying the app for a few nights, I found that my sleep routine was completely disrupted by having the iPhone attached. The stress of having it there caused me to wake up early anyway, thus negating the actual alarm clock functionality. In summary, you’ll sleep better if you avoid Easy Wakeup.

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All of the thrills, adrenaline and drama of ping pong arrives on the iPhone, courtesy of Skyworks.

I’ve tried many sports — rugby, basketball, hockey, even lacrosse — and discovered that physical exertion is not my bag. I much prefer my Macbook Pro and a bowl of edamame for company any day. As a sport, ping pong is special though: it’s high-speed, it’s intense, it’s got a silly name, and it requires very little movement on my part.

Skyworks Ping Pong aims to capture the energy of the real thing, but requires even less physical exertion. The game features a single-player International tournament mode, polished graphics, online scoring and even single-device multiplayer.

Eye of the Tiger

World Cup Ping Pong has been given a dynamic, sporty design with each game playing out on a 3D table. For such a simple game, it’s incredibly polished. Yet, this polish is more akin to a a high-class video poker game than an iPhone app and, as such, the game feels somewhat lacking in character.

This feeling of emptiness, like there’s something missing, could also be attributed in part to the sound, or lack of. The menu and option screens are eerily silent, save for a few chirps on pressing buttons. In-game, there are two cheap ‘n generic dance tunes to choose from — worse still, they get repetitive quickly.

Aside from the gameplay, the classic ping pong sound is one of the most important components of a great ping pong game: that percussive smack of the ball being slapped across the table with a paddle. World Cup Ping Pong gets it exactly right, and, paired with the rhythm of the ball bouncing back and forth, makes for satisfying matches.

Bat & Ball

There are several different game modes to choose from. Players looking for a traditional competition experience will want to jump straight in to Tournament Mode. There’s a choice of teams, including the USA, Russia, Finland and Germany, and a choice of paddles, too.

Arcade Mode provides a more immediate entry point for jumping in to World Cup Ping Pong. With half the table propped up, Forrest Gump-style, you bash away at various targets, attempting to rack up a high score.

Totally unexpected was the Head to Head gameplay mode — with a birds-eye view of the table, you and a friend can both play simultaneously on one iPhone. It was an absolute treat, utterly at odds with Practice Mode. This final game-type had very little use: no lesson, no guidance, just a dry run of Tournament Mode.

Bat In Hand

Once you’ve selected either a Tournament or Arcade Mode, it’s time to choose your paddle. There are three to choose from, not only differing in color but also impacting your technique, in terms of energy and spin. Once you’ve made your choice and have a tight grip of your paddle, it’s time to start a match.

There are absolutely no buttons to learn and, as such, the controls are incredibly simple. Dragging your finger around the screen controls your paddle; serving is as simple as quickly swiping up. The major issue with this control method is that your finger may occasionally obscure the on-screen action.

Once you’ve grasped the basics, the game begins to have a little more depth. Mastering spinning the ball means matches become much more fun. However, the opponents occasionally feel a little too tough, and rallies become repetitive chores, devoid of the drama and pace of real ping pong.

At the end of a game, you’re invited to submit your score online to the global score board. Unfortunately, you’ll have to register and log-in first. Forced registration to access in-game features are loathsome — frequently a thinly veiled excuse to harvest e-mail addresses and rarely genuinely needed. In the case of World Cup Ping Pong, it’s not clear just why I have to register simply to submit my high-score online.

Summing Up

While World Cup Ping Pong isn’t necessarily awful, it just didn’t blow me away, either. The game is missing character and depth, the graphics and music lack charm, and the gameplay, while effective, just didn’t leave me wanting more.

This game certainly isn’t an outstanding pick from the App Store’s Game section; it’s just a fun little time-waster. Fans of the sport won’t find any depth relating to the real thing, but those looking for a quick-to-learn time-waster will certainly glean a little pleasure from this game.

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It’s only fitting that a serious crossword puzzle app has a seriously verbose title.

The daily puzzles offered up by The New York Times are a classic staple in many crossword puzzle players’ diets. Kicking off each week with Monday’s easy offering, the puzzles get gradually more difficult each day, peaking with a fiendishly difficult grid on Friday.

The New York Times Crosswords Daily 2009 is the official NYT crossword app. The app features daily downloads of the latest New York Times crossword puzzle, alongside leaderboards and player profiles.

Sophisticated and Stylish (6 letters)

The game opens with a seriously smooth New York vibe: the Big Apple’s skyline sits atop the menu, rendered with a newspaper-style aesthetic, all backed with light-hearted jazz.

The cheery music and mellow tone was initially off-putting, perhaps due to my current diet of awful iPhone action games. After a few minutes though, I had adjusted to the breezy pace of the game and started to appreciate the gorgeous menu animations.

Zipping through the different menu screens, the animations are utterly gorgeous. Before even setting a single letter on to the grid, it was clear that this is a different breed of iPhone game — it’s smart, paced and incredibly classy.

To Make A Link (7 letters)

Prior to playing, you’ll need to set up a profile, which enables you to access the game’s array of community features and downloadable puzzles. Even though the registration process takes place within the app, it’s still a bore. I resented having to give my email address away, simply to access the game content.

Another issue with the registration process is that you’re automatically given a Magmic Profile. Magmic, the developers of the app, had, quite unexpectedly, created a profile for me on their site. It seems somewhat inappropriate for Magmic to be harvesting user-data for the game in order to create unrelated public profiles on their site (and without prior warning, too).

Once registered, the app is given an injection of content. You’re immediately able to download and play the latest daily crossword from The New York Times. There’s also a small archive of puzzles available to play, dating as far back as 2002. And best of all, downloading happens in a snap, which means you can be playing a fresh puzzle only moments after opening the app.

Corbijn’s Directorial Debut (7 letters)

Once a crossword has been opened, the timer starts ticking, giving the game a sense of pace and competition. Navigating each crossword is surprisingly intuitive. I expected clumsy navigation, and yet the interface design is solid and incredibly easy to grasp.

To select a square on the grid, you simply tap it. The clue is then displayed at the bottom of the screen. Tapping the same square again toggles between Across and Down, while using the left and right arrows (which flank the clue text) scrolls through the clues sequentially. You’re even able to zoom in and out of the grid by pinching, Mobile Safari-style.

Separate to the main crossword grid is an excellent clue view screen. The clue view screen is a useful tool when attempting to solve a grid; it’s a space where the clues are clearly laid out, enabling prolonged perusal and consideration. Plus, solutions can also be entered on this screen, too, enhancing its usefulness.

Summing Up

Magmic says that the app “includes access to daily and archived puzzles until the end of 2009.” It’s not clear exactly what this means, though. Does the app stop downloading all crosswords — even old ones from the NYT archives — when we hit 2010? The lack of clarity is an issue; if the app is essentially a subscription, it should be made clearer from the offset.

Setting the app’s description discrepancy aside, despite it’s overly verbose title, The New York Times Crossword Daily 2009 was an unexpected pleasure to play. The app’s design is classy, and the excellent user interface means that solving the crossword on the iPhone is just as engaging as the real thing.

The real joy of this app is the way in which it stretches your mental capacity. And taking on such a challenge — giving your brain-box a thorough testing — really does make you feel immediately smarter.

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Don’t let life get you down, put your punchin’ gloves on and show the world you’re a champion in this retro boxing game.

In these economically egregious times, we all need a little release from the fiscal pressures dumped upon on our already strained shoulders. Even I need some respite from the current monetary melee, having just conducted a thoroughly British argument with my thoroughly British bank manager, both of us politely snarling, in a disturbingly reserved manner, down the phone line.

Allowing you to take your troubles to the ring, Fist of Fury is a retro-style boxing game for the iPhone. The game features five muscle-bound walking clichés for you to attempt to beat the pulp out of.

Round One

Before you’ve even set fist to face, or foot in ring, however, you’ll be struck down by the inordinately long load time. For a game that has the technical depth of a caveman dressed as a robot, it’s surprising that Fist of Fury takes so long to load.

Once past the loading screen comes the disappointment of seeing what took so long to load. The graphics on the title screen, like those in the rest of the game, look unfinished, more akin to placeholder graphics in a beta version. Only moments into the game, it’s apparent that very little effort has been spent on its visual design.

In the ring and on level one, my opponent was a beefy, retro-styled juggernaut. And yet this juggernaut, the boxing ring, and even my own character reminded me of something. A quick Google search later and it’s clear that Fist of Fury bares a striking resemblance to Nintendo’s NES classic Punch Out.

The audio in Fist of Fury, however, doesn’t bare any resemblance to Punch Out’s glorious blippy bloppy sound effects, nor is it reminiscent of the NES classic’s oddly jaunty music. Fist of Fury features no musical accompaniment and the sound effects, while satisfyingly 8-bit and tinny, are few and far between.

A Hollow Victory

Fists of Fury pits your character, the imaginatively titled John Doe, against five gargantuan opponents. John stands square in the center of the screen, riveted to the spot, perhaps through sheer fear. The only option open to the player is to keeping throwing punches while attempting to dodge your opponents’ onslaught of fists.

Tapping the left and right punch buttons cause John to flail the appropriate fist in the general direction of his enemy. It feels ineffective and devoid of any strategy. For your defense, by leaning the iPhone left or right, you’re able to dodge your opponents advances.

As there’s no tell, or indication of any sort, for when your opponent may punch, nor is there any strategically effective method to dodging and attacking beyond that of randomly leaning left and right, while bashing each punch button alternately. With the gameplay being so lacking in depth, each win in Fist of Fury feels frustratingly futile.

Note that I’ve not mentioned options or settings because there are none. There’s no way to change the game’s difficulty, no tutorial or control overview (understandable, given Fist of Fury’s strategic simplicity), nor is there the opportunity to change your character’s name or add a profile picture.

Summing Up

While the sound and graphics aren’t necessarily awful, they don’t bring anything new to retro-style gaming and are more of a rushed rip than an outright homage. The control mechanism and general game mechanic — no efficient strategy beyond whacking the punch buttons — is a disgustingly poor attempt at mimicking the depth and effectiveness of 8-bit boxing games.

At this point, my only hope is that this review shames the developers of Fist of Fury into either taking app development and their customers seriously, or throwing the towel in and leaving the industry. To summarize, I’ll be blunt as a punch square in the face: Avoid this awful game.

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Get your tweet on and shake your verbs, Tweetie — the much-celebrated iPhone Twitter client — has hit the Mac OS X desktop.

As regular readers will know, I adore my iPhone and I’m an avid tweeter. A few months back, I weighed the options and, despite there being an array of free alternatives, the iPhone version of Tweetie, available for $2.99, was my favorite Twitter client.

Over on Twitter there’s been some serious buzz surrounding the release of the desktop version of Tweetie. Available now, either for $14.99 or as a free ad-supported version, Tweetie for Mac blends a streamlined user interface with a host of essential features, including multiple account support, threaded conversations, URL shortening and image uploads.

From iPhone to Desktop

Every seasoned Twitter user’s stream is more akin to a flood of data: names, links, descriptions, useful posts, phatic musings and more. Opening Tweetie for the first time, the most immediately noticeable and pleasing aspect of this desktop application is the streamlined interface.

The main Tweetie window takes up but a slither of screen real estate. Along the left of the window are the main navigation icons, including avatars for shifting through multiple accounts, and shortcuts to view @replies, DMs and more.

The top of the Tweetie window displays exactly where you are in a given thread — incredibly useful as a visual aid when drilling down through conversations and replies. The main body of the Tweetie window contains your stream, filtering out different information depending on which section you’re in.

Minimal & Sleek Looks

Tweetie’s streamlined approach to presenting and navigating the Twitterverse is also applied to the application’s aesthetic styling. Where Twhirl is garishly on-brand and Tweetdeck is a visual overload, Tweetie’s visual style is, despite the vast quantity of information, minimal and sleek.

Only the most essential icons are on display (other functions are accessed via right-clicking) and clicking through icons to navigate to different sections causes tweets to swish and slide around in an incredibly satisfying way.

Individual tweets keep the visual clutter to a minimum. Alongside the message itself and @reply button, the user’s profile picture and name is presented. Setting aside the @reply button, clicking a username within the message body takes you to that user’s stream, alternatively, double-clicking the profile picture takes you directly to the user’s Twitter stream.

When new tweets arrive, Tweetie’s OS X menu bar icon glows blue, while within the app, updated streams are marked with helpful blue dots. Of course, it all seems so obvious, but that’s because navigating Tweetie is intuitive — allowing you to breeze through conversation threads with ease.

It’s worth noting that the ad-supported free download of Tweetie drops an ad into your stream every hour. The ads genuinely don’t intrude or impede your tweeting: They look good and appear rarely, for $14.99, though, you’re able to order a registration code to disable them.

Getting The Message Across

At the bottom left of the main Tweetie window is the compose button. It seems odd to place the button for such an oft-used function so out of the way from the main application interface. Although you can access the same function via the Command-N keyboard shortcut, the tiny button feels totally disjointed from the actual application.

The tweet composer opens up in a separate window, meaning that the integrity of Tweetie’s sleek ‘n’ chic design isn’t impacted. Plus, you’re able to focus on writing your 140 character musing without distraction from the main stream.

The composer window also packs in a broad range of tweet-enhancing features. For starters, users with multiple accounts can select from which account they would like to send the tweet. If your tweet is over 140 character, Tweetie offers to post via Twitlonger. Plus, via a dropdown menu, you’re able to automagically shorten URLs or add an image.

The latter function can also be accessed by simply dragging and dropping an image into the compose window. When you click the Post button, Tweetie will then upload the image to a Twitter image hosting service — you can choose from Imageshack’s YFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, or Posterous.

The selection of URL-shortening services to choose from is excellent. All the usual suspects are there — TinyURL, Is.gd and Tr.im — but there’s also feature-rich Bit.ly and URL-squishing newcomer Diggbar.

Bit.ly is my shortener of choice, however there’s no account integration for the service. This means there’s no simple way for me to track a specific link and gather stats such as number of visitors over a given period. Although I’m not as familiar with Diggbar, I’d imagine that users of Digg’s fledgling URL shortener may be hankering for account integration, too.

There are a few outstanding issues with tweeting, though. For starters, prolific tweeters may be dismayed to discover that there’s no drafts functionality. Furthermore — and this is a major issue for me — there doesn’t seem to be a method for deleting tweets once you’ve posted them.

Navigating the Twitterverse

Finding your way through the torrent of tweets is rendered effortless with Tweetie. Alongside the intuitive click and double-click features mentioned earlier, it’s also possible to navigate the Twitterverse via a variety of keyboard shortcuts — a real time-saving boon for power users.

Hash tags are clickable, too, instigating an immediate search for the tag. The search section also incorporates trending topics, however it’s executed in an incredibly obtuse way — clicking the magnifying glass icon on the search page brings up a list of currently trending topics. Clicking one of the topics in the list instigates a search. For such an important feature it’s all but hidden and clunky to access.

There are also a few other features missing which, although I tried, it was difficult to adapt to life without them. For starters, there’s no refresh button on the main tweet stream. As such, users hoping to refresh regularly will find it frustrating to have to use the Command-Shift-R shortcut, or simply wait for an auto-refresh.

I was also surprised to discover that Tweetie doesn’t support groups, allowing you to place users in different categories and filter through your tweets. It’s a feature that, when viewing and organizing your contacts in such depth, would have been perfect for the desktop version of Tweetie.

Moving on, the way in which Tweetie renders profile pages follows suit with the rest of the app with a clear design, integrating core features with a couple of useful twists. Stats such as updates, favorites, followers and bio are all on display, accessed in more detail via a quick click.

Clicking the cog icon on the profile page opens a menu with options to @reply, DM, or follow the user. Most useful, though, is that Tweetie clearly tells you if this user is following you. Such an unexpected feature, yet so obvious in retrospect and, especially for social networking via Twitter, inherently useful.

I’ll Get Back To You

The mentions page, represented by the @ button on the left side of the Tweetie interface, works just like Twitter’s own mention page — grabbing any instance of your @username from the Twitterverse. You can even double-click a message to view the conversation thread in full, however this feature seems a little haphazard. It’s still not entirely clear to me when Tweetie will actually display a conversation thread; sometimes a double-click just loads that single message on its own.

Although there’s a reply button on all tweets, there are no dedicated buttons for DM, repost or favorite. Instead, right-clicking the message body brings up a menu with a variety of options: reply, repost, copy link to tweet, direct message, mark as favorite and open in browser. This isn’t ideal, though, as it’s preferable that frequently used functions — such as DM and repost — have a dedicated button.

The DM section breaks with Tweetie’s overall styling. First, there’s an instant messenger-style conversation overview page, displaying links to all your active DM-exchanges in chronological order. Clicking through brings up an iChat-style page, featuring back and forth tweets in text bubbles. It looks strange and certainly feels out of place but, setting aside the aesthetic, works correctly.

Summing Up

Tweetie’s success is that it simplifies what could be a complex experience — dealing with a Titanic stream of incoming information and interacting with a multitude of other users. Just like its little brother on iPhone, the application is visually streamlined and loads quickly.

There are drawbacks though: there’s a missing refresh button, no method for deleting tweets, the compose button needs to be integrated more clearly with the overall design and, although it’s not essential, the next version of Tweetie will ideally incorporate organizing contacts in to groups.

But these few issues don’t impact on the overall experience of Tweetie, an app that incorporates a wealth of features for the seasoned tweeter and yet is inviting and easy to pick up for Twitter newcomers. Twitter users looking for a well-designed, feature-rich client should certainly download Tweetie today.

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Learn to play the leaf trombone, perform your repertoire before a global audience, and prepare to be judged.

Since the App Store’s launch last year, Smule has been steadily building an impressive portfolio of sound-based social apps for the iPhone. With Dr. Ge Wang — an assistant professor in Music and Acoustics — at the helm, among a smattering of clever and fun sonic toys, their biggest hit to date has been the multi-award winning Ocarina.

Smule’s latest app, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, is a social musical instrument designed specifically for the iPhone. Players can download new songs and perform before a judging panel of other leaf trombonists.

Leaf Your Troubles Behind

In terms of igniting the musical imagination of touch and iPhone owners around the world, Smule’s standout moment has been the creation of Ocarina. The app is an enchanting recreation of the palm-size wind instrument, incorporating several features that take advantage of the iPhone’s tech to connect instrumentalists around the world.

Leaf Trombone: World Stage takes the wind instrument concept even further than before. For musical beginners, Ocarina was a serious toughie, whereas playing the leaf trombone is a breeze for musicians and fresh starters alike.

There are two methods for tooting on your leaf trombone. For beginners, there’s touch mode. Simply tapping and holding on one of the vertical note-markers plays the note. Advanced players can take it further by blowing in to the iPhone microphone — ideal for adding nuance to a performance.

Song Selection

Despite having just been released, there’s already a stack of tunes ready to toot in the song library. The selection on offer is constantly growing, too, as Smule’s provided a song composition and submission platform on their site.

There’s something for everyone in the library. Classical picks like “Ave Maria” and “Auld Lang Syne” sit alongside rock and metal renditions, such as “Iron Man” and “Through The Fire And The Flames.” Notably, there are video game tunes in the mix, too, with several pieces from Legend of Zelda already on offer. The only major drawback with the library is that there’s no way to differentiate between pieces for beginners and more accomplished players.

If you’re familiar with rhythm action games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge, it’s easy to get your fingers around performing the songs. Once the track begins playing, accompanied by a dainty Mario-esque music box, leaves begin floating towards the different note-markers. The note-markers glow when a leaf collides, meaning there’s a clear guide to playing the correct note at the correct time.

There is, like any musical instrument, an initial period of getting comfortable holding and touching the leaf trombone and familiarizing yourself with the interface. However, actually playing a complex score should be surprisingly intuitive, even for non-musicians.

World Stage – Judging & Performing

Fire up your leaf trombone for more than a few minutes and there’s a good chance that your solo soliloquy will be interrupted with an invite to be a judge on the World Stage. As a judge sitting on an “American Idol”-esque panel with two other players, picked from across the globe, you’ll critically appraise a fellow leaf trombonist’s performance.

Represented by three smiley-styled emoticons, the judging panel listens to the performance — posting comments and changing the emoticon to reflect opinion and mood. At the end of the song, you’re invited to score the performance and provide closing thoughts.

Playing the role of judge is an excellent twist on traditional multiplayer gaming. There’s something deliciously addictive and downright fun about judging — whether you’re praising, encouraging, or just laughing at someone’s trombone tooting.

Judging a performance also earns you Leaf Tokens, the currency of the budding Leaf Trombonist. Each performance on the World Stage costs one Leaf Token, an exceedingly cunning solution, on Smule’s part, to ensuring players are involved in both performing and judging, and also encouraging performers to practice a solo before playing online.

Performing works slightly differently compared to the judging. After selecting a song from the library, you’ll perform alone. Once you’ve completed your performance, the judging panel is then selected to appraise it — meaning you’re able to initially perform without being distracted by a shower of praise, or worse, an onslaught of criticism.

Summing Up

Leaf Trombone: World Stage is everything we’ve come to expect of Smule. The instrument part of the game draws non-musicians in — it’s so easy to get satisfying results and is enjoyable to play (plus endearingly individual with its comedic tooting and parping).

And it’s daring, too, linking players up for social fun a refreshing way: Being part of the judging panel is compelling fun and performing on the World Stage — and getting right — just feels good, too.

Leaf Trombone is a wonderful instrument and an incredibly accomplished social toy. Furthermore, like any musical instrument, it’s something that you’ll delight in playing and growing with over time. Smule’s ability to manifest pure gold out of a downright silly concept, earns this app TheAppleBlog Gold Award.

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Chased through a trap-laden forest by an axe-wielding murderer, Hysteria Project is a step in a much darker direction for the iPhone.

Reviewing Asteroids-esque shooter The Void last week, I mentioned that some iPhone games are ditching the cute and getting darker. With their first release, the BulkyPix team have taken the anti-cute movement further: chopping up any semblance of cuteness with a rusty axe, putting the bits into garbage bags and burying the bags in a creepy forest.

Hysteria Project is a choose-your-own-adventure for the iPhone. Blending atmospheric film sequences with quick-fire decision-making to create an intense horror experience.

A Beautiful Place Out In the Country

The game opens with you waking, bleary-eyed, in what seems to be deserted cabin. Viewed from a first-person perspective, your eyes are still adjusting themselves to the dingy gloom. After discovering your hands and feet are bound with tape — trademark crazy serial killer move — the first decision is to how you’ll go about freeing yourself.

After freeing yourself of the killer’s makeshift bindings, bursting out of the cabin, you’re on foot, limping through a foggy forest. Occasional flashbacks and visions, like twisted treats, fill in the back story. A hooded axe-man took you here and is now on the hunt as you make a desperate bid to flee the forest.

With the action kicking in immediately — a constant blurred chase-scene, stalked by a madman — the game’s unrelenting pace holds up throughout. From the handheld first-person camera, to the blurry shadow monster and the creepy killer, it’s clear that the creators have cherry-picked from a selection of horror classics. As such, the game has a distinctly Blair-Witch-meets-Texas-Chainsaw vibe (with a sprinkling of Lost for good measure).

Getting Ahead

The gameplay itself takes its cue from choose-your-own-adventure books, updating the old-school concept with a modern(ish) twist using live action sequences. The game ends up playing out a little like the old FMV games like Sega’s Night Trap and Cinematronics classic Dragons Lair.

Every minute or so you’re given a choice, such as freeing your legs or finding a sharp implement to help you. Most of the time however, these are not branching choices — one of the options will result in the game advancing while the other will lead to death at the hands of the axe man.

There are also infrequent touchscreen interactions, such as tapping different highlighted areas to push branches away as you search for a hiding place in the forest. It’s fun at first, but feels incomplete — there’s a sense of disconnect between the action and the interaction during these quick-draw sequences.

Sticking the Knife In

This sense of disconnect from the world of Hysteria Project doesn’t end there, however. The low level of actual interactivity is due largely to the constraining nature of video. Although there’s a poor illusion of choice, you’re pretty much on a one-track path to the end of the game.

Furthermore, because most choices end in death or success, the game ends up playing out like a freaky trial-and-error process, replaying chases and choice sequences as all the intensity drains out of them.

When a choice does arise, the game drops out of the first-person video view to provide a video game-style description scene. Paired with the waiting time as the choice (or video) loads, this text-based screen feels completely at odds with the intensity and immediacy of the video sequences.

Summing Up

Based on the story-arc in Hysteria Project, I’m under the impression that this is the first episode in a series. And perhaps it’s best to look at Hysteria Project as more like an interactive TV series than a straight-up survival horror game.

There’s not enough interaction to really classify this as a proper game; furthermore, there’s not enough real choice, either. It’s more an intense, shocking and exciting interactive experience than a playable adventure.

While Hysteria Project isn’t as groundbreaking or genre-defying as its creators would have us believe, it’s certainly an accomplishment to have realized such a twisted vision. Fans of horror movies and players should check out Hysteria Project; though it’s not perfect, it’s certainly a unique iPhone experience.

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Amplitude pushes the iPhone in a new direction, transforming the device in to a hand-held James Bond-style surveillance tool. An intriguing concept indeed, but would Q approve?

Setting aside the more recent Bourne-esque gritty romps of the latest Bond movies — which are, for the record, utterly brilliant — I’ll be forever enchanted with the classic laboratory scenes where Q presents 007 with an array of innocent-looking yet lethal gadgetry.

Amplitude transforms the iPhone in to a surveillance device, allowing you listen in on distant conversations.

Covert Conversing

Originally released under the guise of iHearClear, the app was designed specifically for individuals who are hard of hearing. The intention being that the iPhone could act as a tool for amplifying quiet sounds.

Gripwire, the folks behind the app, suggested that iHearClear could be used in a variety of ways such as improving the sound quality at a movie theater or at parties and gatherings to communicate easier with friends.

Amplitude is a re-skinned, re-imagining version of iHearClear, designed with a younger audience in mind and pitched more as a tech-styled spy gadget than a listening tool.

With both apps, your iPhone essentially becomes the electronic equivalent of one of those unsettling old-time ear trumpets. Certainly not as glamorous as Bond, but perhaps a more accurate description of what the app does.

Seeing & Hearing

The app is designed to look like a kids-version of a spy gadget with all dark brushed metal, exposed screws with a couple of buttons, and a big slider. The centerpiece to Amplitude’s visual is an oscilloscope, a pulsing green screen ripped straight out of a scientific laboratory.

The idea behind the oscilloscope is that it allows the user to view, and visually quantify, signal voltages, as you’re able to see the volume of the sound your listening to. More importantly though, it lends the app some much needed visual authenticity — in short, it looks super-cool.

The slider beneath the oscilloscope controls the amount of microphone boost to be applied. This is essentially the active component of the app — the useful bit — as, in essence, Amplitude is merely boosting the volume of the sound coming in to the iPhone mic.

There’s also a mute button, enabling the app to be muted (useful in instances where the sound-level may have jumped up unexpectedly) and an info button. The info button, aside from displaying the credits, provides access to a settings screen where you’re able to set the app to mute on startup (advisable as a precaution for your ears).

Spy Games

In testing the app, I decided to try out a few different situations. My initial experiment consisted of listening in on two friends whispering to each other.

Pointing the iPhone’s mic towards the duo and plugging my headphones in (note that the app works best with headphones without a built-in mic), I discovered that, despite a bit of hum, I could hear them whispering.

However, upon removing the headphones, I discovered that I could still hear them whispering and, without the hum of the boosted iPhone microphone, everything sounded much clearer. My next test — listening to a friend’s heartbeat — ended similarly. I discovered that while Amplitude could aid me in listening to their heartbeat, my ears did a much better job.

The creators of the app posed the question, “Have you ever heard the sound of a hummingbird’s wings beating back and forth.” Yes, it’s like a tiny motorcycle being driven by a little biker man. “Using Amplitude it’s a truly amazing experience.” No, if I could locate a real, live hummingbird, using Amplitude, I’d most probably discover that the sound is slightly louder and more annoying than just listening with my ears.

Summing Up

According to the marketing text in the App Store, Amplitude can be used a tool to help fix your car. Or to spy on baseball players communicating in the batting circle. Or any number of a variety of utterly bizarre situations where, in actual fact, I doubt Amplitude really would work. Unless of course you stood next to these people, in which case you wouldn’t need the app anyway.

Amplitude is about as much actual use as a novelty fart apps. However, setting aside the grotesquely exaggerated claims of Amplitude’s ability by the app’s creators, it’s good fun as a 99 cent novelty app.

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