Game review: Monster Dash v1.10
This a great little game from Half Brick for the iOS where the aim is to survive as long as you can running through the levels and avoiding pitfalls, spikes and the undead.
Like Canabalt, your character automatically runs from left to right and the controls you have are to jump and shoot, both of which are responsive and easy to reach on the screen. Never do you feel that a death was of fault of anything other then yourself.
The game’s graphics has a huge amount of charm and definitely add to the experience along with the interesting range of weapons that you can pick up in the levels. From the more straight forward magnum like Pacifier to the outright ridiculous Machinegun Jetpack, each one has their own quirkiness, appeal and satisfaction when mowing down the undead.
With four themed levels that switch after running for 1000m, you won’t get bored of the scenery too quickly. My only gripe is that the pick up boxes for the weapons are often mistaken for spikes in the levels in the heat of the moment.
Definitely worth the 59p and kept me entertained for a few hours.
"Woot! VLC has been approved :) Need to give it a test run when I get back home. iTunes link: http://tinyurl.com/29s2tea"
— yaustar
Disappointed with VLC for iPad v1.0
In short, tried three files that play normally in VLC on PC and none of them play well on the iPad which was very disappointing as I had high hopes for it. They were:
- MKV with SSA soft subs. Video at 704x400 using AVC1 and Audio using VORB 48000Hz at 128kb/s. Crashed the application trying generate a preview.
- AVI. Video at 848x480 using H264 and Audio using MPGA 48000Hz at 128kb/s. Video was extremely choppy and unwatchable.
- MP4. Video at 1280x720 using AVC1 and Audio using MP4A 48000Hz. Application gave a warning about being too slow to play, video was extremely choppy and unwatchable.
Admittedly, this was the first release and will undoubtedly be constantly updated by the VLC team but for now, I have to give it a miss.
Revenue breakdown for Solipskier iOS and Flash game »
It is great to see developers share breakdowns of their revenue as it does help others to project possible income. I was surprised to see only $1k generated from ad revenue on Kongregate since it was a popular game and considering it generated over $70k on iOS sales.
Still, it made a very tidy profit for two months worth of sales and look forward to seeing their next game.
‘Free’ to play games? Not this one
The other day, I was browsing the App Store on my iPad as I was waiting for something else to download and came across Contract Killer which was a sniper simulator and was free.
Downloaded it and started playing the game for a bit, graphics were decent, controls had a few flaws, gameplay was a bit repetitive but it wasn’t a bad time waster considering that the game was free.
A few missions in, a pop up message came up while trying to start a mission stating that I didn’t have enough energy. It then dawned on my that each mission took a chunk out of an energy meter.
The only way to replenish it was to make an In App Purchase (IAP) which effectively stopped me from playing unless I spent some money. It had committed the cardinal sin of free to play games.
I could understand the game being a little harder unless I brought some items (a great example being the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds that allows you to skip tough levels) but actually preventing the player from playing and forcing them to buy items is a stupid design decision as it doesn’t give any reason for the customer to keep the game on the system as they can no longer play let alone progress.
One year later with an iPad
I brought an 32GB iPad 1 about a year ago with without having any clear purpose for it. At the time, I owned an iPhone 3G so it already seemed odd to own two iOS devices (I now have an Orange San Francisco Android) and on top of that, I also owned a Macbook making a total of three portable devices with overlap.
During the initial period, it really did feel like owning and maintaining a second giant iPhone as I was using the same apps albeit on larger screen. The only difference I noticed at the time was that Internet browsing was a much better experience and the general performance was a lot better.
I started to wonder why I brought the iPad in the first place.
Slowly, I started to realise that most of the things I do on my laptop which included web browsing, email and chat, could be done on the iPad.
Fixing my iPad 1 after updating to iOS5
After upgrading my iPad Gen1 to iOS5, I found it be extremely sluggish when typing and apps (especially Safari) were crashing constantly. I originally thought it was it was like when the iPhone 3G got the iOS4 upgrade which basically made it almost unusable and frustrating sluggish.
However, after a quick search, I found a thread in the Apple forums where a couple of people have replied with a ‘fix’ for this:
Hope it works out for everyone else.
