Tag / App Store

by Henry Hunt

App of the week: Mass Effect: Infiltrator

Mass Effect Infiltrator

This week’s app of the week is Mass Effect: Infiltrator by EA, published for mobile platforms as a spin-off from the wildly successful game series. Set in the same universe and time period as the console games, you follow the story of Cerberus agent Randall Enzo, a veteran agent who ‘procures aliens for illicit experiments at a secret facility’. During the course of the game, Randall goes rogue and vows to take down Cerberus. You do this through an arsenal of weapons and biotic powers which, depending on how you use them, give you a number of different ways to kill the enemies which have you completely outnumbered. Each set of enemies you take down, depending on how and how fast you kill them, will earn you credits to spend on things such as armour and weapon upgrades for your character.

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The controls of the game are fairly simple and are well explained at the beginning of the game. There is a massive contrast between combat and non combat controls, with the latter being fairly slow and relaxed while the other enables you to play lightning fast, taking down multiple enemies in rapid succession. Switching between weapons to get more style points for your kills and choosing which biotic powers to use is as simple as dragging in from the top corners of the screen, something which after a while of playing becomes almost automatic.

Overall this is a fantastic game which I would recommend to both fans of the Mass Effect series and just about anyone else who enjoys shooter games with a great storyline.

Mass Effect Infiltrator, Android (£3.71) and iOS (69p)
Download it from Google Play and the App Store

by Henry Hunt

App of the week: Epic Meal Time

Om Nom Nom EMT

Here at Digixav we all love some bacon strips and as such we all love Epic Meal Time, the YouTube show that brought you the Turbaconepicentipede and the candy pizza among other bacon-ridden crimes against health. Now Harley and the team have released a mobile game in conjunction with Molecube, and I believe it is great enough (ie. it has enough bacon) to be our app of the week.

When you play this game a variety of food (bacon strips, gay bacon strips, candy bacon, Turbaconepicentipedes etc.) come flying in from the side of the screen and it is your job to make sure that Sauce Boss eats as much unhealthy food as possible while avoiding the healthy stuff like carrots and broccoli. As you eat you gain points in the form of calories and grams of fat which get transformed into the in-game currency of Internet Money. This can then be used to buy upgrades and more food for Sauce Boss to devour. If you commit the cardinal sin and eat a vegetable, you lose a life, rather like Homer in Treehouse of Horror XI.

This is by far one of the best games that I have downloaded on Android or iOS. It is addictive, a great time waster, and all around hilarious for both those who have and haven’t watched the YouTube series. I would recommend it to anybody.

Epic Meal Time, Android (£1.24) and iOS (£1.49)
Buy it from Google Play and the App Store or visit the website

 

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

App of the Week: Monsters Ate My Condo

This week’s app of the week is Monsters Ate My Condo, a game from Adult Swim for iOS and Android. The game is simple – various monsters want feeding, and you do that by feeding them apartments. If you make a chain of 3 or more condos of the same colour, you get a shiny bronze combo condo, and then you gradually get all the way up to diamonds. Feeding shiny condos to the monsters activates special powers, and the game ends when a monster is neglected and goes on a rampage or your tower block falls over. Add in some seizure-inducing colours, wacky animation, a blue unicorn that vomits rainbows and a fat lady that sings when the game is over, and you have yourself a ridiculously addictive game.

Monsters Ate My Condo, iOS and Android, 69p
Download from the App Store or Google Play

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Splashtop Metro Testbed lets you try Windows 8 on an iPad

Want to try out Windows 8 on a tablet but you’ve only got an iPad? Splashtop could have the answer with its new Metro Testbed app, which gives users the chance to use the Windows 8 Consumer Preview in a simple iPad app.

Splashtop Metro Testbed, iPad, £17.49
Download from the App Store or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Instagram launches on Android after iOS exclusivity

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app cum social network, finally launched on Android today. The app, which lets users apply filters to their pictures and share them across a variety of social networks, including within its own community, has proved wildly popular since its launch on iOS, with over 30 million registered users (from myself to Justin Bieber) and Apple naming it as the best iPhone app of 2011. If you have a phone running Android 2.2 or later and you want to see what all the fuss is about, head over to Google Play for the free download (unless you have the new HTC One X), but don’t blame me if you become addicted. I hear it can have that effect on people.

Instagram, Android & iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or Google Play or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

How Draw Something became an overnight hit

Over the past few weeks, Draw Something has become massive, with over 30,000,000 downloads on iOS and Android. GigaOm‘s interview with the CEO of OMGPOP, Dan Porter, explains how it all happened.

Gigaom

Draw Something, the No. 1 app right now on iOS (s aapl) and Android (s goog), is listed as a game and draws a lot of comparisons to the family game Pictionary. But the funny thing is that it’s not really a game at all.

It doesn’t have scores or leaderboards, and the players in the game aren’t actually competing against each other. They’re working together in a cooperative manner, but they’re not taking on anyone else or a computer.

Instead, it’s more of a social communications app masquerading as a game, said OMGPOP CEO and Draw Something game designer Dan Porter.

I sat down with Porter Friday at OMGPOP’s New York office and asked him about how he pulled off the immense success of Draw Something, which has racked up 30 million downloads on iOS and Android in about five weeks. The app has generated about 2 billion…

View original post 1,013 more words

by Henry Hunt

App of the Week: Crazy Survival

This week’s app of the week is Crazy Survival by Techsoft Ventures.

In this game you play as a small stick figure that has to avoid a large number of bouncing balls coming from the left of the screen. At the start of every game you have ten lives, with each hit removing one life. Although this is a simple idea, I have never played anything like it before. The simple controls (an arrow to each side of the screen) make getting good at this game fairly simple but mastering it is something completely different. My personal high score is only around 250 while the world record is in excess of 800.

This game is just what you need from a mobile game – quick, simple and addictive, and that is why we are proud to call it our first cross-platform app of the week.

But no Android. Sorry.

Crazy Survival, BlackBerry/iOS/Windows Phone, Free
Download now from the App World, App Store or Zune Marketplace

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: iTunes 12 Days of Christmas

This week’s iOS AOTW is a simple one – Apple’s own 12 Days of Christmas app.

It is the most wonderful time of the year and therefore Apple’s annual European promotion to give away a new free thing every day from December 26th to January 6th has returned. Grab the app now to get notifications of each gift, with something sure to take your fancy. Last year we got Mirror’s Edge, a Charlie Chaplin film and the amazing Father Ted Christmas special to go with the Kings of Leon and Kylie Minogue, so the good must surely balance out the bad this year as well. Although not all the gifts may be to your tastes, remember Apple don’t have to do this and something good will surely pop up.

Merry Christmas from all at Digixav

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas, iOS, Free

Download from the App Store

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: GarageBand

From now on I will be doing (roughly once a week) a post on a good iOS app and what I think about it. Today we get a first party app called GarageBand.

It’s GarageBand. On iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Need I say more?

GarageBand, iOS, £2.99

Download from the App Store or visit the website