MATT1604's posterous
The Result of 3 Hours Worth of Tidying
I finally got around to doing some Spring Cleaning, despite it being Summer. Now all that's left to do is clean the carpet.
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Cubees
Well, boredom has set in, so I've been trying to find something to do. I got these from http://www.cubeecraft.com/ and they're beginning to become an obsession.
From left to right, the Cubees in the picture are; Vault Boy (from the Fallout series of games), Master Chief's head (from Halo. I haven't completed the body yet), Gir (from Invader Zim), Bender (from Futurama) and Bloo (from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends).Comments [0]
Plushed iPhone App Review
Finally, after a long, excruciating wait, Plushed is now available in the iPhone App Store.
In case you didn't know, Plushed's developer, Blacksmith Games, has created an Appvent Calendar, where iPhone games are available for free for one day, every day until Christmas. You can find that at http://www.appventcalendar.com/
Plushed is quickly becoming one of my favourite games for the iPhone. The stunning graphics paired with a very simple, easy-to-use interface add up to make a great iPhone app.
There are two game modes; Story and Minigames. In Story, you get 9 levels, beginning at 1 and unlocking the rest as you continue through each of the progressively difficult, 2-Dimensional, beautifully designed levels.
Minigames, on the other hand, involves three different minigames (obviously). They're simple little games that have the same elegant design as the Story mode, but don't involve any complicated storylines. They're the kind of games that you play over and over, trying to beat your high score.
The controls are very simple; left and right arrows (located on the bottom-left of the screen) to move your character side to side, tap-to- jump, shake to dislodge items such as pizza and boulders and touch-and- drag items in your inventory to use them with the environment.
Anyway, back to Story mode. It's your classic "Princess is missing, you have to save her" scenario. You use some very simple, easy to use controls to navigate your way through a side-scrolling, 2-Dimensional level, dodging the occasional enemy and jumping over the odd spike pit and cauldron of acid.
Each level involves a relatively straightforward mission, such as collecting a distressed mother's eggs, or defeating a boss. However, you don't get any weapons, which means you need to use skill and tactics to eliminate enemies and use the environment to bypass obstacles. You can also use objects available throughout the levels to aid you in your mission. These objects include slices of pizza, pizza perfume and Pizza Eaters (fat little animals that act as a sort of trampoline). All this talk about pizza is making ne hungry.
Overall, I'd give Plushed a well-deserved 10/10 rating. Not only does it have stunning graphics, but it has a great story, a simple interface and very adaptable controls. It's currently available in the iPhone App Store for A$2.49, so you should definitely check it out.
And don't forget, http://www.appventcalendar.com/ is still giving away free iPhone games until December 24th.Comments [0]
VernX iPhone App Review
VernX is an elegant iPhone game that heavily relies on the use of the iPhone and iPod touch's accelerometer. Its simple controls and design give it a somewhat oldschool feel.
The idea of the app is that you have to use your device's accelerometer to navigate your way through a maze. You begin with a group of red dots that move and bounce around when you tilt the device. You have to follow the path to the end point, dodging obstacles along the way. If you lose any of your red dots, the ones you lost reappear at the beginning of the level.
The gameplay is fairly straightforward and easy to understand, but it can get quite complicated in the later levels. The difficulty increases as you progress through the levels and makes the game more challenging.
One of my favourite features is the ability to use your own music in the game. I love when iPhone apps allow you to select your own music and create playlists specifically for that app. The appearance of the app can be changed from the options menu at the main screen. Overall, I think it's quite fun, especially considering the fact that it wasn't developed by one of the massive iPhone game developers. It's one of those games that you can pick up, begin playing, and stick your tongue out while making erratic movements in the desperate hope to better control the game, looking like an escaped mental patient to anyone who may happen to walk by. However, it would be a nice feature if it could auto-calibrate the accelerometer, rather than having to recalibrate every time you play it. I'd give VernX a 7/10, simply because it was really only built to play a few different game modes, with the same basic idea. However, it's great to just sit down and let the time fly by, trying to perfect each level.Comments [0]
Magic Mouse
I just bought myself Apple's new Magic Mouse. Not only because the Mighty Mouse was an epic fail on Apple's part, but also because the damn scroll ball on my Mighty Mouse was shot to shit and only worked when it felt like it. And hey, I don't want to hear you saying "just use a post-it note", because I tried that, along with a lot of swearing and temper tantrums, attempting to tell a hunk of plastic and silcon to work the way I wanted it to.
Anyway, when I got home and opened up the sleek little case the Magic Mouse came in, I hopped on the ol' iMac and jumped right in. As per usual, I left the user manuals for the computer iliterate and instantly went into my bluetooth preferences to pair the mouse with my iMac. It all worked fine, until I tried to scroll, using the awesome new scrolling technique. To my surprise, the damn thing wasn't scrolling – the same issue with the Mighty Mouse I was replacing – but then I had the great idea of looking for software updates. No surprise, there was "Wireless Mouse Software Update for Snow Leopard 1.0" in my Software Updates. I downloaded the relatively massive update (63.9MB. I say relatively because that's a decent size for a glorified mouse driver) and restarted my computer. When the computer booted, it took a second for the mouse to connect, but after it did, it worked perfectly.
After I worked out that kink, I got to use the mouse to find out the reason Apple named it "Magic". The reason? It honestly feels as though it's powered by magic. This thing just glides across your desk like a puck on an air hockey table. It scrolls so smoothly. And best of all, it feels great. The design just works so damn well.
I tested out a few of the features Apple displays on the back of the box and found that they work just as advertised. Although, I have no idea why they started advertising the ability to zoom so vigorously, because I've been doing that since I got my MacBook, last year.
Anyway, if you use the Mighty Mouse and think that it's a piece of shit, I highly recommend you fork out A$100 for this slice of geek heaven, because it surpasses all of my expectations and doesn't have a pesky scroll ball that decides to lock up on you whenever it feels like it.
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Layers iPhone App Review
When you open the app, you get a gallery, in which you can view previous drawings and create new ones (by using the + at the top right). By creating a new drawing, you will open up the window that allows you to doodle. By default, there are 2 layers; one transparent (top layer), the other opaque white (bottom layer).
The brush and eye dropper icons are the brushes and colour picker menus, respectively.
By tapping the icon in the bottom left, you can screw around with the layers, doing things such as adding, deleting or modifiying the background. You can import images into new layers, so you can easily personalize your images. Due to my lack of artistic know-how, I simply took an image of the Grand Canyon and drew a stick figure on it, just to use as an example. The cool thing is that the stick figure is on a separate layer, meaning I can modify it in any way, shape or form without messing up my picture of the Grand Canyon.
The great thing about having multiple layers is that I can botch up my image severely, without affecting other elements of my image. The app gets a 9.5/10. If there were more brushes, that score would definitely get bumped up to a 10.
Overall, if you've got a spare A$5.99 that you can scrape out of the couch cushions, you should definitely give this a whack.
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