Tom Phillips, over at Eurogamer:
12 months have passed since the glory of London 2012. Jessica Ennis is now appearing in skin care ads. Olympic Park is being dismantled, and gold medallist Usain Bolt is now available to purchase as a playable character in endless runner Temple Run 2.
If you've ever had the desire to play as an Olympic gold medalist in Temple Run 2, then now's your chance. As for me, I remember having a lot of fun playing World Class Track Meet for the NES with my cousins.
'Home' is one of those games that sneaks up on you, no pun intended. At first glance, it doesn't seem like much but as you progress through the game you find that there is so much more to be found. Without going too far into spoiler territory, the story revolves around a character who wakes up with a damaged leg and then has to unravel a mystery surrounding his amnesia.
Source: iTunes App Store
This is a game that follows the traditional 'point-and-click' adventure style. The graphics have a retro feel to them, and the use of the flashlight provides an appropriately creepy feeling. Likewise, the audio effects are excellent in the way they emphasize the tension being felt by the character (and by extension, the player).
Tension and anticipation are the main draw of this game. Transitions between different rooms use a door animation that is reminiscent of the transitions between rooms in Resident Evil. You never know what to expect next around every corner or every item you pick up (or don't pick up), and the choices you make throughout the game impact the ending of the game.
Folks, give this one a try. I recommend playing late at night in a dark, quiet room. The experience is so much better that way.
Zombiegal Kawaii is a side-scrolling game for iOS (iPhone/iPad) that pits players against hordes of zombies that have taken over your hometown. There are other games that follow this same basic plot, but where Zombiegal Kawaii separates itself from the pack is through its unique character design and character audio.
The main character is a gun-toting schoolgirl that is drawn chibi style. As the player plays the game, the girl will make some sort of context sensitive utterance (in a stereotypically syrupy sweet voice). If you pick up ammo, she will say 'yokatta wa (good)' . Picking up a health kit will elicit a 'daijoubu (I'm ok/not hurt)' . If you go on a bit of a rampage and get multiple kills in a row, she will exclaim 'shinde! shinde! (die! die!)'. These character quips, coupled with the fact that you are fighting chibi-zombie girls, make for fun and fast-paced gameplay.
Shooting Zombies
Zombiegal Kawaii is $0.99 in the App Store, but plays like a freemium game. I've previously written about how certain games have really missed the mark and others have done really well with integrating freemium aspects into the gameplay, and this game leans towards the latter. There is a 'energy meter' that limits how many levels you can play in any one sitting. This energy meter, of course, is intended to encourage you to pay for an in-app purchase that gives you more energy (and thus more play time). This game is best played in relatively short bursts, so this energy meter never really bothered me much (though I can see how it might bother folks who want to play more).
As you progress through the game, your character gains experience and picks up money from fallen zombies. These can be spent in the 'store' screen where you can buy new guns or other kinds of weapons such as a baseball bat or katana. You can also purchase 'attribute enhancements' that impact character stats such as speed, accuracy, or counter-moves.
Additionally, you can purchase outfits for your character. This brings up what is perhaps the biggest downside to the game--the somewhat sleazy way that the character is presented in some of the loading screens and the in-app store. Tapping an item that you don't have enough in-app currency to afford brings up a prompt to go to the shop to buy coins, which is punctuated with a picture of the main character in her underwear and in a suggestive pose (drawn in a much more realistic style than normally seen through gameplay). The juxtaposition of the cute, chibi-style and the sexualized versions of the character is odd, to say the least.
Folks, Zombiegal Kawaii is a game that is worth a look. The touch controls work well, and the visual design and audio work is appealing. The art style may not appeal to everyone, but fans of anime and manga will find the style familiar and inviting.
Nathanael Arnold, in a post over at Wall St. Cheat Sheet:
Besides using the iPad as a piloting accessory, the airline is also initiating its use as an informational customer service device for flight attendants. It remains to be seen if the airline will be passing its new iPad fuel savings on to the passengers.
Arnold's post notes that American Airlines will save a nice bundle of cash in the form of fuel savings by using the iPad as an Electronic Flight Bag for its pilots instead of a traditional paper-based flight bag. The above quote is something that I often see in aviation reporting...the implication being that everywhere an airline saves money is an opportunity to pass those savings on to consumers.
Folks, that just isn't realistic. Airlines in the USA are having difficulties in being profitable (and quite often have been losing money). Airfares are, oddly enough, actually very inexpensive compared to fares in the past (adjusted for inflation). Every bit of cost savings that an airline can manage in today's market will be used to maintain the health and well-being of that airline, not used to save Joe Traveler a couple of bucks on airfare.
Microsoft recently released a commercial for the Surface Pro. This commercial is in the same vein as the Surface RT commercial released last year.
The commercial is also rubbish.
Why is this? It's because in an attempt to look 'cool', 'hip', and 'edgy', Microsoft has failed to inform the public what its product actually does. This is an especially terrible idea when you are clearly lagging behind the market leaders. What are the market leaders doing right with their commercials that Microsoft is doing wrong?
Apple's iPad Mini commercial takes half as much time (roughly 30 seconds) as the Surface Pro commercial (roughly 60 seconds) to explain twice as much to the user in a more easily digestible format. This particular commercial shows that the iPad A) can let you communicate in real-time via voice and video, and B) comes in different sizes (standard iPad and Mini).
Amazon's Kindle Fire HD commercial has a narrator discussing the various features that the device has, overlaid to video showing people using the device in real-world scenarios. In 30 seconds, the video shows us that you can read books, play games, watch movies, play music, and communicate in real-time via voice and video.
Google's Nexus 7 commercial, at 60 seconds, is the same length as the Surface commercials yet is so much more informative. The commercial shows us a little girl reading a book with her mother, using a drawing app, communicating in real-time via voice and video with her grandmother, playing a video game, and using Google voice search to find out how far away the Earth is from the moon.
What could someone possibly learn about the Surface Pro from the commercial? If they are paying very close attention, they might possibly see that it has a stylus, connectable keyboard, and kickstand. Everything else gets lost in the blur of song and motion. Microsoft's competitors communicate the value of their respective devices in a very efficient manner by crafting short stories that resonate with the viewer. We already know why we want to communicate with our loved ones. We already know that we would enjoy playing games, watching movies, or listening to music. It's unclear why we would want to have a stylus, connectable keyboard, or kickstand.
Ultimately, Microsoft fails to inform the viewer why they should care.
A few days ago I had a discussion with some friends about how strange it was that Sony had yet to make any sort of real impact on the mobile world. This lack of impact was particularly intriguing to me considering that Sony has such a rich design history. This design history is so rich, in fact, that one of Apple's industrial designers produced the often-shared 'Jony' phone design concept which was inspired by Sony's design aesthetics.
It was excellent timing (for my benefit, at least) to see that Sony has revealed its Xperia Tablet Z which looks to my eye to be a very pleasing design. At 6.9mm, it is slightly thinner than the famously-thin iPad Mini but in a 10.1-inch form factor. The fact that it runs Android Jelly Bean is the icing on the cake. (Quite attractive cake, by the way.)
I'm a bit concerned about battery life based on the small (6000mAh) battery, but all in all I'm starting to be convinced that Sony might be returning to its design roots.
Rick Aristotle Munarriz, in an article for The Motley Fool:
An early upgrade cycle isn't necessarily unusual for Apple. When the tech giant introduced the new iPad two months ago, it came just eight months after the third generation of the iconic tablet. Apple even raised the stakes by rolling out the lower-priced iPad Mini at the same time.
However, it's clear that sooner will be better than later at a time when the market's starting to lose faith in the magnetism of the iPhone 5. Even before this week's unconfirmed report of Apple scaling back supplier orders for iPhone 5 screens, analysts performing channel checks were talking down their projections.
Misek himself is now lowering his shipment expectations for the current quarter from 48 million to 44 million. It's certainly not as bad as some of the gloomier revisions out there, but it's just one more connected pro hosing down his forecast.The hubbub began when The Wall Street Journal reported on information from Japan's Nikkei regarding dour news for the iPhone 5. The key point in the WSJ report was this line:
Apple’s orders for iPhone 5 screens for the first quarter, for example, have dropped to roughly half of what the company had planned to order, the people said.However, as noted in a rebuttal by Mark Rogowsky on Forbes:
What’s missing from that quote, however, is what Nikkei originally included and can still be found on Reuters (although no longer on WSJ): “Apple has asked Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display Co Ltd to roughly halve supplies of LCD panels from an initial plan for about 65 million screens in January-March, the Nikkei cited people familiar with the situation as saying.” And that 65 million number we know is completely absurd.65 million LCD panels is indeed absurd. A chart in an article by Dan Gallagher for MarketWatch shows a much more reasonable (but still very high) estimate of 48 million. It should be noted that this 48 million number is much closer to the "48 million to 44 million" referenced above. 65 million iPhones would be off the chart (literally).
The stock market has completely unrealistic expectations for Apple. For some reason, in the market's opinion it is not good enough for Apple to simply be a top level competitor in the marketplace, it has to dominate in order to be considered worthy.
I don't know what Apple will say in next week's quarterly results call, but I'm fairly certain that it will be something to the effect of 'we sold bunches and bunches of the iPhone 5'.
