I have found that many free game apps have very little content, and if they have multiple games they tend to all be boring. I noticed AddictingGames by Nickelodeon in the app store for free, and having been to their website I thought I would try the app. Upon trying it, I was surprised at how many games were on it and began to try each one.
There are 33 games currently and more seem to be coming on a regular basis. As I began to write this review one new game was added, and it seems that one is added every week. My favorite games are Feed the Panda and World Wars.
In Feed the Panda your goal is to, well, feed the panda by cutting various ropes holding cookies.
In World Wars your goal is to take over the map. The game simulates dice rolling for your number of soldiers, and the computer opponent’s soldiers, and the winner either takes or defends their area depending who got the highest roll.
There are also games like solitaire and even a game to help you memorize the states and their location.
I really like this app and didn’t even mention many of the games. The games range from card games to “Zombie Burger.” Most of the games could be their own apps and still be fun, but there are a few that aren’t as fun and seem pointless like Potty Copter.
In Potty Copter you fly foreword and try not to crash. Thats about it…
This app is safe to put on your child’s iPod because, as far as I can tell, there are no In-App Purchases. There are a few games in this app that I haven’t tried yet. But from most of the games I have played they are fun and creative. I really enjoy the AddictingGames app and you should try it.
I had heard of Shadow of the Colossus and decided to get it about two or three years ago. Once I started playing, it became one of my favorite games for the PlayStation 2 for many reasons.
In Shadow of the Colossus there is very little speaking because the plot is very simple, but the game is complicated in its own way. The nameless main character wants to bring a girl back to life, but to do this he must venture into forbidden land and slay all sixteen colossi. He must slay them with his ancient sword, bow, and horse. His sword is magical and can find the colossi, their weak points, and kill them.
This video is showing actual gameplay rather than just an animation like in some trailers.
The graphics are beautiful in Shadow of the Colossus. I found myself being really excited to see the next colossus. With each colossus you’ll find yourself looking for how to beat it by trying new things until you find what works. For example, when fighting the first colossus you must stab his ankle to get him to fall over so you can get to his head. With each colossus it gets more and more complicated to kill them. It is like an exciting puzzle figuring out what the next step is.
Shadow of the Colossus is one of the best games on the PlayStation 2, because of the graphics, the gameplay, and the creativity of the game. It is like nothing I have seen before. This game is one of the best.
I am so excited about this Lego game. It looks like a lot of fun.
You have to buy the Life of George pack at a store (Lego had a link to their store, but it didn’t work and it’s not listed on Amazon yet) and download the free game. When you run the game, it gives you little challenges to create with Legos. You create the challenge, and take a picture of it with your iPhone. Your creation is judged and you are given a score.
It looks like a lot of fun and I can’t wait until it exists!
I noticed that the 3DS cartridges are the same size and the normal DS cartridges and would fit just fine if it weren’t for the plastic nubbin on the side.
What would happen if I shaved off that nubbin? Would it work in my DS?
Many thanks to Joystiq for answering this question for me. Sadly, the answer is no.
When you shave off the nubbin and put it in the DSi, you get this result.
It says, “There is nothing inserted into the Game Card slot.”
They go on to say that shaving off the nubbin doesn’t make the game unplayable in the 3DS, so fortunately they didn’t lose a game researching that for us.
Considering all the extra programming required to create a 3D game, I’m not surprised that the 3DS games don’t work in the old machines, but I AM disappointed that we’ll have to buy an entire new DS machine in order to play the new MarioKart game.
This video of twin three-year-old boys playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii is so adorable! Watch the boy on the left at the 1:58 minute mark. He’s just the CUTEST!! If you play on Xbox 360, there is Just Dance 3 for Kinect. I have played a bunch of these dancing games ever since DDR was a flash in the pan years ago and I still love them. They make me want to MOVE!
Nintendo has finally gave me a reason to buy a Nintendo 3DS! Mariokart 3DS!
Watch the video from E3 here:
I really like the way the karts change depending on the terrain. When you’re flying through the air, you expand some hand gliding wings and when you go underwater, your kart uses a propeller to move. Plus, I can choose big wheels on those courses where there is mud!
They gave us a release date of the fourth quarter of 2011, so I’m hoping they have it ready for Christmas!
The AR.Drone is a completely new type of flying toy enabled by the capabilities of smartphones. Using the iPhone (or iPad or iPod Touch) as a controller, the AR.Drone receives tilt control and commands from the iPhone’s sensors and sends video back from its two onboard cameras.
The result is a totally new type of experience: Augmented Reality First-Person Flying. When you get good at it, it’s just like playing a flying game, except that you’re really controlling an actual flying machine and the video you see on screen is what you’d experience if you were onboard the machine piloting it.
Before you can use your AR.Drone, you have to download the AR.Freeflight app from the Apple App store. Once you’ve got it, you power up the AR.Drone, go to settings on the iPhone, and set your WiFi base station to the drone’s SSID. This creates a high-bandwidth wireless connection directly between your phone and the AR.Drone. Launching the AR.Freeflight app provides a videogame-like view through the Drone’s front camera with virtual thumb-pad style controls on the screen, which you will use to control the AR.Drone.
Here is video of our first flight:
Using the iPhone to control the AR.Drone is simple. When you first launch the AR.Drone, you will naturally control it from this third person frame of reference, by watching the quadcopter and matching movements using the iPhone’s tilt feature. The AR.Drone tilts as you tilt your phone, providing instant controllability that’s easy to understand so long as the iPhone’s orientation matches that of the AR.Drone. Because the tilt mechanism is so simple, literally anyone can fly the copter out of the box with about a minute’s worth of practice. It’s immediately accessible and great fun right out of the box.
In addition to tilt control for move forward, move backward, move left, and move right movement, there’s a soft thumb pad for controlling altitude (up and down) and orientation (turn left, turn right). Up and down is simple, but rotating the quad-copter is where things get tricky: When rotated, the iPhone’s tilt orientation no longer matches the quadcopter: If you rotate 180 degrees, controls are opposite. tilting left moves right, and tiling forward moves back. It’s difficult to map this in your mind while watching the quadcopter in third person.
Now, if you just want to fly around without watching through the camera, you never have to rotate the quadcopter—you can tilt in all directions and move anywhere you want precisely without ever rotating the quadcopter. Rotation is used when you want to change the point of view of the camera because you’re piloting by looking through the camera in first person perspective, rather than looking at the quadcopter in third person perspective. It’s a paradigm shift in control that takes a while to get used but gives you something to skill up at, which is what makes the quadcopter so much more fun than a typical RC device.
First Person flying occurs when you look at video from the camera on the iPhone, ignore the actual helicopter, and fly first person from the camera’s point of view. As soon as you do that, the tilt controls make sense again in your mind, as if you’re onboard the machine. First Person flying takes more skill, and leaves a lot of room for learning. At first you’ll find yourself jumping right back out to look at the quadcopter and confuse yourself about the orientation, but once you learn to trust what you’re looking at on screen and you’ve found the control setting options you like, you’ll be flying around as if you’re a miniature pilot onboard the AR.Drone. It is quite amazing.
Onboard sensors and a powerful ARM9 microprocessor (in the same family as the iPhone processor) stabilize the quadcopter and perform the automatic flying functions so you don’t have to think about hovering and the machine never goes “haywire” if you lose control of it. If for any reason you can’t figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing (usually due to mismatched rotation), you just stop touching your phone and the quadcopter will halt and stabilize in mid air. If it hits anything causing any rotor to slow, it will shutdown immediately and drop to the ground. You can also hit an emergency soft-button to drop it at any time. Otherwise, there’s a soft-landing button that will set down gently on its own.
One of the sensors is an ultrasonic altimeter that the quadcopter uses to control its height over the floor. Flying over objects like boxes or couches will cause the quadcopter to hop up because it’s tracking a specific height over the ground for stability.
With the indoor hull on, the copter is quite safe. All the rotors are enclosed, and they’re not really capable of seriously injuring a person even when exposed unless they perhaps somehow hit an eyeball directly. They will sting if they hit you while rotating however, so fly with the indoor hull on until you’re an excellent pilot. I deliberately stuck my finger in the rotating fans, and while it smarted for a few minutes, it didn’t break the skin (or the rotor).
Downside #1: $300. It’s pretty expensive for a toy. Totally worth it, but still pretty expensive. Considering the fact that you will get addicted, you will buy extra batteries, and you will buy repair parts, and you’re looking at easily spending $500 on it in the first few months. Again, totally worth it, but expensive.
Downside #2: Battery life vs. charge time. My charge time is 70 minutes, and my run time is 17 minutes. That’s 3x+ more time to charge than to play. This means you’ll need at least three batteries and at least two chargers if you want to fly without waiting.
Downside #3: Repairs. You will damage and eventually break the AR.Drone. The upside is that Parrot sells literally every piece of the device as a repair part and the parts are not particularly expensive. The repairs appear to be rather simple. During my initial flying, I ran the quadcopter into a chair and one of the rotors took a raisin-sized chunk of Styrofoam out of the hull. A dab of glue and it was as good as new. But you should expect to spend money keeping it repaired, pretty much as you would with any vehicle.
Here is a video of a crash and fall:
I totally love the AR.Drone. It’s both a toy and a videogame, with the best features of both. It’s the most fun I’ve had with a pure toy ever, bar none, and I put it amongst the top ten gadgets ever, alongside the iPhone, iPad, Legos, Atari computers, and other gadget greats in my life.
The GadgetsPage purchased this AR.Drone retail for this review. Two more videos after the break: (Continue Reading…)
Our family is always on the lookout for fun games to play together and we’ve been big fans of Scrabble. When I heard there is an interesting game out called Konexi, I jumped at it. It’s like a cross between Scrabble and Jenga. You balance the letters carefully to create words. The strange thing is that the letters don’t have to be in the correct order to count as a words as long as all the letters are touching. Here is an explanation.
In this example, you could add the letter N to the left branch to create the word “wine,” but you couldn’t add it to the right branch because that doesn’t make a word and it doesn’t connect to the W and I on the left.
Sadly, every place I’ve found that sells this game has none in stock. I guess I’ll have to wait until it becomes available to try it out with my family.
There is a new game coming to PS3 and XBox Live Arcade called Costume Quest. Here is a trailer for it:
It seems to have everything I love: Halloween, candy, evil witches and scary amusement parks. Deep down, however, I know it’s just a first-person fighting game and I’ll probably hate it.
I have found that many free game apps have very little content, and if they have multiple games they tend to all be boring. I noticed AddictingGames by Nickelodeon in the app store for free, and having been to their website I thought I would try the app. Upon trying it, I was surprised at how many games were on it and began to try each one.
Before you can use your AR.Drone, you have to download the AR.Freeflight app from the Apple App store. Once you’ve got it, you power up the AR.Drone, go to settings on the iPhone, and set your WiFi base station to the drone’s SSID. This creates a high-bandwidth wireless connection directly between your phone and the AR.Drone. Launching the AR.Freeflight app provides a videogame-like view through the Drone’s front camera with virtual thumb-pad style controls on the screen, which you will use to control the AR.Drone.
First Person flying occurs when you look at video from the camera on the iPhone, ignore the actual helicopter, and fly first person from the camera’s point of view. As soon as you do that, the tilt controls make sense again in your mind, as if you’re onboard the machine. First Person flying takes more skill, and leaves a lot of room for learning. At first you’ll find yourself jumping right back out to look at the quadcopter and confuse yourself about the orientation, but once you learn to trust what you’re looking at on screen and you’ve found the control setting options you like, you’ll be flying around as if you’re a miniature pilot onboard the AR.Drone. It is quite amazing.
