Streaming Music for your iPhone

• Developer: Sam Abadir
• Version: 1.2
• Cost:Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

With respect to streaming music itself, Flycast offers two modes.  The standard mode, “quick play” aims to conserve battery life and reduce skipping by using an extended buffering system.  However, you can turn off Flycast and launch the radio via Safari.  The benefit of streaming the station from Safari is that you can then stream the music in the background and launch other apps. Beautiful.

The only thing with Flycast (and any other streaming software) is that you’d want to be within wifi or 3G range - otherwise EDGE simply cannot keep up with the stream.  Otherwise as long as you have a good charge on the battery you should have hours of entertainment.

App Review Score: 4.0 out of 5.

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Fun Little Widget

• Developer: MarketWall
• Version 1.0
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

I don’t have much to say about this one, since the functionality of this little utility app is pretty basic.  Nevertheless, I really like A Free Level - it’s a clever way to take advantage of the accelerator and show off to your dad.

How useful would an iPhone level be in real life - just a little since you’d have to hold the phone vertical to use.  At any rate, it’s fun to play with and small enough that I keep in the back of my home pages just for the heck of it.

App Score: 2.5 out of 5.

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Blue Skies…Shooting at Me…

• Developer: Rocking Pocket Games
• Version: 2.0
• Cost:Free for Lite version / $5.99 for Full Version
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

To add to the gameplay, you have options of purchasing weapon upgrades, and you have a basic storyline in between levels to complete the package. Okay, the storyline is cheezy really doesn’t add much to game and the graphics are uncharacteristically amateur.  Nevertheless, even the demo is full featured and enjoyable to play.

It’s a Creature-Eat-Creature-World Out There

• Developer: Electronic Arts
• Version: 1.0.0
• Cost: $9.99
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

Back in March when the iPhone 3G and app store was announced, a little tech demo showing a version of Spore on the iPhone was the talk of the town for quite a while.  It was probably one of the most anticipated games for the iPhone for quite a while.  Flash forward to September, and Spore arrived, and as of this post I’ve been playing Spore Origins on and off for about a month now.

Does the game live up to the hype?  From a sales perspective, I’m not so sure.  It quickly disappeared off of the Top Paid Apps in about 2 weeks and haven’t seen it come back since.  In terms of my impressions, the game is beautifully created and really shows off the power of the iPhone as a gaming device.  The graphics - from the multi-layer background to the smooth animation, is visually very pleasing (although my creature is anything but ugly) and the music and sound effects blend perfectly into the gameplay.

On the game itself, the premise is very simple.  You control a little creature of your own design, that swims around and makes its way from primordial goup until it reaches deep water.  Throughout this little journey, the creature must swim through different areas and do two things: eat and avoid being eaten.  There are little colorful tadpoles which you compete with other creatures to eat, the larger of which would also be happy to eat you as well.  As you progress through the different levels, you get larger in size, and creatures that used to take a bite out of you now become part of your dinner menu.  After each level, you also get the option of “evolving” your creature - adding new features such as spikes, teeth, and armor to make you stronger, faster, or easier to capture food.
The app uses the tilt controls on the iphone as used on many games.  However, the controls don’t seem as sensitive as many of the driving games out there, which is a positive - I for one still can’t get used to the highly sensitive controls.

Overall Thoughts

Spore Origins is beautifully done - great graphics, sounds, and controls.  It really shows what a great game system the iPhone can be.  The only negative against the game is the lack of variety in the gameplay - there’s really only 2 things to do, eat and avoid being eaten.  After the 10th of so level, this starts getting repetitive and definitely reduces the replay value of the game.  Recommended if (when) the price drops.

App Score: 4.0 out of 5

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