I am a huge history buff…especially Roman and Greek history. This probably comes from the fact that my mother is a high school Latin teacher (this is her 40th year teaching by the way). As such, I have always been enthralled by the Spartans. Those kind of warriors just don’t exist today…and probably for good reason. However, the whole concept of a warrior from birth taps straight into the hero complex that I have.

So any form of media that has to do with Greek/Roman mythology, Spartans, gladiatorial combat, etc and you can usually count me in as a customer (as you might have guessed 300 and Gladiator are some of my favorite movies). So when I see a game called Hero of Sparta (by Gameloft, $6.99 on App Catalog) I pretty much have to get it.

So I got it, what do I think of it? It’s frustrating fun…

There are a lot of games now that utilize a touch based D pad to let you control your character. This was the first one I have played and, I have to say, I wasn’t all that impressed. I don’t know if it is the nature of the touchscreen or what, but I had a difficult time moving just the way I wanted to move. Sometimes I would move my thumb too far…sometimes it didn’t seem to register my touch…overall the experience leaves a bit to be desired.

Is the game unplayable? No, not at all…just not as responsive as I would like.

The game itself is actually pretty well done. You take the role of a “Super Spartan” that would make Ah-nold blush. Seriously, this guy is a beast. Not a lot of story here…just enough to send you off to kill hundreds of beasties based on Greek Mythology. Minotaurs, weird crabby things, lizard people, and scorpions all wait for you to smite them.

To do the smiting you tap on one of two virtual buttons. Your sword button can be held down some to get some combo action, and as you collect super items (like the Sword of Damocles, or Axe of Ajax!!) you unlock board sweeping skills that take up your magic.

Aside from the regular baddies, you also run into mini-bosses all over the place. These add a bit of variety in that you get little quick-time-events that make it so you have to click the screen in a certain place a few times to kill them off. It is a nice mechanic overall, but I feel it is overused. Once you get on in the later levels you can have 3 mini-bosses against you at one time. Also, the pattern you have to touch doesn’t change except between monster types, so if you have to kill 3 minotaurs, you will do the same tapping 3 times.

The boss battles feel nice and epic. Most of them are hugemongous and have some form of trick to beat them (often another QTE). This isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, but they are fun nonetheless.

Graphics wise I am gonna give it a meh. Most of the textures are blocky…looks like something on the old PS1 perhaps. However, I did dig the animation. Mr. Spartan may look a bit pixelly, but he moves nicely and transitions between attacks well. Good job Mr. (or Ms.) Animatordude (or dudette)!!

Level design is also nicely done…lots of variety and a surprising amount of verticalness. The one downside to the levels are the traps. The control issues make these much more difficult than they should be.

The game will last you a good few hours if you are digging it. I, for one, plan on seeing it through to the end. I want to see if the Axe of Ajax will speed up my httpxmlrequest objects (a little web developer humor for ya).

Let’s face it, from an economic perspective, we are living in some crazy times. In the last 18 months or so we have had the most volatile stock market in about 80 years or so. If you are like a lot of people and sold every position you had, well, you probably don’t have much use for Top Stocks by VIT Software. However, if you held strong, then you may find this app to be pretty darn handy.

The goal of this app is to help you keep track of your stock positions in an “on the go” format. To do this it shows you some nice graphs, charts, and info about the markets in general, or specific stocks that you choose. Now, it it is impossible to review this app without talking about another app that is very similar called MoreStocks (reviewed here). I really liked MoreStocks, so the real question is whether or not this one is better or worse. The answer is, as you might expect…it depends.

If you are someone who is in the market for an app like this, then you probably think to yourself several times a day…”I wonder how the markets are doing today”. Fire up Top Stocks and the first thing you see will answer that in a really nice format. They have a graph of all the major indexes right from the get go. If you want to know about foreign markets, that info is right there as well. Very nicely done.

If you are the sort who cares more about specific stocks than the markets in general, then you can get your fix with a watchlist. Basically the watchlist allows you to select stocks that you care about and see how they are doing in an easy to read format. Adding a new stock is simply a matter of entering in the ticker symbol. If you are a stock guru, then this isn’t a big deal; however, one thing I did miss from MoreStocks is the ability to enter the stock by company name or even selecting it from a list. Again, if you are pro, you won’t care about this, but it isn’t very noob friendly. On the plus side, I love the little graph that is next to each stock. A quick way to see how your favorite stock is doing. Nice touch.

When you click on a watched stock you go to the detail view. From a layout perspective, this is definitely a win compared to MoreStocks. They both basically show the same information (including after hours trading), but Top Stocks just seems a bit more organized and clean. Both applications have nice graphs and function the same way, although, again Top Stocks has it all laid out a better. I guess the real difference is simply that Top Stocks puts everything on a single screen, while MoreStock breaks it up. There are pluses to both approaches, but I preferred the single page view.

From the single stock view you can also create alerts to let you know if your pick has gone up or down to a specific point. This basically lets you log into your favorite trading application (E-Trade for example) and perform a buy or sell. This is one area where I think Top Stocks falls short. The alert is only a notification on the phone…no email or SMS options (like MoreStocks does). If I am really watching a stock, I don’t want to risk missing an alert. I want that thing to annoy me in every way possible. Sometimes a notification just isn’t enough.

The “big” difference between the two apps is how they handle portfolios. MoreStocks lets you insert them directly while Top Stock hooks into Google Finance. Which is better is a matter of preference, of course. If you are drinking the Google kool-aid, then this a great feature. If you prefer another tool, then this would be a deal breaker because there is no way to set positions in the app itself. The integration with Google is nice, but only one way. Would be really cool if it could communicate both ways. It is worth noting that if you need to add a new portfolio item, the app will let you get into Google Finance with a single click…so at least it has that.

The last section of goodies is news. If you are a stock watcher there really is no such thing as too much info. Top Stocks brings in news feeds of virtually every type of financial instrument (stocks, bonds, commodities) and news (earnings, IPOs). With each news story there is a little blurb to let you know if it is something that interests you. If it does, then you can click on it to visit the source of the article. Nice, clean implementation.

Gallery

Let’s say you’re a customer in the market for a new, shiny smartphone. You’ve never had one before, and you’re able to choose from whichever U.S. carrier you want. You’ve heard some news about a “Google Phone” and you’ve seen commercials for this thing called “Droid” and apparently that has something to do with Google as well. You’re intrigued, but also confused, and I feel your pain.

Baby Android’s First Steps

I love Google as a company because they offer a lot of services that work well which I use every day. Maps, Mail, Search, etc. The idea of them having their own phone is great in theory, but the execution over the last year or so has left a bit to be desired. Many people think that the new and fancy Nexus One is the first Google Phone. In actuality, Google’s first phone was the G1. Google and phone manufacturer HTC launched Android into the world with this phone 15 months ago and it was with a whimper instead of a bang. Ugly hardware matched with unfinished-feeling software just couldn’t cut it with most consumers. If you were on T-Mobile, chances are you were sticking with your Sidekick, or your Blackberry. If you weren’t on T-Mobile, there wasn’t much reason to switch.

Resurgence

Over the months, Android carried out a relatively quiet existence with a small group of low key phones. However, about three months ago, we started seeing some commercials about this “Droid” thing and it could apparently Do a bunch of things that another competing smartphone Doesn’t. I was intrigued, the masses were intrigued, and being the resident nerd among all my circles of friends, everyone was asking me what this Droid thing was. No one ever asked me anything about Google and it’s mobile operating system before that. A clear sign that Google hadn’t yet made an impact with their presence in the mobile marketplace. The Droid was shaping up to be the heavy-hitter that the search giant needed to shake things up, by partnering with the largest cell provider in the U.S. and with an ad-campaign taking direct jabs at the countries best-selling phone, the iPhone. If you were waiting for an Android phone that was worth your while, it seemed your waiting would now be over.

That is, unless you waited just two short months after the launch of the Droid when Google and HTC would announce and release their new flagship device, the Nexus One. Boasting a better processor, a bigger and newer version of the Android OS, the N1 had taken the title away from the short-lived champ that was the Droid as the best Android phone to have. If you had just signed into a two year contract with big VZW and were hoping to show off your big, bad Droid, you might be feeling a bit of a sting at this point.

webOS Makes it Simple

When you look to Android as a mobile platform, you no doubt have a lot of choice behind what kind of device you can have. Size, shape, keyboard or not, flavor of OS (as we mentioned previously, not all devices sport the latest -or same- software version). But if you want the cream of the crop, what phone do you turn to? The choice isn’t so clear.

With webOS, Palm have been gracious enough to bestow upon us the advantage of choice as well. Although they have made it a much easier task deciding which phone is right for you. The Pre is clearly the flagship, power device that fully realizes the power of webOS, and the Pixi is the choice for those that are looking for something less imposing, yet boasting the same great look and feel of the operating system. The Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus coming to Verizon in just a matter of days, are only incremental improvements for the hardware that Palm has already released into the world. Technology changes at a rapid pace, and for Palm to release the same old phones on a new carrier would be an obvious missed opportunity for them. Nonetheless you’re still getting the same version of the same great operating system on all four devices.

So if you’re out there with cash in hand and are looking for the best that Palm can offer with webOS, the choice is pretty clear. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for Android, which will have you doing more research and making more compromises than you’re probably hoping to make. Choice is always good, but in this case too much of something good isn’t always.. erm.. good.

So with that said…lets put them head to head shall we?

“What other phone don’t, droid does”…that is the slogan for this beast, and it is mainly aimed at the iPhone, but lets see how it stacks up.

Basics

• Screen: 3.7″ WVGA, 854×480
• 16 GB memory + SD card expansion
• Wifi, 3G, USB
• 5 megapixel camera
• 550 Mhz processor
• 256 Megs of RAM
• Android 2.0

Now first thing to notice is that this is not the Droid Eris…The Droid Eris is a completely different Android phone that happened to come out right around the same time. That guy can’t hold the DROID’s charging cable…

Ok, now that we know what phone we are looking at, the next thing to notice is this thing is a beast. From a pure specs perspective it stacks up better than the Pre in several areas, but the Pre Plus starts to put it in its place. The Pre has a faster processor and the Plus has more RAM (and the same amount of memory). There is one place the Droid spanks the Pre…the screen. Seriously, the screen on that thing is ginormous.

If you watch people look at the Droid for the first time you hear a lot of…”man that is huge”, “is that a brick?”, “can this thing fit in your pocket?” The fact of the matter is, this phone is big and was designed for techies, geeks, and nerds. Why? Because while the Pre and the iPhone are all about slickness and style, the Droid is about pure functionality.

When it comes to pure functions, this thing delivers…just don’t ask it to give you sexy. The Droid is a great phone, but I still recommend the Pre. Here’s why.

First, as of right now the Droid has just about the newest version of Android out there (Nexus one is one digit higher). As I have mentioned before, there is absolutely no promise that this will remain so, and 2.2 (or Froyo) is right around the corner.

Second, apps. Seriously, did I just say apps? Am I trying to say that the 16,000 marketplace compares to the 1,200 of the App Catalog? It’s all about quality…not quantity. Have you seen Asphalt 5 (if not check out the review)? Android has nothing that can compare. Now to be fair, the Droid does have a separate GPU so it is possible for the beast to get games like that at some point…course that would be done through an upgrade to Android…which you probably have to wait 6 months for.

Its not just about the games though. The lastest version of webOS opened up the door for programmers to talk straight to the GPU and linux itself. This opens the door to way more than just games…just watch.

The Nexus One is the newest Google phone, and, like the Droid, it is a monster. Here are the specs:

• 1Ghz Qualcomm QSD 8250 “Snapdragon” processor
• 3.7″ 800×480 AMOLED display
• 5 Megapixel camera with LED Flash
• 512MB RAM, 4GB MicroSD storage
• Wifi, 3G, USB
• Android 2.1

If you just read that for the first time, you probably drooled a bit. That’s ok, it really is impressive. The screen is the same size as the Droid (the resolution is just a tiny bit lower), but it has a much faster processor and more RAM. It also has the latest and greatest Android version with it. Now, one can hope that since this is actually a phone sold by Google, that they will let you stay up to date with Android…time will tell.

Now how does the Pre stack up to this monster? Well, from a specs perspective, not all that great (the Plus hangs in there though). Aside from the same problems I mention with the Droid, the real kicker to this guy is support and price. When Google released this phone they wanted to change the way that phones were sold…no forced carrier lock. You could buy this phone without worrying about which network you were gonna be on. Well, that sounds noble, but here is the truth. First it is a GSM device so there goes Sprint and Verizon. Also, the way that the 3G tech works in the device it currently doesn’t work with AT&T at all. So that means, as of now, you can only get it to work right on T-Mobile. So you can get it without contract, but you can’t go anywhere with it. Now this will change, of course, but it is definitely something to keep in mind.

Now lets talk price. Lets say you like T-Mobile and you get the Nexus One all hooked up. Then, for some reason, 90 days later you decide you need to get out (probably cause the Pre 2 comes out!!!). With a normal phone you would just get nailed with a $200 early termination fee. With the Nexus One you also get a whopping $350 Equipment Recovery Fee. Huh? Say again? Basically Google charges you for dropping the phone if you get rid of it within 120 days. I don’t know what you call that, but I call that sleezy.

Finally…service. Google sells this phone,  not T-Mobile (or any other phone company). What does this mean? It means that if the phone goes berserk, you can’t just take it to the phone company’s store and get it looked at. You have to go through Google’s email only technical support. If you have ever done this, you know the kind of joy this really is (I do it for clients all the time and I cringe every single time).

Sure the Nexus One is a great phone, but is it worth the extra hassles that come with it?

Today’s market is getting pretty crowded with superphones. There are currently four major players in the smartphone market (although Windows Mobile is pretty much dead until 7 comes out), and let’s face it, Palm is the smallest of the bunch. Here at webOSroundup, we believe that this is simply because most people don’t know the advantages of webOS and its associated devices. So to fix this, today we are beginning a series that outlines the advantages of webOS when compared to the other devices and platforms that are out there.

The series will be covering the gamut…webOS vs Android, webOS vs. iPhone OS, Pre vs. the Android’s Flagships, and finally Pre vs. the “Jesus” phone itself, the iPhone.

Today we will focus on the differences between webOS and Android as a platform.

If you are a superphone guru, you can skip past this little section, but for those of you who are new to the smart phone world, here is some history and details about the two platforms.

Basic Training

Android is the operating system (OS) that Google bought from a little company called Android Inc. in 2005. They changed it to an open source platform and the first official release came out all the way back in October of 2008.

Android Facts

• The source code is written in Java.
• It is based on Linux
• It has a WebKit based browser (just like webOS and the iPhone).
• It supports multi-touch, but a lot of its devices do not allow it (which we will talk about more in a future article).
• It is open source. This means that aside from the official releases, developers and companies can expand and add new features on their own.
• Supports limited multitasking
• Currently has a fleet of developers and has approximately 20,000 applications on its marketplace.
• Heavily supported by Google, which gives great integration to their products and exclusive apps like Google Goggles

Conversely we have webOS by Palm. WebOS was originally introduced to the world at CES 2009 (along with the Palm Pre). It is a proprietary platform that is completely controlled by Palm. The purpose of the OS was to have a framework for mobile devices that was heavily reliant on the Cloud. Its SDK (Software Development Kit) is called Mojo and was released in beta form shortly after the release of the Pre in the summer of 2009. The official release came at CES 2010.

WebOS Facts:

• Most applications are written in HTML and Javascript, but there is also a PDK (Plugin Development Kit) for developers wanting to go straight at the Linux kernel for access to the GPU (see our video of Asphalt 5 to see the results of that)
• Natively supports multi-touch
• Card system makes multitasking a breeze
• It is proprietary, which means no one can extend the OS except for Palm
• Very developer friendly (including a web based development environment called Ares, and a $1 million contest). Currently around 1,200 apps are available on the Catalog.
• Synergy brings all of your contacts from around the web together in a (relatively) easy to use format.

So now you know the basics, why is webOS better? Glad you asked.

Android Based Refrigerators

The main point of contention is the dispersal of Android and the many, many flavors of the OS. Now, generally speaking, open source is a great thing, and I  have been personally a big supporter of it. However, in the world of phones and gadgets, open source opens things up in such a way that it can hurt the quality of the platform.

Case in point. Right now there is a plethora of devices running and about to be running on Android. Everything from phones, to video conference devices, to tablets, to refrigerators all have one form of Android or another. To complicate matters, each device manufacturer puts their own spin on the OS. Heck even the hardware is different from device to device. Multi-touch support (only some Android phones support it)? Physical keyboard? What about a trackball?

Now why does this matter? Apps…in the end it is all about the apps. Right now Android has over 10x the number of apps in its marketplace, but over the coming years this will certainly not be true. As the number of Android devices grow developers are going to have to take into account how their apps look on all those devices. This isn’t just a difference in pixels. If you have an Android based 10 inch tablet, it is a completely different user experience than with a 3 inch phone. Even if you just limit things to the phones, do you build in trackball support? Multi-touch? Realistically, you have to support all of them which bloats the development budget. With Android out in the wild, there is no control over how the platform will be used which can cause a lot of headache for developers.

WebOS, on the other hand, is a strictly controlled environment. Palm can control what devices use webOS and choose platforms that will best work with the OS (i.e. no webOS toasters). As a developer this makes a big difference because you don’t have to develop five different versions for different user experiences.

Which version am I on?

So lets say you just purchased a killer new phone…the HTC Hero. It has all sorts of amazing features that you just love. Three weeks later a new phone called the DROID comes out. “No problem,” you think, “It is an Android phone too. My phone is just as cool.” Unfortunately, you would be wrong. Why? Because the DROID has a new version of Android that comes with some of the best navigation software on the market. Your phone is now obsolete even though you have the same OS. The reason for this is that, like Windows Mobile, when a device manufacturer selects a version of Android, they don’t ever have to upgrade it.  Now, lucky for you Hero owners out there, HTC has committed to upgrading the phones to the newer version of Android sometime this year…6 months or so after it has been released.

With webOS, the upgrades are automatic. When version 1.4 comes out you don’t have to be sad that your phone doesn’t get the awesome new video recording features because you get it automatically without doing a thing. Come on…how cool is that?

From a developers perspective (yup…still all about the apps) the different features that are available with the various version really affects what your app can do. Do you create your app for the lowest common denominator but lose out on some sweet features? Or do you target the latest and greatest but lose 50% of your target audience.

This post from Android.com shows what I am talking about.

When Palm announced at CES that they had a new framework for tapping into the GPU I was excited.

When I played Asphalt 5 and saw the actual power of the little phone I had been carrying around for six months I started to drool.

Now I have played Need for Speed Underground (by EA Mobile for $9.99 on the Catalog) I feel as though I have truly hit phone nirvana.

Never before have I actually looked forward to some time where I could sit and play on my phone. I have a gaming rig PC, an Xbox 360, and a Wii and here I am sitting on my couch playing on my phone. Seriously, the game is that fun.

First we should get the bad stuff out of the way. If you played Asphalt 5 and then played Need for Speed Underground (henceforth called NFSU), you can tell very quickly that the graphics are just not in the same ballpark. The graphics in NFSU are rather muddy with a side of jaggies. If I had never played Asphalt I wouldn’t be all that disappointed, but now I know what is possible on my superphone, I can’t help but be a bit sad. With that said, the graphics didn’t get in my way of enjoying the game in the least.

What separates NFSU for Asphalt 5 is a storyline. Whereas in Asphalt 5 you raced just cuz you could, in NFSU you have a purpose. You are working for the government (FBI? No idea, but I do know that my contact with the agency is a hot chick and I think that is all I am supposed to care about), and your goal is to track down some stolen cars for some reason or another.

The plot is given to you in two ways…full motion video and text intros. The acting is exactly what you would expect, but it is serviceable and enjoyable. The text intros are 90’s style where the mouths just kinda move on their own a bit while you read the text. No complaints though because the story is good enough where you feel like there is a purpose to all this driving.

There is a good amount of variety in the different races. There are races where you have to avoid the cops (my least favorite), 1 on 1 races, KO races (where the person in last for a lap is automatically out), knock other drivers out races, etc. What I also like about it is that the races aren’t very long. In Asphalt 5, the races could last several minutes. In NFSU they typically are around two.

Driving itself is similar to Asphalt 5 in that you steer by tilting (this is the only option), but I found things to be a bit tighter…at least I could stay on the track a bit better. Also NFSU takes a slight turn towards realism. This isn’t Gran Turismo here, but there aren’t powerups and crazy shortcuts either. Overall the experiences are similar, but I enjoyed NFSU a bit more.

As you race you unlock cars, but other than that you don’t really unlock much. Upgrades to your car (and there are quite a few of them) are applied to your car simply by paying for them. I used to own a Mazda RX-8 so I was particularly excited to unlock that one and pimp it out.

The only other knock I have against the game is the soundtrack. There are essentially three songs that loop over and over. One of them in particular sounds like a 1980’s hair band reject. If you are too young to know what I am talking about, then go look up Poison, Whitesnake, Ratt, throw in some Europe (Final Countdown!!!) and then imagine those songs but worse…way worse.

Ending on a positive note, I am pleased to announce that the game is rock solid. I did not crash once the entire time I played it. This is a big relief because I was beginning to wonder if it was my phone since all the 3D games were blowing up. Guess it is just Gameloft…

Years ago (around 2001 – 2002) I created and ran a simple, text-based, online game called the Octagon. Originally it was a spreadsheet created by an Excel genius whose name was Charlie (can’t remember his last name at this point). I worked with him and helped him bring it online. Over a few months Charlie no longer had time for the game so I took it over and rewrote everything in PHP and expanded it considerably.

The goal of the game was to create a fighter that you then managed and upgraded, bought items for and talked shmack to the other players. At its peak we had about 300 players or so. It was a lot of fun, but it eventually took too much time to run so I had to shut it down.

I say all of this to give you an idea that I am intimately familiar with games like Mobile War (by MobileWar.net for $1.99 on the Catalog). Also, it gives the foundation for why I feel as though the game has a lot of potential, but is currently not living up to it.

The backstory of Mobile War is simple, but refreshing…no elves, dwarves, or space marines here…nope here you have the hackers vs. the elites for world dominance where all war is conducted over cell phones. The game’s humor is inconsistent, but is often pretty funny (if you are a geek like me). Basically the hackers are the basement dwellers who have l33t skillz, but are very lonely. The elites are the Paris Hilton type (including the dog)…they have the money to buy anything, but they have no idea what the tech actually does.

You choose your faction and begin. There is a decent help file, but a tutorial or something would be nice since there is no way you are going to know how your phone’s “signal strength” is going to matter in the game without some guidance. You are given a bit of money, but you really don’t have a clue what to spend it on at this point. After fumbling about a bit you come to the heart of the game…battling. The developers call this a “MMOG” (massively multi-player online game), but this is about as massive as a midnight showing of the latest Vin Diesel movie. With that said, I never had a problem finding a battle which is a good thing.

Battling simply consists of selecting an opponent (can be your faction or the other which is a bit odd) and pushing go. You see a bunch of numbers flash between the two and about 45 seconds later its over.  This is easily the weakest part. I engaged in over a dozen battles and I really have no idea what is going on or why it took so long to finish. Seriously, 30 – 45 seconds of watching flashing numbers is not my idea of a good time.

Once you battle you gain experience and, if you win, “minutes” (the currency of the game). You can take your minutes and go buy stuff to beef up all your stats to take on other foes.

All the while I am playing this, I see the potential but also see them not coming close. For instance:

• The mobile phone battles are novel, but I feel as though they really missed out by not making the game look like your Palm device. The UI is functional and clean, but I think having it look like you are battling with your phone would have been very cool.
• There is no combat log at all…I see flashing numbers, but I don’t know how those numbers came to be. Why did I hit for 6? What programs and other goodies does my opponent have?
• What is the point of the battery life? The game states you can only battle with 100% battery life, but after each battle my battery charged within about 3 seconds so I was always 100%. If this was by design, why have the battery at all?
• The novel backstory (for what it is) is completely lost…I can fight anyone at all…why choose a faction?
• When I level up, I feel no sense of accomplishment because it doesn’t do anything for me…I get no stat points to distribute, no bonuses or anything tangible. The game is full of unique stats…why not bring them front and center?
• If I find some poor shlub that I can beat, if I wanted to skew my stats I could fight him over and over…no chance to lose.

I would also love to see something besides simply battling people. That is fun and all, but I think some missions or something to immerse me into the story is sorely missing.

“You have died of dysentery”

These words have been a classic since the 70s (before I was even born). Oregon Trail has been around for what seems like forever. I had never played the previous iterations…not sure why. I have always been intrigued by a game that killed you with the “flux”, but I had never picked it up until the other day on my Pre. This version is made by Gameloft (the same people who made Asphalt 5) and costs $5.99 on the App Catalog. You can see what the classic version looked like below…don’t worry, it looks a lot better now.

So what is Oregon Trail? Well it is basically a simple role-playing/puzzle game that puts you in the role of big pappa who is taking his family WEST to fulfill their destiny in Oregon. Its part of the whole manifest destiny stuff from your American history class (or at least it was in my class). The goal of the game is to keep your family alive as you cross the terrain of the USA. As you cross, you will run into towns and outposts where you can pick up supplies and upgrade your wagon.

Gameplay-wise it is kind of like a choose-your-own adventure. You get to choose which path you go down which then determines what dangers do you face. How do you cross the big river? Try to ford it and risk losing your supplies (or drowning one of your children). Do you rent a raft? Well that will cost you some of your precious, hard earned money. Basically everything boils down to making choices that will keep you and your family alive and healthy.

As you make choices you play mini games.

Need to repair your wagon? To do this you need tap the nails as the come by (you get points and experience for this).

Want some money? Play classic Simon with telegraph machines.

Kid break his arm? Well…ya just gotta wait a couple of days on that one and he will heal right up.

The games are varied (there are 5 or so of them), but they all come down to tapping something at the right time. Nothing mind-blowing, but the variety keeps it fresh.

Along your travels you will also encounter famous figures (like Senator Abe Lincoln) who will give you quests like meet him at Fort Suchandsuch and he will give you some money. The quests are simple and basically require you to pick the correct route so you can get to Fort Suchandsuch (the other path will take you past that fort and over to Fort Whatsitcalled).

To get all the way across the country is gonna take you a good while. Personally, I am in Salt Lake City and I have been playing for around two hours. Once you get across the country, you could easily play again and see a very different set of challenges with the various paths.

What makes the game entertaining are the graphics and the humor. The cartoony graphics are nice looking and set the tone for the silliness you are about to encounter. The humor pops up in various ways…your wife complaining about the stinky hitchhiker, dad telling the kid to walk it off after he breaks his leg. One of my favorites is when you are walking and you see an eagle flying in the background. Dad says “Eagles are so majestic…”, and the about five seconds later you are queued to tap your screen at which point your character pulls out is gun, fires and the big eagle falls out of the sky. At which point your wife will probably yell at you and call you a monster for killing the beautiful animal while your kid says “Nice shot!” I am probably butchering the humor there, but I found it hilarious. You can see this play out in the video.

One minor thing that I found annoying was the lack of saves. This is a phone game which means I need to be able to save and get out very quickly. This game only saves whenever you hit a town or major event which could be several minutes. I don’t see why there isn’t a save anywhere feature…

The major thing I ran into is crashing. Yup, just like Asphalt 5, this game crashes…regularly. If you really want to spend a decent amount of time playing, then you have to reboot your phone first. Once you do that it will play reliably for a good while, but if you start without the reboot…well, lets just say it ain’t pretty. Crashing + infrequent save = one cranky customer. *sigh*

Gameloft…I like your games, I really do, but this stability thing has got to be fixed.

Gallery

Well the Christmas season is finally over…my wife and I actually just took down all the decorations this evening in fact (an interesting task when you do it with a small child let me tell you). However, just because you are done buying Christmas presents doesn’t mean you aren’t shopping. This is America baby! We always find a reason to shop!

So, today we have a new tool that can help you stay organized: Shopping List by Adaptive Code (formerly Mojo Apps). Now I have reviewed several apps like this, and my current favorite has been easyShop because of its simplicity, but I have to say, Shopping List has taken the lead. Why? Actually the two apps are very similar, but Shopping List keeps the simplicity, but adds a few features that really kick it up a notch (or maybe two).

The purpose of Shopping List ($1.99 on the Catalog) is to organize your shopping. It does this by letting you create stores and lists that allow you to quickly queue up what you need to buy and mark them off as you make your purchases. The most common use for an app like this is definitely groceries, but it could be used for any type of shopping.

The first thing that Shopping List gets right is starting out. The biggest problem I had with easyShop was that when you first started up you had a blank slate…no stores, items, etc. You had to add it all in at the beginning. This wasn’t difficult, but it was time consuming. Shopping List starts out with a default store that has over 600 items in it…or just about every “everyday item” you can think of (it didn’t have gorgonzola cheese though. Come on! Who doesn’t need some gorgonzola? Anyone? No? Just me…ok fine). Now TealShopper had something similar, so this isn’t unique, but it still is darn handy.

Furthermore, creating new lists has been greatly simplified with the addition of auto-completes. This means that if you have an item saved in a store (i.e. bananas), then when you create a list it will automatically popup when you start typing. Huge time saver there.

You also have the ability to create template lists. So lets say you have to get your prescriptions every month. You can create a medicine template, and when you are ready to go to the store you can add the medicine list to your main shopping list and poof, all of them come in with a couple of taps. Good stuff.

When you are ready to go shopping, you pull out the list you made and as you find your items, you just click the checkbox and it moves from Need to Have. You can switch between the two very easily so if you accidentally check the wrong item you can add it back in just a couple of taps.

Other cool features.

• Searching: If you need to find an item quick, you can click “All Items” for a store and start hunting.
• Pricing: It will help you total up your items if you enter in the prices. Personally, I this would take too much time and wouldn’t be worth the effort, but it is still nice that it has the option.
• Email and SMS: You can send your list to others by text or email. Nice.

One tiny problem I had, and this is probably because I am stupid, was when I manually added  a new item to a list.  There are two buttons, Add and Done, that are on the bottom of the screen. When I finished adding an item I would click Done because it was on the bottom right (where most commands are). Well, this means you are done adding items completely so it just closes out the add screen and doesn’t add your item. You are supposed to click Add then Done…I found this unintuitive. Maybe if both buttons were right aligned (and Done was named something different)? Or perhaps Done should save and close? Dunno, but I messed up a lot.

Well today has been a pretty amazing day. It is the first full day of CES and Palm led the charge with an action packed keynote speech. Now the goal here isn’t to go over all the highlights (there were a lot), but there was one major revelation that  is pertinent right now…3D gaming has arrived on the Pre. Now we all knew that the Pre has a pretty beefy GPU in it (on par with the iPhone 3GS), but until now there was no way to really access it.

Starting today Palm announced a new SDK that allows developers to circumvent the typical HTML, Javascript platform and go straight at the goodies underneath. This allows devs to tap right into the GPU and really show what the Pre can do. Asphalt 5 is a testament to that. This game, by Gameloft, costs $6.99 on the App Catalog, and graphically it is a stunner (especially when compared to anything we have seen so far on our phones). These aren’t Xbox 360 graphics, but there are some really impressive goodies in here. I particularly like the snow hitting the screen in the Aspen race. The lights in Vegas are also pretty amazing as well.

Aside from the graphics, what do we have here? Asphalt 5 is a racing game, pure and simple. It is arcady and fun with powerups galore and a very forgiving crash setup (I hit just about anything that was on the road and still won most of the time). Now personally, I am not much of a fan of racing games. Just not my thing. However, when I started playing this I got into it way more than I expected to. Just…one…more…race. Seriously, I was going to play it for just a few minutes earlier today and I found myself staring at my phone almost 2 hours later. Some of that was just reveling in the awesomeness that a game like this is playing on my Pre, but honestly the game is a lot of fun.

You start off in the garage. You can unlock a pretty wide array of cars including Ferraris, Ford GT, and some super sweet Lamborghinis. Once you have a car you can change its paint, add decals, and you can unlock goodies to upgrade the vehicle’s performance in a myriad of ways. All in all there is an impressive amount of content, including 50 different events on several different tracks. The events range from simple time trials to standard you versus six computer opponents to evading the po po for a while (that is the police for the less hip out there).

As you progress you also unlock girls that give you bonuses. Each woman you unlock lets you see a video and stare at pictures of her posing in front of fake cars. Personally, I think this kind of thing is ridiculous. However, I understand the intent, and I am sure it accomplishes that with their target audience, but it seems a bit unnecessary for me.

From a control perspective, the game gives you three options: accelerometer, steering wheel, and tap. Accelerometer is the default and it makes you steer by tilting your phone. I started this way and it works fine, but I found myself overcompensating too much. I personally like the steering wheel option. This way you use your thumb to act like the wheel of the car. It seemed to me that this was a bit more precise. The tap controls are just odd. You have to tap your screen over and over to turn. Not very effective…the other two ways work just fine.

The one major problem I ran into was crashing. It wasn’t constant, but it was definitely common enough to affect my experience. It even happened during the video review. Typically it is right at the beginning of a race, so at least it isn’t gonna die right before you cross the finish line. Still, Gameloft isn’t some new little developer. They are heavy hitters in the mobile game world, and they should have prevented this.

[Update] – It’s worth noting that this, and any other graphically intense games, are not playable (or even purchasable ) with a Pixi. It just doesn’t have the horsepower.

Arkanoid. I loved that game way back in the arcades where they had that knobby thing to control your paddle (you young whipper snappers can click here to learn what I am talking about). Over the years the game, like most other classics, has been rereleased in about 400 different formats and versions. Also like other classics, this game has about umpteen billion clones. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I love a good clone.

For webOS we have Block Breaker by Invasive Bamboo ($1.99 on the Catalog). What they did right here is the basic gameplay. You control the paddle by touching the screen and sliding your finger left and right. The gameplay is smooth and the ball reacts just as you would expect it to. As you progress, the levels get more challenging and varied, but the differences are mainly cosmetic.

Block Breaker reminds me of some of the earliest versions of the game…the ones designed to eat your quarters in the arcade. You get a set number of lives and if you die, then you start all the way over. Technically speaking that means that the 20 levels provided in the game give you a ton of content because you have to start over each time you play. However, in practice that means you won’t get past level 5 (maybe 10 if you are talented) before you get frustrated and stop playing all together.

To me, this game is begging for a level selection screen (like found in Paratrooper and Topple Ball). If I have beaten a level, then I should be able to start from there next time I want to play. Maybe this bothers me because I am not good at the game…dunno, but I do know that this is a feature that is sorely missed.

Another thing that was missing was variety. The levels change colors, and you can earn a couple of powerups (speed up or slow down), but, in the world of Peggle, this seems awfully bare bones. Now I don’t need unicorns that burp rainbows, but how about some multi-ball? or the paddle expander? or (my favorite) the laser?

Also, the boards don’t have much variety. Sure the blocks move around and change colors between levels, but they are still pretty spartan. Now a lot of this isn’t Invasive Bamboo’s fault…the screen is inherently small and there isn’t much space to make a grand scene. Maybe landscape mode would help? I am not sure the answer, but I really missed the long volleys where my ball would just bounce around up top for what seemed like forever. The basic layout seemed to prevent this kind of action.

Now Invasive Bamboo should be praised for one key feature: pausing. It sounds weird, but when you are on a mobile device like the Pre, and you are playing a game where timing is key, being able to stop the game at a moment’s notice and return without losing your ball is really important. Here if you swipe back on the gesture area (or up), then the game will pause. When you come back you get a second to prepare while the ball drops from the top of the screen. I can see where this could be used to cheat a bit, but I still think it is a very nice implementation.