Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break.
Boost 2 [v2.1.2]
Picked by: jhrogersii
Thanks to the iPhone and iPad’s included gyroscope and accelerometer, racing games have been some of the most popular available for the platform. The ease of control just makes them a natural fit. If you enjoy a good racer, you may already be aware of the Real Racing Asphalt, and Need for Speed series, as well as some other popular titles, such as Reckless Racing or Sonic Racing. Boost 2 is a different experience, to be sure, but it can stand toe-to-toe with any other racing title available for iOS.
Boost 2 is a 3D, 1st Person racer, where you must successfully navigate through a constantly changing geometric landscape without crashing. The simple terrain morphs from a tunnel, where the game starts, to a flat surface, to a tube that you race outside of, and back again. No matter the terrain, you will find yourself dodging a plethora of colored square and rectangle blocks, both stationary and moving.
The landscape is also littered with arrows, that will give you a speed boost as you cruise the track. The boosts are stragically important because they not only increase your speed, but also allow you to absorb a single blow if you hit one of the shapes. The track becomes increasingly harder to navigate at higher speeds, but the boosts also help you stay in the game longer. If you chain three boosts together, you can reach top speed. The longer you can travel at top speed, the more points you can earn. Also, your time at top speed is recorded along with your top score. Speaking of top scores, there are several achievements available, and Boost 2 includes both GameCenter and OpenFeint support for leaderboards.
While many other racing titles focus on career modes and purchasing and upgrading vehicles to progress in the game and add interest and depth, Boost 2 takes a much more simple and straightforward approach. There are no level ups or souped up cars, or even other opponents racing with you on the track. There is a multiplayer mode, but it is just a 60 second high score contest rather than a head-to-head race. Other than that, Boost 2 is just you vs the track looking for a high score in Classic mode, beating the clock in Time Trial, or out to survive as long as you can without any boosts in Survival mode. However, Boost 2 proves that if you have great gameplay coupled with an addictive challenge, then you don’t need all the extras. Sometimes, simple is better.
[$1.99] iTunes Link
[Free /Lite] iTunes Link
LogMeIn [v3.0.720]
Picked by: Thomas
My POTW is the new, free LogMeIn app for iPhone and iPad, which lets me remotely control my Mac. It’s a quick download on all platforms and takes less than five minutes to set up, after which point I can do all sorts of neat geeky things, like:
– throw files into Dropbox using Finder
– load third party programs that act as servers (AirVideo, Minecraft, etc.)
– starting downloads remotely
– put the computer to sleep
The only downside right now is that I often use Lion’s full-screen mode, and LogMeIn doesn’t seem to have a very elegant way of accommodating full-screen apps. As a result, you’ll have to use Cmd + Tab to switch between apps, and the “tab” key is hidden two or three levels inside the keyboard. A dedicated Exposé key would really have helped here.
Aside from this issue however, I’ve found LogMeIn to be a very pleasant surprise. It sits in the menu bar, doesn’t seem to take up much RAM, and requires only a few taps to get going. A pretty painless VNC experience
[Free] iTunes Link
Word Ladder [v2.1.9]
Picked by: PatrickJ
Word Ladder – developed by Sporcle (who run the superb trivia quiz site and apps of the same name) – is a hugely addictive word game for the iPad. It has a simple premise – you need to guess words, altering just one letter in each word in a chain of clues. It took me a while to get my tiny little brain in gear with it. I kept finding that I was trying to make each new word rhyme with the previous one, or start with the same initial letter – when in fact neither of those are needed. Once I got the hang of it, I’ve found myself playing this game a lot. And I mean a whole lot. Luckily there’s lots of good content if you become addicted to the game. It comes with a Starter Pack with 10 word ladder games in it, and there is a fresh one released (and added automatically) every day. You can also buy further packs of 50 games for just 99 cents as an In-App purchase. As in Angry Birds and other games, you can get one, two, or three stars on each word ladder – depending on how much of it you complete.
I find this game both challenging and relaxing to dip into nearly every day. I’m a big fan of word games and this is definitely my new favorite.
Price: Free, with In-App purchases as mentioned above.
[Free] iTunes Link
Osmos [v.1.6.4]
Picked by: Joe Tomasone
To me, the best iOS games are challenging, simple, and can be played for a few minutes or a few hours. If you like games like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, or Cover Orange (all great games, by the way!), then you’ll love Osmos.
Osmos begins with a simple premise. You are an organism called a “mote” — essentially a perfectly round amoeba of sorts — and your goal is to absorb other, smaller motes, thereby making yourself larger while avoiding the larger motes who seek to do the same to you. However, as you may have guessed, what begins simple rarely stays that way for long. As you progress from level to level, different challenges emerge – from special “attractor” and “replusor” motes to more intelligent motes that will actually avoid you — or hunt you down. Finesse, clever strategy, and good accuracy are required to succeed in the higher levels, making this a great arcade-like physics puzzler. Soothing ambient music plays throughout, making this a nice game to relax with as well.
[$2.99] iTunes Link / iPhone
[$4.99] iTunes Link / iPad
Doom 3 [v1.3.1]
Picked by: Alex Jordan
Doom 3 was the highly-anticipated next installment in the Doom franchise when it was released in 2004. It was later released for the Mac in 2005. Back when this game was first released, I had a Windows machine and enjoyed the hell (yes, a pun!) out of this game. Since switching over to the Mac, most of those games I used to enjoy playing no longer run natively.
Doom 3 is a gory first person shooter that takes place in a futuristic base on Mars wherein a scientist opens a gateway to hell. From there, as the player, you must shoot your way through this chaos. It’s a campy premise, but at the time it was introduced, it was, and still largely is, a world class presentation.
I was delighted to see that Doom 3 made it’s way onto the Mac App Store.
[$9.99] Mac App Store
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Picks of the week. Please let us know what you think, and share with us some of your favorites.
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