Aramation Mobile

iPhone (and its phoneless sibling iPod Touch) has seen its countless share of games and applications. Who knew a convenient marketplace would lead to such a development! Fieldrunners for the iPhone is a simple tower defence game where the goal is to prevent a group of nasties from reaching one end of the map by installing defence structures. The game gives you 6 types of structures: machine gun, goo that’ll slow down enemies, rocket and flamethrower with splash damage, lightning and heavy artillery. Each of these structures can be upgraded to increase the damage as well as area of effectiveness. Overall, it’s a standard gameplay with great art direction. Visuals are vibrant and the game runs pretty smoothly on your iPhone (although towards the latter stages with the map full of defensive structures, you will notice some dip in framerate.

The game’s simple nature and addictive proven gameplay of tower defence, it is no wonder that it made Time’s list of Top 10 videogames of 2008.

[Download Fieldrunners - opens in iTunes]

Now that I’ve been using the iPhone 3G for a few weeks, I’ve come to grips with its many positives such as large touchscreen, wealth of programs available in one convenient online store, and the best music player in the market. However Apple still does not have a perfect device and these are some of the problems with the phone.

Reliability Issues
It’s a bit odd to hear people claim Apple’s softwares aren’t buggy, unlike Windows counterparts. In my case, iTunes clearly demonstrates Apple has a long way to go to create reliable software on the Windows platform. iTunes itself is bloaded with unappealing visuals yet surprisingly high resource usage. Sometimes it doesn’t even want to start the application.

Coupling iTunes with iPhone 3G, it occasionally causes my Vista computer to display that dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD). For the record, iTunes is the only software I’ve ever used on my computer that crashed the entire OS.

AppStore can’t update apps
This is a peculiar problem I started having after updating to 2.1 firmware. If I access the AppStore on the iPhone 3G and update the applications, it fails giving me an error message that I should connect the phone to a computer and use the AppStore from iTunes. The problem is, iTunes does not recognize that the application is supposed to be installed on the phone. In the alternative, I try to update the applications directly from iTunes, and that fails as well. Installing, updating and uninstalling applications have to be reliable. I’ve had less issues on this front with my previous phone T-Mobile Shadow and that runs on the often-derided Windows Mobile.

General lag
It is frustrating when you try to use the touchscreen (for example to scroll through the contact list) and nothing happens. Contacts and e-mails can get unresponsive every now and then, preventing you from using the phone. Making matters worse is sometimes a lag is present when you try to answer the call. Apple’s design did not afford a hardware button to answer a call, which means a finger swipe is the only way to take the call. I’ve had several calls I intended to take go to voicemail just because the phone doesn’t recognize my finger swipe to answer the call.

Organizing the applications
This isn’t really a bug in the software but it is still very annoying that there is no easy way to organize applications’ order on your home screen. The only method is this primitive icon based approach where if you move one icon, everything gets moved to create space. Windows desktop may not be the most efficient, but it lets me place icons wherever I want to, in whatever order I desire. Even worse, there is no way to create hierarchy (like you can in the menus) so you can’t really put secondary or tertiary applications away from the main home screen.

As Apple continuously puts out iPhone updates, it is only time before these issues are address (maybe with the exception of new home screen).

Guitar Hero franchise keeps expanding and has now reached the smallest screen available: your cell phone. Guitar Hero III Mobile is based on the latest console Guitar Hero III. By eschewing the plastic guitar, you have to rely on your phone’s keypad to rock. Instead of 5 frets, you have to contend with 3 only – activated by keys 1, 2 and 3. Of course there are blue glowing notes and when you hit a series of notes correct, you can collect star power.

The effort to shrink the experience to the small screen is overall succesful. The game ships with 15 songs initially, and there are 3 new downloadable songs each month. If you’re into the Guitar Hero franchise and you’d like quick fixes outside of your home (or when you don’t have a DS around), Guitar Hero III Mobile is perfect for quick diversion.

Rating: 80%

Live Search Mobile, first released last year for Windows Mobile, BlackBerries and other phones, has now been updated that includes many new functionalities. (I first talked about it on May 31 2007.) In addition to Map, Directions and Traffic, the application can search for Movies, display local Gas Prices, search the Web, display local Weather and even get updates from other websites such as HomeThinking and Flickr. Another big improvement is the addition of voice search. By pressing "Speak" button, you can now search without typing.

Overall, the new additions improve the usefulness of the application over and beyond what Google Maps offers. Although there are plenty of websites and applications that offer weather forecast, it is a nice idea to put it all in one place. It is easy to find out gas prices in your region (especially if your phone has GPS capability since it will know exactly where you are, and then to route to the gas station).

As this is a free download, you should head over to wls.live.com on your mobile device and download Windows Mobile version as it will complement your other applications.

[Visit Live Search Mobile website for more details | Go to wls.live.com to download Live Search Mobile]

Herocraft’s game Robo has a simple concept: navigate a level and get through to the exit without getting killed by many lasers in the level. To do so, you must disrupt laser’s path using rocks and mirrors, move them or blow them up with bombs scattered throughout the level. While the premise is simple, the game is incredibly tough to beat as simply moving things around at random will not get you to the exit.

The game requires a lot of advance planning and strategy as you need to figure out how to change a laser’s path and which one to take out. Even if you think you have something figured out, you will have to try a level many times as it’s tough to anticipate every move. Robo does feature an undo button but you can only undo one move… the game would have benefited greatly from undo button that can take you all the way to the beginning of the level.

The biggest problem with this game is the difficulty spike. First 4 or 5 levels are pretty straightforward, and then you are suddenly stuck in a level where nothing you do makes sense. Often, there is only one way to get through the level, and it can take a long time and many tries if it didn’t click in your brain.

If you like a lot of strategy in your puzzle game, you will definitely enjoy Herocraft’s Robo. With 76 levels, you will get plenty of game time out of Robo. This game is available for many devices such as Windows Mobile (where I tested it) and even TomTom navigation devices at various prices (ranging from $7.77 to $15.85).

Rating: 75%

[Download trial and buy full version from Herocraft website]

Based on the PC game Westward (available from BigFishGames), mobile version was developed by Astraware for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Standard and Professional. It bills itself as a Wild West adventure, and it mostly delivers. Graphics are great for a mobile game, gameplay is very engaging and deep and it is an overall fun game.

You experience the life of a frontier settler by building towns, giving your folks places to live, employ them to produce food and gold, defeat bandits as you track down Mad Russian to bring him to justice. There are over 20 levels in the game and it will give you plenty of gameplay. The game is perfect for you to be playing in short bursts as it is easy to save and return to the game later.

It isn’t exactly bug-free though. On several occasions, I encountered game-stopping bugs such as characters not responding to commands. It is also pretty difficult to control multiple characters at the same time when your town grows to a certain size, particularly with the limited input options on the Smartphone version. You basically move the d-pad to select and issue commands, and when maps get big, it’ll take a long time to scroll anywhere.

Nonetheless, if you’re interested in a town-building game with some action/adventure components, this is perhaps your only choice. Priced at $19.95, it is a reasonable deal for the amount of fun you can get out of this game provided you don’t encounter too many bugs.

[Download trial/buy game from Astraware]

*Reviewed on T-Mobile Shadow running on Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard

Conversion softwares are incredibly useful on your phone and Paragon Software’s Handy Converter is a versatile and affordable tool. Capable of handling currency, temperature, length, weight, area, volume, speed, power, clothes size and even torque, it can convert practically anything. As for currency, it will connect to the internet and download latest rates to keep the conversion as accurate as possible.

It only costs $9.95 which is a pretty good deal for the functionality you get. Granted there are other free converter softwares available but none has as sleek, easy to use interface, and currency rate download is more useful than you think.

[Download Handy Converter for Windows Mobile, and other devices]

*tested on T-Mobile Shadow running Windows Mobile Standard 6.0

Tower Defense games are everywhere, from your computer to your PS3 console. Resco Defender is a well-executed handheld version available for both PocketPC and Smartphone devices. The objective of the game is to prevent monsters from reaching your castle wall by building defensive structures to kill them. There are basic attack towers, advanced towers, rocket towers, freeze towers, glue towers, teleport towers and magic towers, each with different abilities and damage.

The game is simple to understand, but it is quite addictive. You will spend a lot of time customizing your play field, to maximize monster deaths. With each monster destroyed, you earn gold which you use to build new towers and upgrade existing ones. At about $15, this is a good purchase if you like tower defense games and would like to play on the go. The repetitive nature is perfectly suited for short-burst handheld gaming.

[Download trial and buy full version game from resco.net]

Back when print newspaper was relevant in daily lives, people used to do the games such as crossword and wordsearch. Pockster brings those games in addition to Crypto and Sudoku in an unappealing package that is overpriced for its own good.

It includes 50 crossword puzzles, 50 wordsearch grids, 50 crypto puzzles and 75 sudoku games for a total price of $19.99 (yes, that’s $19.99). To put it in perspective, you could get a puzzle title on the Nintendo DS (such as Brain Age 2 which comes with 17 minigames, and 100 sudoku puzzles).

How does this game stand on its own? Not so well. The interface isn’t ideal on a smartphone, the graphics look incredibly dated and the puzzles aren’t as interesting as they could be.

There are much better options if you want puzzle games on your phone than this overpriced package of mediocre games. But if you’d still like to give it a try, visit their website.

Windows Mobile’s default alarm settings are anemic, and Efficasoft’s AlarmU seeks to change that while maintaining an easy-to-use interface. You can have multiple alarms at different intervals (such as every Tuesday) instead of what Windows Mobile offers you (either everyday or every weekday).

Another feature of Efficasoft AlarmU is Schedule which can put your phone in Flight Mode (disabling all radios so you won’t get disturbed during the night with a phone call) and you can also automate phone restart which may help you deal with memory issues.

Overall, this easy-to-use application is what Windows Mobile OS should have built-in, but until that happens, $5.95 will get you added functionality.

[Download Efficasoft AlarmU here]