Quick Reviews 12/2009

I put together this list of the noteworthy apps I use:

Best Games

Fieldrunners – hands down my favorite game, gets tiring after a while
Dapple – made by an independent studio, quite enjoyable
Lux Touch – the pay version isn’t worth it (or so I’ve heard)
Snood – interface actually works pretty well on phone
Mondo Solitaire - lots of types of solitaire games
FlightControl – started a genre of line drawing games, pretty fun for a while
HoldEm – the apple game, pretty nice interface, game play is all right
Kolonists – not available any longer =(

Play Through Once Games

Tiki Towers – solve puzzles by building towers for monkeys to move from point a to b
Zenonia – RPG like Zelda. Quite enjoyable
Electric Box – Lots of puzzles to solve
Oregon Trail – similar to the computer game, reasonably fun

Enjoyable Games

Monopoly – recent purchase, pretty fun
Yahtzee Adventures – quick to play through, but interesting enough
Canabalt – very cool concept, not particularly deep game play
Peggle – Cool shooting game. Light up all the pegs. Small interface
Drop 7 – decent puzzle game
Assassin’s Creed – nicely done, haven’t had time to play as much as I’d like
Trism – created before the iPhone app store existed, decent game play
Frenzic – an interesting puzzler game
Jabeh Lite – neat puzzle
Moonlight lite – Mahjong game, decent interface
Galcon – interesting real time strategy game
Sumo – interesting card style game
MonsterKill – fun slash and kill game
PAC-MAN (or Miss PAC-MAN) – ok implementation of pac man
CashMachine – interesting drop ‘em

Other Games of Note

PocketGod – don’t really like, but popular game
Go! – decent puzzler, never really got into it
Tangrams – reasonable interface, but pretty basic game play
Cro-Mag – racing is decent, not really my thing though
Unify – looked forward to this puzzler, not as good as I had hoped
Catan – ok implementation of Settlers of Catan, games take too long
Cribbage (Lite) – ok cribbage game
Tycoon – interesting stock market type game


Must Have Apps

Shazam – one of the coolest apps, identifies music by listening to it
Sportacular – the best sports scores interface that I’ve found
Now Playing – get movie times
Pandora – an excellent music player
Facebook – decent interface to facebook
Photoshop – nice app for slightly altering the photos you take

Other Apps of Note

ESPN FFL09 – pretty good interface to their fantasy football game
iHandy Level – nice to be able to level using the phone
Keeper – stores all your passwords
Urbanspoon – discover restaurants
MLB.com At Bat Lite – disappointing interface to MLB
ESPN ScoreCenter – ok scores
Band – nice app to make and record some basic music
Scribble Lite – nice little drawing app

Index

As reviews get added, we'll link them from here:

App Name	Type	Cost	Rating

Welcome

The App Store has many applications. Here is a place for us to share our experiences with the apps we use. Here are some general posting guidelines:

1) The title of your review should be the name of the application plus the word "Review". For example, if I were to review the facebook application, my title would be "Facebook Review".

2) Start your review with a rating. Here is the rating system to use:

5 - Excellent - everyone should get this app, one of the best apps

4 - Very Good - most people should get this app

3 - Good - a good app, would recommend it to others

2 - Average - an ok app, some people might like it

1 - Poor - not a very good app, little appeal

0 - Awful - no one should buy this app

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4) Label the post with what type of app (game, tool, etc.), the cost (free or paid), magnitude of cost (free, cheap, expensive) and any other terms that make sense.