Combo Crew: Apple App of the Week

I know, I know, I said I was going to do Starbucks Apps of the Week, but I haven't been inside a Starbucks in a while, so I figured I would go with the next best thing. I have two of these to do this week, since I also let myself get a bit behind.

Combo Crew is a martial arts styled game, where the premise is pretty simple: rack up as high of a combo as you can by swiping through enemies. That's pretty much it, there really isn't anything more to it, and that makes it disappointing.

I'll start with the positives, the art, game play mechanics and sound are all very good. I got awfully excited when I started playing it. The swiping game play responded better than I expected it to, and the only major flaw in it was during defensive maneuvers, they never seemed to work quite right for me. The art and sound fit the feel of the game nicely.

All of that being said, the game got repetitive quick. The same swiping motion over and over again got tiring, and became not fun. I remember on my first boss level, after figuring out that there was a set number of waves of enemies, I got the boss in the corner and just swiped him until he was KO'd. Another thing that greatly frustrated me was the lack of movement ability. All movement is done through the attacking/swiping mechanic. Which meant that the enemy that you were attacking was often unpredictable. 

I had a lot of fun with this game when I first started out playing, however, it fell short of my overall expectations. When I look back on those expectations, though, I have to say I don't even know what they were. The game, however, was not completely un-enjoyable, it just got very repetitive very fast. Maybe down the road I'll pick it up again and mess around with it more, but it's definitely not one that I want to see the end of.

Looking at the App Store and finding it's full cost in there, I would not purchase it for $1.99. I lost interest in this game very quickly, and that is why I would not recommend it at this price.

Download Combo Crew

Snail Bob: Starbucks App of the Week Review

Austin

Snail Bob: Starbucks App of the Week

Snail Bob is a fun little puzzle game where you move obstacles out of the way of a constant forward motion snail. At first it seemed like just another puzzle game, but after working through many levels, it becomes a test of reflexes as well as puzzle solving.

A quick Google search (to get the pricing on the App) shows that Snail Bob is not originally an iPhone game (http://bit.ly/17NmTbE follow this link to check this all out.) The game has a price sticker of $0.99, and with that you have access to 80 levels. 

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Even the In-App purchase requests are adorable.

The game offers In-App purchases, but they are not obtrusive, and they are not at all necessary. What you see is what you get for the $0.99 , and you get quite a lot. You get incredible graphics, cute story events to follow throughout the level series, awesome gameplay that feels native to the iOS devices, and an amazing series of extra pieces to each level.

The graphics will be visibly apparent as this post goes on, but this next picture will illustrate the story events that I think are pretty cool. 

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Not Snail Bob's home!

The first series of levels centers around a construction yard, where Snail Bob has lost his home to a (poorly scaled) wrecking ball, oh no! While I never noticed any resolution to the story (i.e. Bob did not save his home,) it was at least a fun lead in. I am also very fond of the dropping post card styled story telling form, which this is.

Where this game really shines is the game play though. The controls are flawless, the game play is self explanatory but challenging at times, and there is a true difficulty ramp up as the levels increase. My favorite part, however, is finding the three stars that are hidden throughout the level. Sometimes they are simple and right in your face, other times they are camouflaged within the environment and other times you have to perform a particular task in order to find the star.

All in all this game is definitely worth the $0.99 to pick up if you're not lucky enough to get ahold of a Starbucks App of the Week card. It's fun, and it's a game that I will be revisiting as time goes on. 

Here's a download link!

Austin

First

Well, it's gotten to that point where I just have to write something, even if it doesn't directly pertain to any grand scheme.  So here it goes, my post about what I hope to post about in the future.

I've had several ideas, but let me go through some of them, most of them are series. I'd like to do a Starbucks App of the Week series, where I download, play, and review the Apps that Starbucks sets little cards out for. I think that this would be a fun look into what different apps there are, and to get some ideas. 

I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again. I'd like to do an Objective-C tutorial focused around ColorGuess! recently I've been working on a small patch for our first game, and it has renewed my furor in it, and rekindled my desire to rewrite some of the code with better practices. Doing a tutorial series might just be the perfect way to do both of those things. 

Another things I would like to do would be based around the 6th generation of Pokemon games, X and Y. I have completely played through X, and I loved it. What I would like to do is play through Y using only Pokemon new to the game. Somewhere along the way I think that I would be able to find something unique and fun to blog about, who knows. 

These are the three main ideas I'm running with now. I have an App of the Week card somewhere in my personal affects, so I'll be getting started with that here in the next few days!