= 1 star

Taser a cartoon hippie and see how he reacts in this novelty app.

The Good

• Performs as advertised.
• A few smirks from the various phrases spoken by the hippie. It’s well voice acted.

The Bad

• After a few go rounds, I began to feel guilty. While not as bad as shaking a baby, electrocuting an old, clueless, drug addled oldster is not exactly my idea of fun, and I wonder whose idea it would be. Read up on the Milgram experiement.

Conclusion

Not sure what makes me more uncomfortable: the people who created this app or the people who download it. That’s all the thought this app deserves.

iPhone App Store Link:

= 1 star

iGirl Lite places a virtual woman on your iPhone that you can interact with.

The Good

• I suppose if nothing else excites you, this could be a new sort of thrill.
  

The Bad

• The interaction with the pocket babe is pretty limited. The main feature is zooming a camera around her so you can ogle at it from different angles. You can shake the iPhone and she’ll momentarily lose her balance. Excuse me while I calm down from the virtual excitement.
• Options are rather basic. You have different ethnicities, hair styles, and outfits, but despite this I wasn’t able to get iGirl to look much better.
• The graphics aren’t very good. The wooden blocks in Zen Bound are more realistic and appealing, with varied lighting. Yes, I choose the wooden block wrapped in twine over iGirl.

Conclusion

I’m sure the full version of iGirl has more options than this “lite” version, but based on what is on display here, I’m not going to pony up for the full version. Don’t bother with this total waste of time.

iTunes Store Link:

= 1 star

Singing Cat is a novelty program where playing a virtual piano (made up of paw prints) produces cat meows. A cat picture changes in time with your key presses.

The Good

• Well, it does the bare minimum of what it advertises.
• Cute cat.

The Bad

• No choices as far as cat meows. You get one shrill cat meow and you better like it.
• The paw print keyboard is on the small side and at the bottom of the screen, making it a bit hard to play on. There is no landscape mode.
• The “animation” is basically the swapping of two photographs of the same cat. Would be nice to exchange the “stock” cat with my own cat photos.

Conclusion

If you’re at all interested in the admittedly niche novelty of playing melodies with cat meows, check out the far superior Cat Piano. Both are 99 cents and Cat Piano offers much more functionality at the same price.

iTunes App Store Link:

= 1 starr

rRootage is a slide and shoot space game with retro-vector graphics. Move your ship back and forth and avoid all the objects hurtling toward you, in your quest to destroy the mother ship.

The Good

• The graphics are moderately amusing in that retro way.
• There are several different game modes, each with slightly different ship behaviors and interactions with the mother ship’s bullets.

The Bad

• No background music or sound effects — no sound, period. This is a pretty serious omission especially compared to the pleasing background music and sounds of games like Edge and Rolando.
• Your ship’s weapon is on perpetual auto-fire, which basically draws a huge column from your ship up toward the top of the screen. Plus, your beam has no effect on all the tiny projectile-thingies emerging from the mothership. The result is not much fun, both in terms of having something to do (like press a fire button repeatedly) or seeing things explode.
• Seems like there should be some powerups to get cooler weapons.
• Not enough variation between levels, except for the number of bullets coming toward you getting more and more overwhelmingly ridiculous.

Conclusion

Maybe I just don’t get this game, but I didn’t care for it — even at the low, low price of free. The primary activity is dragging a ship around the screen — therefore I’d prefer a good-old classic like Galaga — or even Space Invaders — to this.

iTunes App Store Link:

= 1 star

Spore Origins is based on the cellular level of the computer game Spore. You design a tiny creature and swim it around a primordial soup, eating smaller creatures and avoiding larger ones. Your creature evolves as you progress through the levels.

The game makes great use of the iPhone’s tilt detection as a controller.

The Good

• The graphics and controls are on the level expected from a EA. There’s a sense of depth to the water world as if you’re peering through a few layers of water to see your creature. The controls are also pretty cool, making use of the tilt detection in the iPhone that takes very little time to figure out how to play. It’s a great demo of the gaming capabilities of the iPhone.

The Bad

• The game is made up of multiple levels that get progressively harder over time, which has led to a problem I often run into with these types of games: I got stuck on one level that I can’t get past. At this point I’m not sure if it’s my gaming suckitude or poor creature design, but I’m loathe to start over from scratch.
• The leveling and creature design is fun at first, but soon becomes a tad tedious.
• One graphic element that doesn’t work — when your creature eats a smaller one there is a flash and the creature gets bigger and stuff goes crazy for a second or two. Very distracting.

Conclusion

The most telling thing about Spore: although at first I played it incessantly for a few days, I haven’t touched it again in several weeks. Maybe it’s just me, but as far as I’m concerned, Spore wasn’t worth the ten bucks. If you’re at all curious, try out the free, Spore Origins Light to see if it’s your cup of tea.

iTunes App Store Link: