Icarus-X - Fighter Jet Game - App Review

When I was younger I loved the game Raiden and I have played many fighter jet games since. 
Icarus-X (By The Quadsphere) is an impressive new 3D birds-eye view take on the old classic games. 

The graphics are pretty cool. The 3D is backgrounds are interactive. Pretty amazing, but also can be nauseating at times. 

The game is really fast-paced. There's a lot going on, lasers and fireballs being thrown at you, all over the screen. Downside is the backgrounds make all this on-screen details clash into one...

The controls are okay, not great. I couldn't even get my plane to go right to the bottom of the screen, it would always stay about 1/5 from the bottom. Also when you have your finger on-screen moving the craft, you can't really see what's around you. And you ship don't fire unless your holding your finger down. 

The game features two campaign modes: Redux; which includes power-ups and bombs and Classic; which has just one weapon and missiles. 

Icarus-X includes a practice mode, awards and replays. Also, leaderboards and then settings.

The settings include:

- Direct touch or relative touch controls

- Play game music or listen to songs from your device while playing.

It's a fast-paced, full of action fighter plane game, that can be frustrating at times or may even leave you feeling a little nauseated or dizzy from the 3D fast moving interactive backgrounds. If you love these type of plane fighter games - you may love this one. Not my favourite, but impressive none the less. 

Available for: iOS (iPhone / iPad) and Android

Price: $4.99 (iOS) / $2.99 (Android) 

Awesome Band Eyeshine Releases iPhone App

The most awesome unsigned band in the world, Eyeshine have released their iOS (iPhone) app!

Eyeshine is a unsigned band from Los Angeles, CA. formed in 2004 by Johnny Yong Bosch (Anime Voice Actor, Actor, Power Ranger) and Maurice Salmin. Eyeshine combines elements of pop, punk and post grunge in a blend they call Edge Rock.

The app is filled with heaps of features including:
- music, photos, videos, tour dates, news, band Info and social sharing options.

The Eyeshine app is FREE and available for iPhone and Android.

Download Links:
[iOS App] / [Android App]

Check out Eyeshine on Facebook and YouTube.

Click here for a preview of their new upcoming music video "Acquiescence".

iOS Tip: Undo On Your iPhone and iPad

Your typing something important, then you accidently delete everything! What do you do, probably start fretting, right? Well did you know that the iPhone / iPad has a undo feature? That's right you can get that text you deleted back.

To use the 'Undo' feature, just 'shake to undo'. Simply shake your device for about a second and the display will show a option that will say "Undo Typing" or "Cancel", hit the undo and the previous text will reappear! If you decide you want to go back to what you had before your restored the text, shake the device again and there will be the option, "Redo Typing".

New Social App Vine! But Is It Lame?

A new social network! ...is the last thing anyone probably would want to hear. 

New app Vine (by Vine Labs, Inc.) which is owned by Twitter is a social sharing app that let's you create short six second looping videos. Vine describes that app as "the best way to see and share life in motion".

In my opinion, Vine would fail as a video app. Six seconds is too short for a video. So this app should really be looked at as a short animation or really a stop-motion app. Vine fits in more with the GIF (animated photo) apps. 

While you can get creative and create cool stop-motion videos, most people's Vine posts will basically be just six seconds of video. And would you really get anything more from that than you would in a simple picture? 

The app itself, even though it's still new, seems half done, unfinished and more like a beta version. There are bugs and lack of options and settings. Finding your friends on Vine can also be a problem unless they are on Twitter. At the moment everything you post on Vine is public, you can't set you account private, so remember not to post anything you wouldn't want the whole world seeing. 

I'm not sure if Vine will catch on. On one side, the six second time limit seems about right for people's attention span, and the app lets the user capture a video moment in there life. You could capture six seconds of that wild party or a beautiful scenery. However the app and the looping videos just makes you feel like you should do something creative with it. And I don't know about you, but there's only so many Vine's of food on plates and the liquid in drinks 'disappearing' I can bare to watch. 

Vine is free and available for iPhone. 

Have you been using Vine? Do you like it? Let me know in the comments.

[Vine App Link]

What Is The Best Video Media Player For iPhone and iPad? - iMedia Player - App Review

The next video player app is:

iMedia Player - By VietMobile  

iMedia Player is designed for both iPhone and iPad.


You can copy files to iMedia Player documents via USB or via WiFi. Supports video popular video formats like; mp4, avi, wmv, ect... And audio formats like; MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, FLAC. Also has support for subtitles.

The video playback is Up to Full HD 1080p quality for file types; MP4, MOV, M4V and MPV. (Older devices may not be able to play.)

There is also Airplay support, and many more features.

Reliability? Well the videos I tested did work! And without problems. AC3 audio however isn't supported in this app either.  If you're looking for an app for both iPhone and iPad, give this one a try - I think it's the best option available at the moment.

iMedia Player is free, but ad-supported, but can be removed for an in-app purchase of $1.99 (U.S.)


[iMedia Player App Store Preview Link]



And if you're still not happy with the apps and decide that you want to convert your videos after all, a awesome program for both Mac and Windows is HandBreak. It's free, easy enough to use - works great and will get the job done!

And to all the developers out there, if you think you have a app that better than all these, let me know on Twitter, @AppsReviewed1 or in the comments.



**UPDATE: The arguably best media player for desktop computers, VLC Player, is back on iOS. It's free and plays anything - read more here.

What Is The Best Video Media Player For iPhone? - AnyPlayer - App Review

Apple's Video player on iOS is great, but file types that it can play are very limited - it's basically just MPEG-4 and H.264 files. So if you have all these different file types and don't want to spend the hours it takes to convert them, what is the best media player app for iOS? Well... there actually isn't a great answer to that question. I have yet to find a app that would even be anywhere near perfect great. But there is some hope. There are some apps out there that might be decent enough and may work for you. Luckily all the ones I will mention have at least free versions to try out.

First up is:

AnyPlayer - By michealPlayer

AnyPlayer is actually only for iPhone, so that's the first negative. Second negative is it doesn't support AC3 audio.  On the plus side it does feature:
- Dropbox file download/upload.
- Supports MP3, M4A, WMA and lossless FLAC audio formats.
- Video formats supported;  AVI, ASF, MKV, FLV, MP4, 3GP, MOV, WMV, M4V, TS, MPEG, RM/RMVB, M2TS, MT2S.
- And there are a lot of play back controls for; Speed Control, A-B Repeat Playback, Subtitles, and lot more...

Video playback is okay, mostly works, but you may runs across some issues from time to time.

Try out the free version to see if the app is right for you: AnyPlayerAD


>> Continue reading to the next media player app review.

Disney's Wreck-it Ralph - App Review

Based on the hit movie from Disney, this game takes you right into the film.  Playing as characters from the film, Wreck-it Ralph takes you through all the games he visits in the movie.

When you first enter the game, you'll be in a station like area that you can access all the games from.

'Fix-it Felix Jr.' is the first you can enter. An 8-bit game that is pretty straight forward. Ralph climbs up the apartment building wrecking the windows. Felix (controlled by you) has to move from one window sell to the other fixing the windows while Ralph punches bricks down at you. You have a time limit to fix all the windows before you can move on to the next round. The game gets harder as you move up in levels, by having to move around obstacles that are blocking your path... This is a fan and old school style game.

'Sweet Climber' is the next one up. This one is a platform game, a endless climb that I found a little hard to get the hang of at first. Not really the game I can see myself playing or wanting to play, more so because I never lasted more than 30 seconds, but if you're good at other platform games like the recent "Hop" and "Sonic Jump", maybe you'll enjoy this too.

'Heroes Duty' has you in control of the character, Sergeant Calhoun. In the movie this game is a First Person Shooter, but in the app you're seeing everything from a birds eye view. You have to kill all the Cy-Bugs that are coming in at you from 360 degrees. You can control Sergeant Calhoun with the two controllers on ether side of the screen, one moves you from left to right, up and down and diagonally. The other controller, is a 360 degree continuous shooter, this is a good feature, but it dose take sometime to get use too. 'Heroes Duty' is a fast pace game, difficult, but is still fun.

'Turbo Time' is the last game you can enter at the moment. It's a 16-bit game that puts you in the driver seat, for a number of races as the character, Turbo. All you have to do is steer though the racecourse, collecting cons and hitting the speed tracks to help give you a boost. It starts off easy but the tracks get harder as you win races...

All the games in Wreck-It-Ralph are short mini-games. You cannot save your progress, but the app does keep track of your scores. You can also compete with your friends (and the world) by comparing scores in Wreck-It-Ralph's Game Central Station.

Overall, if you're a fan of the film you'll love this game!

Price: 99¢ (U.S.)

Platform: iOS and Android