Review: DAGi Capacitive Stylus (iPad)

Steve Jobs once said that if you need to use a stylus on one of their iDevices, Apple had failed. However that hasn’t stopped consumers from wanting to use something other than their fingers and equally had little effect on the companies who make them. Considering the amount of drawing applications and the potential for the iPad to become a serious artistic tool, finding a good stylus among the many iPad accessories is essential. Most are fat with a rubber tip and resemble a swollen pencil but DAGi have made a thinner alternative that also offers a remarkable amount of precision.

Using the stylus for drawing works surprisingly well because of the clever design. DAGi replaces a rubber tip with a clear plastic disc that has a red dot in the centre. When held correctly, the red dot is the exact spot of contact between stylus and screen. It’s almost as if you’re painting with a laser sight. It must be said though because of the shape of the tip, there is a certain sweet spot for using the stylus. Drawing still feels natural and you won’t be holding the touchscreen pen at any obscure angles but it’s worth mentioning if you’re fussy about such things.

The Apps I used as a test for the pen were Brushes, Adobe Ideas and Facebook. The first two were to see how semi-professional art applications work with the stylus and they do so very well. If you’re going for detail and don’t want to keep zooming in to 400% or more, having fundamentally a red dot to follow makes everything a lot easier. As for Facebook, that was used to see how well the stylus handles as a navigational tool for people with portly digits. Again, it came up trumps, scrolling through screens and entering text wasn’t a problem at all.

Despite Jobs’ condemnation of iPad styluses, the DAGi Capacitive Stylus is a great accessory for anyone who wishes to sketch or draw precisely. I would argue that using one doesn’t mean Apple has failed but rather that DAGi have succeeded.

Review: Expedition Case for Nintendo 3DS

I was contacted by the good people of Gamingzap about whether I wouldn’t mind reviewing one of their products. They specialise in accessories with one of the latest being an officially licensed 3DS case, which I was asked to take a look at. My first reaction was “How am I going to review a case? Surely all they need to do is protect the device, look good and be easy to use.” But right there is three good topics for discussion so without further ado, here are my thoughts:

Protection
Gamingzap’s case feels like a tough cookie. The outer shell has a firm bottom but flexible padded top with both parts providing adequate protection for your 200 quid handheld. Dropping the case with your 3DS inside won’t result in anything more serious than being called butter fingers by your mates. Inside is lined with a material soft to the touch with a flap that allows for DS and 3DS games to be stored in elasticated pockets. Continuous mistreatment by jamming more carts in than is recommended – which is six – will in time stretch out the pockets so best not do anything silly like that eh? Similar to the game pockets are two holders for styluses if ever you misplace the one that comes with the 3DS. If like me you’re anal about how your prized gadgets are stored, this case won’t let you down when it comes to its security.

Appearance
Fashion conscious gamers may get a kick out of the retro stylings of the case as its top looks like it could be straight out of Star Fox. Angular shapes and a simple two colour scheme makes the appearance of the case fit with its content and audience. The inside is black which is said to go with everything so, if colour really does bother you, the case is future-proofed so to speak for the obligatory wave of coloured 3DSs Nintendo will surely release in the future.

Ease of use
A zip wraps around three quarters of the curved case and needless to say, it worked fine with no jamming or catching even after the most vigorous of testing. It feels odd to praise a zip but if like me you’ve ever bought a hooded top from the fashion equivalent of poundland (you know the shop…) then you’d know how important a good zip is! The previously mentioned elasticated pockets hold the carts snuggly in place but if for some reason they ever did squirm free, the pockets are angled in such a way that your precious games won’t fall out but simply jingle about inside.

As cases go, Gamingzap’s offering does the job. For around thirteen pound you’ll get something that cushions your 3DS from falls and houses more games than are worth having out of the launch line up leaving room for your favourite DS games too. A nice little case indeed.

Review: Full House Poker (XBLA)

In the interest of full disclosure, when I first started playing Full House Poker on XBLA, I had no idea how to actually play the often replicated card game. It was something I had always wanted to do but simply never got round to it. So when the code arrived I was a tad apprehensive as to how exactly I would review the game. Luckily my best friend loves Poker so together we took on the best of what this downloadable game had to throw at us and along the way, I got to learn the art of gambling with a pack of virtual playing cards. And now, I’m hooked. Read on to see my full review.

Review: Dead Space (iPhone)

I had no idea Dead Space was heading to the iPhone nor did I ever think it would. I figured that an acute control method with stellar graphics and sound were integral to the experience and something unable to achieve on any Apple device. But here we are, a gameplay video sparking my interest and a few hours of horror later, I’ve finished Dead Space on the iPhone and the best way to describe it is “wow.”

Review: ilomilo (XBLA)

UPDATE: This review has been updated with purchase information to coincide with ilomilo‘s launch today.

Now then, what can be said about ilomilo? Breaking it down to its purest form, the game is a puzzle-platformer of sorts with fantastic graphics. Expanding on such simplicities, ilomilo is a divine creation filled with the kind of quirky madness and creativity that is sorely missing on the Xbox 360 of late. I won’t hide my shameless admiration for this game nor will I cover the few flaws if does contain but in this review, I’ll do my best to explain just why I think ilomilo is a wonderful triumph.

Read on!

Review: Fable III, Understone Quest Pack (DLC, Xbox 360)

Instead of being the revolutionary experience we were lead to believe it would be, Fable III‘s final moments left a sour taste in a lot of gamers’ mouths. However something about it and the whole game for that matter, did gel together rather well. The combat. So when I finished the main quest I was in dire need of some fun and the promise of more rhythmic battling in the Understone Quest Pack for only 400 MS Points was an alluring one indeed. How wrong I was.

Translating this into real money, the pack costs £3.43 but is hard to justify that price. You get one mission and two mini-games, all of which are as short on entertainment as they are on time. The mini, or rather micro, games are another bash at Reaver’s Wheel of Misfortune and a shooting range courtesy of the mercenaries. Both these experiences have appeared in previous Fable games as part of the main game so why they are paid DLC is beyond me. Especially when you thing how giving Lionhead were when Fable III was released, offering free bonus content from day one. Saying that, I did quite like the shooting range for the prizes it dishes out like any fairground marquee. But instead of almost dead goldfish in plastic bags, the mercenary who runs the range rewards you with gold or items. The lock-on targeting that Fable III has did take away some of the fun though and boredom began to set in fast. The Wheel of Misfortune was something that I found equally tiresome when I played it as part of the main quest so having a second crack at it did little to excite me. There are also a couple of new weapons to be found in the add-on but since I played it after completing Fable III, the weapons I already had were far superior.

What of the new mission? The actual Understone Quest? It’s essentially a bunch of small arenas that are populated with zombified hobbes and wolves. Without spoiling the story, they’re part of a security system that you must overcome. And you’ll be overcoming the same thing over and over again. Once that is taken care of, your hero will arrive at the town of Understone, a community living under Bowerstone with new shops and houses to exploit. One resident helps you continue the mission and once more you travel from one arena to another, fighting swarms of the undead. Like I said earlier, I really liked the combat in Fable III so this kind of thing should be just what I wanted from an add-on. True, it should have been but it was far too easy for a maxed-out king and over all too quickly. At the very end there is a moral choice to be made and one that I thought by picking the good option, would resolve one of my major problems with Fable III‘s end game. It didn’t. Bugger.

If any of the above sounded interesting to you then I’d say go for it, the Understone Quest Pack is right up your alley. On the other hand, if you’re left thinking that this DLC doesn’t sound like great value for money, then for you, it really won’t be.

Verdict:

Okay
But not a lot more. Hardcore fans of the franchise/genre maybe a little more forgiving of its issues.

Note: I’ve recently changed my scoring system for reviews. Click here for more details.

Quick review: Voice Fantasy (iPhone)

Controlling video games through the power of speech has been attempted by a handful of developers with varying success. But what if you replace words with random noises and automate all but a few of the controls? You get Voice Fantasy from Square Enix. It hints at the idea of being an RPG that frustratingly doesn’t actually let you play and isn’t even a game per se but does give a few minutes of fun to begin with.

So what is Voice Fantasy all about? The promotional literature tries hard to make it sound like a full experience, claiming that it’s a new way of playing video games but In reality, players are only asked to make noises into the iPhone’s mic to summon characters. The pitch and level of sound effects what type of character is brought to life and their attributes. Square have tried to invoke happy memories of their classic titles with the art style and presentation of Voice Fantasy by pretty much replicating the presentation of early Final Fantasy games. If you’ve seen any of those NES classics, which is almost a certainty, you’ve seen Voice Fantasy.

Mages, warriors and the typical job types are created via noise and then chosen for battle in one of the shortest single player campaigns Square has ever produced. You fight a few monsters before facing the Demon King. If you lose, you start from the beginning and try again. Win and you start from the beginning and try again. Yep, it’s repetitive regardless of victory or downfall. What’s worse is how there’s no interaction once a character is chosen to fight. No leveling up, no story, nothing. The iPhone does everything for you which left me to wonder why I paid £1.19 for it in the first place.

The quirkiness of watching pixelated people duke it out and repeat a high-pitched rendition of the noise you made to create them is pleasing to begin with but without any kind of progression, real playability or longevity, Voice Fantasy is simply poor. Gathering a group of friends together and showing particularly non-gamers its eccentricity is were most of the slender entertainment is found but paying over a quid for what is essentially an experiment rather than any sort of game is just wrong.

Review: Super Scribblenauts

To say that Super Scribblenauts is a true sequel to 5th Cell’s 2009 genius but flawed puzzler would be a bit of an exaggeration. The developers themselves refrained from giving it a numerical title but instead claim it to be a superior version of the original. And for all intense purposes, it is just that. Though in some weird twist of fate, Super Scribblenauts may have rid itself from the bigger problems of its predecessor but also lost a bit of the charm too.

Quick review: eBoy FixPix (iPhone)

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One of the most famous and pixel artists, eBoy, has made a name for himself in all forms of medium and as his art shows, he clearly likes video games. Catering for an artistic audience, his move into the gaming scene had to be as creative as it was beautiful and his iPhone App, eBoy FixPix is exactly that. It’s a modern day puzzle game using the iPhone’s motion-tracking innards to fix his broken images. By broken I mean images that appear to be multilayered with those layers subtly or dramatically unaligned. By rotating the iPhone in various angles, these layers move independently until you hit that sweet spot and the image is complete. Separating the images in this way exposes detail that wouldn’t normally be seen in the pic. A minor gripe is how you can find yourself in some very weird positions trying to line up the images and sometimes the accuracy of alignment is rather strict. A few puzzles looked as if they were complete but were not until a moved my phone a fraction to hear the retro victory music played after every successful puzzle.

FixPix contains 100 levels (or images) in one continuous stream. Once you complete a pic you move onto the next without being able to replay that level until you finish the game and start all over again. It wouldn’t normally be a problem but when you play with a group of friends – something I found to be really enjoyable with FixPix – the completionist in me wanted to solve the puzzles my friends had done rather than being forced onwards. And the art on show is fantastic so the option to saver these at a later date would have been nice.

But that aside, £1.19 for a unique puzzle game with some fantastic artwork with pittance to pay when you and a group of friends can have so much fun. It’s been out for a few months so there’s no need to wait, grab yourself a copy of eBoy FixPix and get fixing!

Verdict:
Awesome
An outstanding experience that goes above and beyond expectations.