3.5

I am a fan of the original Doom game from way back when, so when its sequels were being offered at a significant discount, I jumped on the chance to own it. Sadly, as with way too many sequels out there, it is somewhat disappointing as compared to the original.

Unlike it's predecessor, which involved simply moving from Point A to Point B and shooting any monsters along the way, Doom II RPG tries to have a story with character interaction between the mayhem usually in the form of text messages on the screen that one has to tap through to get rid of. On more sophisticated computer systems that use voices and smoother 3D motion, this would probably add to the experience. On the iPhone, it doesn't.

Doom II does come with some interesting extras such as a comic book based on the game. It also comes with some "mini-games" in the form of puzzles.

The game might be more interesting if the creators decided to redevelop it using the latest iPhone graphics (or maybe create Doom: The Next Generation). The look of it feels dated and even somewhat sloppy. Or perhaps I'm just a purist.

This might have been an impressive game ten or so years ago, but now it's simply a retro game for your portable device like Frogger or Pac-Man. This is not a bad game, but it could be better. If you like the Doom franchise, you're going to like this game.

I'm a sucker for humorous apps.  Fortune Yeller would be a copy of the famous Magic 8 Ball except it's evil.  Not only it is evil, it's loud.

The premise is simple.  Ask the Fortune Yeller a yes or no question and it will respond in a loud and evil negative answer.  If you get through the answer without wanting to kill yourself, you win.  The cutest part is that the evil 8 Ball is smoking while giving you your fortune.

Answers include 'If you weren't such an $@#%!@ everyone would like you more.  Wait, what was the question?" and 'Maybe.  But ask your friends.  But they don't trust you.  They hate you."  If you let the program wait a little bit without doing anything, the Evil Magic Eight Ball still makes rude and crude noises and phrases.

You can also e-mail the responses to friends (the app interacts with the Mail app on your device) or simply see the list of conspirators behind this app atrocity.  This is in case you want to hunt them down later.

That's about it. There isn't much to the app but what do you expect for $.99?  If you like the Magic 8 Ball but have a wicked, sick and morbid sense of humor, then this app is worth the buck.

It's typical that I don't discover this application until long after "Geek Week" is over.  That being said, if the iPhone existing back when I was in high school and this app was on it, it would have led to a guaranteed beating by the neighborhood bullies.

However, for 'Star Trek' fans, the app is kind of fun.  It's best described as a personal journal where one can record audio, images or text and share them with friends on services such as Facebook and Twitter   If you tap the left multicolored button on the main screen, you can change the type of communicator you have to Captain, Engineering, Science/Medical, Enterprise, Romulan or Klingon.  All that means is that the base color of the communicator will change.  The layout remains the same.

One feature that Paramount could have included with this app is a default setting for the title of each log.  I would have used today's date.  For now, it's required to type something in.  Even more annoying, you can't record your own voice and use 'Star Trek' sound effects in the background at the same time.  You can only choose one or the other.

The app does this annoying habit of playing 'Star Trek' sounds in the background, but that can be turned off by tapping the right multicolored button.  If you tap the Enterprise image on top, you get to see a 3D model of the Enterprise flying through space.  Cute, but unnecesary.

The app is supposed to be a social networking tool for 'Star Trek' fans, but it feels as if it hasn't quite been refined enough to be popular.  It is a cute app, but only the Trekkies will get it.  If you're a 'Star Trek' completist and can spare the buck, then this app is for you.  Otherwise, the creators will need to make it easier to use for others to get utility from it.

This game used to cost $7 in the App Store.  As of this writing, it is free.  However, the game has changed in that future chips purchases must be done in-app using real money.  Pardon me, but isn't that gambling?  I guess not since you can't get back your money via the virtual chips in the game.  However, it seems darn close to actual gambling.

All that being said, for a simple poker-playing app, this one has great graphics and uses the intro direct from the television show.  The game has real-time play with other people via a data connection.

There are various types of games available in the app with various types of play, too many to review them all.  If you play the single-player version of the game, you start with $1500 and play various other virtual people (I play against 8 of them).  It's not a simple game to master and would likely require the user to carefully read the instructions that come with the app.

The game starts with the program's theme song playing in the background, but that can thankfully be shut off (it should default to off).  It's also possible to turn on and off hand strengths, tells and movies.  I'm sure "hand-strengths" and "tells" are obvious terms to those familiar with poker.

Not being a very good poker player, I lost my money relatively quickly.  Despite the slick graphics and the unbeatable price, I think I'll stick with video poker from here on out.

Meebo is purportedly the leader in the game being played by a great many multi-protocol chat clients on the Web. It’s no wonder then that it has also made a stab at the immensely popular iPhone platform with its own free native iPhone/iPod touch app simply and not unsurprisingly called Meebo for iPhone.

The interface of Meebo for iPhone is well-designed and easy to navigate. The app is divided into three main tabs located at the bottom of the app screen. Like its Web counterpart, Meebo for iPhone supports a good number of chat and IM protocols, including Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, Google Talk, and even Facebook, all of which you can sign on to through the app’s Accounts tab.

The tab labeled ‘Buddies’ is naturally where you’ll see a list of your buddies or friends from across all the different accounts you are signed on to, including your offline buddies if you’ve deactivated the ‘hide offline buddies’ in the app’s settings page within the iPhone’s Settings app. Simply tap a buddy ID to start a conversation, or tap on the plus icon above the list to add a new buddy and chat with him/her right away. The conversation will then be automatically saved and included in another tab called ‘Chats.’ Here you can keep track of your recent conversations as well as view your entire chat history, at least those of the conversations that you haven’t deleted yet.

The app, like its parent Web application, boasts a clean appearance and noticeably quick response time. Sending an IM, whether by portrait or by landscape keyboard, is relatively fast, even when riding on a reasonably slow EDGE signal. Sending a photo, though, is understandably more time-consuming. Some display bugs also happen from time to time, such as the disappearance of chat bubbles and some IMs, but these are ones no fair amount of app restarts can do away with and no minor update can take care of once and for all.

iKitt used to be offered for free, but no longer.  Glen Larson or someone must have gotten wind of it and now for the honor of having William Daniels as the voice of your car, it will cost you a buck.

If you're a Knight Rider fan, the app is very cute and definitely worth the buck.  If you've never heard of Knight Rider or couldn't care less, there are probably other purchases you could make. 

For those who are fans, you can even mess with people's heads and put it on your dashboard acting like it's the voice of the car.  However, it only says a set of about a dozen pre-recorded messages from the show (unlike the Knight Rider GPS with Daniels' voice, which is more interactive).

The app is very simple to use.  Tap one fo the buttons around the voicebox or the voicebox itself in the center to hear Daniels say a phrase as KITT.  Double-tap the voicebox to zoom in on it and have it occupy the entire screen (double-tap again to zoom out).  If you turn the device to landscape, it becomes the famous KITT speedometer and keeps track of your car's speed via the GPS.  Obviously, if you are on an iPod touch, you don't get all this functionality.

It's a fun and nerdy app to own, but to truly make this app go to 11 on the cool scale, make it a full-blown auto GPS application for the iPhone using Daniels' voice (like the Mio version).  That would be worth the inevitable $50 price.  In the meantime, just for some fun and games with friends in the car, it's worth the buck.

PhotoAvatar, while not perfect, is certainly a neat app to own and has some of the best computer animation I've seen on the iPhone.  Taking its inspiration from the movie "Avatar", the app allows the user to take a headshot photograph (either through the camera or photo library) and superimposes the facial features to an alien head with surprising accuracy.

The app goes even further by having the alien make weird and scary sounds and movements  when you tap the head.  If you shake the app, the visage turns even more alien.  You can choose to have the image look more human (with only alien eyes and teeth) if you activate the Earth icon near the button.  The app is certain to scare the crap out of younger children.

Despite all this, the app is not without its flaws.  For some reason, in order to process the photograph into the alien head, the app requires a data or WiFi connection.  The app does save previously selected photographs and alien visage choices and the user can return to them later with the equivalent of an "alien photo library".

Another issue is the limited choice of aliens that you can superimpose on their image.  I suspect, in the future, PhotoAvatar will allow for the in-app purchase of other aliens later, maybe aliens from either the Star Trek or Star Wars  franchises.

Overall, PhotoAvatar is definitely worth the buck.

The sheep and the wolf--it's a classic conflict; and Saving Private Sheep builds on that conflict.

You are in control of Private Sheep--you must get him to safely land on the platform as quickly and in as few moves as possible.  If private sheep falls off the wolf will get him.  If you take too long to solve the puzzle, you may have to do it again.

The graphics and interface are well done, the actions are smooth and the controls work well.  The animated wolf popping up every now and then always made me chuckle.  

In many respects, Saving Private Sheep reminds me of Tiki Totems Premium in that in order to solve the level, you need to tap on the pieces to remove them; with various types of blocks that each have their own special attribute. (For example, certain blocks can’t be removed, while others can.)  

Each level is ever so slightly more complicated than the one before it—the difference is so slight, you might wonder if there’s any change in difficulty whatsoever.  And while some people see the gradual increase in difficulty as a plus, I thought that it dragged out the pacing of the game and made it boring.

Saving Private Sheep is good, but unless you are really into this type of puzzle game, you might not play it often.

Recently, the ability to get Insurance for your iPhone was made available (although we think the pricing is a bit off).  But there is still the matter of sensitive data from one's iPhone falling into the wrong hands.  Fortunately, there is the Find My iPhone app from Apple.

Once installed and launched, the app can use your iPhone's GPS to track it down and present its location on a map.  It's also possible to remotely make the iPhone play a sound for an extended period and display a message to help discourage thieves, or maybe encourage them to bring the phone back.  Users can also remotely set a passcode and wipe all personal data from the device.  Sounds like a pretty good idea to us.

Here's the kicker tough: a MobileMe account is required to do any of this.  So, while the app is free, to properly safeguard your iPhone, it will cost $99 per year.  Of course MobileMe brings a lot of other things with it, so It's certainly worth having.  If you don't have MobileMe, all of this functionality can be performed at any Apple store, but having control of your phone remotely is something we think is a nice addition to that MobileMe membership.  Imagine that you don't loose your phone at all, but instead use the feature to track your phones location when you "lend it to your teenager". :)

Overall, the app is very well done, very easy to use, and provides some additional functionality that I'm sure you will be glad you installed if the unfortunate theft ever occurs.

 What if you took Tap Tap Revenge, removed the importance of tapping to the music and instead replaced it with ants.  Well, in essence, you’d get Tap Tap Ants.

The goal of Tap Tap Ants is to see how many ants you can squish (tap) in 60 seconds.

Different Levels? Nope

Powerups? Nope

Different ants? Sort of--ants of different colors, but their points and movements seem the same even though they are different colors.

Nothing different game after game, just a relentless flood of ants coming at you and all you can do is tap.

The developer’s notes talk about how addicting it is, etc.  I didn’t find the game addicting in the least bit; instead it made me realize how long a minute can be.  Sure there are various colors of ants but from what I can tell, there’s no difference point wise, or speed wise, between a black ant and a purple one with a black “bottom”.

All in all, I say Tap Tap Ants is a dud…sure it’s free (and I love free apps!), but in this case the cost matches the quality.