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The Toshiba Thrive showed up on our radars back at CES, though back then it was still known as "the nameless Toshiba tablet". The 10.1" tablet took pre-orders in June, and looked towards mid-July for a shipping date.
Everyone who's been to a midway knows the format of skee-ball; for a couple bucks you ramp some wooden balls into scoring targets in order to get tickets to exchange for prizes. A new game for Android, Ball-Hop Bowling, recreates the whole experience, rip-off and all.
LauncherPro developer Fredrico Carnales made headlines a couple of months ago by announcing that, on top of maintaining his popular homescreen replacement, he was going to tackle development on a music app. That app, now named UberMusic, has made it out to the public in the form of a downloadable beta.
Angry Birds fans who play the game on a Nook Color now have a reason to trudge to Barnes & Noble. The book retailer will be offering a promotion for the game, allowing users who play the game while connected to its Wi-Fi to receive the Mighty Eagle downloadable character free of charge.
Great iOS ports seem to be flowing over the Android border quite steadily these days: I reviewed Cut The Rope last week, so why not tackle AllRecipes.com's Dinner Spinner?
As an Atrix owner, these past couple of days have been a bit of a "Christmas in (almost) July" celebration. First, we get confirmation that our bootloader will be unlocked with Android 2.3.4. After that, the phone is placed on sale on Amazon for one measly cent. Then XDA Developers say "screw that; we'll give you an unlock on Froyo!"
Cut The Rope, which arrived to Android yesterday, is one of those "top shelf" iOS titles that has done so well for itself that it's become synonymous with mobile gaming. Of course, it isn't at an "Angry Birds" level yet, but it's permeated the public consciousness to a point where I've heard non-gamer friends talk about it with enthusiasm.
Even though we reported yesterday that the Motorola Atrix would be receiving the option to unlock its bootloader, a group of dedicated developers on XDA have found a way to do, even on Froyo. The update involves flashing a specifically-coded SBF, and then running commands from the fastboot menu of the phone. If all goes well, you'll get the fabled "device is now unlocked" message, and you will be one step closer to killing that damned Motoblur.
Sometimes, it's best when a game doesn't perform just one function. Especially when graphics-heavy apps charge more than usual for an experience that might grow stale, variance and depth is extremely important. The iOS port of Galaxy on Fire II has depth in spades, but is the overall experience worth the game's price?
In my youth, one of the games I hated most was Battleship - it was simply too slow for my liking. Spending what seemed like ages trying to seek out hits in a sea of misses only served to bore me out of my mind.
Pax Britannica for Android is a port of the open-source game of the same name. Marketed as "the one button strategy game," Pax lives up to its word. Players take control of an underwater factory ship that is locked in combat with another ship of similar function.
The Swype team released a new round of improvements to their keyboard replacement software this evening. With this update, users can expect improvements to the "traditional" way of typing, as the correction engine that is used in the Swype method has been applied there as well.
Japanese developer Kairosoft seems to be the king of the mobile simulation genre, having pumped out three English titles (Game Dev Story, Hot Springs Story and now Grand Prix Story) which manage to be addicting as hell while benefitting from the touch controls of a smartphone. In their games, you're put in the shoes of a business owner who is looking to both make money and rise to the top of his/her chosen profession.
Puzzle games are some of my favourite titles for the Android because of their tendency to play well in short bursts. Rebirth looks to take the gameplay behind Lumines and bring it over to the mobile market: the question is, will it do the original justice?
Sometimes, it's just not fun to be the good guy. Sometimes, you need to be a little bad. Sometimes, you just need to destroy everything that lays in your path with a fiery ball of fury.
A large part of what makes the Internet amazing is that it's taken the human factor out of some things that rely on speed. The fact that e-mail has supplanted snail mail is a testament to this fact. Having to wait for a system to process and deliver your messages is just so much better in a digital environment.
I'm not afraid to say I play Dungeons & Dragons; I think it's a great way for people to have fun together and enjoy a truly dynamic narrative. However, since I write about tech and other nerdy stuff for a living, I like having the old-school pen and paper mesh with technology whenever possible.
You know what's more frustrating than a beautiful-looking game whose controls don't work?
In a perfect addition to this lazy Hump Day, Japanese developer Kairosoft just dropped their newest entry into the Android simulation game genre, titled Grand Prix Story.