Gaming

Test your Knowledge – The iOS Quiz Up App now on Android

Want to find out how smart your friends are? Well, you now have a perfect solution if you are using an Android phone. One the most popular iOS games has made its landing on Android. If you are not aware, Quiz Up is an amazing quizzing game with hundreds of topics and over 200,000 questions. So, this is one game that could really test your quizzing abilities.

To start you could sign in using either Facebook, Google+ or email. Once logged in, you could either choose an opponent from your friends list or let the system pick a random player for you. As you progress through the game, you are awarded some weird and wacky badges, which can be used as your title. The user interface is pretty slick too and the profile page reminds me of Path. For your profile, you can choose background wallpaper and a profile pic on top of it.

The topics range from Music to The Dark Knight Trilogy. From General Knowledge to even Mean Girls. The possibilities are limitless. So this game can keep you going for a long time. Each game consists of 7 rounds with 10 seconds for each round. The scoring depends on how quickly you answer. Don’t worry if you fall back in certain rounds because the last round has double the points to let you catch up. There is an option to surrender a game, but you don’t wanna do that. Do you?

Lost a match? Don’t fret. There is an option for a rematch, provided the opponent agrees to it. You could also challenge an opponent, the difference from a rematch being you are not playing parallel with your opponent. Your opponent can take up the challenge once you have completed your part.

The one drawback of this game is that the questions do tend to repeat but that’s bound to happen and they are not that frequent.

Sounds exciting eh? I’m hooked on it. So, download today and get quizzing!

Download from Google Play

Download QR-Code

QuizUp

Developer: Glu

Price: Free⁺

Download from iTunes

Download QR-Code

‎QuizUp®

Developer: Glu Games Inc

Price: Free⁺

Krrish 3 The Game Reviewed

So I tried my hand at Krrish 3 The Game! I’m not too well versed with the Krrish franchise.. i know the basics.. and thanks to the media frenzy surrounding the movies, i think i know most of the storyline as well. Straight off the bat, Krrish looks good.. The graphics are pretty darn good. The facial features are pretty detailed, and the basic layout is simple enough to start playing right away.

Gameplay

There are a few bugs, with the controls.Why not give players an option of buttons, an option of tilt to play? Swiping furiously is not necessarily the future of touch gaming.
The game is not difficult, but the view angle and perspective is fixed and not speed dependent.. This is so annoying! If my character is walking, i can see X feet in front.. but if the character is hurtling forward at full tilt, i can still only see x feet in front of the character.. Invariably resulting in me falling off too many buildings and running into too many walls..

Pros

Great graphics

Nothing bad to say over here, the character modeling is great. and the game runs quite smoothly.. The backgrounds are clear. (Though at times they seem to merge with the foreground, making gameplay plain annoying)

Game Play

The game is effectively a runner format, with little bits of combat thrown in. The ability to create matches is great and definitely should be used often. Hopefully Play Games integration would enhance the multiplayer experience immensely.

Cons

The Ads

Oh god the ads… at every menu function there is a pop-up ad.. at some points you know the QA has not been done because, the close button for an ad, overlaps with a game menu function. So thanks to that i was not able to even access some of the menus..

Crashes

I will have to clarify this one. During play the game never hung or shutdown. But It seems to run in the background, and is constantly throwing error reports while I’m not even playing..

To sum it up

I’m not a follower of the franchise, and initially i was not too impressed by the game. I’ve had the game for a week and there have already been two updates for bugs – which is great. On the whole it’s a fun game, not what i was expecting. Few tweaks to the gameplay and you could have a great game. Unfortunately with most “theme” games, they tend to die out after the event has passed, i.e. the movie stops screening.. It would be interesting if the producers pushed their audience to play the game more..

Definitely worth downloading!

Download Links

iOS Download

Android Download

Download QR-Code

Krrish 3: The Game

Developer: Vroovy

Price: Free⁺

Windows Phone Download

Gameplay Trailer

Expedition Mars – SciFi game for iPhone and iPad

You’re on a mission to Mars in the year 2020 and during your space jaunt, you’re rudely shocked out of your sleep to find out that your ship is all but destroyed. You’re the sole survivor and have to get your self out of the damaged ship and head over to Mars.

As you go into the game, you have to find parts, fix circuits, assemble space suites and more to escape from the doomed ship. The game demands quite a bit for you to advance to the next level. You have to keep an eye for parts which you may need to assemble into tools and gizmos which will aid your advancement into the next levels.

You can explore your environment by panning around the screen in all directions including up and down. Tap on items in your environment to interact with them or find items to collect for later. The items you collect line up on the top of your screen. You can use these items to build stuff or work gadgets or machinery in the game.

The puzzles in the game are also not a cakewalk either, some of them had me stumped initially and I had to backtrack and figure out how to solve them. You always have the option of getting hints on what to do next using your hand-held computer on the right bottom side of the screen. be aware that if you run out of battery, you don’t get any more hints till you do an in-app purchase to get more. So conserve your hints till you actually need them. I made the mistake of running out of them quite early on in the game…

Apart from your hand-held’s battery, when you’re out on the Martian Surface, keep an eye out on your Air Supply meter on the left hand bottom corner as well. The more time you spend exploring the great Martian outdoors and battling it out on those tough puzzles, the more air you consume, leaving you with no air to survive on. Fortunately, since this is just a game, you can buy more air canisters using an in-app purchase option as well.

Overall Experience

I found this game to be quite engaging and challenging to keep me occupied during my daily commutes. At times it does get me a little worked up with those puzzles end up being a little too tough to solve in the first go, but the satisfaction after actually solving it makes up for it. The environments in this game really are beautifully designed and add that special touch to the game.

The game is available in both iPhone and iPad versions with a free version in both avatars. The free version allows you to play the first chapter in the game to sample it so take that for a spin before you go ahead and download the Full version of the game. Just past the download links for the game trailer video.

Expedition Mars – iPad HD Version

Expedition Mars HD Lite: space adventure

Download QR-Code

Expedition Mars HD Lite: space adventure

Developer: Nevosoft LLC

Price: Free⁺

Expedition Mars – iPhone Version

Download QR-Code

Expedition Mars Lite: space adventure

Developer: Nevosoft LLC

Price: Free⁺

Game Trailer

Wordament – Find words in two minutes & compete against the Internet

One of the first games I tried on my new Nokia Lumia 920 is a game from Microsoft called Wordament. I took it for a spin, just because it was a preloaded game on the phone. Little did I suspect that point that I’d soon be hooked on this game. iOS users can also enjoy this game, since it’s available on iTunes as well.

Wordament is a simple enough game to start off with. You are presented with a 4 by 4 grid of alphabet tiles and you have to find words by sliding your fingers over letters which are adjacent to each other. Check the image below to see how the Game tiles look. Just moving your fingers over the letters PARING, selects and adds the word to the your list of words which you found.

Wordament Game Letter Tiles

Oh. Did I mention yet that you have just Two minutes to find as many words as you can? Wordament is also a real-time game which means players around the world are competing to find as many words as they can within that two minute time window. It’s quite easy to find around 10-15 words per game, but then that’s below par, since most of the times have upwards of 200 words which you can find with in the grid, some of the being real obscure words as well.

As soon as the time is up, you can then look at how many words you found, and how many you missed out on and tapping on the words in the list of words you didn’t find, shows you how you could have made those words on the grid. After that, you are taken to the word score screen, where the app shows you where you stand among all the other players online.

Being a Microsoft Xbox game, you can also sign in with your Xbox creds both on the Windows Phone and iOS versions of the app and have your achievements uploaded to your XBox account. It’s also free, so if you have a few minutes to spare, go get it. Fingers crossed that you don’t get addicted to the game like I did. Download links are available for Windows Phone and iOS right after a few tips to help you score better.
Wordament Game Screen

Wordament Tips for Scoring:

Just playing the game straight up may not help you get the best of scores, or the number of words you can find. Here are a few tips to help you score better and come higher up on the world ranking:

Check the top of the tiles to see if there are any “Themes” for the game. Finding words based on those themes get you extra points.
If you get to a point where you can seem to find any more words, touch the rotate icon at the botton right of the screen to rotate the tiles. Believe me this helps finding those extra words you missed out on.
Two minutes is not a lot of time. Once you are immersed in the game, you’ll find yourself easily running out of time, so lock in those finds as soon as possible.
Words with uncommon letters like (U,W,X, Z, Y) get you more points, so try finding as many words with these letters as you can.
Find plurals of the words. In the grid above – RAT, RATS, RATE, RATES are all scoring words so get them all!

If you have more tips on how to score better on Wordament, do let us know by leaving a comment.

Download Links:

Windows Phone Store:

iTunes App Store:

Download QR-Code

‎Microsoft Wordament

Developer: Microsoft Corporation

Price: Free⁺

Rescube – A Puzzle solving game for iOS and Android

Rescube is an addictive puzzle solving game which can keep you occupied during those daily commutes or while waiting for a friend to turn up. Gameshastra, the developers of the app had initially launched this game on the iTunes store in November last year and have quickly followed up by releasing the Android version of the game.

The main objective of the game is to get Gisu, the ‘cute little’ alien, to the required parts to repair his ship. You can help Gisu by moving around the blocks so that Gisu has a clear path to be reunited with the ship’s spare parts. You get extra points if you manage to do this in the least number of moves. The least number of moves gets you a 3 star level complete achievement. If you don’t manage to get 3 stars, check the end-of-level screen and the number of moves you took vs the “Best Moves”, which is the minimum which you have to aim for when you replay the level.

The paid version offers over 50 levels of puzzles for you to solve, without the ad nags, which gives you quite a lot of gameplay time. You can also revisit levels to better your score by increasing your star score per game, giving some amount of replay value to the game. The Paid versions of the game on both platfroms also don’t cost much just $0.99 (or around Rs. 50). So take the free (ad-supported)version for a spin to get a hang of the game and then go Ad-free and get the paid version, it doesn’t cost much!

You can brag about your achievements by posting these to your friends on Twitter and Facebook. iOS users also get their achievements posted to their Game Center. For a quick game trailer, check out the video after the download links:

Download Links:

Android Market:

iTunes App Store (for iPhone, iPad and iPod):

Game Trailer:

NVIDIA Project SHIELD – A Handheld Android Gaming System With a Twist

NVIDIA has just revealed a new handheld gaming system called Project Shield at CES 2013 and they are saying it’s designed for gamers who yearn to play when, where and how they want. This new portable games console packs a few surprises like a brand new NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset, 5″ 720p display, wireless, mini-HDMI output, Google’s Android Jelly Bean operating system and the ability to play games streamed from a NVIDIA enabled PC.

The Hardware

At the center of NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD is their brand new NVIDIA Tegra 4 mobile processor, which delivers enormous power from its custom 72-core GeForce GPU and the first quad-core application of ARM’s latest generation CPU core, the Cortex-A15. These, combined with its battery-saver core and energy-saving PRISM 2 technology, deliver hours of unparalleled gameplay on a single charge.

Project SHIELD’s integrated 5-inch, 1280×720 HD multi-touch display, with 294 dpi provides brilliant gameplay and video. Plus, Tegra 4 with Direct Touch technology gives it touch responsiveness that is a more consistent, accurate and smooth-flowing touch input experience than a standard touch device.

Deep, rich audio is critical for a great gaming experience. And Project SHIELD brings fidelity and dynamic range unseen before on a portable device, through its custom, bass reflex, tuned port audio system – with twice the low-frequency output of high-end laptops.

Gaming

Windows and Android are the world’s most successful computing platforms, with massive ecosystems of system and software developers. While not specifically designed for gaming, both open platforms have drawn gamers by the millions. What will set Project SHIELD apart from any other handheld gaming system is that it is designed to allow them to enjoy Android and Windows games in a new, exciting way. Project SHIELD can instantly download Android games, including Android-optimized titles available on NVIDIA’s TegraZone™ game store, which has already delivered more than 6 million downloads to gamers. It can also be used as a wireless game receiver to a nearby PC equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 GPU or higher.

Project SHIELD flawlessly plays both Android and PC titles. As a pure Android device, it gives access to any game on Google Play. And as a wireless receiver and controller, it can stream games from a PC powered by NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPUs, accessing titles on its STEAM game library from anywhere in the home.

And the rest

Project SHIELD can also access Android apps such as Hulu, Netflix and Slacker Radio, so users can enjoy their movies and music anywhere without expensive, clumsy wired or wireless speakers.

NVIDIA is yet to announce a price for getting your hands on Project SHIELD but it is expected to be available in Q2 of this year.

You can see more of Project SHIELD at NVIDIA’s official page or watch the video below.

World of Goo – Everywhere!

Here’s a game I got acquainted with when their app went on sale on Google’s Celebrating 25 Billion Download offer.

The World of Goo is a physics game where you get to advance levels by solving the puzzles in that level. In this game, the puzzles revolve around building structures with Gooballs and liberating as many of them as you can per level by getting as many of them as you can to the pipe.

The playful and often eeire graphics of the game, are really good and lends to the gameplay. The clever puzzles are another reason why I got hooked on this game.

As you progress in levels, you have to take the help of other objects in that level like balloons to levitate gates and the Gooballs themselves to the get to the nearest exit pipe. It’s quite easy to clear the levels if you use your brain power, and at the same time some levels can really stump you. Remember to click on the signboard to get hints on each level.

The publishers of this game, 2D Boy, have really stretched themselves in getting this game out on quite few platforms. World of Goo is available for the iPhone, iPod and iPad from iTunes Store, Google Play for Android phones. For the desktop, you can get the Windows, Mac or Linux Versions. They’ve also got a Wii version as well!

This is a paid game, but they have a demo version of the game available on these platforms as well so go ahead and take it for a spin to see if you want to put in the cash for the full version. Here’s a video trailer of the game to get you started off on the World of Goo.

Download Links:

iPhone, iPod and iPad from iTunes Store | Google Play for Android phones

Bad Piggies – the other side of Angry Birds!

All of us at one time or the other have been addicted to the Angry Birds franchise. Knocking down pigges with those Angry birds and their eggs! Those poor piggies bore the brunt of those birds while we played level after level.

Now get into the pigs point of view with this new new game from Rovio. This game is almost as addicitive as the Angry Bird series, where you have to craft vehicles to transport the pigs over Piggy Island in search of the pieces of maps which pieced together give a map to the eggs. The King Pig has ordered his followers to recover these pieces of maps at all costs.

Create land and air based vehicles out of wings, rockets, umberllas, engines and more. Get as creative as you can to steer them to their destinations and advance to the next levels in the game.

The game is currently available for iPhone and iPad users in the iTunes App Store and for Android users on Google Play. Rovio has mentioned that a Windows Phone version is in the works and should be out soon.

Download Links

iPhone and iPad app from iTunes | Android Download from Google Play

Gameplay Video

Game Review: Wind Up Knight

Wind Up Knight by Robot Invader is a really good example of why Mobile Gaming is so popular now. It’s got amazing graphics, really good game-play, has a brilliant story line and is just generally very well made. The best part is, it’s free!

You’re a Wind Up Knight (Rremember those wind up toys? The cars? Yup, that Wind Up). You’re off on a knightly mission to save the Princess. Along the way, you’ll have to gear up for different missions; swords, shields, helms, all that. Game actions are added on as you go along, so you start off with just the ability to jump, then you get to use your sword, shield and roll. The controls placement could be awkward at times because of the speed at which you’ll have to respond.

The level selection and switching is really well designed too. It’s a bunch of tomes, bound and all.

You need to collect money and keys (to stay wound up) along the way, and you can use the gold you’ve collected to get new armour, swords and helms. You also have an in-app purchasing option, and I recommend buying something off that. The game is free, and this is one way to help the developer. Do note that your in-app purchases will not be carried across devices, but I don’t thing that should stop you. Oh, and you can’t go back a level and get more notes/coins, so make sure you collect them all!

Anyways, go ahead and download the game from the Android Market, here. It’s free!

Here’s a video review of the game, courtesy @TotallydubbedHD. Check out his YouTube channel for more awesome videos.

Oh, and the controls bit I was talking about? Here’s a video about that.

101-in-1 Games for iOS

OOOla…. Nordcurrent introduced a new game for the users of iPhone, iPod and iPads. It’s a collection of 104 mini games in a single app. It consists of variety of games like puzzles, darts, sports, racing and lot more popular type of games in one single package. And the most exciting thing is that it is FREE.

It’s boring to switch from game to game and I found the name to be interesting and out of sheer curiosity I downloaded this game, just to find out how 101 games are in 1 application. The size of the game is also pretty small for such a collection of games. The games are pretty easy and there is nothing like levels in this game, it’s just that you need to earn the points to complete the game successfully.

From the beginning only 10 games out of the 104 are unlocked. In order to unlock locked games, you need to play the games that are unlocked and earn points. You can get extra points for free by replaying already completed games. It has a unique way of unlocking games using the points you earn by winning games. This one app is a solution for all the mini games you loved to play. It is a very good time pass while waiting for someone or to kill time. This collection is enough to satisfy all your gaming needs.

Some games in this collection are boring and some challenging for you mentally. If you like challenges then this is the place to be. Each game has only one level but the points limit is different for each game. As and when the game progresses, it becomes difficult for you to earn those limit points to complete the game. Each game has its own difficulty to earn those points. Some games might take just mins to complete and some games might take little more time to complete. There are a lot of similar kinds of game available to download, just the characters and the difficulty levels are different compared to this. Some of the games, you need to be really quick and your reflex should be really good.

The previous version of this game had 101 games and the new version has 104 games. Unlocking locked games is like moving on to the next level. I would rate a 4 on a scale of 5 simply because some games are boring. Most of the games are addictive and for good time pass. It has good puzzles like crossed wire etc..

On the whole to conclude I would say Nordcurrent has done a good job. It requires iOS 3.0 or later and is compatible to all the latest versions of Apple devices the iPad, iPhone and the iPod.

You can download 101-in-1 from iTunes by clicking on the App Store image below. You can also scan the QR code on the right with your device to get to the download link.

101-in-1 Games

Rating by Nanju Kumar: 4.0 stars