iPad Games (and Apps) Catch All

Galcon Fusion for ipad is currently 80% off, at 99 cents.

Subscribing. Got an iPad 2 at Target yesterday. Very pleased with ComicZeal and FlipBook. Not as pleased with Garage Band; my iPad froze about a minute into using it. On the upside, I was using it to play the first song that I ever wrote (about 16 years ago), which was really cool. Can't wait to do some multi-track recording.

Edit: Flipboard, that is. Awesome, but more awesome if it stored more content for offline reading. I'm thinking airplane use.

Flipboard? What exactly do you use it for?

I took some of the default feeds (Facebook, Twitter, and Tech) and added their feed for gaming, a feed for Comic Books, and Wired and Engadget. That's just so far.

If you meant more basically - it's an app that builds you personalized magazine (or several, depending on how you look at it). Apple named it iPad app of the year for 2010.

Looks like Garage Inc. and Garage Inc. HD are on sale today.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I took some of the default feeds (Facebook, Twitter, and Tech) and added their feed for gaming, a feed for Comic Books, and Wired and Engadget. That's just so far.

If you meant more basically - it's an app that builds you personalized magazine (or several, depending on how you look at it). Apple named it iPad app of the year for 2010.

I know, I had it for two weeks and found it way too limited for my taste. I've tried hard to like it (because I like pretty design), but there's just not enough functionality to justify using it. For me that magazine layout only makes sense for RSS feeds... and there's already Reeder for that.

Is Reeder better?

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Is Reeder better?

I love reeder. It has a minimalist design that makes browsing my feeds a pleasure.

Tagged

mateofalcone wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Is Reeder better?

I love reeder. It has a minimalist design that makes browsing my feeds a pleasure.

I bought Reeder yesterday, due to all the positive feedback, and have to say I was disappointed. I like Flipboard a lot more. With Reeder though, it's quite possible that I'm doing it wrong. I couldn't even find a way to add & remove feeds. I added some via Google reader. Is that the only way?

Flipboard's presentation is far more visually appealing, IMO.

I really like Flipboard's presentation (which is so good it screams "The future is here!"), and the price of free is quite nice. It's five dollars less than Reeder's price of $5.

I bought the The Creeps! HD for $0.99. It is almost criminal that the game costs so little. I looked down at my iPad at 10pm, and the next look up at the clock was at 1am. That has not happened for a while.

Fun game. I get very OCD about figuring out how the scoring system works to optimize my tower placement and upgrade strategy.

I wish PixelJunk Monsters would come to the iPad.

So, I picked up Hunters: Episode One HD, and had a blast. But, I'm now at the level cap and considering the in app purchase for $7.99. Has anybody bitten that bullet who can enable me? Considering how many games are out there, is it worth the $8 to unlock the full game?

Greg wrote:

I bought the The Creeps! HD for $0.99. It is almost criminal that the game costs so little. I looked down at my iPad at 10pm, and the next look up at the clock was at 1am. That has not happened for a while.

Fun game. I get very OCD about figuring out how the scoring system works to optimize my tower placement and upgrade strategy.

I wish PixelJunk Monsters would come to the iPad.

I'm a huge Creeps fan!

And, a huge fan of creeps.

ThatGuy42 wrote:

So, I picked up Hunters: Episode One HD, and had a blast. But, I'm now at the level cap and considering the in app purchase for $7.99. Has anybody bitten that bullet who can enable me? Considering how many games are out there, is it worth the $8 to unlock the full game?

I unlocked the iPhone version ($5), and I thought it was (barely) worth that. At $8, I question whether it is worth it. The game, as it is right now is just a random collection of skirmishes. There's no campaign or story at all. The tactical mechanics are pretty tight, but if you played through the demo levels, you've seen most of what the game has to offer.

Does anyone use an app that plays .avi movies? I have ZumoCast, but the only way to actually transfer a video to it so that you can watch it without needing to stream is via wifi. That's clunky and slow for big video files.

I definitely don't want to convert every video I want to watch using Handbrake.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Does anyone use an app that plays .avi movies? I have ZumoCast, but the only way to actually transfer a video to it so that you can watch it without needing to stream is via wifi. That's clunky and slow for big video files.

I definitely don't want to convert every video I want to watch using Handbrake.

I got the VLC app but I think they removed it... So not sure what to use now, I'm kinda interested in this in case I buy a new ipad2.

I have tried a great many. I keep coming back to CineXplayer, which was the original .avi player in the store, and has been updated many times since. It only supports import via USB through iTunes. I have the VLC app, and find that the play back it fraught with jitters and artifacting. Cine is not perfect in that regard, by any stretch, but is far better.

Cine has some irritating background music in the menu, but that can be turned off. It doesn't have support for folders, but I like the blue on black UI. It jitters sometimes, but I invariably find that I either have too many apps running or am downloading something in the background. It's a bit of a "me, and me only" app. It is well-supported by updates.

AVPlayerHD is perfectly serviceable, but I don't like the interface very much. It's nothing major, but I saw no reason to shift to it.

I used Buzz Player HD for a while as it has NAS support for streaming, but it hangs and crashes a lot, even with locally stored content.

ZumoCast has vanished from the app store again, which is a shame. It is still on my iPad, thankfully, as it is my number one choice for streaming from my media pc. I thought that you could transfer over USB, but, now that I think about it, I can't actually recall doing it.

spider_j wrote:

ZumoCast has vanished from the app store again, which is a shame. It is still on my iPad, thankfully, as it is my number one choice for streaming from my media pc. I thought that you could transfer over USB, but, now that I think about it, I can't actually recall doing it.

Just wifi, but it did occur to me that if you have time to plan ahead, you can do overnight wifi transfers.

Sword & Sworcery is out! If you're into 'game as experience' thing, this is the best game on iPad.

Jeff-66 wrote:
mateofalcone wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Is Reeder better?

I love reeder. It has a minimalist design that makes browsing my feeds a pleasure.

I bought Reeder yesterday, due to all the positive feedback, and have to say I was disappointed. I like Flipboard a lot more. With Reeder though, it's quite possible that I'm doing it wrong. I couldn't even find a way to add & remove feeds. I added some via Google reader. Is that the only way?

Flipboard's presentation is far more visually appealing, IMO.

Reeder is Google Reader client! That's all there is to it. If, unlike me, you don't do 90% of your reading through GR you're in for disappointment. If you do, that is quite possibly the best app in AppStore. Interface is polished, considered and... well, snappy, especially things like "pinch for readability version of original source". Not to mention awesome offline sync.

Mex wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Does anyone use an app that plays .avi movies? I have ZumoCast, but the only way to actually transfer a video to it so that you can watch it without needing to stream is via wifi. That's clunky and slow for big video files.

I definitely don't want to convert every video I want to watch using Handbrake.

I got the VLC app but I think they removed it... So not sure what to use now, I'm kinda interested in this in case I buy a new ipad2.

I think I saw VLC in AppStore recently.

For movies my recent favourite is AirVideo + BBC documentaries as HD .mkvs. High-quality live conversion is beautiful.

UCRC wrote:

Sword & Sworcery is out! If you're into 'game as experience' thing, this is the best game on iPad.
For movies my recent favourite is AirVideo + BBC documentaries as HD .mkvs. High-quality live conversion is beautiful.

I checkd the Appstore and there's some clones of the VLC app, but it's not the original, they just ganked the icon...

Since everyone's recommending it, I bought this "Swords & Sorcery" game, I'm not exactly sure what it's about but it looks rather cool. Do I need twitter to play it? Says something about it.

Also, damn Square-enix, I searched for "Final Fantasy" and there's a bunch of official Final Fantasy apps, I thought they were games but they're just stupid image galleries :/

We've mentioned Master of Alchemy and Master of Alchemy HD before. They're both on sale for $.99 right now.

Mex wrote:

Since everyone's recommending it, I bought this "Swords & Sorcery" game, I'm not exactly sure what it's about but it looks rather cool. Do I need twitter to play it? Says something about it.

Nope. But they want a lot of people to create buzz around it, I guess.
Really strange and awesome experience, that. Suffice to say the main source of inspiration for these guys was Carl Jung's 'Red Book'. Price is maybe a bit hefty, but I consider that an investment in really cool, experimental gameplay. I hope it sells well.

UCRC wrote:
Mex wrote:

Since everyone's recommending it, I bought this "Swords & Sorcery" game, I'm not exactly sure what it's about but it looks rather cool. Do I need twitter to play it? Says something about it.

Nope. But they want a lot of people to create buzz around it, I guess.
Really strange and awesome experience, that. Suffice to say the main source of inspiration for these guys was Carl Jung's 'Red Book'. Price is maybe a bit hefty, but I consider that an investment in really cool, experimental gameplay. I hope it sells well.

I don't disagree, and I really want to support these guys, but all the tweeting about this game is right pissing me off.

By the way: Verizon stores selling original iPads on the cheap! The 16GB WiFi model is $299.

I bought Swords & Sworcery. Interesting so far, but it's made me realize how much I dislike having to locomote my character on the iPad, in ANY game. It's implemented better here than, say, the BTTF game on iPad, but I still have to constantly tap new areas of the screen to move around, the screen is pretty big, and I'm playing this on a NYC subway while standing and trying to hold on so as not to fall. It wears on me.

Hate to say it, but after all this time, the only games I truly like on the iPad are Infinity Blade, Scrabble, and Boggle.

Hate to say it, but after all this time, the only games I truly like on the iPad are Infinity Blade, Scrabble, and Boggle.

Have you tried the pop cap games? What about angry birds or cut the rope? Just making sure you have not missed them....

So far, I'm not seeing what the big deal is about Swords & Sorcery yet either. So far I'm just walking thru screen after screen, doing nothing, and reading text apparently written by a teenager. Hopefully it gets better as you progress. Maybe it's just not my cup o' tea.

That said, there are quite a few ipad games I really like.

* Bookworm - while made for iphone, it scales nicely to ipad.

* Civ Rev - fantastically implemented ipad version

* Dungeon Hunter 1 & 2 - for the diablo fix

* Fruit Ninja HD - a lot more fun than I thought it would be. it just makes me smile every time I play it.

* Supremacy Wars HD and Galcon Fusion - along the same lines, very fun

* Cleopatra's Pyramid - excellent solitaire card game

* Plants vs Zombies - best ipad game in the appstore? could be.

lostlobster wrote:

Just ran out of space on my 16gig iPad. Is there a way to see the how much space an apps takes ON the iPad? I know you can look at it via iTunes when synced up.

You could always use the iPad's browser to post a comment in this very thread.

Other than that, I don't know.

firesloth wrote:

By the way: Verizon stores selling original iPads on the cheap! The 16GB WiFi model is $299.

Dang, and I just bought a refurb from Apple for a higher price. Not that much higher though, since I went with the 32 gig model. So anyone have any idea why the 32 had a bigger discount than either the 16 or the 64? It was $70 off instead of $50.

To get back on-topic with apps, I tried out StreamToMe last night and it's pretty cool. It lets you stream movies to your iPad from your computer. The killers features for me are on-the-fly transcoding and the ability to stream from arbitrary folders on my HD. (There's a free server application that runs under os x or windows that handles all that). So for $3 I got to just point my iPad at my existing movies folder. I hadn't been looking forward to manually converting all my stuff and integrating it into iTunes.

And now a question brought on by today's Fringe Busters: if I'm browsing the web on my iPad and run across a file that I'd like to have my Mac download, what's the best way to handle that? Without walking over to my desk I mean. Would I have to use one of the screen sharing apps to control my computer remotely, or is there a more specialized solution? Do the various screen sharing apps y'all have mentioned let you copy/paste between the iPad & remote computer?