Brick Wars 50

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas! Today is the 50th comic in the saga, and the end of Chapter 2.

So this is it! The intrepid bunch have headed off to Tatooine, for more adventures yet to come in the new year. So I'll be seeing you then.

Once more: Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays

From all of us here at Apps Plus we'd like to wish you a Happy Holidays.

The Artist's Picks: RealCalc

RealCalc:


Hello all, and welcome to the Apocalypse! Which is evidently not happening. (If it was happening, then you wouldn't be reading this, so I'm safe :P)

Continuing last week's talk about calculators, here we have RealCalc, an app that pretty much turns your smartphone or tablet into an old-school scientific calculator.

It's pretty cool when you first look at the screen-- it looks exactly like a calculator, no  status bar or anything!

As you can see, it has a pretty fleshed-out group of features, and works very well in my experience. My favourite thing about the interface is that you can press and hold on a button and it will activate the yellow secondary function without having to reach up and press the SHIFT key first.

Since it is just a scientific calculator, there is no fancy graphing mode or anything, but for basic calculations it excells.

Also, it works at night, unlike those old scientific calculators which had solar panels on them. It has no ads, but doesn't come with fraction support; you have to buy the Pro version for that.

Anyways, see you next week for more of my Android favourites.

Apps Plus Comms- Battlefront Part 7

Today we venture to the sinkholes of Utapau, where we encounter General Grievous himself! Unfortunately, Obi-Wan doesn't fare too well in the battle...


Commentators: the Cake Loving Artist and Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Battl...

Battlefront II owned by LucasArts (which is now owned by Disney)

Apps Plus Comms- Kingdom Hearts Part 22

 

A commentary of the original Kingdom Hearts

Commentators-

• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game

Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Part 1

In case you haven't picked up on it, Kingdom Hearts is one of my most dearly beloved of franchises. When I found out the 3DS would be home to some of my favourite games, such as Paper Mario, and even a sequel to Luigi's Mansion, I predicted it would be a great system to buy. The fact that a new Kingdom Hearts was making its way there was icing on the cake! But how does it stack up? Let's take a look at the individual parts.

Kingdom Hearts is comprised of two flavours of meat, the cutscenes and the gameplay. People love or hate them for various reasons. In terms of story, Dream Drop Distance is fairly standard in terms of storytelling for the franchise, at least ever since Kingdom Hearts II. Expect your usual twists and turns, characters who look like other characters, but aren't quite the same. A notable addition is a mysterious grey haired youth (not to be confused with slightly less mysterious grey haired youth Riku, who serves as one of two playable characters in this game) who serves as a surprisingly cultured villain. In terms of pacing, quick frankly, it's quite poor. The bulk of the game revolves around longtime protagonists Sora and Riku attempting to retrieve a mysterious power from a realm of dreams, with some vague cutscenes helping to suggest that something more is afoot. Then things suddenly explode in the final level, revealing plot twists and double truths by the bucket full.
Honestly, I think Kingdom Hearts has started to revel too much in its alleged 'complicated' plot. What I've found, however, is that the story isn't really terribly complex, but rather, can't be explained without going through a rather lengthy set of steps. Sure, you could explain that the villain of the franchise is called Xehanort, but that wouldn't account for him stealing somebodies body, splitting it in two, changing his name, acting independently, fusing back together, then forming a group and... well, you get the picture. The filler of the Kingdom Hearts story has always come from the assorted Disney themed worlds that you visit, of which there are five in this game, an all time low for the franchise. They are fairly well produced, with top notch voice acting, excellent animation. Usual Square Enix stuff. However, the worlds themselves feel ridiculously empty (more on that later) and the story seems to rely far too much on your prior knowledge of the source material. This was especially bad for this game's adaptation of the relatively recent TRON Legacy movie, something I have not yet seen. Similarly, the relationships between characters is rarely explained properly, leading to things such as a sudden romantic plot point being introduced at the end of the world based on the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
All and all, I'd say the story is somewhat weak, a trend that continues with the music. Longtime series composer Yoko Shimomura returns, and her stuff is great, though not her best. The problem lies in the additional composers, whose music sounds largely bland and uninspired to me. This game by no means has a bad soundtrack, however, previous Kingdom Hearts games have spoiled me.
Graphically, there isn't anything to complain about, animations look good and models are excellently detailed. The locations have a habit of looking nice, but lacking any sense of life, however. It's Square Enix though, they can make things look nice.
But there's a lot more to this game than what I've covered here, come back next week for the conclusion.

This is the second game to feature both Sora and Riku has protagonists

The franchise's flashy combat returns

Apps Plus Comms- Fancy Pants Part 2

Pants! Pants! Everywhere!

Apps Plus Comms- Kingdom Hearts Part 21

 

A commentary of the original Kingdom Hearts

Commentators-

• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game

Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney

Brick Wars 49

And today marks the penultimate comic in Chapter 2 of the Brick Wars Saga. Next week's strip will be the end of this Naboo segment. (Finally).

Also, Lego makes really nice walkie-talkie pieces, but they're really big in comparison to the minifigures. Look at that aerial! It's pretty much the size of Qui-Gon himself!

Apps Plus Comms- TIE Fighter Part 14

Join Commander AppsPlus, as he deprives the former Admiral Harkov from a crucial convoy delivering supplies, by blowing it up! Unfortunately, Harkov has had enough of his antics, and sends a full wing of his TIE Avengers to execute AppsPlus!

Apps Plus Comms- Battlefront Part 6

We finally make it down to the surface of Kashyyyk, just in time to meet an invasion of droids. The valiant Wookiee defenders are pushed back to a crucial refinery, and all seems lost until the Jedi Master Yoda arrives to save the day! Apart from killing the droids, he also creates a brand-new game: Wookiee Toss. Expect to see it covered on all the major sports channels soon!


Commentators: the Cake Loving Artist and Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Battl...

Battlefront II owned by LucasArts (which is now owned by Disney)

Apps Plus Comms- Kingdom Hearts Part 20

 

A commentary of the original Kingdom Hearts

Commentators-

• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game

Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney

The Artist's Picks: handyCalc

handyCalc:

http://dft.ba/-handycalc

Welcome back to another Artist's Picks.

Lets talk about calculators for a bit. handyCalc is simply the handiest calculator you'll ever need. Ever. It has graphing capability, it's able to solve algebraic functions, and even has a currency converter. 

No matter what your need is, handyCalc delivers, from simple calculations to advanced transcendental functions.

In addition (ha ha, a pun!) to the regular keyboard of numbers and arithmetic signs, you can access the range of advanced mathematical functions like the trigonometric operators and higher power exponents. If you can't find a certain function, you can type yours in using a QUERTY keyboard. This keyboard is also used to input variables so you can solve complex equations like:

If only I had something like this while going through high school!

When calculating, you also can get little popups before you hit the equals button, like the value of your last answer if you're including it in the current calculation, or, in this case, it states the sum and average:

You can also graph functions about x, but I find that the graphing option is a little lacking compared to other calculator apps on the Play Store. It's still massively better than my old TI-84 though.

This calculator has no ads at all, so download it for free and take advantage of the handiest calculator ever!

Apps Plus Comms- Fancy Pants Part 1

As promised we are now bringing another game into the mix- Fancy Pants!

Apps Plus Comms- Kingdom Hearts Part 19

 

A commentary of the original Kingdom Hearts

Commentators-

• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game

Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney

Recommendations of the Week: December 12th

Welcome back to another edition of Recommendations of the Week. Since we are nearing ever closer to Christmas I figured I'd do a couple for holiday season related recommendations.





Gift Idea: Magazine Subscription

It's getting close to Christmas and you still can't come up with a good idea for a present, well how about a magazine subscription? To me it is near the ideal gift. It's not too costly (especially with all the holiday season deals) and it's like you are giving that person a present every single month/week, plus you are supplying the person with something that they are interested in (presuming you get them the right subscription) which makes the gift more personal. So if you need a great idea, this might just be it.


Beverages: Everything Hot!

Yes the weather is getting colder and colder with each passing day, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing! Now you have an even better excuse to test out every type of coffee/hot chocolate/tea/etc. beverage out there! Just remember what you're buying, if you start trying everything at Starbucks then you might just have given up all the money you planned to spend on gifts.




Activity: Skiing

December brings the opening of most mountains and the start of the ski season for many. Sure December skiing can be a little wet and the snow base causes all sorts of grief to your skies, but hey, skiing is skiing.

Apps Plus Comms- Mass Effect Part 19

A democratic run of the original Mass Effect for Xbox 360.

Commentators-

• Lorl
• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo
• Bryan, The Cake Loving Artist
• Urdon

Buy this game

Mass Effect is owned by Bioware, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts

App Bites #40: Khan Academy

Welcome to the 40th edition of App Bites. Wow we're almost at the big five-o.







Khan Academy:

Keeping with my Windows 8 themed app reviews of late, here is another great Windows 8 app. If you haven't heard of Khan Academy it's basically this website run by a guy named Khan who puts our hundreds and hundreds of videos that help explain everything from simple algebra to multivariable calculus to how haemoglobin functions and everything in between. Khan Academy is supposed to be like a way to bring the teacher or professor home with you so that when you go to class you already know what you're doing and can instead focus on putting the lesson into practise. Personally I just like Khan Academy because of all the medical videos which I find very interesting. Anyways I'm recommending this app because it takes all of the videos from the Khan Academy website and puts them into one nice Windows 8 themed app. So if you frequent Khan Academy, and have a Windows 8 device, then I recommend picking this free app up.

You can get the Khan Academy app here.

Brick Wars 48

Amazing! New characters! Meet Carol and Dave, Republic pilots serving the Jedi. And they've been waiting for them to get back since the very first comic!

The set I built for the cockpit actually took a lot longer than expected; I put a whole bunch of time into building that control panel. And look! You can't even see most of it! Oh well.

Apps Plus Comms- Weekly Recap

This week more advances were made in our four ongoing commentaries. The Cake Loving Artist completed more missions in TIE Fighter while Hatok entered a new world in Kingdom Hearts with me as a co-commentator. The whole crew made some more democratic decisions in Mass Effect, and The Cake Loving Artist and I took down some rebel scum and some nasty monsters in Battlefront.

If you haven't noticed we've changed the schedule around a bit for our commentaries, and if you're interested, we might just be adding a new game into the mix sometime in the near future.

As always you can find links to all our commentaries on the "commentaries" page on this blog, or on our YouTube or Blip pages.

Apps Plus on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/appsplusblog
Apps Plus on Blip: http://blip.tv/appsplus

Apps Plus Comms- Battlefront Part 5

We are tasked to visit Kashyyyk and break the droid blockade of the planet. Naturally we accomplish this task easily, and to celebrate we roll around a bit.


Commentators: the Cake Loving Artist and Ernesto Guillermo


Buy this game:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Battl...

Battlefront II owned by LucasArts (which is now owned by Disney)

Apps Plus Comms- TIE Fighter Part 11

As Admiral Harkov receives his shipment of prototype TIE Avengers, Commander AppsPlus has to escort them to the Protector. He also comes to a realization about his ongoing feud with Alpha Squadron and decides to be the bigger man.

Apps Plus Comms- TIE Fighter Part 12

Join Commander AppsPlus as he begins a new Battle! Today we appear to be assigned a routine mission, teaching some rookies how to clear a minefield in an unshielded craft. But all is not as it seems when Harkov is around...

Apps Plus Comms- Kingdom Hearts Part 18

 

A commentary of the original Kingdom Hearts

Commentators-

• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game

Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney

The Artist's Picks: Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber

Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber:

http://dft.ba/-ultimate-lightsaber

Welcome back to another Artist's Picks, and as you can see, I managed to get Star Wars into my recommendations!

But seriously, this app is super fun. Pretty much what this does is turn your phone into a mini lightsaber. You can set any colour imaginable, and even change the hilt design.

When you activate the lightsaber by tapping on the screen, it starts up by making the characteristic hummmmm noise we're all familiar with. When you swing your phone, the app makes a very cool vwummm noise, like in the movies. The best part is when you swing downwards hard enough, the sound the phone will emit is what happens when two lightsabers clash in the movies, and if your phone has a flash, it will light it up.

If you're feeling in the mood, you can also set the app to play background music; which includes many of John Williams' classic pieces. (My favourite is Duel of the Fates, the battle theme in Episode I)

The cumulative effect of all this is to provide you with the sensation of holding a lightsaber (or as close as you can get without an actual laser sword), and it's pretty fun to just swing it and pretend you're a Jedi (or Sith).

If only I'd had this when I was a kid!

It is ad-supported, but still free, so go to the Play Store and start swinging your very own lightsaber!

May the Force be with you, and see you next week!

App Bites #39: ToolBox

Welcome back to another App Bite. As I've mentioned before, I'm going to be doing a bunch of App Bites on Windows 8 apps, so up today is, not surprisingly, a Windows 8 app.





Toolbox:

Toolbox, created by Vectorform, is one of those apps that really makes use of the whole Windows 8 design and the features that come along with the design. Toolbox is a grouping of apps such as a custom Facebook app, a custom Internet apps, a custom stopwatch app, etc. that can all be launched simultaneously via certain present configurations, or by themselves. The apps are all great, and a recent update added more as well as what they call the "tool depot" which gives news about coming soon apps. Yes Toolbox has some glitches, but the majority of it's features work, and since it is so new I'm going to let the slight imperfections slide.

All in all, though, Toolbox is a great Windows 8 app that I definitely encourage anyone with a Windows 8 device to pick up. Don't worry it's free, and you can grab it here.

Apps Plus Comms- Battlefront Part 4

We journey to the jungle planet of Felucia, where we encounter terrible beasts known as Acklay. Not only that, but there's an entire army of droids here too! We quickly conclude that Felucia is not a great planet to live on.

Commentators: the Cake Loving Artist and Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Battl...

Battlefront II owned by LucasArts (which is now owned by Disney)

Recommendations of the Week: December 5th

Well it's that time again, December! And with December comes winter break, delicious feasts, and of course shopping. "But Ernesto you're forgetting the most important thing that December brings", you might say, and in response I'd say "Oh right silly me, December also brings more Angry Birds!"




Angry Birds Seasons: Winter Wonderham

As always Rovio releases an update to their Angry Birds Seasons game which packs in another set of themed levels to the already massive Angry Birds archive. Like in years past, the levels from this update work like an advent calendar. Each day of the holiday season a new level becomes available for you to launch some birds at pigs (but with holiday spirit). Of course only a few levels are available at the moment, but so far nothing is new as compared to past Angry Birds games. Personally I would have liked to see an Angry Birds Star Wars Christmas themed level pack, so for now I'll just slash my lightsaver on some snowy levels and pretend its Christmas.

Of course the levels are still fun, so I can't complain. Yes I'm tired of playing Angry Birds (though the Star Wars version was great and definitely renewed my interest in the game, if only for that one app though) but I still feel I need to mention every time Rovio updates one of the many games.

If you don't have Angry Birds Seasons then you can grab it here for iOS or here for Android.

App Bites #38: Movie Guide

Welcome back to another edition of App Bites. As promised today I'll feature another Windows 8 app.






Movie Guide:

Movie Guide, created by Zühlke Engineering AG, is your go-to-source for all things about a movie. I love it because I can launch the app, then right in front of me are all the new movies (and other categories too of course) and I can pick one and see a quick blurb about the movie and more. When you select a movie it shows the user's ratings of the movie as well as how well it is doing in the box office, when it comes out, and other important information that I like to look at when deciding on a movie to see. It also has nice tiles with all the major actors, producers, and directors in the movie and if you select a particular tile it will give you some information about the person and a list of all the movies they've been in. You can also see a list of movies that are similar to the movie you're looking at which is great for finding other movies that are popular in the same genre of your selection. Of course there exists websites that offer the same type of service, but with Movie Guide you get it all in one nice convenient package that happens to look great too.

So if you're interested just hit up this link here to get Movie Guide.

Apps Plus Comms- Battlefront Part 3

Today, we're fighting in the Battle of Coruscant (beginning of Episode III). We quickly learn that the Clone Wars aren't all glamorous Jedi rescue missions and crash-landing Trade Federation cruisers. Instead, we're tasked with the mission to blow one up!


Commentators: the Cake Loving Artist and Ernesto Guillermo

Buy this game:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Battl...

Battlefront II owned by LucasArts (which is now owned by Disney)

Apps Plus Comms- Mass Effect Part 18

A democratic run of the original Mass Effect for Xbox 360.

Commentators-

• Lorl
• Hatok
• Ernesto Guillermo
• Bryan, The Cake Loving Artist
• Urdon

Buy this game

Mass Effect is owned by Bioware, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts