Archive for the ‘Mac’ tag
Apple Launches iPad 2 with Dual Core A5 Processor, Faster Graphics
Last week Apple invited media to come to San Francisco and "see what 2011 will be the year of." This morning TouchArcade attended the Apple media event and discovered that, as expected, 2011 will be the year of the iPad 2, according to the tablet maker.
To the surprise of most, Steve Jobs, who is currently on medical leave from Apple, took the stage himself to unveil the successor to the company's hugely popular iOS-based tablet. Jobs unveiled the new tablet to the gathered media, detailing the various innovations Apple's engineers have rolled into this new, most powerful iOS device.
The iPad 2 is physically similar to the original iPad, but with a few notable changes. The new unit weighs in at 1.3 pounds, lighter than the original 1.5 pound iPad. It's 33% thinner than the original unit (8.8 mm vs. 13.4 mm) — that's thinner than the iPhone 4. Despite its new, svelte enclosure, the iPad 2 manages to hold onto the 10 hour battery life of the original thanks to a reengineering of the battery, says Apple. Front and back cameras have been added, as well as the FaceTime and PhotoBooth applications. And, the iPad 2 will be available in both black and white versions (fascia color) and in both WiFi-only and 3G versions — on both the AT&T and Verizon networks — on day one, which is March 11 in the states and March 25th abroad. An updated iOS 4.3 will also be landing on March 11.
The changes don't stop there, and this is where things get very interesting for iOS gamers. The iPad 2 features a new CPU, called the A5, that contains two processor cores as well as a dramatically improved graphics unit that Apple claims is capable of up to 9x the performance of the iPad's (and iPhone 4's) GPU. A likely candidate for the GPU used in the A5 is which is capable of pushing 35 million polygons per second at 200MHz and one billion pixels per second. The SGX543 is able to run in multi-core configurations and supports OpenCL for offloading computation to the GPU core(s). A gyroscope sensor has been included, as well, which, of course, enables more precise reading of the unit's movement in space.
Even without solid confirmation of the A5's exact GPU configuration, it's clear that the iPad 2 is a dramatically more powerful mobile gaming machine than any of the current iOS devices. This was evidenced by the impressive demonstration of during today's event and even in the few minutes we spent in the hands-on session.
Apple allowed the media to spend some time trying out the new iPad 2 in a hands-on session following the morning's presentation. The first thing I noticed about the iPad 2 in my time with the unit is that it conveys an overall "smoother" feel, with the outer aluminum shell being slightly receded at the edge of the polycarbonate face plate. Playing into this was the reduced weight and thickness, which is readily apparent — it definitely feels like a less substantial device, while maintaining a very solid, rigid feel. The new apps, which are very heavy on animation, as wall as iOS in general felt very smooth and responsive. I did a bit of text entry on the unit I was playing with, as lag during text entry is pretty much my only iPad gripe, and found no lag whatsoever. Unfortunately, the test device I used was not heavily loaded with games to try out, but there is no reason to think that virtually every title in the App Store won't benefit from the iPad 2's more powerful hardware.
And the Smart Covers — they are just brilliant. I couldn't stop snapping it on and off the side of the iPad 2. I'm sure other tabletmakers have already begun sketching out copy designs.
Steve Jobs and the other members of the iOS team that took the stage today made frequent use of the term "post PC" to describe the iPad 2. It's an ambitious term, certainly, but based on what was demonstrated today and looking at the hardware sitting under the hood of Apple's new tablet, it's not a term I feel inclined to laugh off.
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Apple’s iPad 2 Event in San Francisco
As mentioned before, Apple is stealing the show this week with their event in San Francisco which quite literally takes place next door to GDC. We're totally swamped with GDC meetings, and as I'm writing this both Brad and Jared are meeting with developers, so for true live coverage of the keynote we recommend checking out , or the many other sites doing live blogs.
Photo courtesy of
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GDC 2011: ‘Machinegun Jetpack’ Is As Cool As It Sounds
Halfbrick, the studio behind the enormously popular fruit homicide game, Fruit Ninja [.99 / Lite], are about three months away from debuting a brand new title on the App Store. And there’s a twist: it stars a familiar face, Monster Dash’s [.99] Barry Steakfries.
Actually, Steakfries and Monster Dash are great starting points when describing this upcoming title, Machinegun Jetpack. It looks and works a lot like Monster Dash. It’s a traditional runner, so it has a lone, endless level and randomly generated content.
Where it differs, it really differs. Instead of controlling a protagonist who can merely run, you control an avatar that’s hooked into a jetpack. Tapping on the screen keeps Barry afloat, and you’ll need to do that to avoid all the vertical obstacles such as electricity or rockets or lasers.
Ratcheting up the intensity of the experience is a goal of Halfbrick’s. Perhaps the best example of this is in the “vehicle” pick-ups that give you control of a robot reminiscent of ED-209 or even the motorcycle from Monster Dash. There’s also a special gravity suit that lets you to run on the top and bottom of the screen with a tap, and a teleportation power that allows you to jump all over the level.
Here’s a video of the game in action from our demo at GDC in San Francisco. The first part is footage from the iPad version; the other is the iPhone version.
At the demo, I was more impressed with the amount of side content as opposed to the explosions, which to be frank, is a little out of character for me. As you play, you’ll collect coins that you can then, in turn, spend on upgrades to your jetpack. You can also pick up bigger coins that, at the end of a single play, give you the opportunity to use a massive slot machine. If you’re lucky, you’ll earn rewards like double coins on your next play or even a Continue that puts you back in the game right where Barry fell. This is good, game-expanding stuff that adds a little more to the “just one more time” play.
Machinegun Jetpack is still three or so months out. Halfbrick told us that it plans to launch the title as a Universal game complete with Game Center support. The target price is also 99 cents, so get ready to take the plunge a little later this year.
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FTA Brings Classic Demos via Apple IIgs Emulation to iOS [Updated]
Here's one that will make a select few of our readers stand up and shout, while merely drawing a faint "hmm" from the rest. But, as Arnold and myself are among the standers and the shouters… Last night, in honor of the 20th anniversary of their founding, the (or FTA) released a free bundle of their classic productions and games wrapped in their ActiveGS Apple IIgs emulator as the Universal application ActiveGS – Best of FTA [App Store].
FTA and the associated groups Apple Chemical Software (ACS) and Second Sight Software were well known in the pre-web online Apple II communities for their to-the-metal, assembly-coded demos, games, and utilities that pushed the Apple II to its limits. Among the included productions are Nucleus and Modulae, probably the most well loved and beautifully executed demos to be found on the IIgs, as well as the playable demo of the group's take on the pseudo-3D shooter Space Harrier. Those checking out this collection who have no Apple II in their past should note that the , which was released in 1986, is an 8/16-bit computer that runs at 2.8MHz — and that's in "fast" mode.
The Modulae demo, running under emulation on a Windows machine:
The group's used in this application is a front-end for the multiplatform , which emulates the Apple IIgs and, by extension, the Apple IIe. It's available in both stand-alone applications and as a browser plug-in and is the primary emulation system behind the website where hundreds of Apple II programs can be run online.
In this iOS version, the emulator simply provides hard coded execution of FTA's demos, so it won't work as a general emulator.
UPDATE: Developer Olivier Goguel has chimed in on the comments thread and provided a link to a video of a version of ActiveGS running on the iPad, loaded with many more Apple II demos and games than are featured in the App Store release. But don't get too excited...
For approval reason, this version contains only FTA product! For a sneak preview of the full version, have a look at this video, but don't expect it to be live soon...
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‘Hunters: Episode One’ Hands-On Preview
Remember Shining Force? It was a turn-based RPG created by the dudes over at SEGA for the Genesis. It’s since been ported and sequel-ized to all hell. Little Brad Nicholson and huge Brad Nicholson is a big fan of the original game. It managed to make the turn-based experience engaging without punitive design constructs, a clever pairing that has somehow been lost to the ether. Well, not completely lost. Hunters: Episode One does a great job in being interesting, tactical, and precise, without making you want to pull your hair out or turn off your iPod Touch or iPad.
That’s high praise from me, folks. I’ve got the patience of a bear standing in front of a car filled with raw salmon. But I suppose I should slow down. Hunters: Episode One is a turn-based strategy RPG with all the trimmings — a top-down camera, characters who can move a select number of spots per turn, devastating range and melee attacks, and tons of brain-tickling scenarios. Unlike the high fantasy of a Shining Force, Hunters is based in a dystopian sci-fi universe that, according to a text crawl, runs purely on the almighty dollar. Mercenaries, it seems, are much in desire, too.
A solid tutorial sequence will set you up with these essentials: each level, which can be plucked from a central hub, earns you cash upon completion. And as you use each of your characters you’ll earn experience points that can be used, in turn, on pumping them up in the usual core RPG categories. Swords are not a part of this future as far as I can tell, but massive hammers as well as sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and shotguns are.
Each character can move a certain number of spots depending on who they are, and a generous amount of war fog obscures the map and keeps you from knowing what’s around the corner. This, as always, adds a major strategic edge to the AI, which in this specific title, seem rather cunning and ruthless. Attacks, by the way, can also be triggered depending on range.
I’m digging Hunters. It’s an ambitious, deep title with tons of equipment and stat options and a lot of menus. It's also content heavy heavy — with a quirky catch. Five levels will be added to the game on a daily basis and you'll only be able to play those levels during this period. However, on the IAP end, the game will be supported by ten-or-so level "story packs" that'll add to the barebones core narrative and give you levels to play whenever, without restriction.
What I like the most about Hunters, I think, is the lack of punishment. If one of your guys eat it, he doesn’t croak forever, nor does he lose his experience points. Sure, he won’t be able to continue in the current mission, but you’ll have him around for the next one. Seriously, it’s nice to be able to breath while playing a turn-based strategy RPG again. The camera isn't too shabby, either. With pinch and zoom, you can do just about anything you want to with it.
Oh! And I can't forget about the difficulty. The game’s earlier missions, at least, are tuned well. Enemies are neither too all knowing nor oblivious. They react and respond just like you would in a given situation, leading to actual, engaging fights. The level design, which features a lot of corners, is a boon, as you’ll never really know what’s around the bend as you split up troops to get accomplish minor level-based goals.
Developer Rodeo Games tells us that Hunters: Episode One is “on the precipice of launching,” so we’ll definitely post a more detailed review when it hits the App Store. We're particularly curious to see how the daily content gimmick works out, we're thinking that could be real cool.
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‘Bad Air Day’ Review – A Fart Management Game
While the App Store may be entirely overrun by terrible games and apps focused around varied levels of toilet humor, there are some definite diamonds in the rough if you're willing to search for them. Bad Air Day [99¢ / Lite] is one such instance of a game centralized around managing farts, which you would naturally just assume to be terrible that actually turned out to be a surprising amount of fun. The basic premise amounts to you taking the roll of a bellboy at a tall hotel who just got finished chowing down at some kind of all you can eat taco buffet. Well, now you've got a case of the furious farts, but your life depends on the inhabitants of your hotel not getting a whiff of them.
As you ride the elevator, your stomach will gurgle, and you'll emit a giant green puff of gas which must be managed. At its most simple, this just amounts to swiping on the screen to waft the fart in a particular direction. You can either blow it around until it dissipates on its own or direct it up to one of the exhaust fans at the top of the elevator to get sucked out. These vents randomly open and close, which often force you to get creative with managing your farts, particularly with a full elevator.
On each floor, hotel clientele get on and off. There are a wide array of elevator passengers from little old ladies who just stand there to clowns bouncing on pogo sticks. Each person seems to have a different fart tolerance as well, so while you might be able to accidentally squeeze one by a briefcase carrying businessman, an angry dog might not be so tolerant. When a part of the gas cloud approaches someone's nose, a red circle fills up in small segments. If it fills all the way, that person turns in to a skeleton and you lose a life. Also, after each floor, passengers get off the elevator and you score higher based on how little of your farts they smelled.
While all this is happening a, for the lack of a better term, fart fairy shows up who awards bonus points if you keep them enveloped in your stinky green cloud. It all gets incredibly hectic, and it won't take long before you're dealing with an entire elevator full of people, multiple farts, and a greedy fart fairy anxious to get a sniff. All of this is set to perfectly suited fart-centric music as well.
Bad Air Day has everything a good iPhone game should have. It's universal from the start, comes packed with Game Center for achievements and online scoring, and has a gesture-based control system that works fantastic. The art style is cute, the music couldn't be better, and the game is built on a funny (yet entirely cliche) premise. Don't let the fart app stigma scare you away from giving Bad Air Day a try, especially if you're the kind of person who can appreciate the silly side of the App Store.
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Telltale Games SF Event – Upcoming ‘Puzzle Agent 2′, ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Hector: Badge of Carnage Ep 2 & 3′, and More
Halfbrick Gets Charitable After All The Fruit Death It Has Caused
Fruit Ninja [.99 / HD / Lite] is a popular game. The touch-based fruit slicing joint has been downloaded to the staggering tune of six million times over its lifespan on the App Store. That’s a lot of fruit death, right? In fact, Halbrick has a number on said fruitricide: 150 billion fruits have met their Primordial Maker since the game’s debut.
In a recent press release, Halfbrick announced the following, an inarguably cute way to make “amends” for all the fruit death: its teaming up with the non-profit Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and sponsoring a fruit orchard in a low-income community in order to help the people there live just a tad bit better. Halfbrick notes that we won’t see the…fruits…of their charitable donation just yet, but it’ll keep an eye on the orchard and give updates about it .
Question: surely billions of aliens have been killed in the DOOM series to date. What can id Software donate to the Martians? Less taxing Phobos teleportation machines? Cadavers?
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Scenes From EA’s ‘Swing Into Spring’ Game Event
This week, TouchArcade attended EA's "Swing Into Spring" game event in in New York and had a chance to spend a bit of quality time with some upcoming titles from both EA and Chillingo. And, while we can't (yet) talk about everything we saw, here's the goods on the open-for-discussion titles.
• Fight Night Champion from EA
Fight Night Champions is the first installment of the Fight Night series, which debuted on consoles in 2004, to appear on iOS. Incidentally, the series is the successor to EA's 1998 console series .
Fight Night Champions is a boxing title set for a simultaneous iOS and console debut on March 1st. The game presents a virtual boxing match, rendered in 3D with four possible camera angles (sorry folks, no photos allowed). You can create your own highly customizable boxer or rebuild a legend like Iron Mike and use this boxer to move up the ranks — fight to fight, ring to ring.
A very cool aspect of the game is its control system. The screen is invisibly divided into quad hit-zones, where a tap in each zone executes a different move, and a swipe from zone-to-zone triggers additional, directionally keyed moves. And there are hidden moves to — illegal moves. These you can specify for your character in its configuration screen, but you have to figure out the gestures on your own. How awesome is that?
There are several venues in which to compete: the Staples Center is for real, and the rest are fictional, some of which are rather elaborately arranged. Matches across these stadiums can be customized as far as number of rounds, round length, difficulty, etc.
Local WiFi and Bluetooth multiplayer is provided. But not so with online leaderboards.
Fight Night Champion looks awesome and is structured such that gamers that are a little more casual on the sports side — like me — can get enjoyment out of the title.
• Battlefield Bad Company II from EA
Not much to say here, but the game got an update last week that corrected various multiplayer bugs and upped the multiplayer games from four to six players.
We posted a hands-on with this one back in December.
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat III from EA
An iPad version launched last week (iPhone version came pre-Christmas).
We reviewed the iPhone version of this one back in December.
• High Speed 3D from Chillingo
High Speed 3D is a new racer on the way for both iPhone and iPad (universal) that offers glossy visuals and a variety of playmodes to mix up the action across 20 tracks in all. As far as playmodes, there's the standard Career mode, in addition to a number of Quick Play modes, including Get The 1st Place, a quick race to the goal; Drift King, a chance to paint the track with rubber; and Crash Them All!, a destruction derby of sorts.
We are told that there's about another month of performance tuning and polishing on this one before it lands in the App Store. Even so, High Speed 3D played very well and looks to be a fun time for fans of arcade style racers.
• Collision Effect from Chillingo
Collision Effect is an iPad game that puts celestial objects of various colors on the screen and it's your task to merge the like colored balls together. In Action Mode, the balls are moving, and a collision between two blobs of differing colors is a bad thing. In Puzzle Mode, they start off stationary, and your tap upon one ball begins the gathering of its like-colored kindred — but clever strategy and timing is needed to keep balls of different colors from colliding. It's a simple, yet challenging, mechanic done up with nice particle effects.
We should see Collision Effect arrive sometime next month.
• Play Kalei from Chillingo
We took a look at this clever graphical matching title last month at Macworld and really liked what we saw.
The basic idea in Play Kalei is that you’re presented with a high quality photograph and a random point of the picture is highlighted in a circular window in the upper corner of the screen. The catch is that the window highlighting the point in the photograph is shown as if you’re looking at it through a kaleidoscope, and you must find that particular point by matching the kaleidoscope view in a second window by sliding your finger around the screen.
Play Kalei is set to arrive in mid-March.
• Food Processing from Chillingo
Here's one for the iPad that takes inspiration from Fruit Ninja, but adds a bit of complexity and a dose of whimsy to the formula. The game puts you in front of a conveyor belt ferrying food across the screen and its your job to slice it up properly — and properly is the twist. Each item must be sliced in a particular fashion, a skill you'll need to learn along the way. And, all the while, a hard rock soundtrack keeps you bouncing.
Food Processing should hit the App Store later this month.
All of the Chillingo titles listed here will feature Crystal integration for score and achievements tracking.
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‘Cows vs Aliens’ Review – These Heffers Have Me Hooked
Last month at Macworld 2011 I spent some time playing with XMG Studio’s latest game Cows vs Aliens [99¢], and yesterday it became available for download in the App Store. Cows vs Aliens is a super casual high scoring game that uses a gameplay mechanic that struck me as especially unique. I enjoyed my ten minutes or so of playing Cows vs Aliens at Macworld, but now that I have the full game in my hands I’m liking it even more and finding it especially hard to put down.
In Cows vs Aliens, waves of cows will appear from the bottom of the screen and it’s your job to herd them into the barn opening located at the top of the screen. Touching the screen creates a circular barrier of sorts, and you’ll use these to push the cows along in the right direction. Making this task more difficult are aliens that begin to appear in saucers along with the cows at the bottom of the screen. You’ll need to weed these aliens out from the pack of cows and push them off the sides of the screen into oblivion, and if even one makes it into your barn then it’s game over.
Those are the basics, but there are additional aspects in Cows vs Aliens that add depth and strategy to the gameplay. Each wave requires you to herd a certain amount of cows into the barn all whilst a clock is ticking away. The clock resets each time you complete a wave, but the number of cows required increases with each wave and the timer can easily tick away if you’re not paying attention. There are also harder types of aliens that will begin to appear as you progress. The initial aliens are pretty slow and easy to shove off the side, but later aliens are quicker and more aggressive, and aren’t so willing to be pushed around.
The real hook in Cows vs Aliens is the scoring system. Cows come in several varieties, and are worth between 10 and 50 points each when wrangled into the barn. Herding a group of cows into the barn at the same time adds a multiplier to the scoring that increases with each successive cow captured. Being patient and letting a huge group of cows amass before herding them inside can earn you some insane scores, but it also gets decidedly more difficult to weed out the aliens when they’re in the middle of a big bunch of cows. Pushing cows off the sides while trying to dispatch aliens won’t count against you, but it does deplete the amount of cows you can use to score with.
The controls in the game just feel good, and there’s something very fun about pushing around a herd of cows. The natural inclination is to use two thumbs to push cows from the outer edges towards the middle of the screen, but Cows vs Aliens utilizes multitouch which can prove very beneficial if used wisely. You can create up to 5 points of contact on the iPhone, and up to 11 on the iPad. While I generally stick to the two thumbs approach it can be really helpful to stick an extra finger or two onto the screen when a pesky alien is trying to sneak into my barn. This can result in what resembles a game of finger Twister as things get increasingly more hectic. It’s definitely a lot of fun.
If I had to come up with one negative about Cows vs Aliens, it would be that it’s really just a one-trick pony. There’s only the one mode with wave after wave of cows where the goal is to get a high score. Still, it doesn’t make it any less fun and I’ve been hooked on trying to rise up the ranks on the Game Center leaderboards. Some of the best high scoring games around, like Doodle Jump [99¢] or Canabalt [$2.99], rely on a single type of gameplay and I think that Cows vs Aliens has found a similar winning formula. The game is also really cute, with colorful Retina Display graphics and a catchy tune. Coupled with the interesting control mechanic and compelling scoring system, Cows vs Aliens has totally reeled me in.
You can head over for a discussion about the game and further impressions, and if you’ve got an extra dollar floating around and enjoy high score-based survival games then I’d suggest hoofing it on over to the App Store and checking out Cows vs Aliens.
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