Saturday, June 22, 2013

Must Have iPad Apps - Part 1 - Games for the Geeks

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In this series of articles, I'm going to share about what apps I currently have on my iPad. We'll try to cover one category each week. Hopefully this is helpful for somebody who just got an iPad or even those who are looking for something new but useful for their 'bought it last year' old iPad.

Today, let me share with you what games I have on my machine. I try many games for each sub-category also. As an example for racing games I tried a bunch but then stuck with one so far. Let's get right into the list.

Real Racing 3: I think currently this is the best racing game out there. The UI is quite professional looking, the scenarios and racing seem quite real as the name suggests and the best part is Cars! They make sure that they make all the good cars from the good brands available. I have always been a big fan of EASports. Whether it be FIFA, Cricket or any other sports. I think they did themselves a lot of good and obviously the gamers are really happy with the fact that it’s completely free, well for the basic cars anyways. Once you start winning some tournaments then you can earn money to buy some cars. You can also upgrade the cars to improve their performance and of course there are those regular repairing needs. The other good dimension about this game is the fact that there are a bunch of race types. Endurance run where you have to leave behind cars to earn more time and try to stay on and run the longest, speed drag where you have to compete one of one with another car or friend. Competing with friends even when they are offline us quite an innovation. This simulates how they performed the last time they competed on that track. Overall I would say that there are enough elements in the game to keep you interested for a while.

Scrabble: Now that the racing game is out of the way, the next one is a word game for the nerds. It's still the original scrabble game that's the best word game out there. The only problem is its not free, well not without ads anyways. Remember how when we used to play scrabble on the board it was tough to know whether it’s a valid word or not. Well that's what the motherboard is for, right? There is a word checker where you can check the validity of the words, and then there is teacher, who is kind of your school teacher who is going to tell you when you haven't done good enough and when you could have done just a little bit better (and sometimes a whole lot better). I think these two features make it absolutely worth to move to the digital version of scrabble than sticking to the board game. However, we do open the board game once in a while just to have the fun of moving the physical pieces around.

Sudoku by Finger Arts: Well, I told you I am a nerd, so what were you expecting? I am absolutely in love with this. The difficulty levels actually make a lot of sense and it’s a lot of fun as you see yourself competing in the leader-boards. But the best part is continuously competing with yourself, beating your own time records and improving your logic in the process. It’s a clean looking UI and very intuitive functionality, addictive and FUN! 

Temple Run:  When you have a device like an iPad, the best games have to be the ones that make use of the tilting and sliding and gliding functionality and this game has it all. The game is fast paced, instant results and a few tricks always there to help you get the next big score. Now, there is a Temple Run 2 as well, which has a guy. I think I liked the first one more and I might stick to it for a while.

Angry Birds: How can a list on games for the iPad be complete without the mention of 'the one' game that started it all. This Finnish invention is surely an invention to brag about for those guys. This game continues to break all top downloads chart records and why shouldn't it? I haven't met a single guy who hasn't liked the game right away. Even the loyal pocket tank fans have a regular go at the game and I'm sure there is nothing to be embarrassed about because this game is absolutely for all ages and almost everybody. In fact, I can only think of one group who doesn't necessarily like it, 'The pig lovers'. Even for them there is a grinning pig at the end of each stage, just that you have to be really consistent at being bad at catapulting those birds around.

Fruit Ninja: I had almost left this one out but now I'm thinking I should include it anyways, because it’s a bit different from the rest in the list. This is definitely more engaging and the two player mode works really well. So if you have some guests over or some kid visiting you can surely give this game a try and avoid the weird silences that can sometimes be a trademark of those visits. Well, the game is just about ninjas (you) who have to cut fruits in half with their swords. Doing it well gives you points (and a fruit salad)!

To conclude, I think my list is quite minimalistic and I haven't really felt much need to expand since I have had these games. I have tried and found some horrible racing games that I have probably played for lesser time than it took to download them. I might have left out some categories all together as I'm not much of a gamer myself, these days anyways. I used to be into strategy games (Age of Empires, anyone?). Looking forward to comments and suggestions from you all.


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