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Apptitude
This week in iPhone apps: zombies, buffoons, and boobs.
Plants Vs. Zombies ($3): Is it time to declare zombies the new bacon? I mean in terms of oversaturation, not deliciousness (braaaaaains).
Lately, I see zombies everywhere. It's bad enough that Wikipedia has a full "list of zombie films" page, most of which is made up of releases since 2000. (The list of porn puns alone should be indicative of a bad trend.) Then there's the recently popular zombie games genre: Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Dead Space... even one of the Call of Duty games added a "Nazi Zombies" mode for some inscrutable reason.
So thanks a lot, PopCap Games. Your new Plants Vs. Zombies game on iPhone is so addictive, I'm forced to tolerate the shtick one more time.
In this zombie apocalypse, you wield neither shotgun nor cricket bat. Instead, your green thumb is your weapon, as you plant the entire Little Shop of Horrors to keep the undead off your damn lawn. Your options include seed-spitting plants, exploding cherries, magic mushrooms that confuse zombies when they eat them, and dozens more. PvZ's a lot like other "tower defense" games: You plant things that do the zombie-killing for you, then manage or dig up your plants when new, tougher zombies present creative challenges.
In spite of my zombie hate, the folks at PopCap deserve credit for infusing their undead (and plants) with cuteness and a sense of humor. The cranky grandma zombie, the football player zombie, the bobsled team of zombies ... PvZ's designs are irreverent without trying too hard for laughs. The game's incremental approach—adding just a few new plants and zombies every level-—seemed too slow at first, but I've come to realize that it's perfectly suited for a phone game (as is the intuitive touch-screen control). Tower defense junkies won't see much new here, but PvZ's among the more refined, lengthy, and funny takes on the genre, and it condenses well on the iPhone for an impressively cheap $3.
Guidofy ($1): As someone relatively new to the iPhone world, I'm not yet burnt out on the "photo fun" genre. Must be why I threw $1 at this piece of shit.
Guidofy takes your iPhone photos and allows you to stick decals on top of them; in this case, they're all the trappings of the Italian macho-doofs you've probably seen on MTV's Jersey Shore. Faux-hawks, sweatbands, oversized shades, bottles of liquor, and musclebound bodies with shirts lifted to expose abs—tap and twist them on the screen to affix 'em to your old photos. Who knew participating in a one-dimensional cultural stereotype could be so easy?
Guidofy goes one step further with its "bronzer" tool, picking out the skin on a person's face to turn it as tan as you'd like. You can see how it looks on my Irish face above. The developers promise to add support for "Guidettes" in the near future. I'll report if the developers add support for getting users' three minutes back.
Most of the half-naked lady apps (N/A): I picked Guidofy as much for its stupidity as to make a point about last week's big iPhone news. Apple's ban on "sexual" apps looks like it's here to stay, booting a number of tasteless apps that did little more than display images of swimsuit- and lingerie-clad women.
The catch, of course, is that Apple has decided it's no problem for app "makers" like Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret to, um, display images of swimsuit- and lingerie-clad women. It's proof that Apple has no serious interest in content control, particularly on an App Store that lacks legitimate search filters. And that's the real problem: the inability to filter out crapware like fart noisemakers and "guido" photo editors. The App Store is a software wasteland that American computing hasn't seen since the great Atari crash of the early '80s, back when every game on store shelves was an untested hunk of junk.
For decades, Apple has trailed behind Microsoft Windows in terms of the amount of software that works on its machines. Maybe that's why the company has proven so incompetent at dealing with a deluge of inappropriate, stupid, and downright offensive material on the iPhone. Got rid of stupid boobie apps? OK. I agree with that. But if you're going to run the gate of your software store with an iron fist, Apple, either show some principle across the board or let the idiots run wild. In digital distribution, there's no fair halfway point.
Plants Vs. Zombies ($3): Is it time to declare zombies the new bacon? I mean in terms of oversaturation, not deliciousness (braaaaaains).
Lately, I see zombies everywhere. It's bad enough that Wikipedia has a full "list of zombie films" page, most of which is made up of releases since 2000. (The list of porn puns alone should be indicative of a bad trend.) Then there's the recently popular zombie games genre: Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Dead Space... even one of the Call of Duty games added a "Nazi Zombies" mode for some inscrutable reason.
So thanks a lot, PopCap Games. Your new Plants Vs. Zombies game on iPhone is so addictive, I'm forced to tolerate the shtick one more time.
In this zombie apocalypse, you wield neither shotgun nor cricket bat. Instead, your green thumb is your weapon, as you plant the entire Little Shop of Horrors to keep the undead off your damn lawn. Your options include seed-spitting plants, exploding cherries, magic mushrooms that confuse zombies when they eat them, and dozens more. PvZ's a lot like other "tower defense" games: You plant things that do the zombie-killing for you, then manage or dig up your plants when new, tougher zombies present creative challenges.
In spite of my zombie hate, the folks at PopCap deserve credit for infusing their undead (and plants) with cuteness and a sense of humor. The cranky grandma zombie, the football player zombie, the bobsled team of zombies ... PvZ's designs are irreverent without trying too hard for laughs. The game's incremental approach—adding just a few new plants and zombies every level-—seemed too slow at first, but I've come to realize that it's perfectly suited for a phone game (as is the intuitive touch-screen control). Tower defense junkies won't see much new here, but PvZ's among the more refined, lengthy, and funny takes on the genre, and it condenses well on the iPhone for an impressively cheap $3.
Guidofy ($1): As someone relatively new to the iPhone world, I'm not yet burnt out on the "photo fun" genre. Must be why I threw $1 at this piece of shit.
Guidofy takes your iPhone photos and allows you to stick decals on top of them; in this case, they're all the trappings of the Italian macho-doofs you've probably seen on MTV's Jersey Shore. Faux-hawks, sweatbands, oversized shades, bottles of liquor, and musclebound bodies with shirts lifted to expose abs—tap and twist them on the screen to affix 'em to your old photos. Who knew participating in a one-dimensional cultural stereotype could be so easy?
Guidofy goes one step further with its "bronzer" tool, picking out the skin on a person's face to turn it as tan as you'd like. You can see how it looks on my Irish face above. The developers promise to add support for "Guidettes" in the near future. I'll report if the developers add support for getting users' three minutes back.
Most of the half-naked lady apps (N/A): I picked Guidofy as much for its stupidity as to make a point about last week's big iPhone news. Apple's ban on "sexual" apps looks like it's here to stay, booting a number of tasteless apps that did little more than display images of swimsuit- and lingerie-clad women.
The catch, of course, is that Apple has decided it's no problem for app "makers" like Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret to, um, display images of swimsuit- and lingerie-clad women. It's proof that Apple has no serious interest in content control, particularly on an App Store that lacks legitimate search filters. And that's the real problem: the inability to filter out crapware like fart noisemakers and "guido" photo editors. The App Store is a software wasteland that American computing hasn't seen since the great Atari crash of the early '80s, back when every game on store shelves was an untested hunk of junk.
For decades, Apple has trailed behind Microsoft Windows in terms of the amount of software that works on its machines. Maybe that's why the company has proven so incompetent at dealing with a deluge of inappropriate, stupid, and downright offensive material on the iPhone. Got rid of stupid boobie apps? OK. I agree with that. But if you're going to run the gate of your software store with an iron fist, Apple, either show some principle across the board or let the idiots run wild. In digital distribution, there's no fair halfway point.
