Despicable Me 2 is set to storm the box office upon its global release which is great news for Universal as well as fans of the original film. If you’re not a fan of the first film, at the very least, you’ve fallen in love with the minions. If you haven’t, then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.
Just look at them!
Not to mention they have a weird fascination with bananas that is incredibly endearing.
What’s not to love?
Now that you’ve joined the minion fanclub (because duh, course you have. Look at them!), let’s obsess about the latest project they’re in - the mobile game, Minion Rush. It’s available on iPad, iPhone and Android devices, and for free too, which means that you have absolutely no reason not to download it now. Just do it.
It’s not revolutionary by any means. The gameplay borrows a lot from (read ‘is a carbon copy of’) other games like Temple Run and Subway Surfer. While the runner game may not be anything new, there’s nothing wrong with doing something old hat so long as you do it well. Which these minions do. Very well.
A quirky little intro video will play the first time you open the game (and subsequently every time you start it, but you’ll have the option
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Every now and then, an app in the iTunes App Store makes you stop dead in your tracks because it’s just so amazingly quirky and completely absurd that you just have to take notice. Sometimes it’s the graphics, the concept or even something as simple as the name will make you do a double take. Very rarely is it the developer. Enter: Run That Town, by none other than the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
I’m sure you’ve all used the ABS at some point, whether it was in high school for some assignment or just to a prove a point to a mate. Point is, the ABS is pretty standard fare. Their website looks like it’s still stuck in the 90s. Not so their beautifully crafted, ingeniously thought out and super cute game.
Right off the bat, the game will ensnare you with its charm (not a word I use often - read ever - when describing anything ABS related), both visual and typed. The animated opening is fun and the graphics are clean cut and simple.
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If you haven’t read part 1 yet, you’re missing out. I talked about SongPop and the Logo Quiz, two really big, really fun and, unfortunately, short lived quiz game apps that were popular a while back. This time around, the games are a little more recent.
Icon Pop Quiz
The Icon Pop Quiz has much better staying power than it’s Logo predecessor, although it runs on the same system as the previous game here. You get shown an image and have to
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Quiz games are all the rage this season, and last season and the season before that. Form the genre’s early beginning in games on Facebook like Who’s Got the biggest Brain (which was later ported to the iTunes App Store), we’ve been pitting our minds against one anothers for a few years now and still the platform stays strong. We’ve long wanted to test our mental prowess against that of our friends. The latest hit quiz game is the immensely popular 4 Pics 1 Word, and to celebrate the longevity of the game category, I’m going back
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Fix-it Felix and League of Evil may be two of the best ‘bit’ game examples on the App Store, if only because Fix-it Felix is an 8-Bit game and League of Evil keeps the controls very limited. If you want a little bit more freedom when it comes to the genre, you’ve still got quite a few more options out there. If you want to be really lose with the classification, Zookeeper treads the line between classic bit-game and modern matching puzzler.
Zookeeper
This game is a bit more polished than the others, not truly being a ‘bit’ game at all. You’ll see nice, smooth edges and the graphics are much more refined than the old NES/SNES game ancestors,
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You heard me. It’s back! Thought the days of blocky plumbers and pong were were gone? Too bad! Seems that the better our technology gets, the more nostalgic we get about its use. You can see the trend to retro in fashion, film and even food, but you’d think our games would be spared that trend. We now have the capabilities to create stunningly life-like visuals and game mechanics that mimic real-world physics near-perfectly, and what do we do with those skills? We make games like Fix-it Felix Jr.
Better Yourself: Quit Smoking, Get Organised, Read More
Ok, so part 3 is a bit of a cop out - I’ve sort of smushed three resolutions into one here. But really, how many eReader apps do you need? If you’ve got too many organisation apps, you’ll need a separate app just to organise them! So let’s keep it simple, shall we?
Quit Smoking
I’m unashamedly anti-smoking, so you’ll get no sympathy from me here. If you’re a smoker, you need to quit right now. And you really need to stop smoking at bus stops - as someone who is incredibly frightened of second hand smoke and who catches the bus regularly, I can’t emphasise enough the discomfort of trying to breathe as little as possible when I’m waiting for the bus near someone who is smoking. It’s not like I can move very far, now is it? With new laws though
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Are you planning a big trip, buying a car or just want to end the year with a savings account that actually has some savings in it? It can be tempting to buy a great deal of things, especially with all these sales going on at the moment. Spend up now, because with all these apps, you’re going to be much more money-wise in the coming year.
Your own bank’s app
The first step to financial stability is having access to your money on the go - not so you can spend it, but so you can schedule bill payments, review your spending and transfer between your spending account and your savings (but try to limit the reverse of this). In order to do that, download your bank’s mobile app. You’ll find that all of the big banks, and even some of the smaller ones, have iPhone apps. You can carry around all
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2012 is over and a lot of you will be thinking about the year that’s passed. Did you keep any of the resolutions you made this same time last year? No? Well, worry not. Here are some apps that’ll make sure you don’t skip out on your 2013 resolutions.
For our first set of apps, we're going to look at a very common New Year's resolution:
Lose weight and get fit
We all want to get the best start to the year and most of us think that, in order to have the best year, we need to be the best possible version of ourselves. But then you’ll get to thinking about what exactly that entails: calorie counting, exercise regime
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Apple’s entry-level handset is currently the iPhone 4 at $449 from the Apple store – although you can likely find a 3GS or 3G cheaper at a retailer. You can buy a semi-decent Android smartphone for under $100. Is it any wonder that Android currently (for the 3rd Quarter of 2012) accounts for 75 percent of all smartphones shipped in the world while Apple are slowly losing ground?
