Appy Shreddin’ Monday!  I’m not sure what it is that draws me to music genre games.  I can’t tell you much about songs or artists for the last decade or two, and I have the manual dexterity of a rhino (animal and/or record exec).  But I keep playing them anyway.  Since APPraisal has already tackled Rock Band, it’s only fitting to give Guitar Hero a spin.

Premise

If you’ve played rhythm games, you essentially know how to play Guitar Hero.  Notes cascade down a runway, which you need to strike at just the right moment.  As you do so without error, you increase a point multiplier.  Along the way you can collect stars, which accumulate to allow you to activate Star Power for brief periods to double your multiplier.  You can play regular guitar and bass guitar for each song.

The game includes achievements, as well as a ranking system that allows you to unlock accessories and costumes for your character.

Presentation

The game looks similar in nature to other Guitar Hero titles.  The runway area is well defined and the colors are bright and distinctive.  The Star Power mode was a little too bright and washed out though, making it harder than it should have been to see the notes coming down.

The music is not the highest quality but it always sufficed.

As happened with the Rock Band app, I did experience occasional stuttering during gameplay on my 3rd gen iPod Touch.  It didn’t happen with any regularity, but it did happen.

Interface

The game mechanic of hitting the appropriate note as it crosses a note bar is recognizable to anyone familiar with the music genre.  There are also a few mechanics specific to the touch screen, such as sliding from note to note without needing to tap (show in the screenshot above) and “strumming” one direction or the other (shown below).  Miss a note and your multiplier resets.  Collect enough stars and you can activate Star Power (shown below) by tapping a bar that appears above the note bar.

I wasn’t crazy about the design choices in Guitar Hero.  Unlike Rock Band, you actually tap the note bar itself as notes cross it.  I found it hard to get a rhythm going because my thumbs cover up the bar and I’m tapping.  I much prefer to see it.  In fact I’d often miss notes because my fingers would drift down off the bar in a subconscious attempt to see the notes as they cross the bar.  I know, the mechanic is similar in the Tap Tap games, but there you only have three buttons not four, the target ares seem bigger.  Some people think Guitar Hero is less finicky about where you tap than Rock Band when your fingers stray a bit, but I seemed to have more trouble with Guitar Hero.  Also, I don’t like the way you activate Star Power by pressing the bar that appears above the not bar.  You essentially had to wait for an open time in the note cascade to do this effectively.  A tilt function ala Rock Band works better.

Freshness

The game is less forgiving that I expected.  It was not unusual to hit 97% of the notes correctly and still only score 4 out of 5 stars on a song.  I know, when you miss notes greatly affects your score, but I was surprised that missing just a couple of notes would cause you to miss a 5 star level.  The game does recognize perfect playthroughs with a different look to the 5 stars achieved, which is nice.

There is no online multiplayer in Guitar Hero, which was also a surprise.  You can tweet or Facebook achievements and such, but there is no head-to-head or cooperative play.  The dressing room and photo booth features to jazz up and take screenies of your character work well.

Value

The game is definitely priced as a platform for purchasing and downloading additional songs.  It comes with 6 songs for $2.99, and I purchased a Queen song pack for $1.99 that added 3 more.  In that respect it’s not much different from a trial game where they hope to get you hooked into buying more.

In my case, there are very few additional songs that I’m interested it.  Minus the Bear, Band of Skulls, The Dillinger Escape Plan and the like don’t do much for me.  Overall I think I got my money’s worth, and it’s worth getting if you are into this genre of game, but I feel like there are a few design decisions that hold it back from being a great app.

Summary

Premise:  Great
Presentation:  Good
Interface:  Mediocre
Freshness:  Average
Value:  Above Average
Overall:  Good app

Justin is back with another APPraisal guest review!

—–

I’m not a huge RSS junkie, nor do I visit a multitude of sites per day. I do, however, visit a small number of sites a LOT each day. I would say I’m visiting Gizmodo like 30 times between 8 am and 4:30 pm. So, if you’re like me and read a small number of sites with great frequency, Pulse is for you!

Read the rest of this entry at justinriggle.COM.  Thanks Justin! »

Things have been kinda quiet here on the APPraisal front, but not because there’s a lack of great iPhone / iPod Touch apps out there.  Whether about apps or music or life, I generally only post when I have something to say.  I don’t post just to post.  For APPraisal, that means using an app enough to be able to talk about it meaningfully and give an honest opinion, and while I’ve downloaded and dabbled with several apps over the last few weeks, I haven’t used most of them enough to talk fairly about.  However, if the lack of APPraisal posts just makes you want to fling a bird at a brick wall (or even if it doesn’t), you may want to know more about Angry Birds.

Premise

Those dastardly green pigs have made off with the birds precious eggs.  With their very future at stake, the angry birds strike back to get revenge on evil green pigs and reclaim their stolen eggs.  Angry Birds, from Rovio, is best described as a physics-based catapult puzzle game, in which you  fling birds via a catapult at various obstacles to destroy the pigs.  Each level starts you off with pre-determined set of birds that have varying abilities.  The game loads each bird into the catapult, and you determine the angle and speed it flies, and tap to activate special abilities in-flight.  Destroy all the evil pigs and you move on to the next level.

As you progress in levels, you get new birds to fling, and the evil pigs build more devious structures to protect themselves with.  In the current version (v1.3.2), there are 3 episodes equaling 135 levels, with at least 15 more coming in a free update.  There are also special golden eggs hidden throughout the game that when found unlock secrets.  The game also has leaderboards and achievements via Crystal, as well as Facebook and Twitter integration.

Presentation

With each screen representing a level, the graphics don’t need to be that complicated, but they do the job nicely.  It’s common these days to make the background move separately for the foreground for a depth effect, and they do that in Angry Birds, but they’ve avoided the temptation of making the backgrounds overly busy.  That’s ruined some otherwise great games for me, but it’s not a problem here.

The intro and menu music is cute but gets old quickly.  It stops in the levels though, and the sound effects there off pigs laughing, explosions, etc are repetitive after awhile but not really too annoying.

I haven’t experienced any problem with the framerate.  Birds have been tossed at a nice smooth rate.

Interface

There is not much in the way of control.  Once past the menus and into the levels, you really only do a couple of things.  You can swipe left and right to scroll the level to see everything, since often your objective is off the far side.  You launch a bird by pulling the catapult back with your finger and adjusting the trajectory, and lift your finger to launch.  To activate a special ability, like the little blue birds splitting into 3, just tap the screen in mid-flight.  Trajectory and timing is everything, if you want to make sure that those evil piggies go down!

Freshness

Catapult games are nothing new, but when done right they can be frustrating yet addictive fun.  Angry Birds is like that.  There are some levels that make me pull my hair out trying to beat, and others where I get 3 stars and a great score.  Most, however, seem to hit that middle ground, where you’re close on the first couple of tries, and just have to work out the best way to succeed.  I have yet to be stuck on any level, which is good since you need to finish levels to unlock more.  I’ve put down several games where I reached a point I just didn’t seem to get past, but that hasn’t happened to me in Angry Birds.

Value

Angry Birds costs a buck, and is currently the #1 paid app on the iTunes store.  It’s been that way for awhile, for good reason.  At 135 levels (and counting) there’s plenty of value there.  With the level rating system and the achievements, there’s good cause to go back and try to best yourself on any given level.  I’m still working my way through the levels, with just over half of them beaten to date.

Sometimes you see an app at the top of the charts for $.99 and wonder what kind of farting app is up there now.  Despite the odd name and seemingly odd premise, Angry Birds is a shining example of a great game that is continually updated by the developer and will cost you very little.  Don’t even bother with the Lite version, just drop a dollar on the full version of Angry Birds and start flinging ‘em!

Summary

Premise: Decent
Presentation: Good
Interface: Good
Freshness: Great
Value: Awesome
Overall: Great App

Want more?  ‘Appy to oblige.  Check out my other APPraisals.

If AppShopper was my ultimate source for tracking Apple apps, then TouchArcade.com is my definitive source for game app news and information.  TouchArcade posts several game app related articles a day on upcoming releases, news, reviews, previews for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.  If you want to know about a game, they’ve probably talked about it on TouchArcade.  Plus they have a very active community with some heavily trafficked forums.  All of that combines to make it a must-view website for me almost daily.  Let me know what you think!

What else have I Bookmarked?  Click and find out.

I’ve recommended AppShopper.com to several people over just the past week, which certainly qualifies it for a Bookmarked post.  AppShopper is a great site for tracking Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch apps.  They list all of the new releases, you can make a list of what you own, and best of all, you can make a wish list to track what you want to own.  When the price drops on an app on your wish list, you can get notification by email or RSS.  Needless to say, this site has cost me some money!  A lot of my APPraisal posts started with something I found or was following on Appshopper.  But it’s also saved me a lot, by allowing me to track apps and purchase them at the price I like when they go on sale or the price drops.  It’s one of my few go-to app sites.  If you’re an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch user, try out AppShopper.com.  Let me know what you think.

What else have I Bookmarked?  Click and find out.

I only do APPraisals on apps I personally found interesting or useful enough to try.  I don’t always end up liking every app, but I don’t buy or download something just to review it.  I was hesitant to discuss the SIRIUS XM Premium Online app, though, because it requires a subscription on top of the app which can be a bit pricey.  But given how much I use the app (a spoiler to what I think of it below), I figured a discussion of it and the ways I use it might be appropriate.  Someone else out there might get some tips or have some for me as well.

Premise

The app is a client for streaming SIRIUS XM radio via the internet to your iPhone / iPod Touch.  A subscription is required for the app to work.  Run the app, pick a channel, and begin listening.  There are 16 Pop channels, 21 Rock channels, 4 Dance & Electronic channels, 7 Hip Hop/R&B channels, 7 Country channels, 3 Christian channels, 7 Jazz, Blues & Standards channels, 3 Classical channels, 3 Latin & World channels, 6 Sports channels, 8 Entertainment channels, 3 Family/Health channels, 4 Comedy channels, 9 News & Public Radio channels, 4 Religion channels, 7 Talk channels, and 4 Showcase channels in the app.  Because it is a subscription based service, there are no ads.

Presentation

The graphics are consistent with what you would expect from this type of app.  The app will show you the channel, artist and song you are listening to, but no cover art, so there are few graphics other than channel logos.  It’s definitely not as well suited for discovering new music, like some streaming internet services.

The audio quality varies depending on whether you are using AT&T’s 3G or EDGE cellular service or you’re using wifi.  Over wifi, SIRIUS XM claims “near CD quality” but then quotes a 128k bitrate, which is hardly near CD quality.  I believe some pay internet streaming services deliver up to 192k, and free ones as low as 64k, so SIRIUS XM streaming falls somewhere in-between.  It’s always sounded fine to me, though I am admittedly no audiophile.

Interface

The app uses that now standard interface, with the home row of screen choices at the bottom.  It’s no-frills but very intuitive.  The Channels page lists the channels by category for easy browsing, and displays with each channel what is currently playing.  You can save individual channels to a Favorites page, which will be the page you use most.  Select a channel, and after a few seconds it starts play.  At the top of every screen is a bar that displays what you are currently listening to.  You can click on that bar and it flips over to reveal where you can add to your favorites, or click to buy that song from iTunes or add it to your shopping cart.  While playing, you can hit the down arrow to minimize everything, leaving just a bar of what you’re listening to and the channel logo.

Freshness

Here’s how I use it.  At home, I pop my iPod Touch into our existing JBL On Stage IIIP portable loudspeaker dock or our JBL On Time 400IHD loudspeaker dock with HD digital radio, and with my iPod Touch connected to the home wifi, I can listen to my favorite channels as I do other things.  As a bonus, because I have the online subscription, which also works on the computer, not just the iPhone / iPod Touch app, I use our Macs and our AirPort Express, along with the programs Airfoil and Pulsar by Rogue Amoeba to stream synchronized SIRUIS XM audio all over the house.  Pretty sweet.

Value

The app itself is free, but there are a few catches.  First, as I mentioned before, you need to be a SIRIUS subscriber to use it.  There are plans of varying durations, from 3 months for $38.85 ($12.95/mo) to 3 years for $349.00 ($9.70/mo).   If you are already a subscriber, however, adding the online subscription is only $2.99/mo.

The second is that some of the channel lineup is not available on the iPhone / iPod Touch.  These include MLB and NFL Play-by-Play, SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, and Howard Stern.  You can access these if you use the XM SkyDock app, which functions similar to this one, but it requires the purchase of the XM SkyDock hardware.  The hardware is $119.99 and has a built-in tuner, so you would not need an online subscription, but you would need an XM subscription (with added ‘Best of SIRIUS’ for premium SIRIUS channels) to use it.

All of that sounds pretty complicated and pricey, but there is free 7-day SIRIUS XM trial you can sign up for to try it out for yourself.  In our case, it was a no-brainer.  We already have a SIRIUS subscription for our primary vehicle, so adding $2.99/mo. to it to be able to stream SIRIUS online anywhere is a nice add.  Aside from using it at home, I also listen to it via headphones at the office while I’m working.  I keep an Apple Universal Dock plugged into the wall with a USB Power Adapter on my desk as well, so if the iPod Touch starts to run low on juice, I can drop it in there and still listen with my earbuds or plug the computer speakers in.

Controversy

To many of the reviewers in iTunes, the fact that the app does not allow you to stream Howard Stern seems to be a big issue.  Stern has said “It was a rights issue and a whole entanglement thing. So, we’re not on it.”  Stern fans flooded the iTunes store and gave the app 1 star because of that.  I really don’t know the ins and outs of it all, but it all seems rather silly of Stern to do that.  People are already paying a subscription + internet, or buying hardware + subscription to get the service.  And Stern’s company is paid $100 million a year by SIRIUS XM.  Quibbling that streaming over a laptop or notebook or desktop is different than streaming to the iPhone or iPod Touch seems a bit ridiculous.

To me an app is the sum of its parts, which is how I’m going to judge this one.  You might decide that if Howard Stern is not included, then you don’t want the app, which is perfectly fine.  But I wouldn’t give the app a 1 star rating on iTunes because Stern won’t let his show be listened to on the app.  There are 116 other channels that don’t have any problem with being streamed to the device and work just fine.  If you can live without Stern and some live sports programming (both of which are ok with me), and it all fits within your budget, it’s a fine app that delivers on what it promises, particularly for current users of the service.

Summary

Premise:  Great
Presentation:  Fair
Interface:  Good
Freshness:  Above Average
Value:  Decent
Overall:  Above Average App

Want more?  ‘Appy to oblige.  Check out my other APPraisals.

The iPhone / iPod Touch excels at small little game apps that didn’t cost much to make, and don’t make you feel bad for tossing down a buck or two to give them a try.  Comet Racer is one of those apps.

Premise

Comet Racer is an arcade-style game by Donut Games in which you control a small spaceship racing through rock mazes to get from point A to point B.  You race against the clock (and your own shadow) to beat the three increasingly faster challenge times.  If you take too much damage, by hitting the side walls or getting hit by missles and so forth, and you lose speed or even blow up.  But get powerups and ship upgrades and you might just beat your fastest time.

Finish each race by at least the slowest of the challenge times, and you unlock the next race.  There are 25 increasingly difficult races in all.

Presentation

The graphics are pretty straightforward here, which it a good thing.  Some games like this can get wrapped up in busy backgrounds that make it difficult to focus on what you’re doing.  Everything in Comet Racer is sharp and colorful without being distracting.  Even the mini-map, which is rudimentary in terms of graphics, is perfect for what it needs to be.

The sound is nothing spectacular.  Again, it’s what it needs to be, nothing more or less.  There is support for playing iTunes music, but I didn’t try it.

The game runs smooth as silk.  The notes say it was updated at one point to eliminate frame rate drops, and I didn’t see anything like that in the latest version that I’ve been playing.

Interface

There are 3 control modes: D-Pad & Thrust, Circle & Thrust, and Ship Circle.  With D-Pad & Thrust, you use left and right arrows in left corner and a thrust button in the right corner to control the ship.  I probably used that the most.  Circle & Thrust is similar, except with the typical circle directional control instead of the arrows.  I tended to oversteer in this mode, but if you get used to it you may be more precise in later levels.  Ship Circle puts a big circle around your ship that you hold and drag the opposite direction that you want to move in.  I had a hard time getting used to that and didn’t use it much.  All choices worked well.

Freshness

Time trial games can be a dime a dozen, but good ones are addicting.  You just know you can do better with one more try.  I actually preferred the earlier levels to the later ones, that got a little over-complicated with missles and tiny paths for my big fat fingers.  But I never felt cheated by the game, just by my lack of skill.

Some games that require you to unlock levels as you go along can be frustrating.  In Comet Racer, you unlock the next level by completing the current race’s slowest qualifying time, which was never really an issue.  Getting that fastest time is the big challenge.

I don’t personally pay much attention to global leaderboards in apps, but I like the implementation of them here, where you are awarded 1 point for each one-hundredth of a second you beat the track qualifying time, and your points are combined for all tracks and compared to others.

Value

The app is a good value at only $1.  This is one of those games you can play when you only have a spare minute or two, and one that you can start playing and get wrapped up in besting yourself, and suddenly you realize that an hour has gone by.  That’s a perfect description for a good iPhone / iPod Touch game.  If you’re in the mood for cheap, addictive time trial game, Comet Racer might be for you.

Summary

Premise: Decent
Presentation: Good
Interface: Good
Freshness: Good
Value: Great
Overall: Above Average App

Want more?  ‘Appy to oblige.  Check out my other APPraisals.

When I first got my iPod Touch, I was dumping apps onto it like crazy.  Free apps, apps that made top 10 lists, just about anything.  Many of those have been long since deleted.  Weber’s On The Grill, however, has made the cut, and definitely falls into the category of “there’s an app for that.”

Premise

At first glance, you’d think that the Weber’s On The Grill was a typical, self-serving corporate app.  But Weber has managed to make an app that’s both useful and subtly self-promoting at the same time.  The app combines everything you need to know to grill or barbeque.  There are sections on recipes, techniques, and grilling time guidelines. There’s also a built-in grill timer and shopping list.

Presentation

The basis of the app is recipes and techniques, and a key to presenting those, whether it’s in book for or electronic app, is photos.  Weber’s On The Grill does it right, with at least one photo of every recipe, viewable on the recipe screen and (probably more importantly) on the recipe list screens like the one below.  I can’t stand cookbooks that don’t show you pictures of what you’re making!  There are multiple pictures in the Techniques articles as well, and even a few videos, like “Controlling Flare-Ups” and “”The Two-Zone Fire.”

Interface

The app uses the classic iPhone / iPod Touch app interface with the category buttons at the bottom of the screen.  The Grill Guide sections and the Grill Timer also use the standard wheel for selections.  Both are appropriate for their application in the app.

The recipe section includes recipes for the following: starters, red meat, pork, poultry, seafood, vegetables & sides, dessert, and rubs, marinades & sauces.  The recipes are laid out as you’d expect: basic info at the top (serving size, prep time, marinating time, grilling time, special equipment), followed by an ingredient list, including rub and sauce ingredients, and then the cooking instructions.  All is easily readable with white text on a dark gray background.  Techniques gives you grilling basics, food prep instructions, grilling safety tips, grill maintenance, and videos.  The grill guide will give you cooking times and temperatures for different foods.

Freshness

The Weber people have made several improvements since the app was released last summer.  One is with the shopping list, which is a nice idea, but not overly functional if one spouse has the device and the other is at the grocery store.  Version 2 added the ability to email the shopping list, and the program will combine multiple instances of the same ingredient into one line item, making it much more functional.  The Grill Timer was also improved, and will now ding and vibrate even if your iPhone / iPod Touch is in sleep mode, and it adds functionality to the app even if you are not following a Weber recipe.

You can also tag your favorite recipes and techniques, which is not an entirely original idea, but goes to the little details that make the app user-friendly.

Value

The app came out in July of 2009, and has never swayed from its $4.99 price point.  Don’t expect to wait for it to be on sale to pick it up.  Also, the recipes don’t appear to be new, but come from other Weber sources, so you may have some of them in other places.  It’s not the cheapest of apps.

On the plus side, though, it is a very well made app that you’d have a hard time outgrowing.  There are over 250 recipes, not counting rub and marinade recipes, and over 100 grilling tips.  The app can basically take you from deciding what to eat, through buying and prepping ingredients, through firing up the grill and cooking for the proper time at the proper temp.  All you need to supply is the grill and the food.

Summary

Premise:  Good
Presentation:  Very Good
Interface:  Great
Freshness:  Good
Value:  Decent
Overall:  Great app

Want more?  ‘Appy to oblige.  Check out my other APPraisals.

ZarkSeven has this cool segment on his blog called “APPraisal”.  It’s his weekly…or mostly weekly…review of various iPhone/iPod touch applications.  Since Zark doesn’t use Google Voice and I’m addicted to it, he asked me if I would take a look at the new Google Voice mobile site and give a review for his APPraisal segment.  I’m new to this…but I love new stuff…so here goes!

I’m a huge fan of Google. I use a lot of their services as my primary way to communicate. From Gmail for my email to GTalk for my IM needs, Google just seems to “get it” when it comes to stable communication tools that just work.

One of their most amazing services is Google Voice. If you don’t know what GV is, check it out here. Google does a much better job explaining it than I do.

Read the rest of this entry at justinriggle.COM.  Thanks Justin! »

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect Galaxy.  Although it’s been out since June of last year, I never got around to it.  But with the imminent release of Mass Effect 2 tomorrow on the PC and Xbox 360, I’ve been immersing myself in all things Mass Effect again, like reading the latest novel, Mass Effect: Ascension, and the new comic Mass Effect: Redemption.  So I figured it was time to give Mass Effect Galaxy a shot.

Premise

Mass Effect Galaxy is set between the original Mass Effect game and Mass Effect 2.  The story focuses on a companion character in Mass Effect 2 named Jacob Taylor.  A retired Alliance soldier, Jacob is pressed back into service by his former commanding officer, Major Derek Izunami, after fighting off Batarian pirates attacking the cruise ship he’s on.  Jacob is sent to investigate suspicious Batarian activity in the Terminus sector.

The situation is politically charged, as at the same time a Batarian ambassador named Jath’Amon is preparing to visit the Citadel to negotiate peace with the Council.  There is a possibility that terrorists may disrupt the peace talks, and Jacob must determine if and how the suspicious Batarian activity is related before peace talks begin and the Citadel is threatened.

Presentation

Bioware made an attempt to emulate some of the basics of Mass Effect in the iPhone / iPod Touch game.  There are 3 aspects of gameplay.  The first is animated, non-interactive cutscenes, which play out in comic book style fashion.  The second is dialog choices, ala the original game.  You’re presented with multiple ways to react to people you encounter, from persuasion to no-nonsense force.  A scroll wheel on the right side of the screen lets you pick between choices.  Finally, there are the action scenes, which play out in top down fashion.

The game is polished, and intersperses actual voice dialog in here and there, but it’s not overly inspired.  For as little animation as there actually was, it seems like full animation would have been better than comic book style.  Sound and music were polished and nice.

Interface

My overwhelming thought regarding the gameplay and control of the game was that it felt like an early iPhone / iPod Touch game, where developers really hadn’t figured out the funnest way to use the device’s inputs for gaming.  The top-down action approach is an odd one, and given the success of recent 1st person shooters like EliminatePro and N.O.V.A., I have to wonder if they wouldn’t have gone that way were the game in development today.

The controls in the top-down view are rather clumsy as well.  The accelerometer is used to control your character, and you move by tilting the device back and forth.  Shooting is automatic, and you can switch between powers and perform special moves by hitting buttons on the right side of the screen.  The game auto selects an enemy, and not always the first one you’d choose.  I often had trouble switching enemies by tapping on the one I wanted, and once you played through a few action screens, the game starts feeling repetitive and boring.

Freshness

I like that Bioware tried to give the game a Mass Effect feel with the inclusion of Biotics and Omni-Tools.  You can use Biotics to freeze enemies, and Omni-Tools to affect their shields.  You can also fire missiles that can hit multiple targets in an area.  The problem is that I rarely used any of these.  It wasn’t until the last battle or two that I bothered to do anything but just shoot and strafe.  The action sequences were just not that good.

Giving the player dialog choices that affected gameplay was a better decision.  Bioware has been known for that since Knights of the Old Republic, and it’s an integral part of Mass Effect, so it was good to see it carried through here.  The game wasn’t really long enough to see a lot of long term affects of your decisions, but it definitely game the game a Mass Effect feel, and it’s something you don’t see much in portable games.

Value

The game was released at a $4.99 price point, but dropped quickly 4 days later to $2.99.  It’s been hovering between $0.99 and $1.99 since November.  It only features about 2 hours worth of gameplay, so it’s hard to advocate spending much on it.  Given the lackluster action, I’d probably say that for Mass Effect fans, it’s probably worth a buck just to extend the universe, but it’s almost beneficial that it’s so short, because it’s really not a great game.

Thown into the mix, however, is a connection that was added between Mass Effect Galaxy and Mass Effect 2.  In the extras section, you can log into publisher Electronic Art’s servers.  If your email for EA’s site is linked to your Xbox 360 gamertag, and you complete Mass Effect Galaxy, you will get message saying that an award is waiting for you in Mass Effect 2.  It’s not known yet what this award will be, though Bioware project director Casey Hudson has stated that you have to talk to Jacob Taylor in Mass Effect 2 to find out what it is.  It might not be worth a buck and two hours of your time, but it’s definitely a wrinkle in the purchasing decision.  I’m very interested in finding out what it will be.

Summary

Premise:  Good
Presentation:  Mediocre
Interface:  Interior
Freshness:  SubPar
Value:  Decent
Overall:  Poor app

Want more?  ‘Appy to oblige.  Check out my other APPraisals.