The object of this game is to get the ball bearing across the wooden board without letting it fall into any holes. Sounds simple enough, right? But what I really like about it is this game puts the accelerometer to work. By tilting the phone, you maneuver the bearing slowly and carefully across the board. Once you reach the other side, you level up. But avoiding those holes can be tough. It’s very sensitive to movement, so you may find yourself accidentally flinging the ball across the board unintentionally until you get used to the mechanics. 

One thing I like was the settings feature that allows you to calibrate the game to how you hold the iPhone. While you’re supposed to hold the device flat during game play, you can calibrate it to your specifications. 

Gameplay is simple and straightforward. It’s just like the mini-games you’d get from the supermarket as a kid, but this time it’s digitized. That’s the only difference. Image quality is simple but decent. Perhaps more realistic wooden blockers would add contour and depth to the board, which, as of this moment looks a but one dimensional. Sound effects sync up nicely and are appropriate as well. Update:Ever feel like you’re losing your mind? There aren’t sound effects on this game, and it would have been nice to hear the ball fall into the holes and bounce off of the blockers.

Overall, I enjoyed this one. It’s nothing to write home about, but it’s a fun diversion, nonetheless. And isn’t that what little games like this are all about, anyway?

Before moving forward with the review, let me just say that Scrabble for the iPhone and iPod Touch doesn’t disappoint and it is well worth $9.99!

EA seem to have put a lot of thought into the opening splash screen with all the fancy animations.  That being said, if they’d put a little more thought or even placed themselves in our shoes, they’d understand that it gets annoying after sitting through the splash screen three or four times.  There isn’t a way to skip through or speed up the LONG 20 seconds, so your only option is to patiently wait for it to finish.  After the fifth or sixth time, I have this urge to launch my precious iPhone 3G towards the nearest wall (yes, I know it’s misplaced anger and the iPhone doesn’t deserve it – but hey it’s the only tangible object in my hands).  Once you get past the 20-second load time a menu pops up with options for Quick Play, Custom Play, game Options, Statistics or see More Games by EA.

Quick Play is you vs. computer.  In Custom Play menu, you’re presented with options to select game modes (Solo Game, vs. Computer, and Pass ‘n Play).  Solo Game lets you change the Game Style to Classic or to 75 or 150-point and 8 or 12-rounds.  Depending on how good you are with formulating words from letters, you can pick the difficulty level ranging from Easy, Normal or Hard.  If you like, you can even turn of or on the Duplicate words.  The Game Style doesn’t change for Pass ‘n Play option.  It allows 1-2, 1-3 or 1-4 players.  Make sure to Pass ‘n Play with people you know and trust, and not to mention has good personal hygiene [Vincent's tip] With the iPhone 3G in short supply, you never know if that dude is going to run off with it!  Since you actually have to hand over the iPhone to the other players, make sure their hands are clean; last thing you need is for your iPhone to be the conduit for unwanted GERMS.  Of course, these would be moot points if EA implement a new feature for multi-player over WiFi or 3G.

Under the Option menu, you can turn on or off the Game Music and Game Tips, change volume, SFX Level and Rest the game.

Visiting Statistics provide you with date pertaining to your Best Game, Best Word, Best Turn Wins, Draws, and Losses.  Should you need help, it’s only a click away.  If you love EA games and want to learn more about the company, click on About, and to see other offerings, click on More Games.

Moving tiles to the game board is as easy as holding your finger down on a tile until it turns dark and then drag it up where you want it.  The game board automatically zooms in, in placement mode.  I found that it doesn’t matter the size of your fingertip, you might find it difficult to see where you’re trying to place the tile.

[Scrabble's tip]: TWO-FINGER CONTROLS, let you use two fingers to hold a tile and move/zoom the board at the same time.

I don’t know about you, but when I play Scrabble, I like to move my tiles around in the tray.  The process helps me to think through creating the best words possible.  I’m delighted that EA lets me do just that, move the tiles around with my fingertip.  Or, if I just want random jumbled tiles, all I need to do is press the Shuffle button or shake the iPhone or iPod touch and voila – the titles are randomly rearranged.  Other game play includes swapping out a completely new set of tiles by tapping the Exchange bag; by doing so, you’re forfeiting points for that round.

EA gives you the option to “sort of cheat”, if you’re really-really stuck figuring out a word.  You can press the heart button and bam – the Scrabble word-god places the best word possible on the game board.  You do have the option to decline using it.

Every now and then, you get a “blank” tile that you can use as any letter you like.  When you place it on the game board, a window pops up letting you choose the letter that you want to use.

Scrabble is available for iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.0.  It’s an awesome implementation of Scrabble mainly due to the iPhone’s gorgeous 3.5-inch touch display.  It’s intuitive and easy to learn to play, and I highly recommend it.  And as I stated earlier in the review, it’s worth the $9.99.

Scrabble for iPhone & iPod touch OS 2.0

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZQwmo3ZxqA[/youtube]

Don’t let the girl at the start up menu scare you. When I played early in the morning, she asked me “morning already?” When I played outside of my regular time, she told me that I normally play at night and it’s not nighttime yet. The first couple of times that this happened it freaked me out, and to be honest, it’s still a little creepy! The game has a feature that allows the player to draw the number on the screen with their finger. However, I was having problems with this feature: the game wouldn’t recognize my numbers, and created more aggravation than it was worth. I finally switched back to the number pad. I was also unable to change the player’s name. It shows up as Julia every game. I know this is a small issue, but if I paid for the game I want to be able personalize it with my name.

You no longer have to go searching in newspapers for a Sudoku puzzle to play, all you need to do is open the Platinum Sudoku.

The arcade mode has a story line that players can follow along.  The two characters in the game are Kale and Malia, and they set out to look for sections of a treasure map of Bubble Island.  There are a total of ten sections, and as the player proceeds through the game there are 30 items to collect for the gallery.  In addition, there are different outfits that can be collected so that Kale and Malia can have a wardrobe change.  There are a total of 100 arcade levels to keep you occupied.  The final mode is Crab Fever, in which the screen keeps on filling up with bubbles and you need to pop them until you can no longer keep up.  This is probably more useful for those dull queue moments where you want a brief distraction.

Gameloft’s Brain Challenge gives your brain a workout while playing various mini-games.  The games are geared towards 5 areas of your brain (logic, math, memory, visual and focus).  The stress games also develops your stress management skills.  There are 9 “creativity” exercises that promotes your artistic side.  The difficulty level adjusts to your play history. so it’s nice that you can have up to 5 profiles saved to the game for multiple players (that is, if you trust them with your iPhone).  Figuring out how to play each game is pretty much straightforward, if not the tutorial is helpful.

I would highly recommend this game for all ages.  You are getting 43 games for the price of one, which is always a bonus.  The menus are easy to navigate through and the animations are colorful.  The touch screen allows you to answer the question much more quickly.  Especially when you are getting timed on everything.   It’s nice that the game keeps a history of your brain chart so you can compare your progress day to day.

However, there are some drawbacks to the game.  One is the screens between the games are unnecessary and time consuming.  After finishing up a game, you spend about 10 seconds for the game to wrap up before it takes you back to the main menu.  Then once you pick a game it takes about another 10 seconds to load up.  Also if  you get a phone call in the middle of a game, it interrupts the game.  Then you have to go through the whole loading process again just to get back; to be fair, this is more to do with how Apple insists third-party applications manage memory, rather than a problem with Brain Challenge, but either way it’s still frustrating.  If you get a text message, you have the option to close the message rather than leave the game.  That’s not so bad.

Unlocking all the games can be a long and tedious operation, but you are actually excercising your brain in the process.  The game is highly addictive, so beware.

Trism requires that you slide the trisms so that they create a combo of three of the same color. Once you do this, they are eliminated from the board and new ones slide down into their place. Here’s where the neat part comes in. You can tilt the iPhone in any direction to change the gravity so the trisms fall and fill in spaces. Open spaces in the board make it more difficult to make matches, says the tutorial, so turning the iPhone on its head can actually help you score big points!

This game only costs $4.99 and it seems to offer hours of gameplay and really, it’s like three games in one. First, there is “Infinism,” a game that allows you to take your time and really plan out your matches. The second version is called “Terminism” which is timed and if you can’t make a match by the time the counter counts down, you lose the game. Lastly, there’s “Syllogism” which is my personal favorite. It really makes use of the accelerometer. To play this game, you must hold the iPhone flat and tilt it so that the trisms fall and match up with each other. It starts out easy, as you can see from the photo below, but then it picks up and can get quite complicated.

To spice it up, there’s also bombs, locks and obstacles that can get in your way and require strategic matching to eliminate. And when you make a match of five trism or more, a rainbow trism will appear and, you guessed it, this allows you to match two trisms of any color with it.

All in all, I enjoyed this game. It’s a fun way to pass the time and with clear graphics, fun sound effects and challenging gameplay, you’re sure to get caught up in all the matching fun.