Game Review: Medieval Apocalypse

So in my email box this week popped up a request to take the game Medieval Apocalypse for a test drive. I have to admit, I found the game image adorable when I clicked the link in the email. Little did I know that the cute little knight in that image would tweak my thoughts of game play on Windows Phone devices forever.

After a quick boot up screen, Zoltán Gubics, completely blew me away. The menu is simple, and getting down to playing is just one little click away. Simply hit the play button and off you go.

The loading screen delivers a quick tutorial of the game controls and how to use some of the additional features. To sum it up quickly, you have a “D” pad control on the left of the screen, attack and defense buttons on the right. Across the top are your character indicators.

Walking through the tutorial, I found the controls amazingly accurate. Normally on these styles, I find myself blocking my view of the screen by having my big thumbs on the controls. Zoltán either designed this thing for my thumbs in particular, or he just knew where to put them in location to the game play to where they aren’t in the way at all.

After learning a few attack moves, you journey thought the tutorial and learn how to control your knight. Basic stick controls, attack and defense moves and even learning to jump are included with the learning level.

After a very rough start on my first try, I started to get the hang of knocking off those crazy zombie things that were popping up everywhere. You will also discover the value of the ‘spin’ attack very quickly as they start coming from everywhere. Another key part is to watch for the glowing items. Those are areas you need to enter or attack to keep moving through the level.

As the game progressed, I was more and more impressed with the shading, the action, the excitement and the fun of playing Medieval Apocalypse. The movements are fluid, textures are perfect and the play was smooth throughout the entire map. I’ve been killed about a hundred times in my first night playing, but this game is flat out gorgeous.

Even as my screen flashes “Chapter failed” once again, I find myself wanting to stop this review to press the restart button yet again. I’m not sure what anyone expects from a FREE game, but this is a title I would easily spend $2.99-$4.99 on without hesitation. That said, get over to the store now, download this FREE – Did I mention that it was FREE yet? – game that literally changed my opinion on what a great Windows Phone game needs to be.
After you down load it and find your battery hitting 5%, go hit the market and give this one 5 stars and a good review before your phone dies. You can snag it here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/medieval-apocalypse/c50f3d48-756a-44e2-abcd-be626c69ae4c

I also wanted to give the developer some extra props on this title by mentioning his social networking sites... Thank you so much for the amazing game and keep them coming!

Website:

http://www.obumogames.com/

 

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/obumogames

 

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ObumoGames

 

Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/obumogames

App Review: 11,000+ Cool Facts

Are you one of those people that just loves to pop off one of those random facts that makes people immediately run for a Wiki check? Did you stop watching Jeopardy because it was just too easy? If so, you need to grab 11,000+ Cool Facts from the Windows Phone Store right now.

11,000+ Cool Facts is an App that delivers exactly what the title says. A quick tap of the tile gives you access to over 11,000 random bits of awesomeness. Even better, some of these things are so crazy that you will actually grab your calculator and double check their math. Yes, the one in the image above is correct.

After you tap the tile to open the App, you are presented with the standard 11,000+ Cool Facts screen. A very simple layout presents you with the App title, the fact number that you are on, the fact, a small banner ad and the menu at the bottom. The banner ad is removable, but the developer did such a nice job with placement, I’m not worried about it at all.

The menu is a pretty powerful area, with some useful tricks. First, if you are a social media-ite or just found a funny that you want to share with a friend, the share button will allow you to message, email or shave via social network. The jump to button allows you to enter a random number and see that fact. The read out button has your device read the fact to you. Finally, there is the search button, and yes, I did leave this one for last. The search button will actually go online and show you the Google page for the fact you are looking at, putting to rest those that don’t believe your factualness.

The rest of the menu below the buttons is very self explanatory. Upgrading to ads-free will remove the banner from the lower part of the screen. Settings allows you to have the fact read automatically and select different voices. Rate and review, just click this and give it the 5 stars it deserves. Help, if you get stuck, there is some help… And the about section tells you all about this great App.

To finish out, I have to say, as the one that likes to throw out the random fact, Ocean68 Studio has blown me away with this one. Not only did it earn a spot in my precious internal memory, but it’s actually one that I will use on a daily basis. That said, how about considering an option to open to a random fact for the next update? Or maybe a live tile option that shows a new fact every few hours? Because that would take a really good App and push it up to amazing very quickly.

You can grab 11,000+ Cool Facts for free from the Windows Phone Store right now: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=b7e7ce38-91c6-4b5e-9a28-045e8a6d5ace

Red Stripe Deal: Kinectimals

Anytime a hot title comes up on a Red Strip Deal, I like to pass along a grab rating for those that are worthy. Kinectimals is one of those worthy ones, as long as you have a device that plays nicely with it. What I mean by that, is that it was really designed early on in the Xbox family, so you Lumia 1520/1320 owners may not want to blow a buck on this if you are going to worry about it being perfect.

That said, for anyone with the Xbox 360 version of this game, you know how it works. You raise a cub by taking care of it, playing with it and just having a blast with it. The advantage of the Windows Phone version over the Xbox version is that it goes with you everywhere.

Game play is fun and keeps you entertained, but you really need to keep in mind that this was designed for kids to play on the Xbox 360. It’s not supposed to keep your interest for more than 10 minutes at a time. If you keep that in mind, you will have a pretty good time playing with your cub. The mobile version of the game is also a key to unlocking five new animals on the console version. If you are trying to finish the game on the Xbox 360, it’s one of the only ways to do it.

I’d give this one a 4 out of 5 stars, mainly due to a few bugs here and there, but overall it’s quite an accomplishment. The Microsoft Studios team did a great job porting this over and the $.99 price tag is quite a steal for it. The Red Strip Deal should be good through this week, so grab it now if you want it.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/kinectimals/5a3f9c59-1d30-4895-bb76-641bdd959a8c

Pandora For Windows Phone Goes Ad Based

When Pandora for Windows Phone was announced by Joe Belifore last year, something amazing was offered up to those that used it, advertising free listening. Now, Pandora doesn’t play that many commercials to start with, but not having to deal with the few that it did play is quite the bonus. In fact, it’s almost as good as a Pandora One subscription. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

Today, Pandora released an Important Update email for users of their Windows Phone product. The text of the email is brief and to the point, they need to make money to play music. There are two ways they accomplish this, by selling us a Pandora One membership or advertisements. The full text is below.

Dear Pandora Listener,

Starting today, Pandora will be introducing advertising on your Windows mobile device.

Why are we doing this? Simply put, ads pay the bills. Running Pandora carries significant costs, including a substantial portion of our revenue that we will pay in music royalties to songwriters and performers. Advertising allows us to cover those costs, providing healthy compensation to musicians while still being able to offer you a free music service.

Our goal is to minimize disruption as much as possible. If you want to continue listening ad-free, you can upgrade to Pandora One which is free of audio and visual ads. Click here to upgrade.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Pandora is dedicated to providing you with the best personalized radio listening experience in the world.

Thanks for listening,

The Pandora Team

Now, I am not one that minds the commercials, but the $36 a year or $3.99 a month not only gets you commercial free listening, but gains you access to Desktop App, longer ‘time out periods”, higher streaming quality and custom skins for your player. All of these really add up to quite a value for most listeners. Needless to say, if you are a Pandora user and are frustrated with the new changes, there are other options on Windows Phone devices. I would recommend checking out Nokia Mix Radio, Slacker or Soundtracker. All of them are solid performing Apps that will keep your music flowing.

App Review: Notetastic

I’m going to be the first to admit that I use OneNote a bunch on my Lumia. In fact, it is one of my “go to Apps” for storing just about anything. That said, I am always looking for a faster way to jot down a reminder or make a voice note for myself. Fortunately, I stumbled across Notetastic from Aman Ardalan.
Notetastic is about as barebones as a note taking App can get. It has an extremely small install size and doesn’t bog the system down with data syncing and backups. It features a few simple options at the bottom of the screen to take a new note and two category views at the top to view them. It is simplicity at its finest and I love that. There are no convoluted menus to scroll through to find that note I’m looking for. There’s no folders to bury things in. It is just a clean and simple format for quick notes and quick retrieval.

Entering notes into the App is as easy as clicking the pencil or the microphone at the bottom of the screen. Clicking the pencil brings you to the standard text editing screen that everyone is familiar with from many Apps. You get to enter a subject and a note body. That’s it. Save it and store it and you are ready to move on.

Pressing the microphone icon gets you rolling with voice notes just as quickly. It uses the standard recognition system, so accuracy for me is about 95%.
Overall, Notetastic is an App that anyone looking for a quick note taking system should look at. The Ad sponsored version is free, and it works like a charm. It doesn’t suffer from one of my irritants of the Ad’s blocking content, so I’m on board with it 100%. If you are one that needs to make those quick notes, grocery lists or even just wants a system to record some quality voice notations, check out Notetastic in the Store, you won’t be sorry.

Notetastic Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

Should There Be A Nokia Android Device?

I’ll shock quite a few people here I’m sure, but I don’t see the major issue with testing the waters of another mobile OS with the Lumia hardware. I know it sounds nuts to consider Microsoft releasing a competitors OS on a piece of hardware, but honestly, Microsoft makes more from Android at this moment than they do from Windows Phone.

That said, a Lumia 500-series device with a stripped down version of Android might be fun to use for a while. Emerging markets will snap this up in a hurry if they are able to run it out there for under $50 US. Nokia and Microsoft aren’t going after the market share that Windows Phone isn’t gaining in here, they are going after the bleeding ‘feature phone’ market that the Asha and Symbian devices in the past are vacating.

The Asha 501 is a decent device, but they just haven’t had the traction needed to keep the MeeGo/Symbian/Asha platform running. Maybe a lower end Android phone could stop the bleeding in the feature phone market that is destroying their stronghold as a major phone manufacturer. The bottom line is that Nokia still makes some of the best devices on the planet. It would be crazy not to send an emerging market device out with a clean OS to see if they can stop that bleeding before it’s too late.

That’s just my 2 cents on the topic, but feel free to send and email or comment below with your thoughts.

Happy 200th Windows Phone Post

May 17th, 2012… Almost two years ago, I began this blog with my trusty Samsung Focus S that I received as my “Smoked By Windows Phone” prize. It wasn’t a post that was ready by many – in fact, the count today is 5 reads. That “Welcome To The Focus S” wasn’t my first Windows Phone post, nor was it bound to be my last.

About a week later, the features started coming out with Socialize Faster With Live Tiles (16 reads), Local Scout Does It All (15 reads) and What Windows Phone Does Better (5 reads). Most people would have looked at these early numbers and given up the ship, but I knew it took a long time to build a following on a blog, and just kept going. Total reads for the first month of the Focus On Windows Phone Blog was 365, but 199 of those came from one key post, Best Ways To Blog From Windows Phone.

That post became the launching point for the site as the following review of the Mafia Game garnered 318 views. I then posted on something that everyone was wondering about, setting up a Windows Phone on Red Pocket Mobile service. In June, the Windows Phone game changed forever as Microsoft announced that no current Windows Phone 7.x devices would be upgraded to the new version of Windows Phone coming later that year. The Focus S and Windows Phone 7 was dead.

2012 finished up rather quietly. A second post on Setting Up Your Windows Phone for Red Pocket Mobile Service was a giant success with over 900 views. July brought the HTC Titan, Radar 4G and a few others through the review stages. August was highlighted with posts on Using Google Voice, the MVNO Solavei, and the arrival of my first Nokia handset, the Lumia 900.

Other notable posts from the last quarter of 2012 included more Red Pocket Mobile setup action – this time on the Lumia lineup, my review of my Nokia Lumia 810, and the post on how to take a screen shot with Windows Phone. 2012 was a great starter year for this little blog, but it only got better in 2013.

2013 started off with quite a few App and Game reviews. Some of the more popular ones were for Alpha Invasion, Shutter Pro and How To Create Playlists In WP 8. In January I also reviewed the HTC 8X. In the months that followed, news of Nokia not bringing the Counters App to WP 8 came out, as did the review of the Nokia wireless charging plate.

Storage problems for lower memory devices became public knowledge for many early in 2013, and the Phone Storage CleanUp App was a solution for many. We also saw the Nokia Lumia 521 come to market, the launch of Tumblr and Hulu+ arrived for WP8. The game Steel Champions made a splash early in the year as did launch of the AT&T Lumia 520 GoPhone edition.

2013 continued on with better deals on Windows Phones than ever before. More Apps filled in the gaps and accessories became a big thing on the site. The reviews of the Nokia DT-900 Wireless Charging Plate and the Skullcandy Titan Earbuds were very popular reads. The review of the zBoost YX545 signal booster was probably read by everyone with T-Mobile service issues indoors. November even brought us FREE games from Disney, which if you didn’t know, once you buy the “free” title from the store, you can download it later without paying for it again.

Finally, December of 2013 ended the year with posts about the Windows Phone Apps that really aren’t missing – though many people don’t know it, using Nokia Mix Radio to get in the holiday spirit and a game preview of Disney’s Frozen Free Fall. The last order of business for 2013 had to be the fact that a popular T-Mobile MVNO launched their LTE service for users that had a Lumia 925.

2014 came in with a bang as I was greeted with a new Nokia Lumia 925. The new device also meant more reviews of new software. Great titles like 4Blend HDR, Domino’s Pizza, and Nokia Camera Beta were all covered. I’ve even covered how to get a FREE Windows Phone without a contract this year. 2014 will be a great year for Focus On Windows Phone and I hope to be writing my next 500 post recap sooner than later.

In the meantime, thank you all for reading this blog and feel free to email smartphonedeals@gmail.com with any topics you’d like to see. Also, please take the time to visit my sponsor pages – www.4gfastdata.com – www.getsmartphones.info and the Getsmartphones.info Amazon Store. Without support from these guys, it would be tough to keep doing the accessory and device reviews.