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Review by Christopher Dambroso

One of my favorite internet memes to date is the “om nom nom” phrase, not sure exactly why but I just get a kick out of it. So when I came across the game MUST.EAT.BIRDS. and read that your character’s name is Nomster I decided to throw cation to the wind and download it solely due to the nom innuendo.

MUST.EAT.BIRDS is hailed per its iTunes store description as “the worlds first ever picnic defense simulator” and basically delivers as a casual, defense genre game. You “play” as the quirky, ball shaped monster appropriately named Nomster. The object is to defend Nomster’s delicious picnic deserts from parachuting birds of differing sizes. The game not only has a Mission Mode where you have to unlock stages one by one, but also has 4 unlockable Challenge stages too. Also, which I thought was a nice touch was that the developers added a “reset” button, which erases all scores and any achievements. I haven’t seen this feature on every game I’ve played, I do think it is an incremental positive to the replay factor.

Gameplay has you firing Nomster (technically multiple Nomsters) from a crude slingshot made from two giant forks and a rubber band. When one of your Nomsters flys into any of the incoming birds the cute little Nomster eats or shall I say noms up each bird, thus protecting the treats below. If you’re still confused or aren’t hip enough to wrap your mind around the Nom meme, gameplay for MUST.EAT.BIRDS. in it’s simplest form is Missle Command….on LSD. In Mission mode you have to either nom a certain amount of birds or score a certain amount of points, possibly both I’m still working through this mode. You can greatly increase your score by throwing two or more Nomsters into each other creating a bigger, fatter, and funnier Nomster which provides you with a score multiplier. My absolute favorite part of the gameplay is when you nom enough birds in a row without any misses, you reach a level of gaming zen called Maximum Bake. When Maximum Bake occurs every
Nomster you fire stays on the screen, usually creating a giant, hilarious Nomster that scores you a boat load of points. BUT, BUT…when you reach Maximum Bake did I forget to mention that your iPhone (in what sounds like a Japanese guy’s voice) screams “MAXIMUM BAKERY!” at you? Just building up to hear this phrase is a big hook that keeps me playing the game again and again.

The music and FX sounds are great and surprisingly fun to listen to. Once you play the game enough you find depth where some stages have only a certain number of Nomsters you are able to fire off, so timing & aiming is definitely important. I can only explain the feeling of achieving Maximum Bake to comparing it to the childhood feeling of stepping off the school bus
to start summer vacation off, yes it’s that fun and exciting.

Final thoughts…I present you with the titles of the first 2 stages in Mission Mode “To Nom a Mocking Bird” & “Close Encounters of the Nom Kind”. For that level of humor IMO MUST.EAT.BIRDS. is WORTH IT alone, along with the fun gameplay and great gaming music. So do yourself a favor if you’re on the fence about spending $0.99 for this game…put down the pack of gum or snack size bag of chips you were going to nom on and BUY THIS GAME. You can thank me in the comments section under this review later.

nom, nom, nom…WORTH IT.

*MUST.EAT.BIRDS. *was created by Mediatronic Ltd. Photos, videos, and iTunes Store link can be found by following this address: http://www.musteatbirds.com

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Review by: Kevin Watson

Vampires Live is part of the emerging Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) niche on the iPhone/iTouch. It is a free app (read Why it’s “free” below). For all you WoWers, recovering EverCrack addicts, and FF XI fanfolks, now you can get your MMORPG fix on the iPhone/iTouch, and you can get it in the flavor of your choice! While I am writing about Vampires Live, the other games from Storm8 are virtually identical, with a different theme laid over the same game play and general concepts.

The game sets the tone with this opening message:
In the darkness under a starry sky, you awake to find a whole new world around you. The night, previously scary and mysterious now seems familiar and comforting. The vampire ho turned you is trying to get you to join his underground vampire clan. You, however, have other plans…

Vampires Live is great at appealing to the vampire lover. Build your pool of blood donors (stray dogs on up the food chain to humans, demons, and beyond) which you get blood from hourly. Then use this blood to upgrade abilities, heal from attacking other players, or save it for later in the Blood Bank. At any time (whether you are online or not) people can attack you and steal small amounts of your unbanked blood or you can pillage other vampire clans and increase your bloody coffers. As you complete missions and attack other clans you level up and increase your power, unlocking new creatures to enslave, abilities to master, and missions to complete. It is also important to collect allies and increase your clan’s size both for survival and offensive prowess.

Many gauges other than blood donations are also on set timers which keeps you coming back throughout the day to complete missions, attack clans, even put out hits on particularly annoying stronger vamps, and enslaving more beings to donate their blood. While you check in with your Vampire Clan periodically, you don’t need to spend huge amounts of time online at any given time to keep things going. Comment on clan member’s profiles, heckle enemies, or invite others to join your clan. Slip online and do a quick mission, or go through and invest some blood into new abilities. You can spend 5 minutes or a half hour. Very easy to play with minimal hand movement, a great feature for the school-going and work-avoiding crowd!

Storm8 is trying out many different things and I’m enjoying most of their ideas and having fun seeing the game interface get updated and new features appearing periodically. All in all, this is a great RPG game made even better because it’s a free download.

Why it’s “free”
This is a “free” app. Yes, you can download it and play with all the features in tact completely free. However, if you want to do extra things like change class, name, add NPC members to your clan you need Loyalty Points (LPs).

You can get these LPs in two ways, buy them (60 LPs for $4.99) OR you can download the other free apps from Storm8 LLC. Now this is really clever on Storm8’s part because this way you download all their other products. Additionally, they put out free apps where you simply download them and get extra abilities/spells or more LPs. You can then delete the app or play one of their other games. This keeps people constantly downloading SOMETHING of Storm8’s which keeps them visible in the top downloads sections of iTunes. I think this is a fair price to pay, you download a random free app of theirs, get rewarded in-game, and they reap advertising.

All in all, I feel this is a great balance for a company to provide their content for free, offer a quick way that you can progress if you are willing to pay, and a slower way if you want to help them advertise with download numbers.

Download Vampires Live from iTunes

As of this post, Storm8 is still working on their website.

Review by: Bronwyn Lewis

I have a confession: I’m a SimCity addict. And when I saw that EA came out with a version for the iPhone, I knew I had to give it a spin.

At $4.99, I was skeptical. I expected a game dumbed down and stripped of what made it SimCity, or one that was so clunky and overwhelming that I’d give up after 15 minutes. What I found instead was a fairly intuitive and comprehensive version of the game I loved.

They’ve skipped over some of the menu controls, and removed the ability to landscape — though you do have some say over your piece of land when starting a game — but that seems to help in streamlining the game. You still have a ton of control over budget, ordinances, and a cadre of advisors to help you along in the game. Building city infrastructure is not as difficult as I thought it would be, since they force your to build roads, rail, pipes, and power lines in straight lines.

Unfortunately, since you are dealing with a small screen, it can sometimes be hard to see if you’ve missed a plot of land or laid something down exactly where you want it, especially when a large building is in the way — yes, there’s only one angle for your view of the city, though you can zoom in/out at a surprising number of levels.

My biggest concern was saving my game — what would happen after I poured hours into a city, and got a phone call? Thankfully, SimCity handles that seamlessly with autosave, and can also handle multiple save files (one per city, not including autosave).

So if you’re a SimCity fan, or just like the idea of a city living in your pocket, this is a steal — you definitely get your money’s worth.

Jump over to EA’s website for more info about the game.
Download SimCity from iTunes.