Games conceived by borrowing elements from other popular games are not often a success. Hero of Sparta was obviously inspired by Sony’s God of War series as well as the blockbuster movie 300. Yet instead of unwinding like a too-late facsimile, Hero of Sparta explodes on the iPhone as a superlative action game full of big thrills and the kind of hack-and-slash gameplay that hardcore gamers love. This is truly one of the best iPhone games of the year and a must-download for any fan of action games, including those that have already played God of War to death.

The game opens with King Argos waking up on a beach. His ship is shattered on the shore around him. There is a mystery to be solved here for sure, but Argos doesn’t use subtle means to unravel it. Instead, he kicks his sword and shield into overdrive, smashing through hordes of creatures straight out of Greek mythology. There is no shortage of monsters to cut down, either. The Oracle’s Island, and the several stages the follow it (Atlantis makes a cameo, for example), are crawling with Minotaur, centaurs, and gorgons demand to be run through with your powerful blade.

When you cut down monsters, you collect colored orbs that serve various purposes. Green orbs restore flagging health while red orbs are accumulated until you can level up your weapons, just like you might find in God of War or the Onimusha series. It’s an effect racket, since it keeps you from just running past enemies. Sure, you may want to avoid a few battles when you are close to perishing, but skipping too many means you cannot “purchase” the best upgrades and attacks and that will make some of the bigger battles tougher.

However, some of your fights against huge beasts, like a Minotaur, are cut short when you instigate a timing event. When the enemy is weak or presents the opportunity, a button appears on-screen. Press it to start the event. In these short scenes, time slows and little discs appear on the screen. If you press all of them as they appear, Argos slays the monster outright. Typically, the execution is accompanied by a somewhat gruesome animation, like Argos drawing his blade across a centaur’s throat. You are rewarded for pulling off executions with an extra number of colorful orbs, so always keep an eye on the lower right corner of the screen for the availability of these special executions.

Pulling off specials is easy in Hero of Sparta.

In addition to collecting orbs, you also earn special gear such a larger shield that can be used it a slam attack, a bigger sword, an axe, and more armor. The game is smart about doling out these improvements. It keeps you playing to see what you can earn next as well as if it unlocks another cool special move.

Recently, I hammered Gameloft’s Brothers in Arms for its awkward control schemes. They completely spoiled the game. Hero of Sparta is unburdened by its smart controls. You hold your device horizontally. There is a virtual analog stick in the lower left corner of the screen. Attack and defend buttons appear in the lower right corner. I had very few problems controlling Argos, and those that I did encounter, were in the beginning of the game when I was still getting familiar with the inputs. The attack and defend buttons are always responsive. Using them to unleash special moves and combos is easy. For example, when you get your shield upgrade, you can use it to push enemies back through a special move by pressing the defend button and then dragging your thumb up into the action. Right away, Argos releases a shock wave that flattens all nearby enemies. Gameloft’s virtual console controls here deserve to be looked at and imitated by other developers considering their own action games.

Hero of Sparta is also, hands down, the best looking 3D iPhone game to date. The world around Argos is richly detailed and painted with an impressive number of colors. The texture work on Argos, the monsters, and the environments is stellar. (During cutscenes, check out Argos’ face. That is some great texture mapping.) Hero of Sparta is illuminated by excellent light effects, too. Slowdown is rare. The soundtrack is loud and bombastic, as you might expect for a 300-style game. Gameloft informed me that an audio update is on the way soon, though, that will improve some of the audio production.
Closing Comments
With so many bargains on the App Store, I sometimes hesitate to recommend a $10 game. However, I have zero qualms giving Hero of Sparta a full-throated endorsement. This is a thrilling action game loaded with cinematic flair. The controls work exceptionally well; they never get between you and the game. Hero of Sparta could be completed in just five or so hours, but $2 an hour for a game of this quality is a deal. Make it one of your next downloads.

In the words of the immortal Hans & Franz, “We’re Going to Pump You Up!” Or at least, iFitness for the iPhone and iPod touch is going to. The personal trainer app has enjoyed a lofty position on the Top Paid charts in the iTunes store, and I wanted to find out why. I’d been disappointed before, so I hoped that iFitness might restore my faith, and get me back in the gym.

From the start, things were looking up with iFitness. The UI, while nothing special, was clean, simple, and dialed-down, which strikes me as appropriate for an application that I’ll be using at the gym in between exercises. From the home screen, you can access individual exercises, your custom workout, pre-set routines, and your log from the bottom navigation bar.

On the Exercises screen, you can browse by categories organized according to muscle group. You can also search for an exercise by individual muscle, or browse the list in its entirety alphabetically. One of the key features of iFitness is the ability to add and edit custom exercises to the already extensive list that comes with the app. Clicking on an exercise shows its details on the home screen, initially displaying just an image series showing you what to do. You can press a button at the top to display text instructions, add to your workout, or add to your log.

My Workout displays your custom workout, which you can build by adding exercises from their information screens. You can also add dividers to separate muscle groups or sets. My Workout adds a degree of customizability that makes iFitness a must-have for more advanced users. The only downside is that you can only create one workout, so the list could get unwieldy if you want to keep a variety of custom routines.

The preset routines are good starting points for novice users. Each has an extensive description to tell you just what the workout is meant to do, and a list detailing number of sets and repetitions.

iFitness has definitely found a place as my app of choice for workout management, since the ability to add custom exercises and your own routine is crucial to my fitness habits. At only $1.99, it’s a steal for beginners and more advanced users alike.

In Cro-Mag Rally you are a speed-hungry caveman named Brog who races through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in primitive vehicles such as the Geode Cruiser, Bone Buggy, Logmobile, Trojan Horse, and many others. Brog has at his disposal an arsenal of primitive weaponry ranging from Bone Bombs to Chinese Bottle Rockets and Heat Seeking Homing Pigeons. In addition to single-player racing where one player races against the computer, there are also several different multi-player modes (available only when running on OS 9) including Tag, Capture the Flag, and Survival. Two players can play on a single computer in split-screen mode, or up to 6 players can play over a network.

Cro-Mag Rally is an incredibly diverse and entertaining racing game, and there is nothing else like it for the Macintosh! The game is visually stunning, has incredibly fun driving physics, and is suitable for all ages. Download the demo to try it out!

Download Cro-Mag Rally and get behind the wheel of a prehistoric hot rod. Your iPhone is the steering wheel as you avoid obstacles and fire off primitive weapons like Bone Bombs and Heat-Seeking Homing Pigeons.

Cro-Mag Rally has 3 different difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, and Hard.

Pangea Software recommends playing in Hard mode since that is the most fun, and playing in Easy mode is essentially cheating. However, here is a list of what the different modes actually do:

Easy
• Only need to come in 3rd place or better to win a Tournament mode race.
• All cars have significantly better suspension.
• All cars have significantly better traction.
• CPU cars don’t know how to brake when approaching tight turns.
• CPU cars never shoot weapons or use Nitro’s.
• Europe cannons don’t fire.
• Jungle Pterodactyls never attack.
• Jungle Totem Poles don’t shoot.

Medium
• All cars have slightly improved traction.
• In Bronze and Iron Ages the CPU cars have additionally improved traction.
• In Bronze and Iron Ages the CPU cars have tweaked / improved acceleration.

Hard
• CPU cars are chosen randomly, therefore, there may be more than one of each type of car in the race.
• In Bronze and Iron Ages the CPU cars have highly tweaked / improved acceleration.
• In Bronze and Iron Ages the CPU cars have highly tweaked / improved traction.
• CPU cars that are behind the last human player are given additional speed and other physics tweaks to help them catch up.
• CPU cars don’t attack other CPU cars if they are behind the last player.

CRASHING AT LAUNCH?

Many people have been reporting that apps they buy on the App Store will not install and/or launch. While Apple figures out what the problem is, there are some things you can do which usually fixes it. Try these in this order until it is fixed:

1. Reboot your iPhone twice (hold down the power and home buttons for 10 seconds).

2. If that failes then you should re-download a fresh copy of the game. To do that, go back into the App Store (either on the iPhone or in iTunes) and click ‘Buy Now’. Don’t worry, if you’ve already purchased it then you will see a message asking you if you want to re-download it for free. You may need to delete the game first before you can download a fresh copy.

You can also see Apple’s App Store Troubleshooting Guide which has some additional information. If you need further help you can contact Apple’s Customer Support from the iTunes Help menu.

SOUND EFFECTS WON’T TURN ON?
There is a small bug in the iPhone OS which causes the audio in an app not to turn on once it has been turned off. The solution is this: go into the game’s Settings dialog and turn the Sound Effects: ON. Then press the Done button to save the changes. Now quit the game and relaunch it. That should turn the audio back on.

Tips for Driving
• Unlike most racing games where you simply hold down the acceleration button and never let go, Cro-Mag Rally requires a bit more interaction. In Cro-Mag Rally, speed kills - remember that. You’ve got to get used to letting go of the gas pedal and hitting the brakes, especially on the levels with tight turns like China and the Viking Village Yes, hitting the brakes slows you down, but in this racing game, “control” is more important than speed.

• Different tracks require different vehicles, and the fastest car is not always the best car. On most of the tracks, good acceleration and traction are actually the most important characteristics to look for in a car.

• Remember that Cro-Mag Rally’s tracks have lots of curves and bumps, and when you hit a bump and get airborne, you will continue to spin in mid-air. When you land after getting airborne, you are likely to skid out if your car has poor traction, and recovering from an uncontrolled skid is much easier with a car that has good acceleration. When driving in a bumpy area try to keep going straight, otherwise, you will inevitably get into a mid-air spin which typically results in a skid-out upon landing.

• If you are involved in a skid-out and your car comes to rest aiming backwards, don’t bother wasting time turning the car around. Just start driving backwards until you get a good opportunity to turn back around. The cars in Cro-Mag Rally work just as well in reverse as they do going forward - it’s just a little more difficult to get used to steering backwards.

• In single-player mode, you are always going to start each race in back of the other cars. The initial melee of crashing that goes on at the start of each race as all of the cars try to get in the lead can determine the outcome of the rest of the race. If you can avoid crashing into any of the other cars right off the starting line and wiggle your way into first place, then that will usually double to triple your odds of winning the race. Let the other cars lose time by smashing into each other in the first 15 seconds of the race; you try to avoid it.

• If you are in a fast car or in a car with the Nitro activated, don’t try to over-steer to avoid hitting steep parts of the terrain. You will usually crash if you attempt to do that, so instead just let your car hit the slope and if you get airborne, just hope you’re flying down-stream.

• The Logmobile, and the Chariot are two of the most speed-oriented cars in the game, and the CPU does a good job of driving them. Therefore, these are often going to be “the cars to beat” in many of the races. If you are in a car with better acceleration and traction, then a good strategy is to ram into the Logmobile or Chariot whenever you get a chance. The CPU artificial intelligence is always going to be worse recovering from a crash than you will be.

• When playing in Tournament Mode it is best to focus on getting the Arrowheads on the first lap. This is helpful because then you will have 2 full laps to focus solely on winning the race. If you are constantly having to worry about staying in 1st place and getting the arrowheads on every lap then you are going to lose.

• Most racing games (and Cro-Mag Rally is no exception) have a gameplay feature which gives players in back and advantage over those in front, thus allowing the players in back to catch up. In Cro-Mag Rally, you are given a little extra speed the farther you fall behind in the Place rankings. For example, you may notice that the Geode Cruiser goes about 20% faster when it is in 6thplace compared with its speed in 1st place. What this boils down to is the fact that even if you are in 6th place and all seems lost, you actually stand a fair chance of winning the game. However, the CPU cars also have the same advantage, so keep that in mind.

Tips for Powerups

• Once you get good at handling these cars, this tip is the sure-fire way to win: choose a car with excellent speed and poor to mediocre traction and suspension. This alone will certainly result in losing the race, but if you can manage to pick up all of the Sticky Tire, and Super Suspension Powerups then you’ll blaze past all the other players. It is often worth the trouble and loss of time to actually turn around to pick up a missed Sticky Tire powerup than to pass them by. High Speed combined with Sticky Tire powerups will greatly improve your odds of winning!
• Avoid using the Oil weapon on the first 2 laps. The CPU cars’ artificial intelligence knows to try to avoid the oil slicks that are on the ground. The CPU can probably do a better job of avoiding these than you can, so odds are that if you drop an oil slick down on the first two laps, the only car that will hit it will be yours. However, on the third lap you should always try to use as many oil weapons as possible. This will slow down the players behind you, and you don’t have to worry about ever running into your own oil slick since you’re already on the final lap. However, on some of the difficult tracks it may be a good strategy to use the Oil weapon as much as you can early on so long as you are in 1st place. Anything you can do to keep the other cars well behind you at the start of the race will help, however, be prepared to take your own medicine when you lap around.

• Unlike the Oil slicks, the Land Mines do not stay around forever, therefore, it is safe to drop those down on any lap - you don’t need to worry about running into your own land mine on the next lap.

• Never throw a Bone Bomb backwards on a bumpy road. If you’ve played the game for more than 20 minutes, you probably already learned this the hard way. Bone Bombs have a tendency to hit the ground prematurely on bumpy terrain, and the shock wave from the explosion behind you will send you into a spin. Only throw Bone Bombs behind you when you are on level terrain.

• If the race is really close and there is a faster car coming up behind you, here is a strategy which works well: Get the Sticky Tires powerup, and then lob a Bone Bomb in back of you. Even if you get hit with your own Bone Bomb, odds are that you will recover from the skid faster than your opponent since Sticky Tires reduce the spin from an explosion.

• The Roman Candle is one of the most effective weapon in the game. No aim is required, and they have good range. However, there are two things to be aware of when using the Roman Candles: 1) If there are no opponents in range when you fire a Roman Candle, the projectile will come raining down on YOU. 2) Never rapid fire a barrage of Roman Candles as fast as you can. Instead, fire one off every 1/2 to 1 second. This will increase your odds of a direct and repeated hit.

• The Homing Pigeon weapon is the best weapon to use for a rear attack. If there are cars coming up on you from behind, nothing does as good a job of neutralizing them as the Homing Pigeon. This weapon is not all that good for a forward attack since they are slow-moving and tend to detonate in front of you unexpectedly which can cause you to be blown up by your own Homing Pigeon much of the time. Primarily use these for rear attacks.

• Even though they look really cool when you fire them, the Bottle Rockets are not a very effective weapon in racing mode. They are too slow and have poor aim in the twisty terrains of the racing tracks. However, they are excellent weapons for use in the battle arenas during multi-player games.

• This probably goes without saying, but never activate a Nitro powerup right before a turn in the road. That’s the fastest way to get your face imprinted on the rock wall.

• Of all the weapons in the game, the most difficult to use is the Freeze Bomb. These require very good aim and timing, but if you manage to hit an opponent with it you’ll be in good shape. They are very effective weapons when they hit their target.

Battle Tips
• In Survival mode, all of the cars take damage equally. The big Geode Cruiser is just as frail as the Logmobile, so don’t just pick the Geode Cruiser because it looks tough. It won’t protect you from enemy fire any better than any other car.

• In the Stonehenge arena there is a Druid in the middle of the track. Every time you touch the Druid you get 20 seconds of Sticky Tires, 20 seconds of Super Suspension, and 20 of whatever weapon you currently are holding. Therefore, a good strategy is to pick up 1 Roman Candle and then touch the Druid. Now you have 20 Roman Candles to blast away with!

• When playing Quest For Fire mode, it is always a good idea to steal one of your opponent’s torches whenever you drop one of your torches at your base. Take the enemy’s torch and hide it somewhere. He can still see it on his map, but you can at least make it inconvenient for him to go get.

• Try to get to the top of the big pyramid in the Aztec battle arena. The best weapons are there. Here is the trick to getting to the top of the pyramid: get a Nitro powerup and then head to the side of the pyramid with the ramp. Activate the Nitro and that’ll give you enough speed to make it to the top.

Gamevil’s Zenonia has been the subject of fan lust for a few months now, ever since we first got our hands on it at GDC 2009.
Though the final product isn’t perfect, Zenonia knows its audience and treats it to an adventure of epic proportions. This game blows the iPhone’s other action RPGs away with obsessively detailed gameplay and a monumentally huge game world that will keep many exploring for weeks on end.

All is not well in the land of Zenonia. The forces of light, led by the Holy Knights, are locked in conflict with the dark side, represented by the Dragon Clan… and the game’s mysterious young hero, Regret, is stuck in the middle.
No spoilers here, but suffice it to say that Zenonia’s story runs through many classic RPG themes. The countryside’s infested with monsters, the magic seals that keep chaos at bay are weakening, and Regret isn’t even sure who he is, let alone which side he’s on.
It’s boilerplate stuff, but it’s artfully written and there’s a nice touch of humor behind it. There’s a lot of dialog in this game, to be sure, but it doesn’t feel like a chore to read it (although we did notice an unusually high number of typos and grammar errors). The characters banter and swear at each other. They seem aware of how goofy some of the plot twists are, and they occasionally even joke about being stuck in a game. Many of these RPGs take themselves far too seriously, but Zenonia isn’t one of them.
You also have some control over where the story goes. The game is peppered with moral choices that steer Regret towards the light or dark sides. These affect your selection of quests over the course of the game, adding to replay value.
Zenonia’s story is woven around a solid core of exploration, item collection, and combat. Superficially, Zenonia plays a lot like Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past–you walk around a landscape from on overhead perspective, whacking enemies with your weapon. The game’s virtual d-pad works fairly well for movement, although we wish the dash move had its own button instead of requiring a double-tap.
But Zenonia combines this basic gameplay with much more complex RPG mechanics. For instance, you have your choice of three character classes, which each have their own items and skills. You have a full inventory, and you can equip multiple pieces of armor and magic talismans. There’s a full skill tree to work through, for adding special attacks and passive abilities to your character. You can upgrade your magic items by combining them, and run up to five quests at once. Some quests are only available at certain times of day. Basically, Zenonia has the feature set of a full PC console action, not an iPhone game.

This insane level of depth is great for those who want to really get lost in a game, but it may turn off more casual players. In fact, some of it just seems like overkill–it’s a pain to keep your equipment in good repair, and you even have to eat from time to time to keep up your strength. Detail is one thing, but is all this stuff really necessary?
Plus, not everyone will have the patience to deal with the high level of difficulty. Like many Korean RPGs, Zenonia requires a good deal of grinding. You’ll run into several points where you simply won’t be strong enough to beat a boss, or make it through a certain area. That means you’ll have to pull back and run through some sidequests until you’ve leveled up enough to punch through. Luckily, you can save the game at any time (and it saves automatically on call interrupt), so you can hop in and out whenever it’s convenient.
Zenonia’s anime-style graphics are vibrant, colorful, and full of artistic flourishes. The animation deserves special praise. Characters display emotion bubbles during dialog that add weight to the conversation, and motion-line effects during combat sell the action. The music’s a mostly forgettable collection of short loops, but at least there’s a lot of them.
At the moment, the App Store is tilted heavily towards casual, throw-away games that are good for a few minutes of entertainment here and there. Zenonia is the exact opposite. This is a real video game that demands serious levels of time and attention.
But for those eager to make that kind of commitment, there’s no better buy than Zenonia. You’ll be playing it for weeks, if not months.

You know what’s missing from the iPhone game library? More adult-oriented type games. Not sexually explicit material, just games that actually have an edge. Amateur Surgeon from Adult Swim fills that void with an entertaining blood-soaked, gross-out surgery game that uses the iPhone touch controls in fun (and disgusting) ways.

You play as pizza delivery boy Alan Probe. Not satisfied with life as an ordinary pie man, your dream is to become a surgeon. Problem is, you only have basic tools like a pizza cutter to get the job done. With the help of a really strange doctor who provides you with more tools to further your career, you help patients suffering from various ailments in your makeshift surgeon’s office called Probe & Bleed Back Alley MDs.

Three different files filled with 27 patients and 3 bonus patients await you. Fix up one patient and move on to the next. Each patient has a variety of ailments and sicknesses that you must fix such as removing bullets, killing ants inside someone, killing an overgrown tapeworm, and even blinging out a pimp with gold plated body parts. Each patient is different and really fun to operate on.

All of your not-so-medically-approved tools are available to you via the easy to access touch controls on the screen. Use the pizza cutter to open up your patient. A yellow line tells you where to slice. The salad tongs are used to remove things like glass, pieces of wood, bullets, etc. Your lighter is used to cauterize the incision you’ve cut open, and the pain relief gel is then used to heal the wound. Use the household stapler to staple shut open wounds and gashes. A dustbuster sucks up blood spots and various liquids presents on your patient’s body. Wield the chainsaw on bones and organs. The corkscrew is used in conjunction with the pain relief gel to increase your patient’s heartbeat. Once his heart stops beating, your patient is close to death. The car battery is used to stop and start the heart, and to also kill various bugs in the body. The Etchy Sketchy helps find objects hidden under the skin. You can always zoom in for a closer look and to help you with your cuts and staples.

Each patient has a certain amount time before his clock expires, but don’t be too hasty in trying to save him. Even though the game tells you the basics in tools and procedures, sometimes you’ll have to do a little experimenting on your own to find out exactly what it is you’re supposed to do during an operation. Even though it is occasionally frustrating, it still adds replay value because you want to go back and retry the surgery just to see the next sick and twisted patient in the game.

You’re given a grade on each patient once you’ve patched them up. The grade depends on how fast and clean your surgery is. Don’t worry if you see a lot of D’s and F’s. I’ve gotten plenty of those with the occasional ‘B’ and one ‘A’. Getting an ‘A’ unlocks your first bonus patient called BUM, a robot with some issues that you have to access from the rear. You can always go back to each patient to try and improve your grade. Future patients are seen in shadows, and some of the forms are really gross looking. It just makes you want to keep playing to see what’s next.

The graphics are really colorful and each operation is different from the previous one. The colors are bright and there’s no shortage of red. The sound effects are great, from the disgusting sound of you slicing open your patient to the bone-crushing sound of the chainsaw. Dialogue between the patient and Alan Probe is also pretty funny. It’s not a game for kids, but then again, I didn’t really see anything that disturbing besides some adult humor they may not get anyway. The music was pretty good but isn’t needed to enjoy the game.

Emergency Radio allows you easily follow the action of over 900 police, fire, EMS and other emergency frequencies. Whether you want to keep tabs on what’s going on in your own backyard or listen in to the happenings on the other side of the country Emergency Radio streams a a variety of emergency services feeds right to your iPhone. Time to put that old Radio Shack scanner on Ebay.
Emergency Radio boasts having over 900 emergency services streams for you to choose from. And it does. Searching for content is quite simple though. You can view a list of all the available streams in alphabetical order or if you know the name of the stream you’re looking for you can simply type it in the search box.

Or if you want to search for streams in your area the application will use the iPhone’s location to determine what streams are nearest to you. You can configure the search parameters based on how far away you want the application to search.

The application then shows you the available streams in order of closest to you to furthest away.

Once you select a stream to play the load time is quite fast. While the stream is playing Emergency Radio shows you a list of common radio codes to help you follow the chatter. To help conserve batter life Emergency radio continues to play while the phone is in sleep mode just like the iPod.

Found a stream you like and want to be able to easily access it in future? Emergency Radio allows you to keep a list of your favorite streams just like bookmarks in Safari.

As a firefighter I was eager to try out this application and thrilled to see my own company’s dispatch had a stream available. Sure enough the stream plays exactly what’s sent and played on my fire department issued company radio. I don’t plan on listening to my own company’s feed on my down time, my wife wouldn’t allow it! But it’s nice to know I can access it anywhere I am just to check in.