iPhone App Zealot

Rat on the Run delivers an amusing platform game that reminded me of Donkey Kong without the climbing.The object is to eat the cheese and avoid spiders, snot, buzz saws, and more as you move throughout your house. There are two modes. Challenge mode prompts you to get all the cheese on a given level to complete it. Arcade mode pushes you to get as much cheese as quickly as possible as the bonus timer counts down. The levels are quick and progress rapidly in difficulty. The graphics are simple and well drawn. Simple directional control and jumping make it easy to start and taunt you into the “OK, just one more time and I’ll get it” mode. Some of the recurrent themes in reviews elsewhere call Rat on the Run cute, simple, funny, and addicting.

Donut Games has Rat on the Run free for this weekend (Oct 23-25). For free, this game is worth a look. I like free. I wish I had more free time to play more games. Happy Friday!

OK, maybe Shazam does not use magic to figure out what song is playing, but I cannot tell the difference. Shazam Entertainment delivers a fantastic music discovery app. Launch Shazam, press “Tag Now” and your iPhone will listen for music around you. After collecting a sample, it calls home and analyzes the track. It reports back with Name, album, genre, album art, links to iTunes, YouTube, and more. Shazam failed to pick up very few songs. While I mostly use it for songs I want to know, I have tried to “trick” it with ones I thought would choke it. The most obscure I tried was Kids Bop #4 (from McDonald’s Happy Meal, “sung by kids for kids”), track 1 Life is a Highway? Nailed it. Who knew? I’ve used it to tag the theme song from True Blood (Bad Things by Jace Everett), figure out the name to a song on So You Think You Can Dance? (Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis; great song & great dance) as well as a large number of songs on the radio. Well, not that large a number since I rarely listen to the radio, but when I do, I have no idea what the song is called. Shazam comes through every time I need it. Did I mention it was free? Get it. Use it. Love it.

Samurai delivers gore and soothing music. It dropped to $0.99 on Saturday and will be on sale for a week. I have only completed a few levels, and I really enjoy it. Like other reviewers, I too find it a little repetitive, but the combo moves keep coming and the bodies keep piling around my noble Ronin. Then again, what games on the iPhone aren’t at least a little repetitive? It is novel, well drawn, and does a good job for a scroller at providing a nice 3D feel. For a buck$1.99, it gets my vote.

If you want to try it out, the lite version can be found on iTunes: Samurai Lite

If you can’t be bothered to try the lite verion, here is a YouTube video of gameplay: Samurai iPhone App Game Play

Update 20 Oct ’09: The sale is over. The price is to $1.99. It is still a great, unique game for that price. While free games good games are best, keeping a developer in business making innovative, fun games is good karma too. Check out the lite version. If you like it, make the devs day at Mad Finger Games and cough up the $1.99.