Rdio: One of the Best Music Streaming Apps for iPhone

Rdio: One of the Best Music Streaming Apps for iPhone

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to the music streaming site Rdio.com, because it saves me from buying songs and albums I might only listen to a few times, and provides me with a network of contacts who help me discover new music I might enjoy.

Rdio provides a free limited music streaming service, but for $5 per month you can stream unlimited music via the Rdio web browser or desktop client. For an extra $5 per month, you can have Rdio streaming to your iPhone, over both a Wi-Fi and cellular connection. If that’s not enough, you can also save songs and albums to your iPhone for offline listening. Because of these and other features, we have added the Rdio iPhone app (free) to our Best of iPhone Apps page.

Your Personal DJ

You can register and get free unlimited access to Rdio on the iPhone for two weeks. After that it costs $9.99 for a monthly subscription. You can also now listen to Rdio Stations for free on iOS and Android devices, but free access to Stations is limited and you can’t save tracks and albums to your Collections.

Sliding to the right of any open page in the app reveals a menu sidebar of all the sections of the app. Heavy Rotation contains the music your Rdio contacts are listening to the most. Similarly, the Recent Activity section shows songs and albums recently played by other subscribers in your network. These sections, along with Top Charts andNew Releases, are useful for discovering new music, or music you haven’t listened to in a while.

The biggest downside to the New Releases and Top Charts section is that you can’t filter them for the type of music genres you like to listen to. So if you choose contacts whose music compatibility is close to your own, you’re more likely to discover the type of music you like in the Recent Activity section.

You can also tap on the avatar of a contact to view his or her recent playing activity, collections, and playlists.

Your Music Collections

One of the benefits of being a Rdio subscriber is the ability to add songs and albums to your personal collection and playlists, just as you do in iTunes. In the app you simply tap and hold on the cover art of an album or the title of a song to bring up the menu for adding items to your collections.

Add new playlists from within the app and they will show up in your account on all your devices. Unfortunately, neither the mobile or desktop version of Rdio includes smart playlists, so you will have to build them manually. Rdio also doesn’t allow users to rate songs.

When you tap on the menu button at the top-right, you can select how to filter your collection by recently added, artists, or synced songs.

Like the desktop client, the Rdio app also includes a History section which lists all your played songs and albums.

Playlists

Under Playlists you can filter by your personal playlists, synced only playlists, lists that you collaborate on with other subscribers, and lists you subscribe to. The app allows you to add to the lists as you would on the desktop client.

The checked albums and songs in a list indicate that they are a part of your collection.

Offline Playing

A significant advantage for some Rdio listeners is the ability to sync songs directly to the iPhone so they can be played offline if need be. Sync a song or album to your iPhone by briefly pressing down on an item until the menu options appear, just as you would to add songs to your collection. You can also remove songs through this same menu.

You can add as many songs on your iPhone as its memory space has room for. In theHistory and Collections sections your synced songs and albums will be marked with an orange icon.

Viewing and managing your synced songs is a little tricky. To see them in your collections, tap on the top-right menu icon and select to filter them by Synced Songs, which results in a list of your synced items. Unfortunately they are not presented in a visual grid list.

There doesn’t appear to be a way to batch-remove synced songs from your device, so you will want to keep in mind how many items you are adding to your device if it has limited space.

You can also sync your existing playlists, and then access them by filtering for Synced Only in the playlist section. It would be nice if there were a dedicated section for synced songs.

If you choose to sync songs only when you’re connected to Wi-Fi, and not cellular, you can tap and add songs to be synced, and then when you’re connected to Wi-Fi, tap onSync in the menu section and then tap Check Now for songs that have not yet been synced to your device.

No iOS 7 Update Yet

The Rdio app, which is also optimized for the iPad, has not yet been updated for iOS 7, but in my use of it I find it performs well with no crashes, and is fairly easy to navigate. The downside of using a music streaming site like Rdio is that you lose access to your collected songs when you close your account or if the company closes down.

That said the monthly subscription is much more affordable than buying songs and albums. I listen to more songs in a single month than I would purchase in an entire year.

Download: Rdio for iPhone (Free)

Let us know what you think about the Rdio service and the iPhone app. Are there features you would like to see added?

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Look Out iOS – Google Music Is Here With One Month’s Free Radio

Look Out iOS – Google Music Is Here With One Month’s Free Radio

The market for streaming music apps is getting quite crowded these days with apps like Spotify, Sky.FM, Pandora, and Apple’s iTunes Radio all trying to get a piece of the action. But now one more is attempting to squeeze in on the iOS platform – Google Music. And they are determined to make a bit of an opening splash by offering everyone one month of “All Access Radio”.

Google Music offers two services – the standard service and “All Access”. Both allow you to store your music in the Cloud, and stream that music (similar to Amazon Cloud Player). All Access adds a radio station as well – which is where they are going to butt heads with Apple’s iTunes Radio. However, Google’s All Access is ad-free, whereas iTunes Radio is not. That will matter to people if they are paying the $9.99 monthly fee to go premium. All Access also lets you skip as many songs as you like.

So right off the bat, those are two advantages to looking at Google Music for your streaming needs. Playlists and offline playing is also supported.

If you use the free standard service, you can add up to 20,000 of your own songs to cloud storage (compared to All Access users, who are able to listen to unlimited songs). In addition to the mobile app, desktop users can also stream songs from the browser.

Currently, the app is only available for the iPhone, although an iPad version is apparently in the pipeline.

Due to their financial muscle and Internet dominance, Google tends to make a lot of companies nervous when they enter their little area of the industry. I doubt Apple with all their billions is breaking a sweat and losing any sleep, but can the same be said about Pandora? Or Sky.FM? Only time will tell if Google is able to take away some of the smaller companies’ customers. What do you think?

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Apple Adds Collaboration Features to iWork for iCloud and iOS 7 Redesign of iBooks

Apple Adds Collaboration Features to iWork for iCloud and iOS 7 Redesign of iBooks

In a follow-up to their new product announcements in October, Apple has released updates to its online office suite of services, iWork for iCloud Beta. The updates include new real-time collaboration tools across all its devices, including the web platform.

iCloud now allows for anyone to collaborate on documents in a supported web browser on a Mac or Windows computer. Collaborators don’t need an iCloud account to view and edit linked documents. The original owner of a shared document can end the sharing at any time.

Last week’s update now includes a list of collaborators for a document, and the ability to see cursors and selections of those collaborating in real time. You can also jump to a collaborator’s cursor by clicking his or her name in the list. Each collaborator is assigned a unique color in the list which corresponds to the the edits they make on the document.

The new update also allows iCloud users to organize iWork documents into folders, as well as print directly from the iWork web platform. Creating and adding documents to a folder on the web platform is is similar to how it’s done in the iOS version. Simply select and drag one or more documents on top of another document, and a folder is instantly created. Folders can also be renamed.

The update also now allows Numbers for iCloud sheets in spreadsheets to be reordered, and in Keynote users can now skip slides during playback.

Apple also followed up with another release, the redesign of its iOS iBooks app—now stripped of its classic skeuomorphic design and replaced with a clean iOS 7 design.

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Use Vine to Shoot and View Looping Videos on Your iPhone

Use Vine to Shoot and View Looping Videos on Your iPhone

Vine is a popular free app from Twitter that allows you to shoot and share seven-second looping videos online. The service, which is also available for Android and Window Phone, helped kick-start the short looping video craze which was later picked up by Instagram.

Getting Started

After you install Vine on your iPhone you can register using either your Twitter username or your email address. The Vine homepage consists of videos shared publicly by other users and as you stroll down the homepage, looping videos will automatically start playing. You can share, like, and leave comments on posted videos.

Tapping on the Home button on the top-left enables you to explore popular videos, various Vine channels (including comedy, scary, cats, family, food, music, sports), trends and search videos by hashtag or username.

When you follow other Vine users, you see their activity on the Activity page.

When you browse Vine posts, you will see some very creative videos incorporating various in-app shooting and post-production tricks.

Shooting Video

Shooting Vine videos can be a little tricky for first time users. Start a new video by tapping the camera icon on the top-right. When it’s time to record something, tap and hold your finger on the iPhone screen. There’s no dedicated recording button like you find on the iPhone video camera. Vine’s camera will automatically focus on the subject you’re recording, so wait a second or two for that to happen before you start recording.

A green progress bar will appear to indicate how much video you have recorded. When you lift your finger, the video recording pauses. To use the front facing video camera, tap on the circle icon on the bottom-right.

Other menu items include a composition grid, a location stamp, and the save button on the far right side. After you record a couple of seconds worth of video, an arrow button will appear on the top-right so you can preview the recordings.

Editing Videos

In preview mode you can tap the Edit button and select to move individual clips around or delete them. However, you can’t edit the length of videos or add filters or titles to them. You also can’t import video clips from your iPhone camera.

Posting Videos

Ready to post a video? Tap the preview arrow, and then tap on the green button below the video. On the Share screen you can choose to add a caption, location, channel as well as share via Vine, Twitter, and Facebook. Every Vine you make will also be saved to your Camera Roll.

Vine videos are public by default which means that when you post a video, it can be seen by anyone using the service. You have only two options for how you want to share videos, either public posts, which are made visible to all Vine users and are shareable on Twitter and Facebook, or you can choose to share to your Vine followers only.

To select the option for how you want to share your videos, tap on the Home icon thenProfile > Settings. On the Settings screen, tap on Your content and then enable the protected and sensitive posts options. The settings you choose here apply as defaults for all new posted videos in future.

Looping Fun

There are several other ways you can shoot and share videos using your iPhone, but Vine is one of the easiest, hassle-free solutions for shooting short videos and sharing them with your friends and followers.

Download: Vine for iOS (free)

Let us know what you think of Vine video and how you use it. If you have any questions about the app, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

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Pick A Disease & Wipe Out Humanity in Plague Inc.

Pick A Disease & Wipe Out Humanity in Plague Inc.

Stressed? Got a minute to spare, and a score to settle? Then why not wipe out humanity while waiting for the bus. Plague Inc. ($0.99) is a universal iOS and Android game that invites you to do just that.

By picking a name, disease type and starting location you embark on an ever-evolving journey through the blood of the infected, improving your infectivity and lethality in order to cause as much widespread death and suffering as possible.

Sounds fun? You bet!

Ode To Pandemic

Earlier this year I covered my favourite “pandemic” games in detail, rounding up a rich lineage of games that put population-control first on the agenda. The most famous of these games is Pandemic, an old Flash game that virtually invented the interactive disease genre. Unfortunately, little came of Pandemic in the age of iPads and 99 cent downloads, despite the huge potential that developers Dark Realm Studios were sitting on.

Instead it was up to Ndemic Creations to bring the microbial murder simulator to our mobile devices, and what a good job they did. Plague Inc. doesn’t feel like a cheap copy of a once-great game; but a carefully crafted refinement of the entire genre for the current generation of hardware. It even manages to exceed expectations by fleshing-out the many horrible variables on offer.

When you first start the game, you can only choose to create a bacteria. There are seven “normal” plague types ranging from virus (rapidly mutating, hard to control) to bio-weapon (exceptionally lethal) as well as seven separate “special” plagues including a neurax worm (which burrows into the brain) and cheat-like viruses which stop government intervention and deny the possibility of a cure. Through playing through various games of Plague Inc. you will unlock these various disease types.

There are three difficulties to choose from for each game – casual, normal and brutal. The difference here is down to factors like hygiene – on casual mode, nobody washes their hands, research doctors don’t work and sick people are given mandatory hugs (that’ll help your infectivity). The harder it gets, the more compulsive the hand-washing comes and on the brutal difficulty sick people are even put in prison.

You’ll be invited to name your disease and right before unleashing it on the world you get a chance to modify the genetic code. These optional genes provide perks such as an increased chance of spread by a certain method of transport, resistance to a certain climate and so on. These too are unlockables which you must discover before using them, or if you’re feeling lazy then you can pay $0.99 per gene or $7.99 to unlock all 30.

These really do swing the odds in your favour, and buying them not only makes the game easier but denies you the satisfaction of unlocking them yourself. Paying to unlock certainly isn’t a requirement, and you’ll find it more rewarding to do it the hard way.

Killing Time

Before unleashish your personalised concoction on the world you’ll need to choose a starting country. Where you choose makes a large difference to how the game pans out. Pick a hot, dry country and your disease will have trouble spreading to colder or more humid lands. Richer countries are harder to infect due to better medicine and drugs, while remote countries don’t see as many visitors before the borders are closed.

Those of you who spent hours playing later versions of the aforementioned Pandemic will remember Madagascar and Greenland being notoriously difficult to infect, so if you want to avoid that scenario you can opt to start there. Seeing as there’s plenty to unlock and a whole skill-tree awaiting you, Plague Inc. encourages you to experiment by changing your tactics from time to time.

Once your disease is in the wild you have indirect control over its payload using DNA points accessed via the Disease button. These points are used to mutate the disease by adding abilities like resistance to drugs and heat, symptoms like cysts and nausea and transmission methods like insects and livestock. Unlike Pandemic, your disease will also sporadically develop its own traits which is bound to keep you on your toes. Don’t forget: the more symptoms your disease has, the easier it is to spot and isolate.

DNA points are earned through your total number of infections, as well as by tapping the orange DNA icons that occasionally pop up on screen. You can control the game speed by tapping the clock, which makes laying low and waiting for the infections to rise a fairly quick process. The World button at the bottom of the screen provides you with information about the visibility of your disease, cure progress and raw data about your wave of annihilation.

Plague Inc. also has a slightly cheeky sense of humour that manages to lighten the mood on what is essentially a doomsday simulator. The use of quirky descriptions and the occasional funny news story offsets some of the darker elements, which is nice.

Addictive & Rewarding

The use of Pandemic-style “destroy the world” gameplay alongside a skill tree makes this already addictive game rather rewarding to play. The more you play, the more you unlock, and in an age of gamers who demand more than a core gameplay experience but longevity too, Plague Inc. is a shining example of how to successfully expand on an already solid idea.

Download: Plague Inc for iPhone & iPad / Android ($0.99)

Have you played Plague Inc. or do you remember Pandemic? Let us know in the comments, below.

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Cook All Of The Food In Frantic Restaurant Sim Cook Serve Delicious

Cook All Of The Food In Frantic Restaurant Sim Cook Serve Delicious

Cook Serve Delicious ($4.99) might just be one of the best games on the iPad, which is odd considering it’s a punishing time-management game in which you chop, slice and serve virtual food.

The game was initially released on the PC, requiring users type in each ingredient by hand as requested on-screen – tiring but addictive. Thankfully the controls have been properly optimized for the touch interface, so the iPad (and Android version) makes for a slightly smoother yet equally frantic experience.

A Cooking Simulator

Recently I reviewed Chippy, a fish and chip shop simulator that shares many similarities with Cook Serve Delicious. Despite both having the same goal – to serve as many customers as possible without screwing up – the two are quite different games. While Chippy requires more hands-on work; battering, frying and flinging your orders at impatient customers, Cook Serve Delicious feels a bit more automatic. Rather than sprinkling salt on a pretzel, this time round you need only tap the salt button when asked.

While this doesn’t sound particularly hands-on, the game will test your stress levels by throwing seemingly impossible numbers of orders at you at one time. Each foodstuff is different too – the pricier, more desirable dishes will require a slice here and a swirl there, while simpler and cheaper items are easier to dispense.

The game starts you off with some limited funding, a basic set of kitchen appliances which allow you to make most dishes (you don’t get a deep-fryers or a grill, for example) and four serving stations. Your serving stations are indicated by numbers running down the screen in the top-left. When a new order arrives, this is where you’ll need to tap it to begin serving your delicious food.

As is customary with such time-management games, these orders won’t hang around for long. Miss an order and your reputation will suffer, so work fast to ensure each customer gets served. In addition to serving customers, you’ll occasionally get chores to do around your restaurant. These can take significantly longer to complete than your average food order, and failure to complete them will again score negative points.

The reputation system takes the form of “buzz”, and the buzz generated depends on your performance and the type of food you serve. Smelly big earners (like fish) might draw the crowds at lunchtime but they’ll kill your morning rush. The best way of earning buzz is by completing perfect orders, and the more you complete the higher your multiplier and the better your buzz.

The better your buzz rating, the busier your restaurant – which is a bit of a poison chalice, because your buzz is sure to drop when your eatery is so busy that you simply can’t keep up with orders.  It’s worth noting that you can’t restart an order once you have started it, so if you’re preparing an order and tap the wrong button then there’s no way to recoup that order.

A Restaurant Strategy Game

Beyond all the tapping and swiping is a game of business strategy. You’re given a lump sum at the start of the game with which you must populate your own menu by buying foods from the Management menu. This menu pops up before each new day of work, allowing you to add or drop foods from your active menu as well as upgrade existing purchases and buy additional equipment.

There’s a range of food on offer, and for good reason. If you leave the same items on your menu for too long, “menu rot” takes over and you’ll incur a -5% buzz for each item of food your customers deem boring. This keeps the game varied by forcing you to swap out and buy new food, though you’ll have to think about the knock-on effects some of those items will have.

Eventually you’ll be moving on to specialty foods like coffee and fried rice, which require a minimum one-star rating to unlock. The star rating dictates your overall progress in the game, with each new star requiring a set number of challenges and criteria be completed before you move on to better things. The more stars you earn, the more serving stations you have and the more food you can buy. This is essentially your long-term goal – if Cook Serve Delicious had a story, this would be it.

This planning side of things wouldn’t be anything worth mentioning without a solid and fun game underneath, something Cook Serve Delicious delivers on. It has that addictive “quick-blast” feel, with each day only taking a few minutes to complete. There are rush hour moments where you’ll be rushed off your feet, forfeiting chores to serve more beer to businessmen at lunch time while hoping the safety inspector doesn’t choose this very moment to audit your restaurant.

Developers have expressed interest in getting the game on the small screen, but for now you’ll need to play it on an iPad or Android tablet as it really does demand additional screen real-estate. To me, Cook Serve Delicious is one of those universally entertaining games you should own if you have an iPad (a tolerance for cooking-themed time-management games withstanding, of course).

It is also possible to grab the PC version through Vertigo Gaming’s official store for around $10.

Download: Cook Serve Delicious for iPad / Android ($4.99)

Have you played Cook Serve Delicious? Let us know what you think of it in the comments, below.

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Dead Trigger 2: A Refined Shooter For The Casual Mobile Gamer

Dead Trigger 2: A Refined Shooter For The Casual Mobile Gamer

Much like a cinema buff will look down his nose at the latest Michael Bay blockbuster, the world of video games has its set of gamers who look for much more than “leave your brains at home” entertainment. But Dead Trigger 2 is not meant for such gamers. And perhaps we should all be a little glad about that.

Developer Madfinger Games has made the sequel to one of the best mobile zombie-shooters easily accessible for the casual gamer and broken it down into bite-sized chunks. Indeed, it seems like a lot of thought was given to the fact that this is a mobile game first and a first person shooter second — most games in this category are the other way around.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

In my opinion, smartphones aren’t inherently a platform meant for immersion—one of the important aspects in premium game design. Think about it this way: if you were to watch a film like Gravity on a small mobile screen, it wouldn’t impact you the way watching it on the big screen does. Dead Trigger 2 takes note of this limitation of mobile gaming and follows the old mantra of “Keep it simple, stupid.” While this may be a downer for the serious gamer, it’s perfect for the casual mobile gamer. Hey, when it’s a video game about shooting zombies in a post-apocalyptic world, that’s all you need to know.

You band together with the “Resistance” to rid the planet of the zombie infestation. Your motley crew is made up of a medic, a gunsmith, an engineer, a scientist and a smuggler. In the game, you’ll earn money by killing zombies, with which you can ask your crew to build you stuff like better guns, painkillers and suicidal dynamite-strapped chickens! Again, the ridiculousness of such items is welcome. Dead Trigger 2 isn’t about realism, it’s about having fun.

These weapons are unlocked as part of the game. Some of the zombies you kill will drop blueprints; collect all the blueprints for a weapon like the Ithaca shotgun and your gunsmith will build it.

Apart from money, you have to earn Gold, which can be used to upgrade your crew so they can build you better weapons. Dead Trigger 2 is a freemium game and buying gold is one of the way it makes money. But you can also earn a lot of gold for free with in-game tie-ups. Complete small tasks like installing an app or buying a domain from one of Madfinger Games’ partner and you will be rewarded with a heap of gold. It’s a nice way for developers to earn money and keep games free without forcing the user to buy items.

Pick Up & Play

Your quest starts in the USA, going from city to city and taking out zombies. Like other shooters, the first Dead Trigger — which is one of the best games on Android and iPhone — made you control your movement from a virtual trackpad on the left, while you could aim your cursor from the right half of the screen and shoot with a virtual trigger button. Dead Trigger 2 reimagines and simplifies the controls: the left half is for movement, the right half is for aiming. When your gun locks on to a zombie, it auto-fires. While this might seem like an annoying way of playing for the serious gamer, it’s the most fantastic first person implementation I’ve seen for casual mobile gamers.

The zombies come in a wide variety, from slow-moving men and women of the undead to special ones like the Kamikaze who will blow up close to you, the Scientist who emits harmful radiation and the Berserker who charges at you like a bull. Plus there are bosses like the giant zombie you will encounter in Africa.

The levels are kept short, and in an ingenious implementation, you can select the skill setting for each level. After playing Dead Trigger 2, I wonder why more console games haven’t adopted this; they always make you choose your skill setting for the whole game, not a particular one for each level. Madfinger instead tells you to select Easy, Normal or Hard and rewards you with money accordingly.

And there is enough variety in the levels too. At times, you’ll be manning a heavy gun in a helicopter or protecting your base and ensuring the zombies don’t get beyond a certain point. The sniper levels were my favourite, where after targeting and firing, you can even control your bullet mid-air with some after-touch. Once you are done with the story mode, there are lots of side missions to keep you entertained, in addition to the periodic updates Madfinger pushes out to extend the gameplay.

I loved the old Dead Trigger, but I would never play it when I wanted a quick stress-buster — the control system and the intensity made it a serious game. Dead Trigger 2 changes that entirely and I find myself playing a quick level while waiting for someone or on a short commute.

Looks Great, Sounds Ok

No two ways about it—Dead Trigger 2 is as beautiful as games get on mobile. The amount of detailing that Madfinger has put in makes it a game that could rival what you got on a lot of games on the Xbox 360 and PS3 when they first came out. In short? It looks spectacular and while video games look better on consoles, you wouldn’t be disappointed if you played this one on a big screen.

The audio is perhaps the only disappointing aspect of the game for me. For a zombie first-person shooter, Dead Trigger 2 never quite got the horror part right—and that usually comes in with sound. It’s partly a problem with the platform itself, since a mobile game can’t give you that deep thumping bass which sets your heart racing and makes you afraid of peeking around the corner. But with Madfinger reimagining all the other aspects to make them more mobile-friendly, it’d have been good if they thought about this too. Instead, Dead Trigger 2 sounds like any other shooter on mobile.

Should You Get It?

I would have recommended Dead Trigger 2 as a must-download even if it was priced at $10. Considering it’s free, you’d be crazy not to download this fantastic game. If you are a serious gamer, you should be prepared to be a little disappointed and maybe not even enjoy it as much. But if what you’re looking for is a fun action shooter that is great for a quick, casual game, then it doesn’t get better than Dead Trigger 2.

It’s definitely making it to our list of the best games on iPhone and Android.

Download: Dead Trigger 2 for iOS / Android (free)

Have you tried Dead Trigger 2? Do you approve of the changes? Let us know what you think in the comments, below this post.

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iOS Apps on Sale for November : Marvin, Crazy Taxi & Total War

iOS Apps on Sale for November : Marvin, Crazy Taxi & Total War

Looking for some cheap or free apps, but a little overwhelmed? Once again we’ve rounded up some of our favourite apps on sale to help separate the good from the bad. This week we’ve had more joy finding quality games than useful apps, so read on to find out.

In addition to two past Dreamcast releases from Sega themselves and Namco, there’s a mobile version of Total War, a premium eBook reader and one of our favourite iOS email clients on offer this week. Let’s get started.

Apps

Marvin ($5.49, now free)

Currently free for a short time while Marvin for iPad users switch to the new universal app, Marvin is a premium ebook reader that puts you in control of your library. Unlike iBooks, Marvin doesn’t come with a book store. It also doesn’t impose the same restrictions as Apple, syncs with Dropbox and lets you read DRM-free EPUB 2.0 files.

Boxer ($6.49, now $0.99)

With support for Microsoft Exchange (ActiveSync), Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, Outlook.com/Hotmail, and IMAP; Boxer is an email client with a twist. Featuring some shortcuts for getting to “inbox zero” as fast as possible, canned responses and the ability to attach files from Dropbox or Box cloud storage, check out our full review.

Games

Crazy Taxi ($5.49, now $1.99)

Crazy Taxi was awesome in the arcades, and it kept on being awesome when it was officially released for the Dreamcast shortly afterwards. Carry on the awesome on your iPhone or iPad with Sega’s official iOS port of this breakneck open-world taxi simulator, complete with original (The Offspring and Bad Religion) soundtrack.

SoulCalibur ($15.99, now $7.49)

Currently lacking support for iOS 7, SoulCalibur is a classic Namco Bandai weapon-based fighting game that much like Crazy Taxt first debuted in the arcades then made it to the Dreamcast. $15.99 is way too much money for an old beat ‘em up, so it’s a good job Namco have reduced the price by half for a limited time.

Total War Battles ($1.99, now $0.99)

From the people who brought you the legendary PC series Total War is a brand new real-time strategy game designed from the ground up for touchscreen devices. Set in medieval Japan, it’s up to you to build an economy and take your troops into battle using a unique new take on RTS unit-based combat.

God of Blades ($2.99, now $0.99)

Inspired by “pulp fantasy” book covers and 1970s rock, God of Blades is one of the most unique games on the App Store. It fuses several genres – notably fighting, endless running and role playing – into one geeky package that features 10 glorious hand-crafted Retina ready environments, a large number of unlockable weapons and ever evolving physics-driven combat.

Liberation Maiden ($5.49, now $1.99)

Originally released on the Nintendo 3DS, Liberation Maiden is a comically named Japanese arcade game. Featuring fully weaponized mechs, flying fortresses and lots of explosions, Liberation Maiden is one of those niche titles that Japan does so well.

That should keep you busy for another week, check back next Friday for more iOS Apps on Sale!

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